http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15610916/prayer-is-not-one-and-done
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Patience Will Be Painful: How to Love the Hard-to-Love
Patience is a virtue we admire, and even aspire to, from afar. The closer it comes to us, however — the more it invades our schedule, our plans, our comfort — the more uncomfortable it becomes.
Patience exists only in a world of disruption, delays, and disappointment. It grows only on the battlefield. We cannot practice patience unless our circumstances call for it — and the circumstances that call for it are the kinds of circumstances we wouldn’t choose for ourselves. We would choose convenience, speed, efficiency, fulfillment. God often chooses circumstances that call for patience. And he never chooses wrongly.
Impatience grows out of our unwillingness to trust and submit to God’s timing for our lives. Impatience is a war for control. Patience, on the other hand, springs from different soil — from a humble embrace of what we do not know and cannot control, from a deep and abiding trust that God will follow through on all of his promises, from a heart that is profoundly happy to have him.
“The kind of patience that honors God is so hard that we cannot practice it without help from God.”
In other words, the deepest patience comes from a humble and hopeful joy in God above all else. That means that real patience is not only inconvenient, difficult, and wearying, but, humanly speaking, impossible. The kind of patience that honors God is so hard that we cannot practice it without help from God. It grows only where the Spirit lives (Galatians 5:22–23).
Many Shades of Patience
What might we say, then, practically speaking, about real patience in real life? Where could we look in Scripture to see some of the colors and texture of patience in action? One verse, in particular, humbles me and bursts with lessons for everyday patience:
We urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. (1 Thessalonians 5:14)
The ways we approach each group — the idle, the fainthearted, the weak — are different, but we’re called to patience with them all. Which means we’re likely going to experience temptation to be impatient with them all (and many more besides them). So what might patience look like in each case?
Help the Weak
The weak test our patience because they need more from us than most. Many of us have an impulse, at least in the moment, to step in when we see a weak person in need, whether that person is young, or old, or sick, or emotionally or spiritually vulnerable. But weakness, we all know from personal experience, rarely stays contained within a moment, which means the weak need more than in-the-moment help; they need for-the-long-haul help — and for-the-long-haul help requires patience.
Paul does not charge the church to admonish the weak, but to help them, and the word for help here can also mean to hold firm or be devoted. There’s a tenaciousness in this help, a clinging to the weak, even after months or years of inconvenience and sacrifice. Where does that kind of patience come from? From knowing that “while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6) — in other words, he died for us. And that “God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27) — in other words, he chose us.
Those who know how painfully and helplessly weak they are apart from God are more ready to endure the weaknesses of others. They don’t resent helping for the hundredth time, because they gladly trust and submit to God’s plans, including the weaknesses he has placed around them.
Encourage the Fainthearted
The fainthearted test our patience because they get more easily discouraged than most. Among the Thessalonians, some were beginning to wither while they grieved the loss of loved ones (1 Thessalonians 4:13–5:11). Discouragement was drying up their spiritual strength and resolve — and so they needed more from others (who were also likely grieving).
The fainthearted lack the strength or stamina others have in relationships and ministry. They bring burdens they cannot carry by themselves. They often despair of their burdens, struggling to see how life will ever be more bearable. And we all already have our own burdens to bear, so regularly speaking grace into someone else’s emotional and spiritual needs can feel especially taxing over time. The ministry of encouragement often requires unusual endurance.
Those who keep walking with the fainthearted, even when the path is slow and winding, demonstrate the strength of a supernatural patience. They have discovered, first for themselves, and then through themselves for others, that
[God] gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:29–31)
Anyone who has experienced the gift of strength and renewal longs for other fainthearted people to experience the same. And how much sweeter when God strengthens and renews someone through us?
Every Christian experiences discouragement, which means every Christian needs a steady stream of courage to endure suffering, to reject temptation, to sacrifice in love, to embrace discipline, to persevere in ministry, to trust and obey God. And those streams run low or even dry in churches when we lack the patience needed to persevere in encouraging one another.
Rebuke the Idle
It’s not hard to see how the idle test our patience. In the case of the Thessalonians, it seems, some thought Jesus was returning imminently, and so they started shirking their work and leaving it to others (2 Thessalonians 2:1–2; 3:6).
