The Pastor and Discouragement

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0:00:00 – (Matt Smethurst): If you’re ready to go deeper in theology, Southern Seminary’s PhD programs were built for you. With flexible formats from fully online to modular to in person, Southern makes serious doctoral level theological training accessible to the pastor called to bring the depth of God’s word to God’s people. Study with faculty committed to strengthening the church and bring that depth back to the people you you lead.

0:00:26 – (Matt Smethurst): Visit SBTS EDU PhD to learn more. If you’re exhausted, God isn’t. If you’re discouraged, God isn’t. If you’re unfaithful, God isn’t. If you’re weak, God isn’t. We have a hope and a future because God is not like us. And we can rest in that. Welcome back to an episode of the Everyday Passion, a podcast from the Gospel Coalition on the nuts and bolts of ministry. My name is Matt Smethurst and I’m

0:01:03 – (Ligon Duncan): Ligg, Duncan and Lig.

0:01:04 – (Matt Smethurst): In a previous episode we talked about spiritual warfare in ministry and we even got into One of the ways that satanic attack can affect us is through discouragement. But we wanted to devote a whole episode to this because it is a occupational hazard for pastors. It’s something that we all deal with in various seasons of ministry. Perhaps some of our listeners even are feeling debilitated by discouragement. When we get into the ministry, we know that there is going to be hard times.

0:01:39 – (Matt Smethurst): We know that the budget cycle or conflict or division in the church or maybe a hard case of church discipline could lead to discouragement. But what we don’t often think about is how just our own inner life, kind of our emotional state, can really ebb and flow and make ministry, oftentime a grind. So what do you think are some warning signs that a pastor should look out for when discouragement has started to become debilitating?

0:02:10 – (Ligon Duncan): Well, obviously we need to take stock of our private life. And this means that as we are feeding the people of God, we’re making sure that we’re feeding our own souls and we’re doing some self examination. I don’t mean morbid introspection, but just taking stock of where we are. I can definitely sense different phases of my experience through different years in Christian ministry. By God’s grace, the early years of my ministry were marked by energy, an excitement, an enjoyment of what I was doing, an exuberation about the things that I was getting to do, things that I’d been preparing for my whole life, learning things, learning different aspects of the ministry. Not everybody has that kind of a wonderful start to a ministry. Other people have really hard starts to a ministry. But mine was wonderful. I was working under a veteran pastor.

0:03:12 – (Ligon Duncan): I didn’t have everything on my shoulders. I could make mistakes and he would cover for me. So I was given freedom to learn and to grow. I was getting to do different aspects of ministry, not just pulpit ministry, but behind the scenes ministry. And were there challenges? Yeah, but I wasn’t the senior pastor. I was working part time at the church and part time at the seminary and full time at the seminary. And so my full time job was at the seminary. And here’s the dynamic that seminary professors are completely different from pastors in your seminary. Students can’t fire you, your congregation can. And that is a fundamental difference in the way a pastor relates to his flock and the way that a seminary professor relates to his students.

0:04:05 – (Ligon Duncan): And so that’s the early five years of my ministry. Now. Did I go through hard things that were discouraging? Yeah. As an interim pastor, I lost count of the number of suicide funerals that I had to preach. Those were gut punches. And that definitely contributed to having to wrestle with discouragements because you love people and you see hard, hard, hard things happening in their lives. And by the way, not just a person who’s taken his or her own life, but the family left behind and all the what’s that gonna mean for those children for the rest of their lives? And that’s a pastor’s getting involved in your people’s lives and knowing your people and loving your people and you start getting those gut punches along with them.

0:04:59 – (Ligon Duncan): And so that certainly happened in those days. But I’d say those early days of ministry, largely energetic new experiences, excitement, exuberance. Even when you get in the grind of ministry, and especially when you’re sitting in the seat as a solo pastor or you’re leading a pastoral staff and the buck eventually stops with you, certainly in connection with your elders and the church leadership. There’s a lot expected on you.

