Steve DeWitt: Don’t Grow Weary of the Gospel

Steve Dewitt

All of those are things that can’t be transferred to the gospel. The gospel is glorious. So it’s kind of that as long as I treasure Jesus and love Jesus, even when Jesus people are making it incredibly hard, I remain I can be weary in the ministry, but I am not weary of the ministry, or the ministry of the gospel or the glory of Jesus Christ.

I would say two things I love, first of all, the people. Being a pastor, if you if you love people, you meet so many interesting people, and all of them have a story. And I love to kind of explore, okay, where are you from? You know, how’s God wired you? How did you become the person that you are? And I enjoy meeting people, getting to know people, and, of course, as a pastor, seeing them grow in their walk with the Lord. And that’s a great, great joy to me. Second thing, I love preaching, you know, I do it every seventh day of my life. I have done that for coming on 30 years, and it is there’s a special joy on a Sunday morning when you know that you’ve got the text by the throat. You know you have a word for your people. Maybe you’ve got a little illustration. You’re excited about a point that you can’t wait to make when you’re confident that this is going to be a message that God is going to use in people’s lives, to have the you know, just I even getting ready in the morning, having a little joy in my heart like this is going to be a great day and and then to be able to go and be with the people you love and then share with them a message that is you know from the scriptures that is fresh in your heart, that you know you know, is going to encourage them, bless them deep in their walk with God. That is a high and a holy privilege and calling you Well, I was blessed to be raised in a Christian home. I can’t remember not knowing about Jesus. One of my earliest memories in my whole life is being on stage with my dad quoting John 316 on his lap at a Christmas program. And you know, so I very much rooted in the church. I also was blessed to grow up in a family that people in ministry were honored, and we would often have missionaries and the pastors and whatever to our house. And so I grew up with a high view of ministry when I was in college. I went to college to play basketball, and it I got hurt, and it wasn’t really going to be my future anyway, and the Lord was using that to really shift my focus to the callings that he had in my life. So I did some college sports ministry working with young people, and found that I really enjoyed it, and people seemed to respond well to it. And so I kind of emerging giftedness starting to reveal itself. I was also blessed to meet a guy that had been an All American basketball player, was a pastor and was a, like, a dude, and, you know, I had the view of pastors. They were a little stiff, little, you know, I don’t know, weird, and I thought, if I can be a pastor like that guy, then then I’m in. And so that really was the process for me. It wasn’t like a moment, it was kind of a growth in discipleship and a growth of awareness of giftedness and then a sense of the call of God of my life. Yeah, I would say to a pastor that’s contemplating whether he wants to continue in the ministry to be encouraged. I heard years ago. I heard Alistair Begg was on a on a panel discussion, and they asked the question, have you ever thought about quitting the ministry? And he said, with his Scottish accent, every Sunday night. And any pastor that would be hearing this video or heard him say that can totally relate to that, like there is a certain exhaustion that goes beyond the physical and the emotional. It’s a kind of spiritual exertion that pastoral ministry requires. That there’s a lot of times where you’re like, I’m not sure I want to do this anymore. I. So I would say to that pastor, you are not alone in that. And any young pastor that’s or young person thinking about going into ministry, you just have to be prepared. This is a unique calling that you’re going to consider quitting often. And that’s where, you know, there’s so many verses that, like Paul writes to Timothy about, you know, running the race and enduring in the ministry, and that sort of resilience that the call of the Gospel, the example of Jesus, maybe inspiring people who’ve been praying for you your whole life. Maybe it’s your parents or spiritual father or mother in your life. All of these come together to gird up the loins of the of the struggling pastor. One quote that has also been one I’ve gone to is, I think, attributed to George Whitfield. And he said, Lord, I am weary in the ministry, but I am not weary of the ministry. And that little distinction, I think, is critically important for lasting in ministry, because over the course of time, every pastor or ministry leader is going to face betrayal is going to face slander is going to have criticisms, big and small, crisis in the church. There’s going to be untold opportunities, if you really take it seriously, to quit and the the distinction that that statement makes between being weary in the ministry and weary of the ministry. It’s one thing to be weary in the ministry, to be weary of people, to be weary of the drama, to be weary of the trauma, to in some cases, resent what you have to endure to remain in gospel ministry, if that ever gets transferred over to being weary of the ministry, where we are blaming the ministry, or we’re, you know, we’re mad at God, or whatever it is. Now you’re in a precarious place. And so I think to maintain the distinction of the glory of Jesus Christ, the glory of the gospel, the incredible privilege that it is to serve in the ministry, to fight against an entitlement mentality regarding the blessings and challenges of Being in ministry. All of that, all of those are things that can’t be transferred to the gospel. The gospel is glorious. So it’s kind of that as long as I treasure Jesus and love Jesus, even when Jesus people are making it incredibly hard, I remain. I can be weary in the ministry, but I am not weary of the ministry, or the ministry of the gospel, or the glory of Jesus Christ. Oh, this is this whole entitlement thing is it’s so subtle, like if think about Jonah. So here’s Jonah, you know, he’s preached against Nineveh. He said one of the most incredible revivals, incredible ministry success, you know. And yet he really hopes the city is going to get destroyed. And he sits outside the city to wait for, you know, the judgment of God to come. The plant grows up to give him shade. And you know that hedonic adaptation kicks in with Jonah very quickly, where he’s like, not only do I have a plant next to me, but I’m entitled to the shade that this plant is providing for me. And then, of course, God causes the plant to to wither and to die. And, you know, Jonah is ready to not only quit the ministry, but to quit living. I wish I was dead, you know. And I think that that entitlement, attitude towards the praise of people, the admiration of family, the the sense in society that maybe you know I’m important, or whatever, these things creep into the heart of the of the pastor very subtly,

and we don’t know it’s there until it’s removed. And so, for example, I think the year or two of COVID was a, you know, pastors were like Jonah outside the city, and the in the plant has withered. You know, many of the things sort of the creature comforts of pastoral ministry that had just sort of been there were taken away, and the turmoil that all of that created in the sense of kind of calm and peace. And you know that I’m the captain of the ship, and never all the all the sailors are happy with me. A lot of that was challenged. And so stats were during COVID And right after it that roughly half of pastors were seriously considering quitting. And at some part of that, not all of it, but some part of that, I think, was that ministry had turned in a direction that was uncomfortable, even relationally and spiritually uncomfortable. And so it kind of was a time that, if you will, separated the men from the boys, and those who were in it for the Lord and in it for gospel ministry had resilience, and those that were in it for people’s approval or for, you know, the other maybe benefits that come with being a pastor, deeply struggled with it. So beware entitlement. It’s a subtle it’s the subtle sin of pastoral ministry.