I don’t need to rehearse the weighty reasons why many of us pastors are feeling depleted, disheartened, fed up. We might still be smiling on the outside. But inside, it’s often a different story. Obviously, one article can’t fix it all. But maybe I can say something here that, by God’s grace, will strengthen a brother’s weary hands. Three thoughts are flooding my mind for you, in ascending order of priority.

1. Gut It Out

My first point is not the most important one. But still, as a pastor who himself has been beaten up along the way, I have to say this. Brother, gut it out! We must. In this world, which is going to stay broken until Jesus comes back, we must get up tomorrow morning and make life happen, and do our jobs, and advance the ministry — and then get up the next morning, and do it all over again.

What’s the alternative? Quitting? No way! We are not going to surrender our calling to Satan just because we’re suffering. He’s suffering too. Satan can read. He knows what the Bible says. He knows his doom is sure. And he sees his doom in you: “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Romans 16:20). Yes, under your feet. But that wretched loser, in his malice and rage, wants to bring you down while he’s going down. That’s why he wants you to feel defeated — so that you’ll quit, so that he can gloat.

“We’re weary and weak and winning, by the unbeatable power of the risen Christ in us.”

Don’t you see how we’re winning? We’re weary and weak and winning, by the unbeatable power of the risen Christ in us. So, no way are we going to budge even one inch from our God-given advantage as faithful ministers of the gospel. Like football players, we play hurt. Pain is just part of the game. We even like it that way. When it’s late in the fourth quarter, and we’re all bloody and bruised and sweaty and exhausted, but we keep running the plays, we know we’re real football players. And in these longest years, we pastors know we’re real soldiers of the cross. We’re not sitting on the bench. We’re in the game.

Serving Jesus faithfully, pushing through the pain, feels good. Giving Satan a really bad day feels good. My brother pastor, when I think about you ruggedly putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward day after day, as the strength of Christ is made perfect in your weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9), I almost feel sorry for the devil! Almost.

So, let’s gut it out.

2. Dig Deeper, Risk Honesty

John 1:16 is one of my favorite verses in the Bible: “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” There is nothing small about Jesus. He has fullness of grace upon grace for our need upon need. Our risen Lord above, at this very moment, is not tired, and he’s not tired of you. You can dig deeper into his grace, deeper than you’ve ever dug before, and you will never touch bottom.

You will never ask too much of him. You will never ask too often. He will never respond to you with an eye roll and say, “Really? You again? This is the nineteenth time just today you’ve come back asking for more strength. What is your problem?” No, that’s what we’re like. Let’s never project onto him our own pettiness. He has fullness of grace for you, moment by moment. Go to him. Go back to him. Never stop going back to him. He is always happy to welcome you and help you — the real you.

Which raises another point. As you are going deeper into his endless grace, why not share that adventure with your people? Their lives are no carnival thrill ride, either. They are suffering too. So maybe there’s a Sunday coming up soon when you can risk transparency and vulnerability with your people at church. Maybe there’s an appropriate moment when you can go before them and say something like this:

Friends, I think this church needs a new pastor. And I’d like to be that new pastor. I want to change. I want to go deeper with Jesus. Please pray for me. And maybe you’d like to go there with me. I can’t right now foresee how it will all play out. But my status quo sure isn’t working for me. How about you? Can we together walk in newness of life, one step at a time? How about joining me here at the front of the church right after this service? Let’s give our need to the Lord in prayer. He will be glad to bless us!

A pastor who digs deeper into the grace of Jesus and risks honesty with his people — you can be that pastor. Go for it!

3. Watch God Flip Your Low Moment

One of the surprising themes in the Bible is “redemptive reversals,” to quote my friend Greg Beale. The point is, God moves in counterintuitive ways. Our grandiosity flops, and his “failures” save the world. Our wisdom flunks, and his “foolishness” outsmarts the experts. Our ministries hit the wall, and his “weakness” breaks through. In the Bible, it’s obvious. But in our lives, we often have to experience it before we really believe it.

When we start our ministry journey, we love Jesus, of course. But understanding him more deeply might go something like this: You answer his call, go to seminary, pastor a church, preach the gospel in a biblical, positive way, and people start lighting up! Well, most people light up. Others start freaking out. As the Lord puts his hand of blessing on your church, moving in and taking over — that is not what some people bargained for when they called you. And their unhappiness is your fault, of course. You are the new factor in “their church.” So you are the problem, even the enemy. And you’re thinking, “Wait, what?” But that’s just for starters.