0:05:29 – (Ligon Duncan): There can be a lot of loneliness in that setting, in a sense that nobody understands what I’m going through. Nobody understands what it’s like to sit in this chair. And loneliness is a dangerous, dangerous, dangerous thing. It’s very interesting that the aloneness of Adam is the first thing that God seeks to remedy. And I think that Satan will use a sense of loneliness to get at us. It’s definitely a playground.

0:05:58 – (Matt Smethurst): Well, and even the more dangerous next step is from no one understands what I’m going through to. And no one cares either.

0:06:06 – (Ligon Duncan): Right. And the self pity that comes along with that. So I Definitely began to experience as a pastor. I was on a pastoral staff of nine or ten dear, dear brothers who are wonderful. I mean, by and large, we are all got along. We all liked one another, we enjoyed working with one another. But there was a by and large.

0:06:29 – (Matt Smethurst): So name the ones that you struggled

0:06:31 – (Ligon Duncan): with, just to be honest. Right. On a large pastoral staff, especially one that I didn’t pick. My initial pastoral staff was there for me when I came to the church, and there was a couple of guys that were maybe out of step with the rest of the brothers. And so while you could always feel like you were on the same page with most of your fellow pastors, you know, I always have a couple of guys that they’re not so sure that they like the direction that things are going in. That can bring about real tensions and senses of discouragement in ministry. Cause things can be going well and you’ve got sort of a pebble in your shoe, you know, right in the middle of your team that you’re meeting with every week. And those kinds of relational difficulties with fellow pastors or elders can eat at you over time. Now, thankfully, I had elders who had their eyes on that, and they didn’t leave that to me to work on. They came alongside of me, and we worked on that together until, I would say, several years in, I just had a great team to work with and we all loved working together. But those kinds of. I mean, I’m glad you pointed that out, Matt. Those kinds of relational difficulties with either fellow pastors or elders, that can be.

0:07:55 – (Ligon Duncan): When you start dreading seeing a guy come around the corner, that’s not gonna be good for your soul in ministry. He’s on your team and you’re dreading see him coming around the corner and then to be in ministry and see some really hard things. Couple of brothers fall and moral failures in min. See some hard political things go on in the church and even amongst the leaders of the church. And no matter how good other things are going, you can get discouraged. And then take a guy who things are going great in the church, but in family life, maybe he’s dealing with a really, really difficult health situation with his wife, with his children, or maybe there’s a spiritual situation with his wife and with his children. And you know how hard it is to have a public ministry that’s being evidently prospered, and then a private life in your family where there’s significant things that are just heartbreaking and they require you to just slog through, persevere through, get up on Sunday morning and have to put out of your heart all the heartbreak, all the frustration, all the discouragement and get up there. And some of what this does is it starts to break you apart inside. And I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m the best minister when I’m whole inside.

0:09:34 – (Ligon Duncan): And when I feel like I’m being broken apart inside, there’s some part of my private world that’s just in chaos. And this disjointedness with my public ministry. So I think all of those things can lead to discouragement. Now, there are other things that can lead to discouragement too. First, Kings 19 is a passage I’ve thought a lot about. And Elijah has a really, really good thing that he wants. He wants to see revival break out in the Northern Kingdom. He wants a back to Yahweh movement in the Northern Kingdom, away from the Baals, away from the false idols, and back to the one true covenant Lord of Israel. And he longs for that. And when that doesn’t happen, even after the great victory in 1 Kings, he’s just utterly crushed. And it’s not that he wants something bad.

0:10:26 – (Ligon Duncan): What he wants is good, but it doesn’t come about the way that he wants it. And so that has become, for me, a principle that I tell every young pastor. Remember, you don’t get to choose how the Lord will use your faithfulness. But sometimes the Lord not using our faithfulness the way we want the Lord to use our faithfulness becomes a source of discouragement in the ministry. So there are a gazillion different ways for a minister to get discouraged.

0:10:54 – (Ligon Duncan): How have you seen that work out either in your own life or in the lives of peers or colleagues?

