Dealing With the Tough Stuff

Tuesday, November 21, 2023

Brothers and sisters, we urge you to warn those who are lazy.  Encourage those who are timid.  Take tender care of those who are weak.  Be patient with everyone.  See that no one pays back evil for evil, but always try to do good to each other and to all people.  Always be joyful.  Never stop praying.  Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.  

1 Thessalonians 5:14-18

Lazy, timid, and weak – It seems Paul has begun the work of caring for the kindergarten of Christianity.  And yet, who hasn’t been lazy, timid, or weak?  These are common ailments of character, and we humans are subject to character flaws.  But notice how Paul then modulates to patience.  That is the needed ingredient in caring for the weak links in character or community.

One of the privileges of being a pastor to a congregation is the holy ground of trust, where church members commit their problems and trials to your keeping in prayer.  A pastor is told heart secrets that would scorch the paint off nursery walls, and depress the most positive people. 

In 2005 I moved from being a Baptist pastor to the Methodist tribe.  Part of that process was in cooperation with a committee charged with overseeing and encouraging me during the shift.  They were kind, helpful, and encouraging to a nearly 60-year-old who had already served 25 years in pastoral ministry.  However, after one session their assessment was that I needed to wait another year before being confirmed in the process of elder-status, because you have too much sadness in your life.  I tried to accept their guidance graciously, but this was one time I had a tough time following Paul’s admonition to be patient!  Inside I was steaming…too much sadness???  Too much sadness?  I’m a pastor; people tell me all the sadness of their lives…OF COURSE I’ve got TOO MUCH SADNESS!

In retrospect, I’m repentant of that inner response.  I needed Paul’s warnings at that point.  Their assessment may have fallen short, but instead of humbly considering their earnest care for my inner peace, I bristled; I had no patience.  I missed the mark by a wider margin than their assessment.  In my impatience and anger I was not (as Paul advised) thankful in ALL circumstances.

Sometimes I think I have not grown much in the patience department.  This week I was walking in the parking lot from the gas pump to the store when a young man almost backed over me.  My Mother would have bristled to see the dance her youngest boy did to escape being flattened…and Dad would’ve had a great laugh and story to tell his buddies.  I quickly (and loudly) told the young driver what a four-thousand-pound SUV can do to an unprotected human body, and how he should look before he backs-up.  The young man humbly apologized to the irate old preacher.  I was immediately convicted of my inappropriate anger and impatience.  As a pastor I have taught, counselled, and (at times) prided myself on being patient.  In truth, I need to sit in dust and ashes more often.

After reflecting and praying about my impatience, I’ve decided to change my way of viewing my circumstances from reacting…to pro-acting.  Reacting is acting in response to how you’re treated, or how the circumstances affect you.  Proactive is deciding beforehand to act in love and joyful thankfulness, no-matter what happens.  I will look-for, and hopefully find, God’s hand of lovingkindness, however the circumstances unfold before me.  I know this will be difficult (at first), but I’m also certain the long view will see the benefit of inner peace for me, and opportunities to serve God’s Kingdom.

For You Today 

We live in a hurried, pressure-driven, and often angry world.  Pray for the calming, joyful influence of patience to take the temperature down a bit; that is something we can all use.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,600 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road library.

Today’s title Image from Pixabay.com  

Images without citation are in public domain or cited via weblinks.  

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from NLT^©   

Overwhelmed!

 

Friday, June 24, 2022

I cry out to God; yes, I shout.  Oh, that God would listen to me!  When I was in deep trouble, I searched for the Lord.  All night long I prayed, with hands lifted toward heaven, but my soul was not comforted.  I think of God, and I moan, overwhelmed with longing for his help.               Interlude

You don’t let me sleep.  I am too distressed even to pray!  I think of the good old days, long since ended, when my nights were filled with joyful songs.  I search my soul and ponder the difference now.  Has the Lord rejected me forever?  Will he never again be kind to me?  Is his unfailing love gone forever?  Have his promises permanently failed?  Has God forgotten to be gracious?  Has he slammed the door on his compassion?            Interlude

And I said, “This is my fate; the Most High has turned his hand against me.”  But then I recall all you have done, O Lord; I remember your wonderful deeds of long ago.  They are constantly in my thoughts.  I cannot stop thinking about your mighty works.  O God, your ways are holy.  Is there any god as mighty as you?  You are the God of great wonders!  You demonstrate your awesome power among the nations.  By your strong arm, you redeemed your people, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph.   Psalm 77:1-15

It's a very common experience; all too common!  The pressure builds on the job, or in the family, or with neighbors, death, Covid, bills, age…and on into the abyss.  You’ve been overwhelmed; hope has vanished.  Even just listing these gives me a cold chill.  I’ve been there; chances are you have too, or you even live there.

Whether you’re a believer in God, follower of Jesus, or someone who’s not quite sure if God is even there, you’ve probably prayed during those times.  You ask for a solution, or at least some relief, and the heavens respond back quickly with….NOTHING.  There’s no sound, no skies unfolding with answers, not a twinge of assurance suddenly welling-up in your gut; just the emptiness and certainty that you’re on your own, in your pain, and completely forgotten.