Then a presidential election gets people riled up. Add to that, racist violence and tribal hatred and online rancor. Then pile on the pandemic and lockdowns and masks and vaccines and Zoom meetings and livestream preaching and more political craziness — and your pastoral capacities are beyond maxed out. All of which leads you, not to a dead end, but to a threshold: redemptive reversal.

“These hard years you’ve struggled through are not the end of your ministry. They can be the beginning of your real ministry.”

These hard years you’ve struggled through are not the end of your ministry. They can be the beginning of your real ministry. Your disaster is not the defeat of God’s purpose for you. It can be the fulfillment of God’s purpose for you. Your best days in ministry may still lie ahead. I know. The Lord did this for me. And I’m nobody special, just another pastor like you, like so many. But all of us serve a very surprising Savior.

If you will dare to believe it, defying every reason to give up, you will find yourself closer to the heart of God than you’ve ever been before. And for the rest of your life, you will have something to offer suffering people that is deep, profound, life-giving. You will offer them a hope that is convincing, durable, undefeatable — by God’s grace, for his glory alone.

God be with you, brothers, as you take your next step forward.

I’m tempted to say that every Christian pastor needs to read Richard Baxter’s Reformed Pastor. We need to read it more than other pastoral manuals. And we need to read it more than once. After all, for what other book can it be said that merely reading the table of contents could change your life?

Already in his detailed summary of the book, Baxter begins his powerful and practical case for pastoring the flock of God in person. Puritans had finally won their long fight for freedom to preach. In the glow of this victory, Baxter realized that the task of visiting and instructing individuals and families had become so widely neglected that the neglect was no longer considered a problem.

Readers will quickly see how this is relevant for us today: visiting with God’s people, teaching them one on one, being in their homes — or as Baxter sometimes did, asking them to come and meet with him — this kind of personal pastoral work is in many places a lost art. And yet it is often the best way, sometimes the only way, of helping those who do not even know how much they need help.

Visiting Pastor

It means something that Baxter, famous for plugging visitation, was also famous for preaching. He lived as one who had heaven to win or lose just as much as those around him, and that made him relatable. And he preached, he said, as a dying man to dying men, and that made him earnest. His local church was sometimes full beyond its capacity, and he was constantly sought as a preacher at venues around England. He was big deal, a minor celebrity before there were major celebrities, a conference speaker if they had done that sort of thing in those days.

And yet, although he had to preach constantly, he spent two full days per week — or at minimum two half-days — visiting with individuals and families in his town. When he was worried that he might not have enough time to visit his large flock, he cut his own wages so that he could hire an assistant pastor — not so that the other man could to do the visiting on behalf of the “senior pastor,” but so that Baxter himself could better reach the many souls under his charge.

We learn these details from his own massive autobiography and from The Reformed Pastor itself. As the story goes, Baxter had become convinced that he needed to visit with people in his church and neighborhood, and that he needed to try to teach adults and children ignorant of the Christian faith. Once he decided that this was his own duty as a pastor, he figured that it would be just as well if all the ministers in his region did the same, so he gathered them together and persuaded them to join him! (I like this kind of ambition.)

Baxter’s fellow ministers in return had two sensible concerns — the kinds of questions that someone reading Baxter’s book might have too. First, how might people respond to this personal pastoral care? Second, how should it be done?

Baxter addressed the first problem by writing a letter to members of churches that other ministers could themselves use — a piece persuading them of the need for and blessing of shepherds coming among the sheep, “for we were afraid lest they would not have submitted to it.”1 The Reformed Pastor offers counsel to pastors on how to help church members see the blessing of pastoral care. Baxter then planned to preach a practical sermon to area pastors, encouraging them in the work and showing them how it could be done. When he fell ill and could not preach, he simply expanded the planned sermon into a large book — the sort of thing he seemed to do all the time.

Baxter’s Approach

The Reformed Pastor has a series of chapters or parts. It begins with the pastor’s oversight of himself, for Baxter wants the pastor to practice what he preaches. The next part of the book turns to the oversight of the church, and why we must chase after the unconverted, help those who are questioning the faith, build up the saints, and visit families, the sick, and the wandering. The spirit in which this is to be done is considered at length, and powerful motives for investing in the flock are carefully catalogued in yet another section of the book.