0:10:59 – (Matt Smethurst): I think one of my greatest struggles, and I don’t think I’m alone, is forgetting, like every week forgetting that ministry is not efficient. It’s like parenting in that regard. God is playing the long game through us. And no matter how well things are going in three, five, seven areas of ministry, as you mentioned, it could just be one area on the home front or in the church, or one relationship that is living rent free in your head and is having an outsized influence on the way that you’re experiencing your days, and it’s robbing you of joy.

0:11:42 – (Matt Smethurst): And I think that that idea of unmet expectations is often the reality of wrong expectations. We expect ministry to be more form than it is. We expect ministry to, and we preach against it. We preach against a prosperity theology light where God is a vending machine and all the rest. And yet in our heart of hearts, we can think that if we just punch in the right numbers that we’re going to get the result that faithfulness deserves. There’s a passage in the Screwtape letters where Screwtape is talking to his demonic protege, Wormwood, and he says this, and he’s writing about ordinary Christians. But when I read it, it especially reminded me of ministers, especially as they get out of the honeymoon phase.

0:12:32 – (Matt Smethurst): Screwtape says, work hard then on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient that is a Christian during his first few weeks as a churchman or as a pastor. The Enemy. God allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavor. It occurs when lovers have got married and begin the real task of learning to live together in every department of life. It marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing.

0:13:05 – (Matt Smethurst): The enemy takes this risk because he has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what he calls his free lovers and servants. Sons is the word he uses. Desiring their freedom, he therefore refuses to carry them by their mere affections and habits to any of the goals which he sets before them. He leaves them to do it on their own. And there lies our opportunity. But also remember, there lies our danger.

0:13:36 – (Matt Smethurst): If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt. How can pastors think about how God grows us through the disillusionment and the disappointment into more mature ministers?

0:13:56 – (Ligon Duncan): One thing that I try to tell candidates for the pastoral ministry, young men that are preparing for the pastoral ministry, is that you need to prepare yourself for disappointment and for discouragement in the ministry. You need to expect it, be a surprise when it comes. When it comes, we ought to go, oh, yeah, I knew this was coming. Now what I have to do is I have to decide how I’m going to respond to it.

0:14:26 – (Ligon Duncan): Not, oh, no, where did this come from? The sky is falling. And so I do think it’s important for those of us in seminary, Southern Seminary, Southeastern Seminary, rts, Westminster, wherever. We’ve got to prepare those that are going into gospel ministry. You’re going into ministry to sinners. You’re a sinner. There is going to be discouragement. We live in a fallen world. And so it’s not if it’s when it’s not whether it’s how deep it’s going to be.

0:14:56 – (Ligon Duncan): And so being prepared. By the way, this goes back, you and I were talking about the sovereignty of God. This is why the sovereignty of God is so important. It helps you buffer yourself against these kinds of disappointments and discouragements in ministry. So one is just, we’ve got to.

0:15:13 – (Matt Smethurst): And again, not so that you don’t feel them, not so they don’t affect you, but so they don’t control you

0:15:18 – (Ligon Duncan): so you can survive, so that you can continue to serve the Lord. So I want us by and large to be able to serve the Lord with joy and gladness, as the psalm says. And we can do that even through tears. I mean, Paul’s motto, Sorrowing yet rejoicing. I think that’s not only the banner over Christian life, that’s the banner over the Christian ministry. Sorrowing yet rejoicing. And you gotta figure out how you can do that. But thing number one is just being prepared that it’s going to come and it’s going to come to us in very, very different ways.

0:15:55 – (Ligon Duncan): You know, I’m thinking right now of a dear, faithful friend in ministry that has been greatly used to bring people to faith in Christ and to deepen their own walks with God. And yet in his personal life, he’s experienced all four of his children turning their backs on the Lord. And when you’re him, you have to be able to get up and write books and preach sermons with a heart broken, that you could let that heart just completely wrap itself around those very legitimate spiritual concerns and disappointments to the point that you could become cynical, you could become bitter, you could begin questioning the truth of God’s goodness and sovereignty. And you have to get up and learn how to keep on going through those kinds of real.

