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.”

ABSTRACT: As a young pastor, Jonathan Edwards yearned for revival — and in time, God was pleased to bring revival, first in 1734, and then into the 1740s as the Great Awakening spread through the Western world. Edwards watched hundreds of formerly apathetic neighbors become earnest seekers of God; he saw evening revelries become gatherings for singing and prayer. Along the way, however, he also observed many spurious signs of spiritual life. His ministry yields insight into both the spiritual means of revival and the genuine marks of revival, and it also gives hope that God might be pleased to bring similar revival today.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors, leaders, and teachers, we asked Douglas Sweeney, professor of divinity at Beeson Divinity School, to draw lessons on revival from the ministry of Jonathan Edwards.

The young Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) longed for nothing more than revival. He viewed special works of the Spirit as special tokens of God’s blessing, and he hoped beyond hope that he would receive some himself. He had moved to Northampton while in his early twenties to assist his aging grandfather, Rev. Solomon Stoddard, at the only church in town. Stoddard had led the congregation in occasional seasons of grace, but soon after he passed away, leaving Edwards by himself as the town’s only pastor, the church’s spiritual life began to go downhill. The young people, especially, started sowing wild oats, partying especially after corporate worship services. They seemed deaf to their Lord. Edwards wondered what would become of his ministry.

After five years of anxiety, hard work, and prayer, signs of spring began to appear. Early in 1734, a revival started to stir the nearby village of Pascommuck, roughly three miles from town. Then in April of that year, Northampton’s youth were faced with the unexpected deaths of two of their friends — the first “a young man in the bloom of his youth,” who was “violently seized with a pleurisy and . . . died in about two days”; the other “a young married woman, who had been considerably exercised in mind about the salvation of her soul before she was ill, and was in great distress in the beginning of her illness; but seemed to have satisfying evidences of God’s saving mercy to her before her death; so that she died very full of comfort, in a most earnest and moving manner warning and counseling others.” As Edwards noted of her passing, “This seemed much to contribute to the solemnizing of the spirits of many young persons: and there began evidently to appear more of a religious concern on people’s minds.”1

“The young Jonathan Edwards longed for nothing more than revival.”

Leaning into this concern, Edwards spoke to the youth that fall, recommending that they turn their Thursday evening revelry into a time of “social religion,” meeting in homes throughout the town for Christian fellowship and prayer. No sooner had they done so than the town was forced again to deal with a strange, surprising death — this time of a senior citizen. “Many were much moved and affected” by this tragedy.2 The adults in town followed the lead of their own children, meeting on Sunday nights for fellowship, prayer, and hymn-singing. Soon these spiritual practices led to transformation. Revival roared through town, spreading up and down the Connecticut River Valley.

God’s Surprising Work

Edwards, of course, was biased, but his testimony regarding this revival’s holy fruit suggests a massive outpouring of the Spirit in Northampton. “This work of God . . . soon made a glorious alteration in the town; so that in the spring and summer following [1735] . . . the town seemed to be full of the presence of God: it never was so full of love, nor so full of joy; and yet so full of distress, as it was then.”3

In addition to the changes wrought in individual souls, this revival changed the nature of corporate worship in Northampton. “Our public assemblies were then beautiful,” as Edwards later recalled. “The congregation was alive in God’s service, everyone earnestly intent on the public worship . . . ; the assembly in general were, from time to time, in tears while the Word was preached; some weeping with sorrow and distress, others with joy and love, others with pity and concern for the souls of their neighbors.”4

It amazes one to consider that Edwards was barely 31 years old when he led this great revival. His wife Sarah was 24. Even contemporaries stood in awe of what was taking place. Edwards scribbled a breathless report to a senior colleague living in Boston, who in turn spread the word along his own social network. Soon the news reverberated all the way to England. A detailed account was in demand across the sea, and Edwards stepped up to supply it in the form of his first book, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprizing Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton, and the Neighbouring Towns and Villages (1737). Within three years, this book was printed both in Edinburgh and Boston, and translated and republished in both German and Dutch editions. It inspired other ministers to work toward revival. It compelled George Whitefield to resume his work in the colonies, encouraged John Wesley to practice outdoor preaching in England, and exerted a powerful force on the spread of the Great Awakening, which would crest during the early 1740s.