Other parts follow, and I suppose that this is as good a place as any to acknowledge that, in addition to sporting a long title (Gildas Silvianus; The Reformed Pastor. Shewing the nature of the pastoral work; especially in private instruction and catechizing), this is also a long book. I recommend reading it in installments. Readers should not race to get knowledge about pastoral care, but slowly reflect on Baxter’s counsel, seeking wisdom as to how to apply it in our own situation (Should we add phone calls to in-person visits? Should we have Zoom calls for those living far from the church?). The book is also best read in installments because the chapters read more like essays on overlapping themes. Baxter is much more concerned about being thorough than being concise — for he returns more than once to motives for pastoral care, objections to pastoral care, and practical how-to tips for visitation.

The tips that Baxter offers are gold nuggets with which to stuff your pockets on your next visit. How can you make your questions maximally friendly? Unintimidating? Clear? Baxter will tell you how, supplying sample dialogues and detailed suggestions.

“For our own good, we sometimes must do the work that only God can see.”

Of course, it is not merely our words that will prove useful. Baxter understood that when we use our time like this, when we invest in people’s lives, we are at some level purchasing their affection with what is very dear to us — our time and convenience. Baxter’s first biographer (other than himself!) wrote that “his unwearied industry to do good to his flock, was answer’d by correspondent love and thankfulness.”2 Nor is the good intended in visiting the flock the only good reaped, for this kind of ministry can also protect our hearts: Baxter comments, perceptively, that the “pulpit is the hypocritical minister’s stage,” as is the press.3 For our own good, we sometimes must do the work that only God can see.

For Current and Future Pastors

I first read Baxter’s book for pastors 25 years ago, and have regularly reread sections ever since. I first started having pastoral interns in 2006, and every intern was required to read part or even much of the book. In later years, I’ve been serving as a seminary professor, and every class on pastoral theology has to read Chrysostom and Gregory the Great. They have to study the works of the Protestant Reformers on pastoral ministry and the best of nineteenth-century manuals on pastoral care. But above all, they must read Baxter.

Baxter always had an eye out for young men being called into pastoral work. He wrote letters matching up godly teachers with godly students, and he kept an eye on the progress of those students over time.4 I find him ideal reading for pastors in the making. But Baxter wrote his book for working pastors especially — pastors who are wondering how to reach neighbors who don’t know Christ, pastors who find that people are going out the back door as fast as they are coming in the front, pastors who discover that the people who do stay don’t seem to be learning.

Non-pastors can benefit from the work too: the woman who would later become my wife read this book as a new Christian, and I can see from her marginal notes that she learned from this book how better to pray for pastors. Indeed, a slip of paper left inside these pages, one that escaped my notice until now, reveals that it was while reading of Baxter’s care for his congregation that Emily understood that she needed to become more involved in a local church.

This is wonderful providence, because the book is not really intended for new Christians. Indeed, the original title signifies that this was intended to be a tough read. Gildas Silvianus is a reference to two church fathers whom Baxter admired for their outspoken style. He respected one for his courage in exposing the faults of the British, and the other for his rebukes of the Romans.5 Baxter considered their work and his work as examples of plain speaking. Truth be told, sections also serve as examples of his well-known legalistic streak. Certainly, along with his invaluable counsel, he could have offered some more encouragement to ministers seeing their pastoral failings and needing grace and forgiveness.

What Edition?

What is the best version of the work to read? The 1656 edition, expanded in 1657, was abridged in 1829 and later reprinted by the Banner of Truth. The abridgement is sensible, although something is lost in the flattening of Baxter’s style (I think we lose something in changing Baxter’s description of pastoral care from “so happy a work” to “so great a work”!).6

“Read the book carefully, consider Baxter’s counsel prayerfully, and begin the work joyfully.”

A more recent abridgement, at once more sympathetic and more severe, is found in the recent edition produced by Crossway under the expert editorship of Tim Cooper. As I wrote in the foreword to that book, “In assigning sections of Baxter’s Reformed Pastor I always felt like I was coming to the text with a cleaver, butchering the book by assigning chunks here and there.” By contrast, “Dr. Cooper has approached his task with a surgeon’s knife, giving the book the slimmer look that most bodies don’t need but which some books do. In this case, when sewn back together, the effect is impressive.”7

Whatever the edition, the main thing is to read the book carefully, consider Baxter’s counsel prayerfully, and begin the work joyfully, for the pastor who does this humble work is the man the King delights to honor.

Do you want to know an inside secret about sermons? You may have noticed it already. If you haven’t, you probably will from now on. Here’s the secret: Preachers often like to begin with an image, story, word, phrase, or Bible passage, and then return to it at the end of the sermon. Those bookends emphasize the preacher’s point, pushing it deeper into the hearts and minds of a congregation.

