Many a man has asked the question, “Am I called to pastoral ministry?” And many a wise leader has counseled him to place the matter upon the three-legged stool of aspiration, affirmation, and opportunity:

Do you aspire to the office (1 Timothy 3:1)?
Do others (especially your current pastors) affirm you as a faithful man who will be able to teach others also (2 Timothy 2:2)?
Has God given you an opportunity to shepherd a particular flock (Acts 20:28; 1 Peter 5:2)?

These are clarifying questions — but they do not clarify everything. Many who sit on this stool find that one leg seems to wobble. One man may aspire to pastor and have an opportunity, but others have voiced reservations about his readiness. A second man may aspire and receive affirmation, but God has not yet provided an opportunity. And a third man may receive affirmation and have an opportunity, but he wonders if his desires for pastoral ministry really rise to the level of godly aspiration.

For some time, I found myself as the third man. I felt a desire for ministry, but I wondered if it had been shaped too much by others’ expectations. I also wondered how much ungodliness was mixed in my motives; maybe what I really wanted was a seat at Jesus’s right hand (Mark 10:37). And I felt the weight of the question. As David Mathis writes in his book Workers for Your Joy, “The good of the church is at stake in the holy desire of its pastors. They will not long work well for her joy if it is not their joy to do such work” (47).

How can men in this position discern whether they truly aspire to shepherd God’s people? We might find clarity by asking three diagnostic questions, drawn from Peter’s charge to the elders in 1 Peter 5:1–4.

Shepherd the Flock of God

Before we turn to Peter’s diagnostics, consider what kind of calling the apostle had in mind when he addressed “the elders among you” (1 Peter 5:1) — lest we aspire to an eldership of our own imagining. Peter writes,

I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight . . . (1 Peter 5:1–2)

Shepherd the flock of God. A pastor may find himself with a host of responsibilities, but at the heart of his calling is this charge to shepherd God’s precious sheep. And at the heart of shepherding is teaching.

Peter had learned the shepherd’s teaching task first from his Lord. He had noticed how Jesus, seeing a crowd wandering “like sheep without a shepherd,” did what a true shepherd would: “He began to teach them many things” (Mark 6:34). He had heard how this good shepherd taught and kept teaching, and how the sheep heard his voice (John 10:27–28). And then, of course, he had received his Lord’s threefold command to feed his sheep (John 21:15–17) — a feeding Jesus had already linked with his words (John 6:57–58, 63).

And so, following Jesus’s ascension, the apostle-shepherd taught and taught and taught — among the eleven (Acts 1:15), to the crowds (Acts 2:14), all through Jerusalem (Acts 5:28–29), across the Jew-Gentile divide (Acts 10:34–43), and then eventually by letter, including to those “elect exiles of the Dispersion” who received 1 Peter (verse 1). For Peter, to shepherd Jesus’s lambs meant, preeminently, to feed them Jesus’s words.

Now, the word shepherding does not exhaust an elder’s job description. Elders also “exercise oversight,” as Peter says — governing the church’s structures, guarding the church from threats, guiding the church through difficult decisions. Even here, however, teaching saturates the pastoral task, for how else will elders govern and guard and guide except by God’s word?

“Pastors are first and foremost Bible men — men who preach and teach and counsel God’s word.”

Pastors, then, are first and foremost Bible men — men who preach and teach and counsel God’s word in public and private, from the pulpit and the hospital chair, in season and out. At its core, this is the “noble task” to which we aspire (1 Timothy 3:1).

Three Tests for Godly Aspiration

With the what of eldership in view, Peter proceeds to describe the how in three pairs of “not this, but that”:

Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. (1 Peter 5:2–3)

Here, Peter points us to where our aspiration comes from, where our aspiration aims, and what shape our aspiration takes.

Where does your aspiration come from?

Shepherd the flock of God . . . not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you.

For some years now, perhaps, the word pastor has seemed stamped on your future. Maybe your father pastored. Maybe friends and mentors have encouraged you to pastor. Maybe you’re currently a seminary student. Either way, pastoring has become entwined with both your own sense of identity and others’ expectations. But now you wonder whether you really want to do this work.

“Jesus wields the rod and the staff with his whole soul, and he looks for men who will embody that same shepherd’s heart.”

