I’m scared, I’ve gone over these things, and I’ve written about three times the outline in this sermon, the message. You guys scare the liver out of me. John is very gracious to let me come, I really mean this. I guess the most kind thing God will let me do is to share with pastors, some of you I know, and are dear friends of mine, and some of you, you don’t know me from a hole in the wall and that’s okay too. This is a very special conference that you’ve come together in the middle of the year like this and I know that you come with a hunger in your heart and I do too. Being a pastor is a great honor, isn’t it?

The Honor and Difficulty of Pastoring

Pastoring is the most wonderful, demanding, satisfying, awful, stretching, pressure-packed, stressful, terrible, fulfilling, happiest job in the world. It’s all that together, isn’t it? I’ve come to the pulpit, and I know you have in your church, and the people are praising God and you’re thinking, “Oh, these are the people of God and I get to serve them. Hallelujah. Lord, you’ve been so kind to me. Ortlund, you’ve got it so good.” And then after a board meeting, driving home late at night, you said, “I wouldn’t give you a nickel for this whole thing.” I think we’re in a new era of pastoring. When I went into the ministry 40 years ago, I felt really, as I look back on it, that the ministry was somewhat simple. It really was not as demanding as it is today.

Much more is being asked of you than was asked of me. They said, “Preach, in the afternoons, go see people, attend a few meetings at night, and be in charge of the youth work and a few things like that.” But really in a sense, it was much more simple. It’s so sophisticated today and so much is being asked of you, and it seems to me that in our current day of our evangelical world, I think you would agree too, we’re really in deep yogurt, deep trouble. The message has become Christianity Light. We’re heavy into recovery programs in Southern California, everyone’s got recovery programs, 10 steps, and so on, which is fine. But it’s almost the place where if you’re not in a recovery program, you’re in denial. That’s right.

So, the battle is going on in the evangelical scene and I believe at the center of all the furor that’s raging is the pastor. About three of my friends have left the ministry in the last year or two. They didn’t leave the ministry because of impropriety or anything like that. They’re just tired, worn out, disillusioned, whatever the reason. Some are being dismissed from their churches because they’re not like Chuck Swindoll. They don’t come with a scintillating sermon every Sunday. A dear brother was a founder of a church in the area of the earthquake and that part of Los Angeles, a lovely man of God. I had a conference with him and I noticed there was not a good sense of timing because he went on and on.

But he’s a good man with a good family, well married, with well-behaved children. He just lost one of his daughters two years ago to leukemia. That church dismissed him and with no reason and you think, “What is going on?”

And of course, there have been those pastors that have caved in under terrible, embarrassing, awful moral problems and we just have this stuff coming at us from every angle. I’m going to take up this theme that John has given me on the pastor’s purity, the pastor’s power, and then I’m going to add another one: the pastor’s passion. And let’s see how much of this we can cover in the time that we’re given this morning. First, let’s go to the pastor’s purity.

The Pastor’s Purity

It is in great, great need that we see that our culture is absolutely opposed to our purity. Biblical standards of purity are laughed at, even legislated against, we’re in an all-out war on godliness in our culture today. James Dobson in his January letter summarizes the changes made in the first year of Mr. Clinton’s presidency. He listed on six closely-typed pages, all the sad slides that we’ve taken morally in our country. The movies, TV, and the advertisements feed this atmosphere of violence and self-indulgence and immorality of all kinds into our home. We pipe it in there. It’s almost in the atmosphere today. It’s in the water.

We’re all threatened and polluted by it in our thinking more than we know. Some things that you would’ve gulped about or that you would’ve been ashamed to even have in your home suddenly come out like that into your home today. Or things that would’ve shocked you 10 years ago aren’t shocking anymore. Pastor, in your personal life you will be tempted to fall into line, get soft on sin, or get fuzzy in your thinking. Morally you will be propositioned. It’s going to happen. If it hasn’t happened, you will be propositioned.

A crazy thing happened to me, I went into a home and the husband and wife were there and the husband went out of the room, the front room where we were standing, and the wife said, “Tell him about us.” I said, “What?” She said, “Tell him about us.” I said, “Tell him about us, what?” Well, she was cuckoo, but he came back into the room, and I said, “I’m out of here.” I ran. Now they’re not always crazy. They’re not always cuckoo like that. Maybe there’s a woman in great need. She’s needy, her husband has left her, a child has gotten sick. That whole thing hits you like a ton of bricks. You give her a warm hug of sympathy because you are needy too, it goes deeper, and off to the races you go.