0:17:05 – (Ligon Duncan): It’s bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh. It’s your own children. How am I going to keep on going? Well, I’m going to believe what I tell my congregation to believe from the Bible. I mean, a lot of this is preaching to ourselves. I tell people to believe in God’s sovereignty all the time. And man, I have to preach that sermon to myself a lot. And Ligon, you say you’re a Calvinist. Well, you, you better live like one. You better believe that God is sovereign.

0:17:33 – (Ligon Duncan): So one thing I think is just preparing for it. I think. Another thing, Matt, and you sort of hinted at this when you said it could be in budget season. Well, you feel like you’ve got a real good idea of how we could utilize the resources that the Lord has given us. And there’s Deacon so and so, or Elder so and so, who just has a totally different idea from yours. And you might think it’s less spiritual than your idea and you just let yourself get all wrought up about that or, you know, you’re well.

0:18:12 – (Matt Smethurst): And by the way, this is where Satan really gets a foothold and encourages us to assume the worst of others. So take the budget cycle. We may think that we’d be best stewards of our resources to give more to international missions this coming fiscal year rather than spending money on our facility. Another brother, just as godly, thinks the opposite. It’s a wisdom issue. And yet the temperature can be turned up, the stakes can feel higher than they frankly are.

0:18:44 – (Matt Smethurst): And we can assume either, oh, that brother doesn’t care about our ministry here in the city, he doesn’t care about our members, or that brother doesn’t care about the nations. It’s never that or it’s hardly ever that. And yet it’s so easy for that posture of suspicion to take root in our hearts.

0:19:03 – (Ligon Duncan): Amen. And so that’s one avenue that can happen. And that’s the whole I wanna get my way thing. And we may be wise and we may be principled and we may have thought about this thing, and we may think we’ve thought about it harder than Deacon A or Elder Be. But it’s part of submitting to the brethren, you know, and that can be really hard. Or it could be you have been faithful as you possibly could be in a really hard church discipline situation.

0:19:36 – (Ligon Duncan): You’ve been willing to take some punches. You’ve been willing to do some really hard things. Cause you thought A, it’s the right thing to do. It’s the thing that’s best for the souls of those concerned. It’s in accordance with God’s word. And because of that, you’ve gotten branded some way by some group. Whether it’s you’re too lax or you’re too harsh or you’re domineering or whatever else it is. And it’s very easy for those kinds of accusations to be thrown around in church discipline cases.

0:20:11 – (Ligon Duncan): And then suddenly you’re feeling the results of that in your ministry elsewhere. And you feel, lord, I’m trying to be faithful to the Bible. I’m trying to do what you tell me to do in the church. And now I’m getting clobbered because I did that. I’ve told you before, my successor, at first, Pres. I prayed that he would not have hard things to deal with in the first years that he was there. And the Lord did not see fit to hear my prayers. And he had really hard things that he had to deal with, which he dealt with impeccably, but he still got labeled by different groups in different ways. And that character, I think he’s only just now kind of coming out into the.

0:20:53 – (Ligon Duncan): The wide open green fields and spaces after having to slog through hard stuff. It would have been very easy for him to fall prey to discouragement. And then any kind of conflict and division in the church. You know, you’re pouring your heart out, you’re preaching your heart out, you’re visiting, you’re shepherding, and there’s some crazy conflict. And sometimes it’s over nothing. It’s just over nothing now. Sometimes it’s over something serious and you’re scratching your head, how in the world am I going to unravel this mess? But sometimes it is just nothing that has started a big conflict. And you love everybody and you want them to get back together, and they cannot get over it. They can’t ask forgiveness, they can’t repent, et cetera. And it can be enormously discouraging. So there are a million different directions that discouragement can come from.

0:21:50 – (Ligon Duncan): And part of it is, are we ready for it? And then do we have the equipment, the spiritual equipment, to make sure that our hearts can at least eventually get back to the right place? About that, how have you experienced that in ministry, Matt?