In Peter’s day, it seems, some men were tempted to become elders “under compulsion” — prodded by others’ wishes or a mere internal sense of oughtness rather than propelled by their own wants. Such an impulse is understandable — but, Peter writes, it is not “as God would have you” shepherd his people. Jesus, the church’s first and chief Shepherd, does not lead his sheep under compulsion. He wields the rod and the staff with his whole soul, and he looks for men who will embody that same shepherd’s heart to his sheep. So, Mathis writes, “Christ grabs his pastors by the heart; he doesn’t twist them by the arm” (46).

Christ looks for willing men. Of course, even men who shepherd “under compulsion” do so willingly in one sense. But Jesus wants a willingness that goes deeper than “Everyone else thinks I should pastor” or “I can pastor if no one else will.” He wants a willingness that reaches for the staff (rather than simply receiving it when asked) — and a willingness that keeps a man from tossing the staff when trouble comes.

Where does your aspiration aim?

Shepherd the flock of God . . . not for shameful gain, but eagerly.

Shameful gain refers, most directly, to money. (In Paul’s letter to Titus, the same word as here appears — translated “greedy for gain” — in place of the phrase “not a lover of money” in his letter to Timothy.) Those who pastor for shameful gain do so mainly because pastoring provides a paycheck — and maybe they can’t imagine how else they would make money. Ministry has lost its God-centered, Christ-exalting, soul-saving focus, and has shrunk to the size of a 401(k).

Of course, the pastorate also offers other types of shameful gain besides money. Pastoring may bring discomfort and criticism and the burden of others’ expectations, but it can also bring honor in a community, a measure of power, and, for some, a flexible work schedule without much oversight. These too are kinds of shameful gain that might draw a man to ministry. But whatever the kind, Peter buries them all beneath the word eagerly.

Eagerly overlaps some with willingly, both of them putting their finger on the animating principle in a pastor’s soul. But given the contrast with shameful gain, eagerly seems to suggest not only a deep willingness to do the work, but also a decided lack of calculation in the work.

The godly elder does not tally what he can get from the ministry and then labor (or not) accordingly. He throws himself into the work, come what may: large paycheck or small, honor or suspicion, influence or weakness, difficulty or ease. For him, the work offers its own rewards in the heavenly currency of preaching Christ and helping to lead his flock to glory. Vocational pastors will get paid for their work, as they ought — “the laborer deserves his wages” (1 Timothy 5:18) — but however much they receive, the godly know their pockets are already lined with better treasure.

What shape does your aspiration take?

Shepherd the flock of God . . . not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.

If the word shepherd echoes Jesus’s charge to Peter on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, the word domineer recalls another striking conversation:

Jesus called [the twelve] to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over [or domineer over] them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you.” (Mark 10:42–43)

Peter never forgot these words. More importantly, he never forgot the one who spoke them: the Lord who did not lord his authority over his people, but served and died as if he were a slave (Mark 10:44–45). However much Peter may have been tempted toward Gentile-like lordship in the years following, the power of that temptation had bled dry on the cross of his King.

So, when Peter calls the elders to set an example, he wants them to serve not only as model sheep, but also as little lower-case reflections of the chief Shepherd (1 Peter 5:4). Christ left the highest heaven to find his sheep and bear them home upon his back, and the thought of imitating his regal humility, his lordly lowliness, makes the hearts of godly shepherds beat faster.

Do You Love Me?

Having pointed us backward, forward, and around, Peter ends his charge by lifting our eyes up:

When the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. (1 Peter 5:4)

Self-examination has its place on the path to eldership, and in eldership. We need some knowledge of our own hearts to sincerely aspire to the office. But the aspiration itself comes from the upward, not the inward, look.

So as we seek to discern whether our desires for eldership match God’s pattern for eldership, we may do well to return often to those Galilean shores, where before Jesus issued his threefold charge he asked his threefold question: “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” (John 21:15–17). Do you love the voice that bid you fish for men? Do you love the glory shining on the mount? Do you love the hands that washed your feet and took your nails? Simon, son of John, do you love me?

Willingness, eagerness, and the desire to set a Christlike example rest and rise on a daily and deepening yes.

As C.S. Lewis ended his lecture on petitionary prayer, he asked his audience of clergymen a question: “How am I to pray this very night?” He did not know. “I have no answer to my problem, though I have taken it to about every Christian I know, learned or simple, lay or clerical, within my own Communion or without” (C. S. Lewis: Essay Collection, 204).

What problem could he not solve? In short, he could not reconcile the seemingly mutually exclusive ways in which we are taught to make our requests known to God.

The first way, which Lewis calls “the A Pattern,” is the “Thy will be done” prayer. The deferential prayer, the creaturely prayer. We bring our requests to our All-Wise Father, but leave them at his feet to answer how he sees best.