Edwards gave the credit to the work of his sovereign God. But he knew that God is wont to work through prayer and gospel preaching. In 1747, Edwards published a lengthy treatise on the need to pray for revival. He preached for many years about the importance of praying persistently. Late in 1734, he also began, prayerfully, to preach a gospel series on the sinner’s justification and conversion by faith alone — a series used by God to effect the work of redemption in Northampton.

He commenced this series in November of that year, attributing his church’s own revival to its contents. It began with a talk on “Justification by Faith Alone,” based on Romans 4:5: “To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” He took from the text this doctrine: “We are justified only by faith in Christ, and not by any manner of virtue or goodness of our own.” And he expounded this doctrine with passion, making it clear that justification comes as a gift of God’s free grace, not for anything we do, but because of what God effects when he unites us to his Son, by the power of the Spirit, making us part of his holy church, the mystical bride of Jesus Christ. Our faith is that by which we cling to Christ in spiritual union. God brings it to life in us; we merely exercise it “actively.” And as we cling to Christ and trust in his merit for salvation, God sees that we are one with him and reckons his merit as our own. “What is real in the union between Christ and his people, is the foundation of what is legal,” Edwards postulated famously.5

Marks of the Spirit

Like the Puritans before him, Edwards placed a high premium on the Christian’s union with Christ as the basis of salvation. We are saved, he taught, not merely by assenting to the gospel; even “the devils . . . believe, and tremble” (James 2:19). We are saved, as well, because the Holy Spirit inhabits our bodies, reorients our souls by uniting them to Christ, makes us sharers in the Lord’s righteousness, and bears fruit in our lives.

“This teaching about the Spirit’s role in salvation might have been the defining feature of Edwards’s ministry.”

This teaching about the Spirit’s role in salvation might have been the defining feature of Edwards’s ministry. He lived in a setting where everyone had to go to church and almost everyone affirmed the basic truths of the Christian faith. He worked as a tax-supported servant of his colony’s state church, an institution that he knew was full of merely cultural Protestantism. He loved his people dearly and believed that he would have to give an account someday for his ministry. So he labored tirelessly to help his hearers understand that there is a wide, eternal difference between authentic faith in Christ and perfunctory religion, or nominal Christianity. That difference, furthermore, has to do with the Holy Spirit and his work of regeneration, of quickening the soul, giving it spiritual life in Christ.

After struggling with his predecessors’ doctrines of conversion, Edwards came to see that God does not convert us all in exactly the same way, that the substance of conversion matters much more than the form. He also saw that true conversion was primarily supernatural. It is not something sinners effect by taking the right steps. They can (and should) certainly prepare for conversion, availing themselves of God’s means of grace and praying for mercy. But they cannot make it happen by their practice of religion. God effects conversion. And the main thing he does when he converts penitent sinners is give them a new heart, reorienting their “affections.” He fills them with his Spirit. He engenders in the soul a deep longing to walk with him, to know him better, and to honor him in everything. So when Edwards counseled sinners, he asked about their hearts. He wanted to find out what they loved, how they wished to spend their time, what they aspired to in life. Moreover, his burden during the rest of his revivalistic ministry was to help others discern the Spirit’s presence in their lives — to “try the spirits” (1 John 4:1), distinguishing God’s Spirit from counterfeits.

Edwards’s strategy was to point people away from what we might call externals of religion, red herrings of the faith, qualities he labeled “negative signs” — they neither confirm nor disprove the Spirit’s presence and activity — and toward what he referred to as the “positive signs” of grace, qualities the Bible says result from true revival and conversion. The negative signs included strong emotions, loss of control (either physically or spiritually), and irregular worship practices. Such qualities had often attended God’s regenerating work, but they could also be the products of religious “hypocrites” (a term Edwards used quite frequently), or even of the devil.