The biblical authors understood this. King David begins Psalm 103 with an exhortation to himself: “Bless the Lord, O my soul” (Psalm 103:1). He ends the psalm in exactly the same way: “Bless the Lord, O my soul!” (Psalm 103:22). This bracketing (the technical term is inclusion) underscores the point of the whole psalm. David urges his own soul to praise the Lord. Everything in between provides reasons for praising the Lord, as well as exhortations for all of heaven and earth to join in praise.

If the borders of a psalm may point toward its main emphasis, what about the beginning and end of the Bible as a whole? When we examine the bookends of Scripture, what do we find?

The End from the Beginning

Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning, God . . .” Before anything else existed — sunsets, seaweed, giraffes, algebra, lightning, tomatoes, laughter, supernovas, bubblegum, coffee — there was only the triune God, eternally happy within his triune self. Everything and everyone else came later.

At the other end of the canon, the close of Revelation describes an eternal future in which “the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Revelation 21:3). Notice three truths about these bookends. First, God bestrides the Bible, vibrantly present at both the beginning and end. He’s the Alpha and Omega of the Scriptures, the first and the last. He never began to exist, nor will he ever cease to do so. He is absolute, unchanging reality. Of no one and nothing else is this true. Only God is present at both the beginning and end of the Bible.

Second, something important has changed from Genesis 1 to Revelation 21. At the very beginning of the Bible, God exists within the happy community of himself. At the very end of the Bible, he dwells with his people in a new creation. Where did those people and that place come from? God himself created and redeemed both the people and the place.

“The cry of God’s people is always for more of God.”

Third, it turns out that the story doesn’t end when the Bible does. It goes on and on and on, for eternity. The Bible’s penultimate verse is a cry from the heart: “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20), which means that the Scriptures conclude on tiptoe, yearning toward a deeper, fuller, richer experience of the presence of Christ. God’s story is an eternal one. The cry of God’s people is always for more of God.

Story Beneath Every Story

The implication of all this is that the Bible is not ultimately our story but God’s. God himself is the main character — and also the author who dictates the action. The Bible tells primarily of God’s works, ways, and words.

Yes, there are lots of secondary characters and interesting subplots. We learn about the material creation, including the abundance and variety of plant and animal life that fills the world. We read fascinating accounts of Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Nehemiah, Peter, Paul, and hundreds of others, who make big mistakes and accomplish great things. The Bible bursts with stories of human frailty, rebellion, intrigue, love, courage, and tragedy. But none of those stories is the main one. None of those characters is the hero.

The overarching story line of the Bible is the story of God — the only one present at both the beginning and the end. Everyone (and everything) else is there in the story as an invited guest, beyond their deserving. All the complexities of human existence, and the vast lifespans of galaxies, exist within the eternal story of God.

Overlooking the Lead Role

It may seem blindingly obvious to claim that the Bible is mainly the story of God, but how easy it is to miss. Years ago, a famous Bible scholar wrote an article called “The Neglected Factor in New Testament Theology.” In it, he argued that God himself was the neglected factor! God’s presence was so often assumed by those committed to studying the Scriptures with care and rigor that it was largely overlooked. Yes, this actually happens.

On a more everyday level, many of us could honestly admit that we commonly place ourselves at the center of the stories we inhabit. When we grant God a place (all too often we forget him entirely), it’s to notice how he fits in around our own story. We may be mystified or angry or sad that he hasn’t intervened more frequently. Or we may be genuinely grateful for what he’s done. But at the deepest level, we’ve flipped the script: God inhabits our stories, rather than the other way around. Maybe God-centeredness isn’t so obvious as we thought.

Our tendency to minimize and marginalize God is sometimes evident in our approach to the great Bible bookends of Genesis and Revelation. Both are battlegrounds for fights about how and when exactly God created, as well as the timetable of events for his return. These questions are not unimportant. But sadly, they’ve sometimes overshadowed God himself. Our fascination with how God has acted (or will act) has too often led to gross neglect of the central truth that he has acted at all — and what that says about him.

Even a brief look at Genesis and Revelation (which is all we have space for here) shows that these two great books tell the story of God.

At the Center of the Beginning

In Genesis, all things are from and for God. He’s the originator of all, and he’s the first enjoyer of all. He creates by speaking everything into existence. That means all else is derivative and has its source in him. Even as he creates, he observes and appreciates what he makes. Over and over, he sees that his creation is good (Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25), even “very good” (1:31). We get the sense that he’s really enjoying this. All things are from him and for him.

