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.

Audio Transcript

Does holy anger kill our delight in God? It’s a good question from Matt, a listener in Wisconsin. “Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast! I think we are living in an age where Christians are taking hard stances on just about anything and everything, making decisions about vaccines and politicians and masks — decisions all held with unflexing, biblical conviction. And then those staunch positions, and the resulting strong language, is justified by Christians in terms of righteous anger — like Jesus flipping tables and not sinning.

A long time back, in an episode on abortion, APJ 672, you made a case for using righteous anger to call out the evil of killing the unborn. It witnesses to the world the degree of such an injustice. But later you were asked about the distinction between unholy anger and holy anger. That was in APJ 1100. And there you said,

I was much more optimistic about a righteous place for anger when I was 30 than I am now. I have seen the destructive power of anger in relationships, especially marriage, to such a degree over the last forty to fifty years that I am far less sanguine about so-called righteous anger than I once was. Anger is not just a relationship destroyer; it is a self-destroyer. It eats up all other wholesome emotions.

I’m wondering if that last phrase is connected to your overwhelming emphasis in your ministry on delighting in God and desiring God. Were you there suggesting that ‘righteous anger’ tends to ‘eat up’ the proper, more dominantly necessary emotions of delight and satisfaction in God? And where are you at now in life with the value or dangers of righteous anger?”

I’m glad to address this again. I feel very strongly about it. So was I suggesting that righteous anger can become a destructive anger that eats up the God-glorifying emotions of joy and peace and delight in God? Yes, absolutely, I was suggesting that and believe it. Anger of a certain kind and a certain duration will not only eat up all God-glorifying emotions, but it will eat up virtually all emotions and leave a person with an outward, plastic, superficial personality or persona, and an inward, easily offended cauldron of suppressed anger. I have seen it in life. I see evidences of it in the Bible.

So let’s look at a few passages for why I see things this way and feel as strongly as I do, and perhaps I can give some help not to go there.

Slow to Anger

You have this famous statement in James 1:19–20:

Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

Now notice the logic, the logical connection: be slow to anger because the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. So a quick-tempered person is generally experiencing anger that is not of God. And that’s the logic: It is simply man’s anger. Quick anger is regularly man’s anger, not God’s anger. It’s not righteous. It’s destructive. Now listen to these proverbs to see where James has rooted all this. I think James is the closest thing we get to the book of Proverbs in the New Testament. I don’t doubt that he was deeply schooled on Proverbs.

Proverbs 14:17: “A man of quick temper acts foolishly.”
Proverbs 14:29: “Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.”
Proverbs 15:18: “A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger quiets contention.”
Proverbs 16:32: “Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.”
Proverbs 19:11: “Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.”

Wisdom from Above

So then you go over to James 3. I think it is really important to align James 1:19–20 with James 3:14–18, and you see the heavenly alternative to the merely human anger that does not produce the righteousness of God. Here’s what it says.

The wisdom from above [it’s heavenly; not just from a man] is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

And remember that James 1:20 said that anger does not produce the righteousness of God. So here you get a harvest of righteousness, and this harvest is sown in peace by those who make peace — in other words, the opposite of anger. Anger seldom accomplishes the good ends that James is after — namely, a harvest of right, good, wholesome, just, loving behavior. It may. I’m going to get to the fact that there is such a thing as righteous anger, but it is really rare, I think, and therefore, James says, “Be slow to go there — very, very slow to get there.”

So the very least we can say from James is that if anger should come, it should come slowly — not necessarily temporally slowly, though that’s probably the case ordinarily, but rather in this sense: It’s got to go through some real serious filters in your soul. It’s got to go through the filter of humility, and through the filter of patience, and through the filter of wisdom, and through the filter of love, and through the filter of self-control. And if it comes out on the other side, it might be righteous anger. It should be slow in the sense that you put it through the paces. Don’t just go there.

Now here comes Ephesians 4. That’s the only other text we will look at in a significant way.

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. (Ephesians 4:26–27)

So James says, “Be . . . slow to anger.” And Paul says, “Be quick to stop being angry.” That’s really significant, isn’t it? Paul puts a high premium on the duration of anger. “Do not let the sun go down on your anger.” Be done with it by sundown. It’s dangerous. And the danger is the devil. So, James and Paul treat anger as a hot potato: Be slow to catch it. And if you’ve got to catch it, toss it quickly to somebody else — or better, toss it in the river.

Now, why? And Paul gives the reason why it’s so dangerous. He says, “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger. Get rid of it quick. Don’t give place to the devil.” So to go to bed seething, to go to bed with a grudge, to go to bed with anger that’s not dealt with — not forgiving people, holding a grudge — is an invitation as you go to sleep to the devil to come on in. And it seems that the devil specializes in moving into this deadly work, his deadly work, where anger is held onto day and night.

So one of the signs of righteous anger is that it comes slowly, and it leaves quickly. It does not dominate. It does its work in the moment, and it doesn’t stay around to contaminate. It doesn’t give place to the devil. And what I’ve been saying for years is that what the devil does, when you give him place by holding onto anger longer than you should, is eat up every alternative, good, God-glorifying emotion. And I would add from what I’ve seen in recent days, that he not only eats up good affections and emotions, but that, in the absence of those affections, he eats truth. He distorts true perceptions. We don’t see things as clearly when anger eats us up.