Edwards’s positive signs, by contrast, included esteem for Jesus, opposition to the devil, greater regard to the Scriptures, and a spirit of love to God and man, qualities that guarantee that God is active in one’s life. They cannot be fabricated. They are supernatural gifts. And the “chief” of all these gifts, the sign most clearly taught in Scripture as an indicator of grace, was the sign of “Christian practice,” or biblical holiness. This was no red herring. It was the sum of true religion and, in Edwards’s estimation, it had characterized Northampton for a period of several months — like never before in local history — from December of 1734 through summer of 1735.

Whitefield Visits Northampton

Unfortunately, however, this revival of the Spirit and its signs of grace would fade — nearly as fast as they had appeared — during the dog days of summer. Despite (or rather because of) these positive signs of saving grace, the devil was haunting the town by spring, trying to thwart the work of God by spreading melancholy, doubt, and even suicidal urges. The revival came to a halt that summer.

The good news is that Edwards continued grow in grace through the late 1730s and taught his people to do the same, preaching some of the best sermons in the history of the church. This faithfulness contributed to even larger revivals, which culminated regionally in the early 1740s and were tied to the preaching of Edwards’s friend George Whitefield, thought by some to be the greatest preacher in history.

Only 26 years old at the height of this work of God, Whitefield spoke to larger crowds than anyone else in colonial history — at times to tens of thousands — long before the invention of microphones and amplifiers. A poor man from England with distinctly crossed eyes, he was blessed by God with a booming voice, a flair for the dramatic, and a remarkable gift of extemporaneous speech. He preached a basic gospel message from all over the biblical canon. He told stories with charisma. The most compelling stories he told as he progressed from place to place had to do with the spread of revival through the Anglo-American world. He personified the Awakening and its international scope.

During his second trip to the colonies, Whitefield sent a letter to Edwards asking permission to visit his church. Edwards replied warmly. He knew of Whitefield’s record as a winsome gospel preacher, and he longed for help renewing the work of revival in Northampton. By the spring of 1740, Edwards’s parish started to show the signs of another work of God, especially among the youth. Then when Whitefield finally arrived — on Friday, October 17, eleven months after he had written to Edwards — these sparks were fanned into flame.

Whitefield stayed for three days. He spoke twice on the day he arrived, once in church and once at the manse; once the following afternoon (after another sermon in Hadley, nearly five miles away); and twice more “upon the sabbath.” Edwards reported to a friend that his “congregation was extraordinarily melted by every sermon; almost the whole assembly being in tears for a great part of sermon time.” Edwards “wept” as well, “during the whole time” of the Sunday morning service, according to Whitefield. God’s Spirit was at work, as nearly everyone could tell. While in town for only three days, Whitefield played a crucial role in drawing Edwards’s flock back into the Great Awakening.6

Whitefield was impetuous, at times spiritually arrogant. He had earned a reputation for judging other pastors rashly, claiming that many — maybe most — were unconverted. So as Edwards traveled with him to his next few preaching stations, he advised the young star that it could be dangerous to rely too much on spiritual impulses without help from the word of God. He also said that, while he affirmed Whitefield’s emphasis on the need for clergy themselves to be converted, he believed it inappropriate to judge precipitately which of their colleagues were regenerate — and which were not. Edwards listened to Whitefield preach to several thousand in the fields, thanked him heartily for his labors, and returned home hopeful for the future. Right away, he preached a series on the parable of the sower (Matthew 13), exhorting his people not to be starstruck by Whitefield’s obvious eloquence, but to live as the kind of soil in which the word bears fruit.