The idle test our patience because they refuse to take responsibility and initiative. They could do more, help more, carry more, contribute in more significant ways, but they’re content to do just enough (or less), which means someone else has to do more. And when we are that someone, we understandably grow impatient.
But Paul doesn’t let the impatient off the hook, even with the idle. He does say admonish them — warn them, exhort them, wake them up — even if you have to withhold food for a time (2 Thessalonians 3:10–11) or remove them from fellowship (2 Thessalonians 3:6). Nevertheless, he says to do so with patience. Be patient with them all. What might that mean? We don’t usually associate hard words or painful consequences with patience.
Why of Patience
First, we might ask, Why are we patient, even as we admonish the idle? We’re patient with sinners, in part, because we still are one. The idleness of others — or the greed of others, or the lust of others, or the anger of others, or the vanity of others — is never so evil that we cannot see something of their sin in ourselves. It takes very little imagination for us to see that, apart from an undeserved miracle, we would be them — and perhaps far worse.
Impatience with sinners betrays a small view of God’s mercy toward us. The same apostle that says we should rebuke the idle also says,
The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. (1 Timothy 1:15–16)
Even our rebukes should be seasoned with a humble awareness of our own sinfulness — of just how wicked we would be without the grace of God.
How of Patience
Knowing why we are patient, even with those we need to rebuke, how do we rebuke with patience? First, it probably needs to be said that good rebuke itself is an evidence of patience. It’s easy to give up on sinners. It’s easy to lash out and tear down someone who has sinned against us. Those who rebuke well — who aim to restore someone through honest and gentle confrontation and correction — demonstrate that they haven’t given up, and that they still have hope that God will grant conviction, forgiveness, reconciliation, and transformation.
Patience in rebuke, though, will also mean a willingness to wait for change. Sanctification can be painfully, sometimes excruciatingly, slow. We shouldn’t expect the slothful to become immediately diligent — or, for that matter, for the proud to become immediately humble, the angry to become immediately kind, the lustful to become immediately pure. We don’t overlook patterns of sin in those we love, or make excuses for their sin. We go to them, we warn them, we implore them, we even rebuke them sharply, if necessary — and we keep doing so — but we do so knowing, again firsthand, that change often comes slowly. We plant seeds knowing that they may need time to take hold, mature, and eventually blossom.
Patient God for Impatient People
We might welcome the opportunity to rebuke the lazy and negligent, but can we do so with patience? If we can’t, it’s likely because we haven’t meditated enough on the patience of God toward sinners like us — sinners like me.
“God never asks anyone to be patient who hasn’t already received the infinite riches of his patience.”
When Moses pleaded to see God’s glory, what did God reveal about himself? “The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness’” (Exodus 34:6). He has every reason and right to get angry with us, and yet he’s slow to anger. He’s patient with us, 2 Peter 3:9 says, “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” God never asks anyone to be patient who hasn’t already received the infinite riches of his patience.
That doesn’t mean patience isn’t hard. It is. Whether in traffic on the way to work, or in a season of significant transition or uncertainty, or beside the hospital bed of someone we love, patience can require uncomfortable sacrifice and surrender. In the Father’s patience, after all, he did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us. As it was at the cross, so it is with us. The painfulness of our patience serves its hidden but beautiful purpose: to call attention to the beauty and power of God’s love.
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A Holy Conspiracy of Joy: The Heart of Healthy Pastors and Churches
Money and joy. Across the passages in the New Testament that speak to Christian leadership, these are the two most repeated themes. And we might see them as two sides of one motivational coin. That is, what gain are pastor-elders to seek (and not seek) in becoming and enduring as local-church leaders? Why pastors serve really matters.
What Makes a Pastor Happy?
The apostle Paul worked with his own hands, making and mending tents — which made him a good man to make the case for “double honor” (respect and remuneration) for pastor-elders who give themselves to church-work as their breadwinning vocation. However, necessary and good as it is for staff pastors to receive pay, Paul would not have greedy men (paid or unpaid) in either the pastoral or diaconal office. “Not a lover of money,” he specifies in 1 Timothy 3:3 (memorable in the King James as “not greedy of filthy lucre”). For deacons, in 1 Timothy 3:8: “not greedy for dishonest gain.”