Here are two suggestions for when that happens and how to avoid that. Always talk well of your wife and show affection to her. The second is to have an ugly secretary. I don’t have that in my notes because I didn’t want my secretary to type it.

A radio listener called me at Haven of Rest six months ago and I noticed in her conversation she was making verbal approaches to me and making passes at me. She didn’t know me from anybody, but she heard the voice. And after I talked to her for a while, she was inviting me to her home and so on and I said, “No way.” I hung up and I said to the secretaries, “Don’t ever let her talk to me again. Never. I don’t care if she’s dying. I don’t want to talk to her.” After the earthquake she called, one of the secretaries told me — a very wise, keen secretary — and she asked for me and asked then, when she wouldn’t put her through to me, she said, “Well, is he all right after this?” And she said, “Oh yes, he’s fine. They were lying in bed together, him and his wife and when the earthquake came along, they just hugged each other very tightly.” Of course, she didn’t know a thing about that, but she said that and the woman hung up.

Purity with God

Well, the assault is on us all. Every one of you men here, and women too, are going to be propositioned. It’s in the water. In your mind, you’ll be propositioned to toy with it or in your relationships. The suggestions that I would like to make concerning purity is that first of all, you must seek to have, and I could give you lots and you could give each other lots of ways, like leaving your study door open when any woman is in there with you and never go see someone in their home at night, a woman particularly, or even during the day without your wife or someone else. Those you’ve heard over and over again.

But I’d like to say that first of all, in order to deal with the temptations of our day, in order to have purity, you must have a pure heart with God. Now, this seems obvious, doesn’t it? But if you’re going to have a pure relationship with God, it means it must be an unmixed relationship. Purity means that there’s no foreign thing in that, that your love for God is clear. Like Caleb and Joshua, you are wholeheartedly following the Lord.

In 2 Chronicles 16:9, the same kind of thought comes through:

For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him.

He will strengthen that person. He will hold that person whose heart is pure toward him. God looks to do that. God longs to do that for us. God so wants to see us, ministers of the gospel and wives of ministers that we might be pure, and it comes from a pure heart with God, first of all. It says of King Amaziah that he did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord but not wholeheartedly. There was a mixture in his heart and brothers and sisters you know that there can come mixtures in your heart. There could be some cravings there or some little worldliness that just says, “You know that you’re with it or something.” You have to watch that. Even as Christians, we are centered on God or we’re centered on ourselves and man. Either God is the center of our universe and we’re making all orbit around him and for him, or we’ve made ourselves a center and are making everything orbit around us and for us.

You’ve met some big wheel of a Christian. When you got close, you said, “Goodnight, the guy is full of himself. I’m sorry I ever found it out.” And your people are looking for a man with a pure heart. They’re not looking so much for someone who’s clever, even someone who knows the Bible like the back of his hand, although that is certainly important, but they want to know, “Does my pastor know God and walk with God in honesty and purity?” That’s the greatest thing you can give to your people. It’s the greatest thing you can give to your children, that there is an honesty and a purity with God. We are so tempted to make things orbit around us and for us as pastors — my church, my elders, my deacons, my choir. They don’t belong to us. There’s a sense of impurity about that, of taking things and owning things ourselves.

An Ordered Life

Oh listen, brothers and sisters, for there to be purity, Jesus must be first — absolutely first — that in all things he might have the preeminence. And for purity, it seems to me we need to have balance in our lives, a balanced schedule, a balanced lifestyle. Too many of us run and rush, there’s no rhythm to our lives. And so, in order to have that purity with God, there must be a rhythm where you’re living your life in scheduled honesty with scheduled times to be alone with God, to be quiet before him, to drink in as well as to put out. If your week is full of disorder and confusion, I’ll tell you it’s going to affect the purity of your life.

Interestingly, in Genesis, it says, “And the evening and the morning were the first day” (Genesis 1:5). How interesting, evening for rest, morning for work, daytime for work, it’s rest and then work rather than work and then fall into bed for rest. I don’t want to press too much into that, but it seems to me that we reverse these so often. But first we should be with God, rest in him, not only resting our bodies but resting in him first, then working, coming out of fullness rather than going into fatigue all the time. It’s coming out of fullness to be with God. There must be that balance and that sense of orderliness to your life.