0:22:10 – (Matt Smethurst): Yeah, well, I’m blessed like you were, to be able to labor alongside people who make me look better than I deserve. So many people who put wind in my sails and our encouragements. But there are. I mean, on a weekly basis, there’s at least a conversation or something I become aware of. That can get me really distracted. And then that actually becomes a spiral where I grow discouraged because I’m so distracted.

0:22:43 – (Matt Smethurst): And I can just feel like, man, if I were more mature, I wouldn’t let this bother me so much. This wouldn’t bother me so much. But, yeah, there can be those things. And that goes back to the idea of efficiency. I just think sometimes my expectations are wrong. I can have a triumphalistic view of what either sanctification ought to look like or what just ministry ought to look like. And though I say faithfulness is successful, I can actually mistake results for the real thing.

0:23:16 – (Matt Smethurst): So it’s something I’m still, I think, learning to grow in. And with the help of other mature brothers and sisters, I think I’m growing in that regard. I know there are pastors listening lig, who feel that even though we reject prosperity theology and they preach against it, that they still are discouraged by not seeing More fruit, more visible fruit. They feel like they’re working hard. They feel like they’re doing all the right things.

0:23:54 – (Matt Smethurst): And it just feels like they’re surrounded either by difficult people in the church or by really hard soil among the lost in their town or city. What words of wisdom or encouragement would you have for the pastor who’s just really struggling to see fruit?

0:24:09 – (Ligon Duncan): Yeah, I mean, one is the examples of some of our great heroes. You know, there have been great heroes of the faith that have, from the standpoint of the visible result of their ministry, not had a dramatic result like some other folks have had, or they’ve gone through seasons of ministry where there was a tremendous response and then long seasons of ministry when there was not one. That comes to my mind from my theological neck of the woods is Jim Boyce.

0:24:43 – (Ligon Duncan): Jim Boice was probably for the last 20 years of his life, at least one of the key leaders in the neo evangelicalism movement with Carl Henry. I think Carl Henry really wanted him to be the next editor of Christianity Today. That never came about, but Boice just. He ran in those circles. He was involved in the International Council on Bill on Biblical Inerrancy. He was writing books and such. And yet in his own congregation for many, many years, the congregation was in numerical decline. The city of Philadelphia was going through really, really hard times coming out of the 1960s, and some of the conflicts in the culture there. The city wasn’t particularly cooperative with the church in terms of even letting people park in the area around it. There was a long period of decline. It towards the very end of his ministry there at 10th, that things began to take off. And that’s when Phil Reichen and Rick Phillips and others joined him on staff. And it was when he was finally diagnosed with cancer.

0:25:52 – (Ligon Duncan): He was probably in the happiest phase of his ministry. There’s a picture, by the way. You know, you slog for 30 years through the doldrums and the disappointments, and now the wind is in your sails and you’re diagnosed with cancer and you’re dead in three months. You know, that’s just a picture of how it often goes. And I don’t think anybody would have questioned Jim Boyce’s faithfulness, Jim Boyce’s brilliance, Jim Boyce’s gifting his consecration.

0:26:23 – (Ligon Duncan): He’s been mightily, mightily used. But there were enormous frustrations at the church level. And so it’s not that misery loves company. I’m not saying that we need to all get together and just sort of be miserable together. But, but it is good to look at faithful men and recognize faithfulness is not always attended with unimpeded success and growth. Sometimes faithfulness is attended by really, really hard things.

0:26:55 – (Matt Smethurst): And there probably usually. Usually not just sometimes.

0:26:58 – (Ligon Duncan): Right, right. Rarely do we get to kind of sit back and ah, it’s all, you know, I see how it’s all worked out. And so that’s actually a good thing to do to go. And we see it in biblical figures. I mentioned Elijah, but you could mention Moses, Moses ministry. Oh my heavens, how disappointing would it be? Okay, I’m going to show you the land that you’ve spent 80 years of your life trying to bring these people into and you’re not going to go in.