So too, the final chapter of Hebrews moves seamlessly from “keep your life free from love of money” (Hebrews 13:5–6) to “remember your leaders” (Hebrews 13:7), and it’s no wonder. The one should go hand in hand with the other — as they do right at the heart of Peter’s passage for elders: “Shepherd the flock . . . , not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly” (1 Peter 5:2). The apostles would have us speak, in the same breath, of lives free from love of money and local-church leaders who exemplify that lifestyle.
The other side of the coin, then, is the positive motivation: joy. Paul begins 1 Timothy 3 by not only condoning but requiring the holy pursuit of joy in ministry: “If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.” Pastor-elders must aspire to the work, that is, want it, desire it, anticipating that it will, in some important sense, make them happy. They should not have their arms twisted to serve, but genuinely desire such work from the heart — as Peter says, “not under compulsion, but willingly.” Even though prospective church leaders hear (and may have observed or even experienced) that this line of labor can be especially taxing emotionally and spiritually, they can’t seem to shake a settled desire and aspiration for the work. They desire it, from and for joy.
Gain That Matches the Work
Peter succinctly captures the two sides (not money but joy) of our motivation coin: “not for shameful gain, but eagerly.” Notice he doesn’t say “not for gain.” Rather, he says “not for shameful gain,” meaning that there is a gain without shame that he is not excluding. And in fact, he requires it. “Eagerly” presumes some motivation to gain — just that this gain is not “shameful.”
“Honorable gain in Christian ministry is benefit that befits the work.”
What, then, might be honorable gain in Christian leadership? We wouldn’t be right to rule out any financial remuneration (which would require ignoring Paul’s case). But we would be correct to rule out money as the driving motivation. What gain, then, are pastors to seek? We might say it like this: honorable gain in Christian ministry is benefit that befits the work. Or we might say: gain that is commensurate with the work. We might ask the potential or present pastor, “Do you have joy in the work, and receive joy from the work, that strengthens the work itself? Or does the gain you seek from the work of Christian ministry take you away from the work?”
In other words, Is the gain you seek from ministry in, or apart from, the good of the flock?
Joy, Not Groaning
Hebrews is particularly striking in that it puts the pursuit of joy at the heart of the work of pastors, both for the pastors and for their people. Addressing the congregation, Hebrews 13:17 says,
Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.
In the healthiest of churches, the pastor-elders aspire to the work and do it willingly and eagerly (1 Peter 5:2), and (now we add) the people do their part to “let them [labor] with joy.” Which makes for a kind of holy conspiracy of joy in three critical stages.
1. The Leaders Aspire
First, the leaders aspire to the work, as we’ve seen, and joyfully undertake it. Good pastors want to do the work of pastoral ministry, from joy and for joy.
“Let them [labor] with joy” assumes that the pastors are starting out with joy; they are operating from and for holy joy in Christ, and in his people. Let’s be honest, pastors don’t get into this line of work for the money; the pay is modest at best in the vast majority of pastorates. Rather, God moved on these men, whether over time or seemingly in some particular moment, to give them an unusual desire to give more of themselves for the good of the church. They came into the work with a particular joy-fed and joy-led desire to love and serve the church through diligent teaching and humble governance.
“Unlike other vocations, mere willingness is not enough in pastoral work.”
Unlike other vocations, mere willingness is not enough in pastoral work. Christ appoints and provides a kind of eagerness in pastors for the calling, not just to make a living, but to give of themselves, beyond what can be fully reckoned and remunerated, for others’ progress and joy in the faith.
2. The Church Cooperates
The people then, encourages Hebrews, “let them do this with joy.” That is, the people try not to disrupt or derail that happiness by turning pastoral joy into groaning. Healthy congregants don’t want to interrupt happy labor with needless and sinful complaining and grumbling.