Within the next couple of months, Northampton bore abundant fruit. “There was a great alteration in the town,” Edwards testified, particularly among the local children. “By the middle of December a very considerable work of God appeared among those that were very young, and the revival of religion continued to increase; so that in the spring, an engagedness of spirit about things of religion was become very general amongst young people and children, and religious subjects almost wholly took up their conversation.” Even Edwards’s own daughters had come under the work of the Spirit. Many other children, as well, had been affected by the gospel. Edwards later described this time as “the most wonderful work among children that ever was in Northampton.” It rekindled his flame for revival and conversion in New England.7

Pastor as Watchman

During the following spring and summer, Edwards himself was called upon to serve as a traveling gospel preacher. Inspired by Whitefield’s example, he did more of this than ever during 1741. He is best known for a sermon he preached in Enfield, near the border with Connecticut. He had preached this sermon before to his own congregation. As he preached it on the road, however, amazing things happened. Edwards’s text was very brief: “Their foot shall slide in due time” (Deuteronomy 32:35). His doctrine somewhat longer and more memorable today: “There is nothing that keeps wicked men, at any one moment, out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God.” He applied this doctrine at length, in words that have gone down in history:

The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given, and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course, when once it is let loose. ’Tis true, that judgment against your evil works has not been executed hitherto; the floods of God’s vengeance have been withheld; but your guilt in the meantime is constantly increasing. . . . Thus are all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all that were never born again, and made new creatures. . . . You are thus in the hands of an angry God; ’tis nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction.

So goes the famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” a truly frightening piece of work, but one that is also full of love and passionate literary artistry.8

Edwards preached dozens of hellfire sermons during his ministry, many of which survive. Like the Puritans before him, he did so in the manner of the “watchman” of Ezekiel, whom God held responsible to sound a trumpet clearly when his people were threatened with danger. This was serious business. Edwards believed, as he proclaimed at one of his colleagues’ ordinations, that “ministers of the gospel have the precious and immortal souls of men committed to their care and trust by the Lord Jesus Christ.” He believed that he would give an account on judgment day for his ministry. So he preached from time to time on the dangers of damnation. “If there be really a hell,” he wrote in 1741,

of such dreadful, and never-ending torments, . . . that multitudes are in great danger of, and that the bigger part of men in Christian countries do actually from generation to generation fall into, for want of a sense of the terribleness of it, and their danger of it, and so for want of taking due care to avoid it; then why is it not proper for those that have the care of souls, to take great pains to make men sensible of it? Why should not they be told as much of the truth as can be? If I am in danger of going to hell, I should be glad to know as much as possibly I can of the dreadfulness of it: if I am very prone to neglect due care to avoid it, he does me the best kindness, that does most to represent to me the truth of the case, that sets forth my misery and danger in the liveliest manner.9

Such preaching saw success at the apex of the Awakening. Thousands were converted — in America alone — during 1741. The Great Awakening was divisive, but it also crystallized the crucial importance of conversion and of living with eschatological urgency.

Ten Lessons from Edwards’s Ministry

What might we learn from Edwards and his work on revival? Let me conclude by offering ten brief lessons.

First, Edwards and his colleagues show what God has often done — and still wants to do today — by means of urgent, vivid, preaching framed by the doctrines of grace. How many preachers can you name who share Edwards’s ability to render Bible doctrine urgent and Edwards’s commitment to write sermons that leave a beautiful, intellectually compelling, and enduring impression on their hearers?

Second, Edwards and his colleagues demonstrate the great promise of preaching to people’s hearts. As Edwards wrote in Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival (1743), “I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided that they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with. . . . Our people don’t so much need to have their heads stored, as to have their hearts touched; and they stand in the greatest need of that sort of preaching that has the greatest tendency to do this.”10

Third, Great Awakening Christians showed that testimonies matter. I cannot do justice to this topic in this essay. Suffice it to say that what they often called “religious intelligence,” or news of the work of God and the spread of the gospel both at home and abroad, played a central role in spreading the revival. This news was shared orally in evangelistic services. It was also published in Christian magazines and newspapers, used by God to expand people’s horizons and make them feel part of the global cause of Christ.

