I want to offer a word of encouragement for pastors. This season has led to much discouragement. The breakdown in the rhythms of church community has led to real strain and a fraying at the edges of church life, and this takes a huge toll on you. In addition, you have faced unexpected challenges – some emerging from without (especially politics) and some from within. You have been personally attacked and criticised, and it has been very difficult to mend damaged relationships. People are leaving your church, and some of them because they are disgruntled.
You feel a loss of purpose. God has given you a field to work – the church you lead – and it feels like you’re working with your hands tied and the field on fire. That makes it hard to stay upbeat and full of faith, because all you see are the problems. So, it’s harder to get up in the morning, and harder to pray, and harder to smile to the impassible shark eye of the camera.
If ever a minister knew discouragement, it was surely Jeremiah. This is how God encourages him:
Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose trust is the LORD.
He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.
– Jeremiah 17.7–8
We are in a year of drought. There are natural and unnatural forces at work beyond our control, affecting our work, our field, our fruitfulness.
Are you trusting in your sovereign Father? Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD. When you’re discouraged and feeling a temptation towards self-pity, you must ask yourself: Do I believe God is sovereignly in control of these circumstances? And do I trust him to work all things together for good? Your emotional state is a gauge of your trust, and so be honest with yourself; are you anxious or are you trusting?
In an echo of the first Psalm, the promise God speaks to Jeremiah is for fruitfulness. While the world is burning, your trust is like a set of well-developed roots that find the underground streams and keep you nourished when everything else is charred, brittle, dry, and barren. Knowing you have access to the Father in prayer and in his promises and that he means to do you good has a sure and certain consequence: you will be fruitful.
Jesus does not will for you to be anxious. Yes, he’s allowed you to face a season you were not necessarily prepared for. You have felt the slow and chronic wearying through months of misery. You’ve also felt the blows, buffeting and battering of the emails and the gossip. But Jesus does not will for you to be anxious. He instead would want you to trust.
It is in trust that you will not fear when heat comes, you will remain green, you will not be anxious in this year of drought, and you will not cease to bear fruit.