Jesus taught us to pray this way in the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done” (Matthew 6:10). Jesus prayed this prayer himself in that most dire hour in Gethsemane, when he first asked for deliverance from the cup and yet ended, “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus assures us that our Father in heaven will give us good things when we ask him, but often not the exact thing we ask for (Matthew 7:9–11). We ask for “bread” and only know our Father will not give us a “serpent.”

So far, so good.

Ask Whatever I Wish?

Then comes “the B Pattern,” the “Ask whatever you wish” prayer. Instead of explicit deference, this prayer requires faith that what is actually prayed will be given by God. “Whatever you ask in prayer,” the perfect Pray-er also taught, “believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:24). Or again, “And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith” (Matthew 21:22). This pattern requires “faith that the particular thing the petitioner asks will be given him” (199).

Jesus is not bashful to teach this pattern. “Ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7). Jesus (not some modern prosperity preacher) teaches, “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it” (John 14:13–14; John 15:7; 16:23–24).

So, the question: “How is it possible at one and the same moment to have a perfect faith — an untroubled or unhesitating faith as St. James says (James 1:6) — that you will get what you ask and yet also prepare yourself submissively in advance for a possible refusal?” (Letters to Malcolm, 35).

When he (now we) bend the knee in prayer, interceding for ill Mrs. Jones, by which pattern do we pray? Do we ask for her healing if the Lord wills (Pattern A)? Or should we pray for her healing in Jesus’s name, expecting — and not doubting — this to happen?

Lewis wrestles:

Have all my own intercessory prayers for years been mistaken? For I have always prayed that the illnesses of my friends might be healed “if it was God’s will,” very clearly envisaging the possibility that it might not be. Perhaps this has all been a fake humility and a false spirituality for which my friends owe me little thanks; perhaps I ought never to have dreamed of refusal, μηδὲν διακρινόμενος [without doubting]? (Essay Collection, 203)

If we pray prayers of deference (Pattern A) when we should have prayed prayers of assurance (Pattern B), could we be the doubter who clogs the drain of his own prayers (James 1:6–8)? Yet, if we pray Pattern B when A was best, we expose ourselves to presumption, false expectation, and disappointment.

What Wicked Men Understand

To deepen the question, we hear this same promise on the lips of another in the Gospel of Mark. Though he was a wicked man, the scene provides another valuable lens.

When Herodias’s daughter came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests. And the king said to the girl, “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it to you.” And he vowed to her, “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, up to half of my kingdom.” (Mark 6:22–23)

This, you remember, is how John the Baptist’s head ends up on a platter. What did he mean by this promise? When Salome requested the prophet’s head instead of half the kingdom, “the king was exceedingly sorry, but because of his oaths and his guests he did not want to break his word to her” (Mark 6:26). He realized (and assumes his guests realize) that having promised “whatever she wished” up to half the kingdom, anything other than John’s head would break his word.

This understanding strikes the nerve of our silent misgivings over Pattern B. What do we make of the unanswered prayers of so many saints who thought they prayed with expectant faith? “Every war, every famine or plague, almost every death-bed, is the monument to a petition that was not granted” (Letters to Malcolm, 35). Again, he sees no problem with Pattern A — God always knows best. But how can we comfortably make eye-contact with Pattern B when it contrasts so much with our experience, dwelling now on the borderlands of the unbelievable?

Unhappy Birthdays

Some hurry to man the gap between the promise and our apparent experience of the promise by insisting that “whatever you ask” really means “whatever you ask . . . according to his will.” They cite 1 John 5:14: “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.” See, “according to his will.” Whatever is not a blank check in which one can write “a new Ferrari” or “a Christian spouse” or even “the conversion of my son” and safely believe to have it. Only checks that accord with his definite plan will cash.

Lewis finds this answer unsatisfactory.

Dare we say that when God promises “You shall have what you ask” he secretly means “You shall have it if you ask for something I wish to give you”? What should we think of an earthly father who promised to give his son whatever he chose for this birthday and, when the boy asked for a bicycle gave him an arithmetic book, then first disclosing the silent reservation with which the promise was made? (Essay Collection, 203)

Although the book might be better for the child, Lewis argues it arrives with a sense of “cruel mockery” for the boy without his bicycle. And Lewis’s understanding that sees whatever as quite simply whatever accords better with Herod’s understanding as well.

Splashing in the Shallows

As I wrestled with the tension Lewis exposes here, I began to realize a problematic tendency in my own prayer life: How often I have defaulted to Prayer A as a way to protect unbelief?