Fourth, Edwards and his peers showed that prayer matters even more. Edwards preached for many years about the importance of praying persistently. He published a major treatise on the need to pray for revival, An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God’s People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and Advancement of Christ’s Kingdom on Earth. And he exhorted all who listened to participate in transatlantic concerts of prayer for revival.

Fifth, Edwards and pastors like him demonstrated the importance of preaching what the apostle Paul called the whole counsel of God — even the parts about hell and the consequences of sin. God used such preaching to draw thousands to himself. Do we have the wisdom, faith, courage, and spiritual sensitivity to preach this way today, to the honor and glory of God?

Sixth, Edwards and his peers modeled pastoral wisdom in the midst of signs and wonders and spiritual intensity. They often failed to discern rightly. But they tried their best to open their Bibles and interpret the signs of the Spirit all around them, teaching the distinguishing marks of a work of the Spirit of God.

“Edwards and his peers demonstrated that word and Spirit always go hand in hand.”

Seventh, Edwards and his peers demonstrated that word and Spirit always go hand in hand. Against those who taught the word without spiritual vitality, they called for real conversion and walking with the Spirit. Against those who made claims to immediate revelation, or to spiritual impulses not grounded in the Scriptures, they called for theological accountability.

Eighth, Edwards and his peers modeled evangelical ecumenism. They avoided spiritual rashness and judgmental attitudes toward serious Christians, at least when at their best. Some did prove divisive from time to time. But again, when at their best, they showed that Anglicans, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and others can work together for the gospel — giving rise to modern evangelicalism.

Ninth, Edwards and his colleagues did not let anyone despise them for their youth, as Paul said to Timothy (1 Timothy 4:12). Edwards was in his thirties at the height of the Great Awakening. Whitefield was in his twenties. God used them remarkably in spite of themselves.

Finally, the early evangelicals demonstrated the crucial importance of “social religion”: Christian fellowship, Bible study, testimony, prayer, and spiritual singing in small-group contexts. Indeed, they put these practices on the church-historical map. Millions have come to know Jesus as a result.

May God help us all make good use of their example, facilitating revival and renewal in our time.11

If you desire to serve as a pastor, you desire a noble task (1 Timothy 3:1) — literally, a good work. When God surveys the mountain range of your desire, he sees wisdom, beauty, and honor. The worldly may pity the pastor. They see anything but nobility. But not you. When you look at the real costs and inconveniences of ministry, you see glory and eternity and gain. Whether anyone ever paid you to pastor or not, you couldn’t be content to devote your short life any other way.

And yet, for some of you, you’re still not a pastor. As much as your desire to pastor may please God, it has not yet pleased him to open a door for you to actually pastor. The waiting can be as disorienting as longing to be married but struggling to find a date, or aching to have children while amassing pregnancy tests. If God loves this work, and if churches need this work, and if you want this work, why would God withhold it from you, sometimes for years?

Because God often does as much through our waiting as he does through our serving. Sometimes God makes us wait for doors to open in ministry because unwanted waiting is some of the best preparation for ministry. That means closed doors really can become spiritual gifts to those who will humbly kneel before them.

But what can we do while we wait? How do we keep ourselves from wasting the years before we enter formal ministry? How do we squeeze as much good as possible from a closed door? Over the last decade, I’ve learned at least seven practical lessons while waiting outside doors of my own.

1. Purify Your Ambition

One reason God withholds ministry from those aspiring to ministry is because the aspiration itself needs refining. That the task is noble does not necessarily mean that our desire has risen to such nobility. People seek out positions of leadership for all kinds of reasons (and sometimes, honorable motives are deeply mixed with dishonorable ones). We may want to glorify Christ and love his people, but deep down, we also want recognition, or influence, or power and authority. Our ambition needs purifying.