Busyness is a badge of honor to the pastor. Someone says, “Oh, pastor, you shouldn’t be here in the hospital, you’re too busy to be here.” We think, “Oh, yes I am. And isn’t it wonderful that I’m here and I have just blessed you?” But that is just baloney, isn’t it? We’re there because we’re serving God together. We tend to do so many things at once. For instance, I catch myself watching television and reading a book at the same time. I can do that. It’s terrible. I don’t get much out of either one, but that’s what I do. And that’s what we do in today’s world. Joggers run with Walkmans on their sleeve or arm. We simply can’t slow it down and be quiet before God. It’s busyness as usual, even when we run.

So, we become nervous, tired, and overdone in all that we do, and vulnerable to sin because we’re confused. I urge you to get a balance to your life to allow the firstness of Christ to always come through your schedule. Have a Sabbath rest day, a rhythmical pattern to your week, a day off. If you don’t take a day off, then it’s going to make you nervous and angry. You’re going to be overloaded, you’re going to feel put upon, and it’s going to give you a lack of purity in your heart and life. You must have a day off. At Lake Avenue we tried to say that if you didn’t have a day off, you couldn’t serve on the staff. I never had to say to any of those men, “Now get to work.” They were motivated and they worked like crazy. But we did have to say, “Now look, you have got to have a day off.”

Do not get off balance, when you get worn out, you feel that your people are your enemy after a while and it’s ridiculous and it’s rough riding. It’s like a tire out of balance. It’s rough riding and it wears you out if you don’t take time to follow God’s schedule of a day off. I know that some of you are very sincere about your ministry, and you are willing to give yourself more than 100 percent as the athletes say. And you do that all the time, give yourself that way. But I urge you to have balance in your life — balance in your thinking and balance in your living. We called it the irreducible minimum, that one of those was not only to have a quiet time every day and have a date with your wife and stuff like that. They made that irreducible minimum list as a staff and as a pastoral team.

But one of them was to have a day off and every month we had to give an account, did we take that day off? And if we didn’t, the brother who looked over our schedule with us said, “Okay, now what about this next month? Now let’s see how we can get that day off. What can I do to help?” The point was to have balance. I believe it would be good for you to put an announcement in the bulletin that said, “In order to be your pastor in the best way I know how, I need to have my mornings for study and prayer. In the afternoon I will return any phone calls and I will see you anytime. Of course in an emergency I’ll stop everything to be with you. But for an ordinary week, I want you to know that I’m available after 12 p.m. And every week I take a day off and I’d appreciate it if you let me take that day off. It will be better for you and more of glory to God if I take that day off and live a biblical lifestyle.”

Buy into Your Marriage

So, have a pure relationship with God. Really give Christ firstness in your life. Now, I know you say, of course, He’s first in my life. Wait a minute, your ministry can become first, can’t it? In fact, the greatest threat to your ministry is your ministry. You’re so committed that after a while you’re too busy for God and suddenly you become ministry-centered instead of Christ-centered. And you’re worn out, you’re ticked about it, you feel put upon and after a while, your heart is not pure toward God even.

But then have purity in your relationship with your wife. I love those verses that you know are the bulwark, the mainstay of the Christian home in Ephesians 5:25–28 where Paul says:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

And then it goes on to say that we are to leave even father and mother (the basic relationship we came out of) and be united or cleave to our wives. And the two become one flesh. And I think in our relationship with our wife, let’s remember that God’s word is saying we are to “cleave.” That word has to do with being so united that both are injured if there’s ever any breaking. And we know that’s true in divorce, isn’t it? Both are injured for life. It’s cleaving. Leave all former relationships, any dreaming about anybody else. Leave and cleave, leave and cleave, leave and cleave.

Buy into your marriage again every now and then, have a remarriage and buy in again to that woman that’s your wife or your husband. Anne and I often have had to come to that place where we buy in again. God has given me a wonderful wife. She’s a strong woman. She was wired up that way. She thinks strongly. Most of you married strong women. They are people who have been to college, they have fought well. You’ve talked theology, you’ve talked the church, and you’ve talked lots of things through. They’re strong women. You wouldn’t have anything else. You didn’t want to marry a weak person. You married a strong person, and that carries with it some problems.

I remember one night in Princeton Seminary we’d had a tiff — more than a tiff. It was an argument. I think it was more than that, come to think of it. I walked out and took a walk and I had not really realized that I’d married a strong woman. But we had three children in less than three years. Now that’s what you call family planning. And then we adopted a son and we didn’t even know he was coming until three days before we adopted him. We didn’t plan one child. I remember an Episcopal minister asked me to take part in a family planning thing talk together. I said, “Well, let me tell you about my children. They’re 18, 17, 16, and seven months old right now.” He said, “Forget it.”