0:27:30 – (Ligon Duncan): That’s a crushing experience. Or the APostle Paul in 2 Timothy 4, who, when he finally gets to stand before the imperial court and give witness to Christ, nobody is there with him. And I think it’s Sinclair Ferguson who says, is it 2 Timothy 4:16 where that is said that no one stood by me? He says, that’s one of the saddest verses in the New Testament. And I think it is. And I’ve often thought if we are to know what happened that day in the Imperial court, we will have to hear it from Paul because there will be no other human being who will be able to tell us what happened.

0:28:11 – (Ligon Duncan): Unless some of them got converted that day. There will be nobody but Paul who can tell us what happened that day. And ministers, faithful ministers get into places where they’re isolated like that. So you do have some biblical company and you do have some faithful, faithful, faithful gospel people that you can look to that have gone through times of real, real despondency, discouragement, and yet they’ve persevered to the end. So I think those are a couple of the directions we need to look when we find ourselves there.

0:28:49 – (Matt Smethurst): And it’s important for pastors to be reminded of this, for ordinary Christians to be reminded of this, because I know not just pastors who are listening to these episodes. One ill timed, ill advised word of discouragement can muffle a hundred encouraging ones. The world has. We live in an age of cynicism and skepticism. The world has enough professional discouragers. Oh, that the Lord would make us and our churches havens, greenhouses of encouragement. I mean, I think sometimes we think, well, I don’t want to encourage that person.

0:29:23 – (Matt Smethurst): I don’t want to encourage my pastor because they’ll get a big head. That’s almost certainly not the risk. No one, no one that we meet with during the course of an ordinary day is struggling from over encouragement.

0:29:41 – (Ligon Duncan): Correct.

0:29:41 – (Matt Smethurst): And so I think one of the ways that the evil one can keep ministers discouraged is by keeping the people in his life from speaking words of encouragement and hopefulness.

0:29:54 – (Ligon Duncan): Peter Barnes has just written a little article in the Banner of Truth magazine called how to Develop the Hide of a Rhinoceros. And it’s off of that old line that a pastor needs to have the heart of a child. What is it? The heart of a child, something or other. And then the hide of a rhinoceros. Well, that’s what the thing. And he has a whole paragraph on just what you said. And he said, it’s not that we’re looking for applause, but we are looking for encouragement. And it is a terrible, terrible thing to discourage a faithful servant of the Lord, because we’ve got enough ammunition already to be discouraged. We don’t need you to lay one more log on the fire of discouragement. And so I do think we’re not looking for applause.

0:30:42 – (Ligon Duncan): We’re not looking for pats on the back in the sense of puffing us up. But sometimes just a word of encouragement to keep on going is huge. And let me again give testimony. My people were great at this. They did not want to give me a big head, but they did want to encourage me. And that encouragement was meaningful. So meaningful words of encouragement to those who are faithful in ministry. You may never know how much they mean, because I can remember the words of discouragement from years ago.

0:31:17 – (Ligon Duncan): I can remember the letters, the emails, the texts, and the words at the door. Okay, that’s my sin. That’s my issue, Matt. But I can remember those things. And I can so easily forget the encouragements. How much more important are those meaningful, appropriate biblical encouragements that we get?

0:31:37 – (Matt Smethurst): And back to the brother who’s just feeling discouraged because his church, his ministry, isn’t growing, bearing evident fruit. There’s a section in one of John Newton’s letters. I’ve mentioned this on previous podcasts that you have to get the letters of John Newton and read through them devotionally. They will be balm for your soul. But there’s a section in a letter he wrote in 1791 to a minister who is discouraged just by the slowness of things.

0:32:05 – (Matt Smethurst): And here’s what Newton said. I have not been disheartened by your apparent lack of success. I have been told that skillful gardeners will undertake to sow and raise a salad for dinner in the short time while the meat is roasting. But no gardener can raise oaks. With such expeditions, you are sent to New Holland not to sow salad seeds, but to plant acorns. And your labor will not be lost. Though the first appearances may be very small and the progress very slow, you are, I trust, planting for the next century.

