My Dear Shepherds,
A pastor friend told me that on Sunday mornings during his 4:30 a.m. shower he tries to be sure his heart is right with the Lord while the water washes over him, a sort of baptism refresher. Sometimes it can be a long shower! Whereas others might live a while with a grudge, lust, or anger, pastors face the urgent pressure: Sunday’s comin’. We know better than most that our work requires clean hands and pure hearts lest we stain or skew the holy work entrusted to us.
I trust completely the open-armed grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. I’ve worn a path in the carpet leading to the throne of grace. I know and believe with all my heart that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” The problem is that our work requires faith (“without me you can do nothing”) and our faith is easily sidetracked or diluted by sin. When I’m uneasy at the prospect of repentance I opt for keeping busy without Jesus. I hide busily in meetings, email, or TV, even though I know he is “gentle and lowly in heart” and I would find welcome rest for my soul.
Dealing with our own sin is part of faith’s heavy-lifting that our people never see. I doubt that our brothers and sisters realize how hard it can be for their pastor to deal with guilt and failure, especially when we feel that we, of all people, have no excuse. Having been given much, isn’t much expected? Under the barrage of accusations from our own conscience and the devil it can be hard to muster the faith to run to Jesus yet again.
But we’re caught between a rock and a hard place because, on the one hand, there is the sort of spiritual dullness and procrastination that comes with sin. But on the other hand, if we don’t run to Jesus we know that we are powerless and graceless in our holy tasks.
Again and again, we’ve seen that “where sin increased, grace increased all the more.” God in his mercy doesn’t just pull the plug on us when we are in those dark doldrums. He works, at least for a time, despite our unclean hands. Also, the very urgency that presses us toward repentance is his mercy for it pushes us, however reluctantly, into the arms of the Father and there, to our constant surprise, we’re enveloped in his compassion and his joy in having us safely home again.
Alexander Maclaren preached a sermon titled, “The Collapse of Self-Confidence,” on John 13:38, where Jesus questioned Peter’s over-confidence that he would never betray his Lord. At the end of that sermon Maclaren said,
We may be the stronger for our sins, not because sin strengthens, for it weakens, but because God restores. It is possible that we may build a fairer structure on the ruins of our old selves. It is possible that we may turn every field of defeat into a field of victory. It is possible that we may, “Fall to rise; be beaten, to fight better.”
All this is unseen and unsuspected by our people. But they will surely see the result for it is a God-given blessing to them and to us that they have a pastor who is poor in spirit, who has mourned over sin and been humbled to meekness, who is famished for righteousness, who is merciful, pure in heart, and peacemaking. So there you have it—yet another reason to …
Be ye glad!
Lee Eclov