But Anne was so taken up and we were both so taken up with doing these children and trying to go to seminary and I was working and trying to do all this that life got pretty hot at times. We loved each other, there’s no doubt about that. But I remember we’d had this tiff. I took a walk and I walked out and I said, “Lord, I thought she was this pliable, sweet little thing that would just fall at my feet and do whatever I want. And suddenly, she’s a strong woman. What do I do with her?” And I said, “I don’t know how to handle this woman. She is so strong, she has such conviction, and she’s smarter than I am.” And it seemed to me, the Lord said, “But she’s not a good man. You go back and be the husband. Go back there and be the husband-man who tenderly for and leads and serves his wife.”

I had to buy into the marriage again and went back and said, “Now Darling, you’re strong and that’s okay, God made you this way, but I’ve got to be the leader of this home.” I’m kind of a loving sort of a cream puff in many ways. I said, “Now, you know my personality and you’ve got to help me or we’ll just have chaos in this home.” And we bought in again. We talked that through and I urge you that you’ve got to buy in every now and then.

Marriage like Railroad Tracks

I remember one time it was in the latter part of our ministry at Lake Avenue. She was busy with women’s conferences because she’d written a couple of books at that time and a lot of folks were after her to have conferences and women’s retreats.

We just had one boy at home at that time and I was working like crazy in the church. I came home after a board meeting or something and as I walked into Nels, I said, “Hi Nels, how are you doing, Cap?” He said, “Oh, hello dad.” He went back to work. I went upstairs and there was Anne at her desk and I said, “Hi darling, how are you doing?” She said, “Oh, hello Ray.” And she went back to work. I told her when we climbed in the bed, “I think that if I didn’t come home you wouldn’t know it.” And she began to cry and cry. It was wonderful because I saw her in her weakness and at that moment I said, “Darling, our lives are like two railroad tracks. We’re going the same direction but we’re not touching enough and we mustn’t be so absorbed in our ministry because then we’re going to get very vulnerable to sin and I’m very vulnerable to sin.”

So right there, she canceled some of her retreats and I canceled some things and we turned a corner. We bought into the marriage again. You must seek purity with your wife in honesty and vulnerability. Seek to walk together and make some new steps. We said from there on, we’re going to pray together every night because I can leave for breakfast in the morning and not have time to pray with her or with Nels.

And then she, of course, had time for prayer and Bible reading with Nels, but I was gone for lunch and then at night sometimes we were not together or we were in a restaurant somewhere just to get a quick meal. Life can get like that and it gets very dangerous, very dangerous. It’s not that you’re going to go off and commit adultery with someone, but it’s dangerous in your relationship. But there is the other too, that can happen of course. So I would urge you to buy into your marriage again. Sometime after this conference, sit down with your wife and say, “Look, let’s come back together again. Let’s make some fresh commitments. Let’s have a revolution in our marriage. Let’s have a renaissance. Let’s do some things new. Let’s make some new order of things or some new times together.”

We began at that time to have a day of prayer and planning every month when we would have together a time when, a half day or a whole day, we went off alone together and talked about how I was doing as a husband, how she was doing as a wife, and how we were doing as parents. We’d spend some time in the word alone. Then we would come back and say what God has said to us in the word. We would pray together. We’d kind of make a schedule for the day and just cover the bases. We would talk about last month and what it was like. Was it good, too full? What will the next month be like? Who do we need to be having in for dinner so we can share the gospel with them, have a family witness. What shouldn’t we be doing? Buy in and let a revolution happen. There need to come times when you make new, fresh commitments for new purity in your relationship.

I love what the Proverbs chapter on the wife says, “Her husband praises her.” Brothers, praise your wife once in a while in the pulpit. Praise her. Let the people know that you love her. And then anyone in the congregation that may be thinking romantically about you will immediately get the message because you don’t even know when that’s happening. Declare yourself for her. Shut the door on any advances in your own life, in your own thinking because that shuts the door on it. You’re openly declaring yourself and it shuts the door on anybody else.

Purity with People

Have a purity not only with your wife but with your people, you must love your people deeply, speak well of them. The first couple of years at Lake Avenue, I was threatened by this church that had seminary professors in it and had a wonderful background, a great youth program, and missions’ program, and all these things and they really thought they were the cast pajamas and I was threatened by that. They thought, “You’re not so hot.” So I began to preach the beatitudes and I beat them up. I beat them up with beatitudes and then with the Sermon on the Mount, the rest of it. And for about four years I beat them up, and finally, I came to the place where I said, “This is ridiculous. I’m just venting hostility. I’ve not bought into the church; I haven’t had a pure spirit toward them.” And I began to say, “Where does that come from?”