Moreover, humankind, the pinnacle of this “very good” creation, exists to display his worth. God’s creation of men and women in his image, after his likeness (Genesis 1:26), suggests that their vocation is to image him forth to the rest of the world, serving as agents of his rule. His command to be “fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28) demonstrates that their display of his worth isn’t meant to be merely local but rather global. And God is doggedly persistent in his project of blessing all mankind and displaying his worth everywhere. He doesn’t allow the rebellion of Adam and Eve to derail his project but persists in working with humanity. After the catastrophic judgment of the flood, he starts over with Noah’s family. Following the proud self-assertion of the nations (Genesis 11), he calls Abram to serve as a conduit of divine blessing for “all the families of the earth” (Genesis 12:3).

Throughout Genesis, God is the sovereign planner, the persistent initiator, and the main actor. He’s the one who sends the flood, calls Abram, blesses Abram, renews his covenant promises to Isaac and Jacob, and sends Joseph ahead into Egypt to preserve his people (Genesis 45:7; 50:20). He writes the story and moves it forward at every step.

God is also the sweetest blessing, the ultimate treasure, of his people. After Adam and Eve’s rebellion, their greatest punishment is exile from God’s presence (Genesis 3:22–24). More precious even than the blessing of land and offspring is God’s promise to Abram “to be God to you and to your offspring after you” and his promise regarding Abram’s descendants that “I will be their God” (Genesis 17:7–8).

Genesis is a profoundly God-centered book. In it, all things are from, through, and to God.

At the Center of the End

The seven blessings scattered throughout Revelation (the first in 1:3 and the last in 22:14) show that the main purpose of this book is not to satisfy end-time curiosity or to solve apocalyptic puzzles, but to bring divine blessing to God’s suffering people. God means to give grace, as is evident in 1:4 (“Grace to you”) and 22:21 (“The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you all”).

“God’s blessing is not a gift that is separable from himself. Rather, the blessing of God is God.”

Importantly, God’s blessing is not a gift that is separable from himself. Rather, the blessing of God is God. In the new creation, he will “dwell” with his people (Revelation 21:3), a promise that recalls his presence among Israel in the tabernacle. In fact, the description of the new Jerusalem as a perfect golden cube (Revelation 21:15–21) nods to the Most Holy Place in the temple, suggesting that in the new creation God’s people will enjoy his immediate presence, as only the high priest was permitted to do (and that only once a year).

In the new world, his people will see his face (Revelation 22:4), a staggering privilege not even Moses was permitted. The long and painful story of exile from God’s presence that began after Adam and Eve’s sin and banishment from the garden, and continued through Israel’s exile from the promised land, will finally end. God’s people will enjoy his perfect presence in the new creation and will never again be sent away.

Meanwhile, as God’s people await this promised future, Revelation steadies them by insisting that nothing happens by chance, but rather all things occur by God’s sovereign plan. The book is “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place” (Revelation 1:1). That key word must expresses divine necessity. The book ends with the reminder that “the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place” (Revelation 22:6). It must take place because God has willed it. His sovereign control brings steady comfort and strength in the present.

Revelation is radically God-centered. The sovereign God ordains the ways of the world. The glorious, triune God is the aim and treasure of his people. His throne is set in the midst of worshiping angels and humans (Revelation 4–5).

Joys of a God-Centered World

The God-centeredness of the Bible’s bookends suggests that the whole Bible is, in fact, focused on God and meant to tell his story. And this is very good news for us. When we live for ourselves, life doesn’t go well. But when we live for him, we’re living along the grain of the universe, as he designed things to function. We therefore experience true, deep, lasting joy. When John the Baptist heard that Jesus was growing in prominence, he said, “This joy of mine is now complete” (John 3:29). John was happiest serving as the spotlight operator, shining his light on the one true star of the show.

The biographer Arnold Dallimore records a story about Charles Spurgeon, in whose day streetlights were gas-lit. Each had to be lit individually. One night, Spurgeon observed a line of streetlights being lit that went right up a hill, from its foot to the summit. He later described that moment:

I did not see the lamplighter. I do not know his name, nor his age, nor his residence; but I saw the lights which he had kindled, and these remained when he himself had gone his way. As I rode along I thought to myself, “How earnestly do I wish that my life may be spent in lighting one soul after another with the sacred flame of eternal life! I would myself be as much as possible unseen while at my work, and would vanish into eternal brilliance above when my work is done.” (Spurgeon, 162)

Let’s allow our joy to swell as we live within the one great story of the one true God.