Sometimes this selfishness lies across the path to ministry like a fallen tree after a storm. We can’t always see our own selfishness, but God is kind to help us remove it. A season of waiting can be a season for better aspiring. In these times, it’s especially good to pray prayers like Psalm 139:23–24,

Search me, O God, and know my heart!     Try me and know my thoughts!And see if there be any grievous way in me,     and lead me in the way everlasting!

In his classic book, The Christian Ministry, Charles Bridges presses home three qualities of a godly desire to pastor. First, godly desire is a constraining desire, one that persists and intensifies over time. Waiting helps us test the strength and stamina of our desire. Second, godly desire is a considerate desire, meaning we have sufficiently counted the cost. Waiting gives us time to begin serving and to seek out the stories and counsel of those further along in ministry. Lastly, godly desire is an unselfish desire, meaning it’s not focused on self — praise, power, esteem — but on the glory of Christ and the good of his bride. Waiting proves and strengthens our readiness to deny ourselves, pick up our cross, and follow him.

2. Strengthen Your Character

The qualifications for eldership in 1 Timothy 3:1–7 and Titus 1:6–9 touch on various areas of a man’s life — how he speaks, how he drinks, how he spends his money, how he responds to conflict, what kind of husband and father he is — but they’re really all about who he is. The qualifications are searching for outer evidence of inner character — not perfect evidence, but real and persistent evidence.

So, God might be withholding ministry to give your character time and space to mature. Therefore, in your season of waiting, “be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election” (2 Peter 1:10).

Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:5–8)

This stage of pastoral preparation is not unlike premarital counseling. No couple can address every character flaw or potential area of conflict in three or four or five sessions with a counselor. It’s impossible. But that doesn’t mean premarital counseling is futile. Everything you can address (or at least begin to address) in premarital will have some good effect in marriage. The same is true in preparation for pastoral ministry.

So, which areas of your life and character could use more prayerful attention and consistent accountability? You cannot imagine all the future fruit your church might receive from your diligently sowing godliness now.

3. Pastor Your Home Better

When you read through the qualifications for eldership, which one feels the most daunting to you? Someone could certainly make an argument for “able to teach” (“I sweat even thinking about public speaking”), or “hospitable” (“Do you know what my house is like with small kids?”), or “well thought of by outsiders” (“You don’t know my neighbors”). I would argue for a different one though: “He must manage his own household well” (1 Timothy 3:4). In other words, we know how well a man will lead a church by how well he has led his home.

In most cases, this will be the qualification that requires the most forethought, sacrifice, and follow-through. If God has given you a wife and children, they are the first proving grounds for your qualification and preparation for church office. No man who fails here should be entrusted with the people of God. “For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?” (1 Timothy 3:5).

And yet every man, even the most qualified, can stand to grow here. So, if God gives you a season without formal responsibility in the church, receive it as a golden opportunity to lead even better in the high and holy responsibilities you have at home. Initiate more time in the word of God. Lead your family in singing to him. Spend more time on your knees, with them and alone. Brainstorm how you might be more hospitable together and share the gospel with neighbors. Before you begin formal ministry, use the precious time and energy you have now to fortify the spiritual foundation of your home.

4. Refine Your Abilities

If God has given you gifts that others believe would be useful as a pastor, a season of waiting can be a great time to identify and nurture those gifts. You don’t have to wait until you’re preaching regularly to develop your ability to teach. You don’t have to have formal office hours for counseling to begin helping other believers through conflict and crisis. In fact, you don’t have to have a title to meet most of the needs in your church. How, then, might you use your gifts now to be a blessing to others?

Bobby Jamieson, in his excellent book for those aspiring to ministry, wisely counsels younger men, “Aim to be mistaken for an elder before you are appointed an elder” (The Path to Being a Pastor, 67). You cannot be a pastor until a church calls you to pastor, but you do not need to be a pastor to begin serving, teaching, leading, and loving like one. In fact, as Jamieson says, no man should be called to pastoral ministry who is not already doing some, if not much, of the work of pastors.