It comes from fear. It comes from the fear of rejection. It comes from the fear of failure. It didn’t come from faith. I’m not loving my people out of faith. I haven’t joined the church. So, in my mind, between my ears, I had to join the church and I became a member of Lake Avenue Church and I quit beating them up. It was so important. I was not treating my pulpit as a bully pulpit. I began to say, “These are my people.” Jeremiah 23:1–2 says:

Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” declares the LORD. Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for my people: You have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil deeds, declares the Lord.

Be careful that you do not beat your people up and you call it conviction for the word. It could be that you’ve never really stopped to love them and you’ve made them the brunt of your hostility.

Putting Away Hostility

In 1 Timothy 5:1–2, we have a wonderful little neat word for us pastors on how to deal with them:

Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.

Oh, treat your men with respect. Sometimes they bug the boo out of you. They don’t want to go along with what you know would be God’s will but treat them with respect. Oh, praise God for those who have an older woman in the church who’s like a mother to you, who prays for you, who cares about you, who loves you deeply as a son in the Lord. She’s a mother of Israel. I’m sure that “with all purity” has to do with the younger women particularly. But I believe the purity goes all around that — older men as fathers, and younger men as brothers, and the older women as mothers in the Lord, and the younger women as sisters. Have a pure heart and pure relationships with your people. They long for that. They want you to love them. Be careful not to be hostile and for purity have an honest, pure view of yourself, brothers, where you’re in that relationship, a relationship with yourself like Paul, “I am what I am by the grace of God.” And you see yourself as you are in honest humility.

You know you’re not everything but you know that you’re something. God has wired you up just right for him. And live near the cross. Always know who you are and that you are really vulnerable as any man in that congregation. “If anyone comes after me,” said Jesus, “let him deny himself daily.” “I die daily,” says Paul. Go to the cross daily, confess your sins daily, confess your weakness daily, confess your humanness daily, and confess that you’re a disaster waiting to happen daily. I pray every day, “Oh Lord, I don’t want to do anything today that would be dishonoring to you. Oh Lord, protect me from myself.” Jesus says, “Take up your cross daily and follow me.”

Stress or Ego?

I think in our day we’ve grown nuts about ourselves. We have studied ourselves to death. C.S. Lewis has this word about that. He says, “The more you get what you call yourself out of the way, and let Christ take over, the more truly your real self you become.” You find your true self waiting for you in Christ. That is so true. Anne, in her recent book that comes from her other writings, called My Sacrifice, His Fire, has a couple of paragraphs that I want to share with you. It comes out of our own relationship with ourselves and what we’ve discovered.

How much emotional energy do you spend protecting yourself from every possible slight? Challenging every word spoken by either friend or enemy which demeans you? Cringing under every cool look? Tossing at night because someone else seemed preferred over you? How much emotional energy do you spend trying to doctor up the image and look good? Trying to say only what’s cool, trying to do only what’s accepted? Trying to appear only in a way that will make you admired? Trying to sustain a subtle publicity campaign that says you are more, do more, and have more than you are? Exhausting, isn’t it? It’s cruel. It’s a crushing burden. It never lets up. It never lets you relax for a minute to recoup. It wears away your strength, your morale, your life. We can call it stress, but the real name is ego.”

Brothers and sisters, have a pure relationship with God and with your people and with yourself. Be absolutely open about yourself, with yourself. And then you need to continually keep that pure heart with God. That has to do with purity. I hope it’s been helpful.

The Pastor’s Power

Secondly, out of purity comes power. When there is sin in your life, your power is gone. But when there’s purity there, there comes power. Now your power isn’t in your brilliance, is it? It’s not in your personality or in your gifts. I have ministered off my personality. You can put a note in there, outline, “Shout here, it’s a weak point.” But then you go into your personality and you try to make your point by clever words or by loud speaking or by earnestness and so on, but you’re ministering off of your personality rather than on the power of God. I’ve done that, you have too. But power only comes by the Holy Spirit.

Turn with me to Ephesians 1 and notice that power that is available to us in the Lord Jesus. Ephesians 1:18–20 and then Ephesians 3 tell us about this power and how it’s available to us:

[I pray that] having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come (Ephesians 1:18–21).

My, that’s exalting. Now that power that did that to the Lord Jesus out of death, death, death, death, death brought him out of the grave, brought him into the glory and seated him above all power, that power that did that, Paul says, “I want you to know that power. I want you to know it in your ministry.” Wow, have mercy. Look at Ephesians 3:16. Here he comes back to it again:

[I pray] that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith . . . (Ephesians 3:16–17).