Consumed Affections

I have seen it. I’ve seen people move from the most mild assessments of someone’s error to damnation. I mean, you wonder, Where did that come from, that they would move to the point of actually damning another person for what started out to be a relatively minor fault? And I think part of the answer is that anger eats up love, anger eats up affections, anger eats up thankfulness, and anger eats up true perceptions of reality. So the point is this:

The devil hates joy in God.
The devil hates tenderhearted compassion.
The devil hates us to be kind to suffering people.
The devil hates sweet affection for our families.
The devil hates it when husbands and wives are tenderhearted and kind and forgiving to each other (Ephesians 4:32).
The devil hates wonder and admiration at the beauties of nature.
The devil hates all the fruit of the Holy Spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, meekness, faithfulness, self-control (Galatians 5:22–23).

He hates them all. And when we give him place in our hearts at night, going to bed with anger, the jaws called anger consume, over time, all those precious affections.

So the present state of my mind here — he asked, “Where’s your mind presently on this issue?” The present state of my mind, both biblically and culturally on this question about anger, is that anger is a dangerous emotion — not necessarily sinful. God, by the way, is the only person who is holy enough to manage it really well. And he does get angry, and he never sins. But we, however, being fallen and sinful, must consider it much more dangerous for us than it is for God. It’s not dangerous for God. Nothing is dangerous for God. It has a proper place, therefore, only when it comes slowly, leaves quickly, and in between, is truly governed by a love for people and the glory of God.

Joyfully Overwhelmed

So, let me end the way Paul does, following up on his admonition not to go to bed angry. He says in the next verses,

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger [now we’re told that not only do you give place to the devil, but you grieve the Spirit, if you hold onto anger] and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4:30–32)

And there’s the key, isn’t it? We must let our affections be joyfully overwhelmed that, while we deserve wrath and anger from God, amazingly, we have been forgiven by the death of the only innocent person who ever lived. That state of mind and heart — being forgiven and amazed at our forgiveness, like John Newton in “Amazing Grace” — will keep anger from rising too quickly or staying too long.

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him; and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet: ‘And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.” After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way. (Matthew 2:1–12)

There are two ways to deal with Jesus Christ. I am thinking specifically of those of you here tonight who do not yet worship Jesus as the greatest treasure of your life.

Herod and the Wise Men

There are two ways to deal with Jesus: the way of Herod, and the way of the wise men. The way of Herod is to get rid of Jesus. It was pure hypocrisy when Herod said he wanted to go worship the child. He did not intend to worship him. He intended to get rid of him. And in a matter of days, he would kill every baby boy in Bethlehem under two years old to get rid of Jesus. He failed. Herod’s way always fails.

Of course, nowadays it’s too late to kill Jesus. He has risen from the dead and he is alive, this very night, reigning in heaven. He will come back someday as King of kings. But we can, with less violent and more sophisticated ways, try to get rid of him, evade him, follow the Herod way.

We usually get rid of him by recreating him in our minds in ways that strip him of his claim on our lives: he’s a mere legend, or a moral teacher like other gurus, or just another prophet, or a mere symbol of hope. When I was in graduate school in Germany in the 1970s, a very popular book was Jesus for Atheists. Lo and behold, Milan Machoveč discovered that Jesus is, after all, a perfect embodiment of twentieth-century Marxism.

For two thousand years, people have been trying to get rid of the real Jesus by reinventing him in their own ideological image. But the Herod way of dealing with Jesus has never worked and will never work. You cannot get rid of Jesus. And I plead with you tonight: Don’t live your life trying to evade Jesus.

“You cannot get rid of Jesus. And I plead with you: Don’t live your life trying to evade Jesus.”

Instead, deal with Jesus the way the wise men did. “Going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him” (Matthew 2:11). Falling down signifies submission, and worship signifies treasuring. Submission to Jesus as your supreme King. Worshiping Jesus as your supreme Treasure. This is a huge change for all of us. Nobody is born this way. Jesus calls it new birth (John 3:3–8).

News to Make the Angels Sing

When this change happens to us, by God’s grace, we become the beneficiaries of God’s Christmas purpose. A few chapters later, Jesus tells us why he came — why there’s a Christmas: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). That’s the best news in all the world, for two reasons.

First, every one of us in this room tonight is under the guilt and bondage of our sinfulness toward God. We deserve judgment, and we know it. It is a debt we can never pay. And Jesus, God in human flesh, says, “I have come to pay it. I give my life to pay this ransom.”

Second, when we experience this forgiveness and freedom through the death of Jesus, we discover that for the rest of our lives, and for the rest of eternity, Jesus works for us. Omnipotence works for us. “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve” — meaning, through all our pleasures and all our pain, Jesus is working to bring us to everlasting happiness in the presence of the all-satisfying God.

This is the good news of great joy that made the angels sing. It’s yours tonight, if you renounce the way of Herod and embrace the way of the wise men: they fell down and worshiped.

The song that we are about to hear, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” will end on a note that will be a perfect moment in the pilgrimage of your life to do what the wise men did: to say to Jesus, “My heart is not my own. It’s yours. I worship you, my King, my Treasure.”