Note well, the church is not charged to make the pastors’ work joyful, but to let them labor with joy. In other words, “Church, your pastors are working with joy. Don’t make their work miserable or unnecessarily difficult. Your miseries might want company, but for your own good, don’t seek to make your pastors groan.” The church is not responsible to make their pastors happy; neither is it the church’s job to make them miserable.
Now, to be sure, there’s a word here for pastors too: brothers, labor with gladness, not groaning, even when ministry gets hard, for both your own joy and the church’s, which is the third and final part.
3. The Church Gains
Finally, ongoing, resilient, joyful labor by the pastors brings about the joyful gain of the congregation. That’s the explicit reason Hebrews gives: “Let [your leaders labor] with joy and not with groaning,” he says, “for that would be of no advantage to you.” When the pastors labor with joy, and the people don’t unnecessarily interrupt that joy, the people themselves benefit. Those who undermine the joy of their pastors do so to their own disadvantage.
And the pastors, who have been aiming all along at the holy and enduring joy of their people, have their own joy made complete in seeing the advantage and gain of the flock. So it is, in the apostles’ complementary callings on the pastors and their people, a kind of holy conspiracy of joy: the leaders aspire to the work and joyfully do it; the people “let them do this with joy,” striving to not give their pastors reasons to groan; and that joyful labor by the pastors then brings about the greater joy, advantage, and benefit of the whole church.
In it all, why is joy so central to the work of pastoral ministry? Because Christ is most glorified in his people when they are most satisfied in him. Joy in Christ in the heart, radiating out in audible and visual expressions, and life together in the church, magnifies its source and focus. So if pastors want Jesus to be glorified in their work, then one major, even central, reality to take into account is joy — the pastors’ joy in the people’s joy in Christ.
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Should the Church ‘Bless’ Same-Sex Relationships?
Audio Transcript
Welcome back to this new week on the podcast on this Monday. Well, 2023 ended with two huge declarations that got a lot of attention online and led to a pile of emails for you, Pastor John. First, and most talked about, the pope said Roman Catholic priests can now “bless” (so-called) same-sex couples, which is a move that confused and angered many Catholics and non-Catholics alike, as you would expect.
According to the Vatican’s statement, this blessing is “for couples in irregular situations and for couples of the same sex, the form of which should not be fixed ritually by ecclesial authorities to avoid producing confusion with the blessing proper to the Sacrament of Marriage.” This so-called divine blessing is for “those who — recognizing themselves to be destitute and in need of [God’s] help — do not claim a legitimation of their own status, but who beg that all that is true, good, and humanly valid in their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit.” The pope is trying very hard to thread a needle here.
More bluntly, two weeks after this, Reuters reported that Burundi president Évariste Ndayishimiye called on his citizens to respond in a different way. “If you want to attract a curse to the country, accept homosexuality,” he told journalists. Then he said, “I even think that these people, if we find them in Burundi, it is better to lead them to a stadium and stone them. And that cannot be a sin.” This was a statement made to his predominantly Christian nation, perhaps drawing from a text like Leviticus 20:13. So, Pastor John, how would you respond to the pope and the president of Burundi?
Well, let me preface my thought with the fact that I’ve tried very hard to understand the pope and that needle that you said he’s trying to thread. I can’t quite make sense out of it. It just seems contradictory. But let me take it for what I do see.
I think the New Testament directs us away from the kind of blessing that the pope is endorsing and directs us away from the mob rule or the official capital punishment that the president of Burundi is endorsing. In other words, the New Testament is pushing us away from both of those steps.
And I think the New Testament also gives Christians another way to disapprove and another way to love those that we think are walking in behaviors that are ultimately and eternally destructive. So, let’s start with the Old Testament and the threat of the president of Burundi to stone those who practice homosexuality.
Excommunicate, Not Execute
Do the laws of capital punishment in the Old Testament — for things like adultery, dishonoring parents, having sex between two men or two women — define the way that the Christian church is to deal with those sins? And the answer is clearly no.
We’ve had several podcasts in which we try to unpack how the Old and the New Testament relate to each other. And I say that without denying the authority of the Old Testament — with its validity for Israel at the time and its ongoing authority for Christians, with an awareness of how the coming of Jesus the Messiah has changed things.