He is praying that the glory of Christ might be in your life, that in your inner being, you may be strengthened with this power. You may be empowered with power. He continues:

[I pray that you] may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:18–19).

Paul goes on to say:

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen (Ephesians 3:20–21).

Isn’t it wonderful that the power of the Holy Spirit is at work within you so that you may know God, so that you may know his power, so that you may minister in the Spirit, is now working in you. I like that present tense in EPhesians 3:20. It’s not that it will be, but now it is at work within you.

Power Attending Our Work

Look at 1 Thessalonians 1, again here, Paul’s talking about how this church got built, what was the basis of this church being founded? First Thessalonians 1:4–5 says:

For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake.

Isn’t that interesting? The word Paul preached had the power of God and the Holy Spirit and Paul added to the word his own personal conviction, the word and the conviction Paul brought along with Timothy and then the Holy Spirit and the power came. We’re going to talk about the conviction in just a moment, earnestness. But Paul’s life substantiated what they said. They had a purity about them. “You know how we lived among you for your sake” (1 Thessalonians 1:6). And he said, “When we came to you with the word, there was the power in the Holy Spirit,” not just words. Oh, I often pray, and I know you must too, “Oh, I don’t want to preach this word. Oh God, give me the power for your glory to establish your church, to build your people, to convert the lost, the power of God.” Andrew Murray says, “All Christ gives, he gives with power. Every blessing he bestows, every promise he fulfills, every grace he works, all is to be with power. Everything that comes from this Jesus on the throne is to bear the stamp of power.”

And maybe you say, “Well, how come I don’t experience this power? I feel so impotent.” There are times you’ve experienced though, haven’t you? Sometimes in the church, I’ve never given an invitation, and right at the end of things people just came forward. It was the power of God. Sometimes we’ve just stood there, what else is there to do? But why don’t we experience this power more? Well, I think sometimes our expectations are very low, that we know who we are in Christ and all he has done, but we don’t think that it’s an immediate appropriation that we can make. Somehow or other theologically we believe it and even shout it, but emotionally and practically we don’t expect it.

You heard the story about the eagle egg that fell out of the nest and was taken right away and put under a chicken and with a mother hen and her other eggs, this eagle’s egg was hatched and he walked around the chicken yard scratching and feeding like the other chickens, sometimes flapping the wings and flying across the chicken pen. And one day the eagle saw a huge bird in the air soaring. He said, “What’s that?” One of the chickens says, “That’s an eagle. You can never be like that.” So he never was. He lived and died like a chicken. And often that’s what we do, brothers. We don’t expect anything. We don’t know who we are in Christ. We never really cash in on it and we live and die like a chicken. I believe that we need to have God-sized expectations when we minister the Holy Word of God and go for it.

It isn’t that God hasn’t encouraged us with enough promises, the promises of God upon his word and upon the man God in the pulpit announcing the truth of God are enormous in Scripture in both illustration and promise. The problems aren’t that there aren’t enough for us to be encouraged. The problem is that they’re so enormous, we think, “Well, they can’t be for us.” So we never enjoy them. He is able to do exceedingly, abundantly beyond all you could ask or think. Believe it, brother, according to the power that is now at work within us.

Paying the Price of Brokenness

I heard about Spurgeon who came to a young preacher on a Monday morning. You know Monday mornings, they’re the pits, aren’t they? You think of all the things you should have said that you didn’t and some things you said that you shouldn’t have. He was talking with this young brother and he said to him, “Well, how’d it go on Sunday?” And he thought, “What am I supposed to say to Spurgeon?” And he said, “Well, okay.” And he said, “Did you see many conversions?” And he thought, “What am I supposed to say to Spurgeon?” He said, “Well, no.” Spurgeon said, “Did you expect many conversions?” He thought, “What am I supposed to say to Spurgeon?” He said, “No.” Spurgeon said, “Well, then you won’t get any either.” I think that we have very low expectations from God and his word.

Oh we believe in the inheritance of Scripture, I believe in it. And we take it seriously. But when it comes to our own ministry, we many times don’t expect anything. Have some high expectations. But you must also pray and pay the price, the price of brokenness and humility and prayer before God. Before God uses and empowers a man greatly many times he brings him and hurts him deeply, brings him down and hurts him deeply. I know that some of you are here and you’ve been hurt deeply. I’ve been hurt deeply too. My last pastorate was a bust. I thought that I could come into a church and I would be a success because I knew pastoring. Well, I found out what I could do.