The apostle Paul urges his protégé Timothy, “Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress” (1 Timothy 4:14–15). He returns to the same point in his second letter: “Fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands” (2 Timothy 1:6). So, if others have seen abilities of teaching and counsel in you, what could you do to fan the flame of those abilities? How might you immerse yourself in ministering the word? What opportunities has God given you now, however modest, to teach and meet needs in your church?

5. Count the Cost

Many men who aspire to pastoral ministry really aspire to the more fulfilling facets of ministry — studying God’s word, helping the congregation see what’s there, watching people become liberated from sin and reconciled to one another, winning souls to Christ. Fewer aspire to the costs. Some are almost completely ignorant of the costs. And there are serious, sometimes overwhelming costs to ministry.

Jesus says to the great crowds who seem so eager to follow him,

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, “This man began to build and was not able to finish.” (Luke 14:27–30)

The warning applies all the more to pastors. Have you given yourself time to look beyond the appealing aspects of ministry to its darker, more discouraging sides? One way to count the cost in a season of waiting would be to spend regular time with a veteran pastor or two. Find a man willing to be vulnerable about how hard pastoring can be. Ask him to paint a wider, fuller picture of the warfare he faces than you can imagine on your own.

6. Discern the Right Door

God may have withheld some opportunities from you simply because he has a particular opportunity in mind for you. There are real spiritual dimensions to any ministry job search. Paul says to the church in Thessalonica, “We endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face, because we wanted to come to you . . . but Satan hindered us” (1 Thessalonians 2:17–18). Paul wanted to minister there, and that desire was a noble desire — and the church wanted him to come — and yet Satan hindered him. Ministry did not happen because evil was allowed to intervene (at least for a time). A door was closed, and God had a good reason for leaving it closed.

Elsewhere, Paul highlights other spiritual dynamics: “When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was opened for me in the Lord, my spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia” (2 Corinthians 2:12–13). The door was open in Troas, and Paul wanted to be there, but he didn’t feel peace about staying there. He took Titus’s unexpected absence as a reason to leave for now and walk through a door in Macedonia instead. So, for various reasons, even some open doors may not be the right doors.

And some right doors may not immediately seem open. Look closely at how Paul talks about an opportunity he took in a different city: “I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries” (1 Corinthians 16:8–9). He saw a wide-open door even though the enemies were many. While many might have interpreted intense opposition as a closed door, he saw the opposite. So, just because a particular ministry opportunity looks challenging, even very challenging, it still might be the right door.

All to say, a season of unwanted waiting may be necessary to make sure you land where God wants you. You may knock on closed door after closed door because you haven’t reached the door he has opened wide for you. So, pray with Paul that God may open to you the right “door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ” (Colossians 4:3) — and that you’d recognize it when he does.

7. Care for Souls

Lastly, and most fundamentally, the call to pastor is a call to shepherd, to live and die for the good of the sheep. When Jesus, the Good Shepherd, restores and commissions Peter after his betrayal, he charges him three times (mercifully, once for each denial) in John 21:15–17,

“Feed my lambs.”

“Tend my sheep.”

“Feed my sheep.”

This is pastoral ministry in five words: “Feed and tend my sheep.” Sheep-work is rarely thrilling, glorious, or fragrant. It’s simple. It’s repetitive. It can be messy. It’s often thankless. But if these sheep belong to Jesus, and one day will be washed clean and made like him, there’s no more important work in the world. If God has called you to ministry, you see that filthy wool and those wandering feet, and your heart strangely rises with love and devotion. You want to give yourself to the word, so that one day you might help present them to Christ.

So, spend time with the sheep. Tend the sheep. Love the sheep. Embrace a season of waiting and serving in the church with a graduate-level degree in shepherding. Do what good pastors do, and begin to make yourself at home in the pasture.