“When you curse others, you want them destroyed. When you bless others, you want them saved.”
When the New Testament deals with immorality like adultery or incest, which would have been a capital crime under the old covenant, the way it handles that sin — for example, in 1 Corinthians 5 — is to excommunicate the sinner from the church rather than execute the sinner. In the church, the new people of God (which is not a political or ethnic or civil body), excommunication has replaced capital punishment in cases like this.
Blessing Sin?
When we turn to the instructions of the pope that faithful Catholic priests may bless same-sex unions, we need to be very careful how we are understanding the nature of blessing.
I’ve tried, like I said, to understand the wording of the pope’s proposal, and I have listened to a Catholic priest defend the pope’s proposal, and I cannot escape the impression that even though the effort is being made not to consecrate the so-called “irregular situations” as marriage, nevertheless, the very effort to provide an official way for there to be a blessing on a kind of same-sex togetherness, which the Bible warns is evil and eternally destructive, inevitably communicates that the pope does not hold that biblical view, at least not with the same ultimate seriousness that the New Testament does.
And the reason I say that we need to be careful how we understand the nature of blessing is that the New Testament does tell us several times, very clearly,
“Bless those who curse you” (Luke 6:28).
“Bless those who persecute you” (Romans 12:14).
“Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called” (1 Peter 3:9).
“When reviled, we bless” (1 Corinthians 4:12).Now, none of those uses of the word bless is intended to signify an official or unofficial gathering in which you bring people together who in their hearts are celebrating sin. That’s not what blessing means. Whether it’s two men having sex or people celebrating fraud or celebrating witchcraft or celebrating slander or celebrating devil worship, whatever the sin is, the biblical commands to bless our adversaries, our opponents, our enemies are not a command to hold a service in which you extend a hand of blessing over those who are celebrating behaviors that lead to their own destruction and which God calls an abomination.
That gathering will not communicate the biblical truth of heartbreak and danger and warning. If you made those dangers and those warnings part of the service of blessing, we know the so-called couple would reject it. They would reject it. If the warning of hell were made part of the service of blessing, if the sin were called an abomination in the service of blessing, the couple would not have the service.
Longing for Another’s Good
The meaning of blessing in Luke 6:28, Romans 12:14, and the others is that we seek the temporal and everlasting good of our enemies — or those we disagree with; they don’t have to be just enemies, but just anybody we disagree with. That’s what blessing means. We seek the temporal and everlasting good of our adversaries, both with words and with deeds, even if it costs us our lives. We are not eager for the destruction of anyone. Blessing is the opposite of cursing. When you curse others, you want them destroyed. When you bless others, you want them saved.
We want our words and our actions to count for their good. It’s not a blessing to give the impression of treating lightly something that God treats dreadfully. It feels kind — it’s not kind. It feels tender, but tenderness is not love where clarity and firmness are needed to save life.
The form the blessing takes in Romans 12:20 is this: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” In other words, the aim is not affirmation but contrition and repentance and salvation. We want them to be our brothers or our sisters in the presence of God forever, forgiven and transformed into the likeness of Christ.
Final Warning
And before I go, I think I should conclude by warning Roman Catholics that they need to be especially concerned about this pope, Pope Francis, because this is not the first time he has gone astray. He has espoused unbiblical thinking in other ways, not only on this matter.
I watched him in a video counsel a child — about a six- or eight-year-old child — who had lost his father in death. The child said that his father was an atheist — never went to church, didn’t believe in God — and then he asked where he was. And the pope said that his father was in heaven. The pope said that that was the case.
“It’s not a blessing to give the impression of treating lightly something that God treats dreadfully.”
Now, that’s very contrary to what the Roman Catholic Church and all other Christian churches have taught. I doubt that this pope believes anyone will suffer eternally in hell. I could be wrong about that, but if so, then the warnings of 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 — that those who practice homosexuality will not enter the kingdom of God — lose their ultimate seriousness for him. That’s the direction our culture has moved for decades, and that’s where the pope appears to be moving as well.
So, by all means, let us bless those who curse us — but not extend a blessing over a same-sex union.