I found out that I could fail miserably and I now say that God did that so I could always have a heart of humility and I wouldn’t have slick answers for pastors. Every one of us hurts and my last pastorate at Mariners Church in Newport Beach was a bust. I look back on my sermons. I overloaded them. I look back and I think of how I did everything I knew how. I tried harder than I should. But it was a bust. And God led me down a road of tremendous pain and rejection for both Anne and me. It was a terrible sense of failure, but it had to happen. Someone said this, “God gives us a vision of power and glory in our ministries and then he takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of that vision. And it’s in the valley that so many of us faint and give way.”

And I urge you not to do that. Oh, I’ve been there, and I know how hard it is to know that nothing has gone right and there’s nothing but personal embarrassment. And when that happens you weep but you don’t die, you go on. And in that pain, God shapes you and batters you in a way that is very beautiful to him. Listen, God will give you power. I know some of it, you know some of it. I’ve known what I’ve known and I cherish it and I say, “Oh Lord, I’ve seen revival and I never want to live without it again.” But I don’t see it all the time, obviously. Where we’ve seen revival, something had to happen, someone paid for it in a sense. There was always someone who paid the piper. I’ve never seen it before when it wasn’t like that.

When God Breaks In

When we were at Wheaton in 1970 and God broke in a beautiful way and a brother asked me to share something about that at the table this morning. Our people prayed around the clock in 15-minute intervals for all the time from when we got on the plane until we got off the plane and came home. They refused to give up. I asked them. I said, “Let’s go hard after God, let’s storm heaven.” And there were some on the campus that stormed heaven in around-the-clock prayer. There was fasting and prayer. And God broke in in a most marvelous way. I remember when we came on the campus, it was cold. It was in February in Wheaton, and it was five below zero. I thought I’d die.

You came across the campus and you’d say, “Good morning.” And the students would say in that bitter of the late 1960s and early 1970s, “Humph.” The newspaper read, “Hardcore Blahs.” It was an ugly spirit. A couple of weeks before Hudson Armerding, the president, had been backed into a corner by some students who were going to beat him up. Hudson Armerding, that lovely man of God. I couldn’t believe it. There was a bitterness that was terrible. But God broke in on that campus in a most marvelous way. On Thursday night, a brother came forward, he said, “Ray, I have to say something before you speak.” I said, “Go ahead.” He said, “I’ve been part of the bitterness on this campus and I’m terribly sorry. I’ve been part of the terrible attitude and atmosphere in our home. I’ve called home and asked my parents’ forgiveness and I now ask your forgiveness and Dr. Armerding, I ask your forgiveness.”

He broke down and wept and suddenly the aisles were filled with people coming to confess, coming to share the word of God, coming to pray, and some standing to sing. It was the most orderly, beautiful, glorious, breaking through from 7:00 p.m. until 7:00 a.m., and the next night it went from 7:00 p.m. until about 2:30 a.m. God sent a wonderful cleansing, what did we have to do with it? Absolutely nothing. But some people prayed around the clock, and they paid the price. You want to see the power of God in your life? All right. Are you having days of fasting and prayer? Are you having times of special prayer? You’re calling people to the seriousness of the moment?

I don’t know what God may want you to do to tap into that power, but I want to say this too. There may be power in your ministry but you don’t see it. And that’s not bad. Your people may see you as God’s great servant in the sense that I say great, God’s term for great, as his man of God and you don’t know it. “The Lord is in this place,” said Jacob, “and I didn’t know it.” So don’t think that you have to discern it. Moses came out of the mountain and out of the thick cloud, and it says his face was shining but he didn’t know it, but they all knew it and they were afraid of him.

Realize that Spurgeon thought he was a failure and went through tremendous times of depression. He didn’t know it. And that’s probably true with many of you. To a young pastor, he said:

Pray and so preach that if there are no conversions, you will be astonished, amazed and brokenhearted. Look for the salvation of your hearers as much as the angel who will sound the last trumpet will look for the waking of the dead. Believe your own doctrine, believe your own Savior, believe in the Holy Ghost who dwells within you. For thus you shall see your heart’s desire and God shall be glorified.”

The Pastor’s Passion

Here’s one word about passion and I’m just about through. J.C. Ryle says this about the passion or zeal:

Passion is a burning desire to please God, and to do his will, and to advance his glory in this world, in every way possible.

Isn’t that good? Passion is like Paul saying:

One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:14–15).