The Psalmist, a court musician in King David’s reign, spent a night in prayer over what was happening in his life, and a kingdom in chaos.  Heaven went dark on him.  You can just picture the building sense of Why Bother?  If you’ve watched that develop in a friend, or family member, you know it’s time to collect all the loose prescription bottles around the house and change the combination on the gun safe.  The scenes start playing over and again in your mind of how you can escape such pain.  If you’ve faced this, and lived-through to a revival of hope, you know it was something greater than what was left inside of you that saved you from yourself.  There was a moment when it all changed, or it gradually dawned in your soul, that a genuinely-hopeful light did exist at the end of the darkness.

For Asaph, it was a long history of staying close to God’s family, prayer, and choosing faith over feelings.  He began to recall (out loud in his written prayer) all the historical facts of God’s goodness.  He started listing them, one-by-one, and with each post of God’s unending faithfulness, the light of dawn crept a little closer.  This practiced litany of Israel’s history with God’s lovingkindness became a sermon Asaph penned for other depressed, hopeless ones in Israel.  By the time this court poet was done, his own darkness was glowing with surprising and fierce joy; the next Psalm ends with God’s solidified tenderness and hope:

He cared for them with a true heart and led them with skillful hands.  Psalm 78:72

For You Today

Is your hope tank on empty?  Take Asaph’s lesson; joy comes in the mourning!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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For other posts on this topic:  A Prayer From the Hourglass and Has God Forgotten to Be Gracious?

[1] 6 Images:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

 

Pain in the Parsonage

[i]

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

This is a trustworthy saying:  “If someone aspires to be a church leader, he desires an honorable position.”  So a church leader must be a man whose life is above reproach.  He must be faithful to his wife.  He must exercise self-control, live wisely, and have a good reputation.  He must enjoy having guests in his home, and he must be able to teach.  He must not be a heavy drinker or be violent.  He must be gentle, not quarrelsome, and not love money.  He must manage his own family well, having children who respect and obey him.  For if a man cannot manage his own household, how can he take care of God’s church?  A church leader must not be a new believer, because he might become proud, and the devil would cause him to fall.  Also, people outside the church must speak well of him so that he will not be disgraced and fall into the devil’s trap.  1 Timothy 3:1-7(NLT)

I’m not the only pastor who takes a deep breath when he reads this passage.  It’s a formidable list of qualifications; who, besides Jesus, lives up to this?  I think the one that troubles most preachers greatly is that sticky one about managing his household.  I was going to write a book once entitled Pain in the Parsonage, but decided I’d wait a while on that like Pastor Bruce McIver who wrote the series on Stories I Couldn’t Tell While I Was a Pastor.  Some things are better if you sleep on them and put a little distance between reality and revelation.

One painful memory from my youth is about Dave[ii], who was the son of my pastor when I was just a boy.  This preacher’s kid was just a baby when Pastor Olson and the family hit town.  He was much younger than me, so I didn’t hang out with him.  Dave’s Dad was a great pastor; he hung out with the youth mostly, and the church grew like wildfire.  It seemed overnight the little sanctuary was overflowing.  By the time I graduated high school the congregation had built a brand-new building and parsonage.  But the pressure on Dave was building.

Dave was a sensitive young man and the occasional criticism that came with the job of being a pastor surfaced.  Dave’s Dad, usually congratulated for everything good that happened, was now being vilified for not pleasing everyone.  Some of the older members assumed he should have been visiting them, rather than taking the youth group on a camping trip or playing softball at the children’s day.

When Dave’s high school days came to an end, the open door was too appealing, and Dave left home, hitchhiking to California for a vastly different life than his small-town upbringing.  Pastor Olson took Paul’s letter to Timothy at face value, judging that he had not managed his own family well, so he was disqualified from serving as pastor.  He resigned his position and took up carpenter’s tools to earn a living.  But all the while Dave was in the far country, Mr. and Mrs. Olson kept praying for their son.

One night the phone rang; it was Dave.  He’d had enough of the good life that really wasn’t very good; Dave was somewhere in the Midwest, hitch-hiking towards home.  He needed to know if it was alright to come all the way.  Dave and my former pastor cried together and prayed together on the phone and made plans for the reunion.  Their prayers had been answered.

But, somewhere on the long road home, something happened, and the phone rang again.  This time it was the police; Dave’s body had been found in a ditch beside the highway.  He’d been beaten, robbed and left for dead.  Dave, the blond haired, blue-eyed twenty-something sensitive son of a preacher never made it home…at least to his earthly father’s embrace.

I never heard whether they found out exactly what happened, or whether Dave’s murderer was held accountable.  It’s just a fact of life that sometimes there is no such thing as closure; it is only faith that God holds all things in His trustworthy hands, and Dave, having given his life to his Redeemer, did make it to his eternal home with Jesus. 

For now, that is enough.

For You Today

You may have never lived in a parsonage, but you have dealt with pain.  For followers of Jesus Christ, it is our chief blessing that we do not have to shoulder it alone!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[i] Title Image:  via Pixabay.com

[ii] This true story is based on my recollections and a recorded program of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family