0:32:39 – (Matt Smethurst): I have a good hope that your oaks will one day spring up and flourish and produce other acorns which in due time will take root and spread among the islands and nations in the Southern Ocean. It’s that kind of long term perspective that we need. And speaking of an even longer term perspective than from the 18th to the 19th century, Newton elsewhere once said, the day is coming when we will be astonished at what mere trifles were once capable of discouraging us.

0:33:09 – (Matt Smethurst): When we’ve been there 10,000 years, bright, shining as the sun, we will have the ultimate perspective. To be able to look back and see that all the labor was worth it. All the suffering, all the difficult conversations, all the difficult sheep and our own sin. And all of it was ultimately about making much of him so good.

0:33:34 – (Ligon Duncan): By the way, just the thought of Newton’s letter there reminds me that old guys who’ve been through the wars need to make sure that we’re reaching out to the younger guys and just giving them a word of encouragement. Because that means just think how much that meant coming from Newton. He’s towards the end of his ministry there. He’s in the last 20 years of his ministry when he writes that letter. He’s been at it for a while.

0:34:01 – (Ligon Duncan): For a senior guy to write to you and say, I’m not discouraged. I know you’re discouraged. I’m not discouraged. What you’re doing is going to redound to eternity. Don’t expect too much too quick. Plant the acorn. Oh, how freeing that is to hear from an older, respected brother. So old guys, we do need to keep our eyes out for our young guys when they’re discouraged and say a word of timely, spiritual, biblical, godly encouragement like that.

0:34:38 – (Ligon Duncan): Again, Newton is one of my. Simeon is a pastor to me and he experienced so much discouragement. Newton is a pastor to me and he experienced so many difficult things in his life and I do find those incredibly helpful. Lloyd Jones is another person like that who had this way of encouraging ministers. Mark Dever is a person who has a way of encouraging ministers. Look for those kinds of voices out there that can speak. They’re realistic.

0:35:09 – (Ligon Duncan): They understand the slog of ministry. They understand the disappointment in life and ministry, but they also believe God. They believe the promises of the Word. They believe in the efficacy of the Word. And they want to encourage you. They will have good things to say to you. Mark is famous for reading that John Brown of Haddington quote to the young man. I know you’re embarrassed by how small your congregation is, but when you’re standing before Jesus on the last day, you’ll think, these are enough souls to give account for.

0:35:40 – (Ligon Duncan): So what a perspective giving kind of thing. That is for John Brown of Haddington to say to a young man who’s starting out in a small congregation. So I do think we need to be on the lookout to encourage folks either at the start of their ministry or in the middle of their ministry when they’ve just started hitting the slogan and just say, William McKenzie was saying this to me just a couple of weeks ago. William McKenzie, the wonderful publisher of Christian Focused Books. And they’re on the Black Isle in Scotland in Tane and Rosher.

0:36:18 – (Ligon Duncan): And he was saying that one of the things that Lloyd Jones would often sign off with in speech or in letters to other ministers was keep on keeping on. And that’s an important message for people that are discouraged by temporary lack of response to keep on keeping on. Put one foot in front of the other, don’t grow weary and well doing, stay in the slog. Ralph Davis is another guy who has that kind of ability to say that to younger ministers. So if you’ve never read any Ralph Davis, pick up Ralph Davis books.

0:36:56 – (Matt Smethurst): Dale Ralph Davis published An Amen, Old Testament guy.

0:36:59 – (Ligon Duncan): So anyway, any Old Testament commentary that Dr. Davis has written, he’s got an eye on pastors like this and you can even see it in his titles. Like he’s got this title on the song, something like Slogging Through Something or other. It’s even these titles let you know that he understands the grind. And so I do think it’s important for us to be on the lookout for guys behind us in ministry and just say, hey, come on, on keep on going.

