One of practical wisdom during a class in Pastoral Ministries when I was in seminary was a professor’s exhortation to future Pastors not to quit the ministry on Mondays.
I think this general principle is helpful not only for Pastors but the rest of the members of the church as well.
I imagine there are those who are reading this who can be quite discouraged and beaten up with serving the Lord in the church. You might even have the case of Sunday blues after the service/fellowship is over. You might have all kinds of heartaches and legitimate grievances.
May I encourage you to never quit church or the particular local church you are in on Sundays. Sometimes a few days later as you think about things with more calmer emotions, you might realized that’s not the decision you should take.
Thanks for the encouragement, brother. Funny how we only want to quit when things are hard, but stay when things are well.
Very true. How are you guys holding up?
Doing well. Hanging on only by the Lord’s strength.
Good idea bro.
Thanks. How did everything go this weekend?
Oh, wonderful, thank you for asking. I realized that I had never preached 3 times in 24 hours before. It was quite overwhelming, but God sustained me.
Funny story. This happened at the dinner immediately before my first sermon:
You know your conversation is going to be interesting when you ask somebody what church they go to, and the story starts with them explaining why everyone at their current church left their previous church to start a new church because somebody at the old church was teaching Calvinism. She continued, explaining to me how frustrating it was that the pastor, instead of sticking to the KJV , was using Greek to “twist” what some words meant.
It took a few minutes, but she finally asked me if I was a Calvinist.
One of the words that bothered her was the new pastor was telling them they were ‘slaves’ instead of ‘servants.’
My second sermon was about how we are slaves.
Needless to say, prayer is needed to ask God to be merciful to my hearers including this woman whose eyes need opened!
Wow! That is rather awkward. Was she there for all three messages? I’ll continue my prayers.
She was there for the first 2 messages. I heard from another person that my sermon about being slaves to sin or slaves to Christ really bothered her, but she was encouraged to go and look up the Scriptures herself. Even with a bad translation there is no way around Romans 6 talking about us being ransomed.
Reblogged this on Talmidimblogging.
Thanks for reblogging this post my brother Vincent!
You’re very welcome Brother Jim!
Reblogged this on devincasey.com.
Thanks for reblogging this Devin.
My family has struggled to find a solid Bible preaching church. Pray for the Lord to open the door for us to find a good church. I work nearly every Sunday (I drive a truck) so pray for me to have Christian fellowship during the week and for my family to attend church when I’m gone.
Ok
Brother Roy I shall be praying for you.
[…] great short post by Jim at The Domain for Truth on hanging in at church when things get tough. This was written for pastors, but the wisdom is […]