How many of my own If the Lord wills prayers have, beneath the surface, really been prayers saying, “I don’t really expect you to answer, so I’ll not get my hopes up?” How much has unbelief masqueraded, in Lewis’s words, as “fake humility and a false spirituality”? A tying of a rope around my waist as I venture out to meet Jesus upon the waves — just in case.

How many of us are men and women of little faith, not seriously considering Prayer B as an unconscious strategy to ward off suspected disappointment? I see this most in myself in my willingness to pray grand and abstract prayers, but rarely granular and specific prayers. Even if I ask Whatever I want prayers, they’re general requests that beget general (and open-ended) answers. But if I pray specific, time-dependent prayers, I know whether they’re answered as I prayed them or not.

Although I abide in Christ, ask in his name, have his words indwelling, possess a concern to bear fruit for his fame, I too often beach-dwell, splashing in the shallows of prayer, tempted to distrust that I ever will see whales and dolphins in the depths, as God offers.

Where Did Lewis Land?

How does Lewis answer his own riddle? Lewis guesses that Prayer B prayers must be expressions of a special God-given faith for specific kingdom work.

My own idea is that it occurs only when the one who prays does so as God’s fellow worker, demanding what is needed for the joint work. It is the prophet’s, the apostle’s, the missionary’s, the healer’s prayer that is made with this confidence and finds the confidence justified by the event. (Letters, 37)

In other words, this is a special “prayer of faith” for God’s fellow-workers. And the faith for this prayer, for Lewis, is not manufactured by us through a feat of “psychological gymnastics,” rather, it is God-given. We do not clench our fist and furrow our brow and prod our imaginations and confuse this with faith. God must give the gift. “For most of us,” Lewis admits, “the prayer in Gethsemane is the only model” (Letters, 37).

So, how should we pray tonight?

Lewis reasons along these lines, “Can I ease my problem by saying that until God gives me such a faith I have no practical decision to make; I must pray after the A pattern because, in fact I cannot pray after the B pattern? If, on the other hand, God ever gave me such a faith, then again I should have no decision to make; I should find myself praying in the B pattern” (Essays, 204).

Even this solution, however, did not ease all tensions,

But some discomfort remains. I do not like to represent God as saying “I will grant what you ask in faith” and adding, so to speak, “Because I will not give you the faith — not that kind — unless you ask what I want to give you.” Once more, there is just a faint suggestion of mockery, of goods that look a little larger in the advertisement then they turn out to be. (204)

How Will You Pray This Night?

For my own part, I look forward to help from wiser, more experienced saints. I confess my weakness, that I still do not know how to pray as I ought (Romans 8:26). Yet doesn’t Paul unearth a secret to our trouble with the next line commending the Spirit’s help to our faltering prayers? “The Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words,” and, “the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:27). He always prays B-pattern prayers on our behalf (if so they can be called). So, I must pray as I’m able, knowing that the Spirit’s groans make up perfectly for my ignorance.

How will I petition this night? I will petition God as one who loves God, his glory, his church, and his world. I will petition to bear fruit and to see souls bow to Jesus. And I will pray for faith to pray more boldly, more expectantly, as one who has a check signed by the King. I pray to experience this prayer of faith (if so it is). And I also pray reverently, “Thy will be done,” leaving room in my prayers for his will, the Spirit’s groans, but not for unbelief.

How will you pray this night?

Some of the most life-changing verses in the Bible are those that come alive years after we first read them. We read them and pass over them, read them and pass over them, read them again, and then suddenly reality breaks through, and their meaning explodes in our imagination. I wonder if any verses like that come to mind for you.

Years ago, a line in Psalm 4 leapt out of the fog of familiarity and arrested my attention. At first, it exhilarated me, awakening me to spiritual wells I had walked by (and looked past) again and again. Then it humbled me, confronting me with how weak and fickle my heart can be. And then, finally, it has strengthened me, stirring my desire and ambition for Christ and building my courage in him. King David writes,

You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound. (Psalm 4:7)

Surprised by Joy

The verse slid under my radar for years, I think, because it rang like a cliché to my immature and naive ears — like a sentence beautiful enough for Pinterest, but just out of touch with the heavier realities of real life. I would read verses like this, feel vaguely inspired for a moment, and then move on and forget them minutes later. The vagueness evaporated, however, when I slowed down enough to finally see through the window this verse opens for us.