0:37:29 – (Matt Smethurst): Absolutely. I think of 2 Corinthians 4:1 where Paul says, therefore, because we have received a ministry such as this, we do not lose heart. And by the way, there’s a book I recently read by Dave Harvey called the Clay Pot Conspiracy, God’s Plan to Use Weakness in Leaders. I would commend that to any pastors who are struggling, discouraged, debilitated in ministry. The Clay Pot Conspiracy is a short book that will be deeply helpful and encouraging to you. But as I think about Paul’s words, we do not lose heart.

0:38:02 – (Matt Smethurst): Ultimately, lig the reason that we as tired ministers need not lose heart is not because we know that just around the corner there’s going to be all this visible fruit. It’s not because we know of anything that’s going to sort of be ours for the taking in this life. It’s ultimately because of who God is. Our hope, actually, that he’s not like us. So if you’re exhausted, God isn’t. If you’re discouraged, God isn’t. If you’re unfaithful, God isn’t. If you’re weak, God isn’t. We have a hope and a future because God is not like us.

0:38:42 – (Matt Smethurst): And we can rest in that.

0:38:43 – (Ligon Duncan): Amen.

0:38:44 – (Matt Smethurst): Like, Will you just pray for pastors who may be struggling with discouragement today?

0:38:48 – (Ligon Duncan): Okay, let’s pray. Heavenly Father, you know the hearts of youf servants. And you’d know that there may be many faithful pastors listening who are struggling with various kinds of discouragement. Some of those discouragements are circumstantial. Some of them are rooted in desiring good things for the growth of the church and for the godliness of the people and for evangelism and for discipleship and all manner of other good things that they have not seen come, come to pass, at least to the extent that they want to see in their ministry.

0:39:25 – (Ligon Duncan): Some of them are attended by pain in their ministry. Pain of body, pain of soul. Some of them are attended by rejection in ministry. Perhaps they’ve been betrayed by someone close in ministry. Maybe they’re discouraged by things that are going on in their family life. Maybe their outward public ministry has been favored and is recognized and esteemed. And yet in their family life, there is a pain that grieves them and from which their soul cannot escape. You know our circumstances, God, and we entrust ourself to youo.

0:40:02 – (Ligon Duncan): And we ask that yout would protect us from a discouragement that would keep us from the joy that yout intend for us to have as yous servants. If we sorrow, Lord, we want to sorrow and rejoice. We want to rejoice and sorrow at the same time in ministry. Because we know that you’re going to have the last word. And just as Matt just reminded us, you’re sovereign over everything. You’re a good and loving Father. You’re going to have the final say to the outcome of all things. And we get to be your stewards, your servants, the stewards of the mysteries of Christ.

0:40:47 – (Ligon Duncan): And just keep us faithful to those things. Give us joy in those things. By the Spirit, when we flag and stumble, pick us up and carry us along. Strengthen us with the strength that only comes from the Holy Spirit so that people will say, it’s not the strength of my pastor, it’s the strength of my pastor’s God. It’s the strength of my pastor’s Savior. It’s the strength of the Holy Spirit who’s been poured out on him, that holds him up in the burdens of life to carry on the duties of ministry with joy in his heart. And I do pray that you would grant joy to those who are discouraged right now.

0:41:31 – (Ligon Duncan): Help them not stop seeking your face for joy even in these moments of discouragement. Because Jesus said that he came to make our joy complete, he does not intend to leave us in the slough of despond to walk with joy, with our face uplifted to God. So by the Spirit, make that happen, O God, and point us to the resources that we need. Thank you that they’re faithful ministers that have persevered through this. Thank you that they’re books that faithful ministers and letters like the letters of dear brother John Newton that encourage us and speak to us as pastors use those kinds of things to keep us going, keep us trusting, keep us preaching, keep us walking with you. We ask all of these things in Jesus name. Amen.

0:42:24 – (Matt Smethurst): Amen. Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Everyday Pastor. If you’re listening and you’re not a pastor, consider sending this maybe to one of your pastors and say, hey, I don’t know if you’re experiencing discouragement these days, but I’m sure you will at some point. And I just want you to know I love you. I’m encouraged by your ministry and I hope this conversation will bless you.

0:42:44 – (Ligon Duncan): You.