by Pastor Patrick Cho

Pastors strug­gle, too. For some, this may be dif­fi­cult to under­stand because they con­sider that it is the pastor’s job to be in God’s Word. It’s part of pas­toral min­istry to be pray­ing for peo­ple and show­ing godly kind­ness to them. Even though these things are true, the pas­tor can strug­gle spir­i­tu­ally. There have been times when on the way to Bible study I didn’t feel like teach­ing. There are times when I don’t feel like open­ing up God’s Word. There are times when I am not in the mood to coun­sel oth­ers or pray for them.

Pastors are not imper­vi­ous to spir­i­tual slug­gish­ness. That really is what it boils down to. We can be lazy, too. Oftentimes, it seems like the hard­est thing to do is to crack my Bible open to have my daily read­ing. There are sea­sons when I am really incon­sis­tent in my times with the Lord. And really, if I’m hon­est, it comes down to a lack of dis­ci­pline in my life. I’d rather do the things that I want to do rather than doing the things I know I need to do.

It’s times like this when I’m tempted to think up clever schemes to get myself back on track. I’ll go out and buy a new jour­nal (I can’t tell you how many jour­nals I’ve started and never com­pleted!) or start a jog­ging rou­tine because I seem to do bet­ter spir­i­tu­ally when I’m more dis­ci­plined phys­i­cally (you can imag­ine how long that lasts!).

The truth is that clever schemes aren’t the solu­tion for spir­i­tual slug­gish­ness. What is nec­es­sary is repen­tance. I need to be hon­est with God and con­fess that lazi­ness is ulti­mately a sin against Him. I need to ask His for­give­ness and direct my life towards Him. This requires that I turn from my sin, and that requires dis­ci­pline. It isn’t about com­ing up with clever schemes. It’s about get­ting back to basics.

First, I need to make time for God’s Word. I say “make time” because find­ing time doesn’t always work. I am resigned to the fact that I will always be busy. It’s not very hard to fill my day with stuff, but it’s amaz­ing how busy­ness doesn’t always amount to pro­duc­tiv­ity. In order to be dis­ci­plined with God’s Word, I sim­ply need to carve out time in my day and stay com­mit­ted to it. Certainly, this assumes that I am not just in it, but prayer­fully in it. Devotionally in it. Joyfully in it. That takes time. I need to pray that God would bless me through what I read. I need to pray like the Psalmist that God would open my eyes to see won­der­ful things in His law. With time and patience, God will make time in His Word sweet.

There is a woman I know in Argentina who spends time in God’s Word each morn­ing. Her son says that she weeps over the pages as she con­sid­ers what the Lord is teach­ing her. This sort of devo­tion does not come overnight. It comes from putting in the time to go deeper and deeper in one’s rela­tion­ship with Him. It comes from com­ing to the Word over and over as if it is the food you eat and the water you drink, under­stand­ing that with­out it you would die. It requires that you allow God’s Word to fill your heart and mind.

Second, I need to pray. Prayer gives me the oppor­tu­nity to express thank­ful­ness to God and gets my heart in a wor­ship­ful state. It also puts me in the right posi­tion of depend­ing on the Lord instead of on myself. When I don’t pray, it becomes eas­ier and eas­ier to fall into the error of think­ing that prayer doesn’t accom­plish much. But when my life is full of prayer, I expe­ri­ence how God hears, answers, and hon­ors my prayers.

OK, this entry is start­ing to get kind of long, so I’ll end here and pick up next time.

Probably Related Posts

• Getting Back to Basics — Part 2
• Flexing Some Muscle
• A Quiet Time of Discipleship
• Weekly Links (10/29/2010)
• Learning to Lean

This entry was posted on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 1:00 am and is filed under Pastor's Corner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.