David does not say, “You have given me great joy,” or even, “You have given me as much joy as those in the world have in their finest meals and fullest pleasures.” No, he says, “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.” If it was a word that seized me, it was the word more. As David weighs his joy in God against the greatest pleasures on earth — the most expensive experiences, in the most exotic places, with the most famous people — he finds the world’s offer wanting. He prefers what he has tasted through faith over anything else he might see or do or buy.

Do you think about your faith in God that way? When you think about Jesus, do you ever think in terms of joy, delight, fulfillment, pleasure? Have you actually been taught, subtly or explicitly, to pit him against your happiness? The discovery for me, at that time, was that I did not have to walk away from joy to follow Jesus. In fact, I could only find the richest, most intense happiness in him.

Stubborn Longings for Less

The more you sit with a verse like this, however, the heavier it can become. The promise of experiencing a joy like David’s can give way to the troubling realization that we do not yet experience it. Can I really say, with him, “God, you have given me more joy than the world has in its greatest joys?” Am I as happy in Jesus as they are in their food, and friends, and careers, and vacations, and possessions? We know we should be able to say what David says, and yet we also know our own hearts well enough to wonder whether we can.

I feel how slow my heart can be to enjoy God. Sin never prefers God over grain or wine or television or self. And sin still lives in me. As John Piper says, we humans, in our sin, “have a deep, unshakable, compelling preference for other things rather than God” (“What Is Sin?”). This sin isn’t just a lingering tendency to do the wrong thing, but a stubborn longing for the wrong thing. So, Bible reading can sometimes feel burdensome. Prayer can sometimes feel stale. Fellowship can feel forced. Joy in God can feel distant and theoretical.

“Sin isn’t just a lingering tendency to do the wrong thing, but a stubborn longing for the wrong thing.”

To be clear, appreciating grain and wine is not sin. The psalmists celebrate and worship God for both (see Psalm 65:9; 104:19). Our joy in grain and wine and every other good gift from God is meant to kindle our joy in him, not compete with him (James 1:17). Preferring grain or wine or anything else to God is sin. And according to 1 John 1:8, we all, at times, prefer wrongly. We crave lesser, thinner joys over all we have in Christ.

How Long, O Lord?

Even if we overcome our inner resistance to this joy, though, the harsher realities of life also become hurdles to joy. The book of Psalms, after all, is not one long chorus of joy. It holds out a life of worship that is not comfortable or predictable, but difficult and demanding, even agonizing, at times.

Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled. (Psalm 6:2–3)

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? (Psalm 13:1–2)

The cords of death encompassed me; the torrents of destruction assailed me; the cords of Sheol entangled me; the snares of death confronted me. (Psalm 18:4–5)

Again and again, the brighter moments of gladness punctuate song after song of hardship. David’s life, in particular, was terribly painful. After he was chosen to be the next king, he was hunted by Saul. After he committed adultery and had the woman’s husband killed, he lost his infant son. Later, another son, Amnon, died at the hands of his own brother, Absalom, who then fled. And when the estranged son eventually returned, he betrayed his father, organized a mutiny, and stole the kingdom.

The agony David experienced (some because of his own sin, and much because of sins against him) makes his words in Psalm 4:7 even sweeter and more compelling. His pain doesn’t gut what he says about joy, but proves it, revealing that this joy is unusually potent and resilient.

Even as I Lose All

When David writes, “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound,” he is not writing from the comfort of a palace in peacetime; he is writing from hiding, while Absalom has seized his throne. Psalms 3 and 4 are the morning and evening psalms of a man betrayed. David suffered much throughout his life and reign, but did anything sting like the stab in the back from his own son?

“No amount of darkness and loss could take the depth and fullness of his joy in God.”

And yet he was not utterly miserable, even while he watched the boy he once held and fed and played with plunder his life’s work. No, “You have put more joy in my heart” — even now — “than they have when their grain and wine abound.” Even while my son indulges himself on my grain and my wine and my wealth, even as I lose nearly all that I love, even while I fear for my life, God, you have made me glad in you — more glad than sinners have in their happiest moments. No amount of darkness and loss could take the depth and fullness of his joy in God.

This joy isn’t merely for the lighter, more comfortable, more cheerful moments of the Christian life, but it’s also strong enough for the trenches, the valleys, the storms. What God did for a wounded and despairing king in the throes of betrayal, he now promises to do for us in the throes of whatever we face or carry. And what greater, more practical gift could he give us than to say, in any circumstance, however bleak or painful, I will not only keep your life, but make you glad?