Let people get mad or glad. It doesn’t make any difference, this one thing I do. And you have to have that kind of passion. God longs for you to have passion. When he didn’t see it in the Ephesian church, in Revelation 2, he said, “You are evangelical to the core. You try those who come among you for your doctrine, and you are straight as an arrow. You work hard. You’re good people. But I have this one thing against you, you have left, you have abandoned, you have forsaken your first love. I don’t think it’s just simply first in date, but first in rank. It’s that love which loves Jesus with all its heart and is aglow at the Lord Jesus. It has a passion for Jesus.

Jesus missed it and he said, “Now I want you to repent, get back to that again. Remember what it was like and start practicing what you did at first.” I know it’s so wearying in the ministry, but brothers, I pray that you will get to Jesus and your first love again and go from here aglow with Jesus, praising the Lord Jesus. And Jesus missed this in the church and he said, “I miss what you don’t even know about.” It’s not there. He had to tell him.

Woodrow Wilson had a student brought to him at Princeton when he was President of Princeton by his mother. The mother was a little bit overcautious for her child. She said, “Dr. Wilson, I expect to turn my son over to you and I want you to return him a fine young man. He’s very precious to me.” President Wilson said, “Either we’ll do that, or we’ll return your son ahead of time.” The boy was actually dismissed from school and she came for the boy and Wilson said to her these words, “This boy won’t burn. He has no heat in him. We can’t do anything with him because he’s non-combustible.” Biblical Christianity without passion is the laughingstock of hell. There must be passion and you have to have that in your soul. Pray for purity, power, and passion.

John Robertson of Glasgow, a preacher for 40 years, was a backslider. He had gotten cold. The glow had gone. The passion was no longer there. And on a Sunday morning, he was so discouraged he was going to resign. He said, “Oh God, thou didst commission me 40 years ago, but I have blundered and failed and I want to resign this morning.” He broke down and sobbed and he heard the voice of the Lord saying, “John Robertson, it’s true. You were commissioned 40 years ago and it’s true you have blundered and you have failed. But John Robertson, I’m not here for you to resign your commission, but to re-sign your commission.” And that was the beginning of a whole new thing in the life of that great preacher.

Question and Answer

Do you have any counsel about close friendships in the church for a pastor?

I think there are many levels of friendships that you must develop and I have a friend with me who has come to this conference, Lenox Palin, who for 20 years has been my dearest friend. And we have met together and prayed together and cried together and loved each other through hard times and tough times. We have been accountable to each other, open to each other, and you must have that — someone that is your dearest friend. I would put my life in the hands of Lenox Palin any day. He is a beautiful, godly brother. He knows me and I know him.

We speak very honestly to each other and now, since he’s moved back to Wisconsin, we’re on the phone once in a while, but I’ve had to get someone who was close by who would be that friend. And I said to this person, “I want you to walk into my life anywhere and any place at any time you want to and I’m going to report to you once a month exactly what’s happening in my marriage, with my children, with my ministry, with my finances, or whatever that I feel I need to open up to you and I want you to ask me about anything.” Now we have that kind of a mentor friendship.

Then you need a small group of guys that you’re discipling. If you’re not discipling, I don’t know how you can have a biblical ministry. I have six guys that I’m discipling right now, and I have them for one year and then they are to go out and form discipling groups after that. Sometimes they’ve lasted two years. It’s an open relationship, but it’s not quite like a fellow peer, a brother in the ministry. Then Anne and I have couples that we have met with and are close to in the church. I think for us to say we shouldn’t have people in the church we’re close to is ridiculous. That’s ridiculous. You have to have people you’re close to. We either have developed them in small groups, couples groups, or whatever, or just because we have fun together and are together.

Are there dangers in that for purity?

That’s good to point out. Yes, there are some dangers. There are dangers in anything you do and you have to pray very seriously about those to make sure that your relationships are pure. There are people, for instance, there may be a couple where the woman in that group, you know that you’re connecting, there’s electricity that’s there and you really need to pray about that. She really connects with you. I’ve had that. You really enjoy each other. Then you have to really put that thing before God. Either get out of that thing or else get it right and talk to your wife about it. Whatever it may be, get it right.

What makes a day off a day off? How do you know you’ve had one?

That’s really good, John. Well, Anne and I always got away from the house and from the phone. We have a day off together. Now maybe your wife is working and you can’t do that, but somehow work that out if you can, that you’re together now. Maybe your day off would be to play golf and so on. That has not been my day off. I’ve chosen that I would not use my day off to play golf. I like to play golf, but I’m not going to do that. I need to be with Anne. And we go somewhere, maybe drive somewhere for lunch and just goof around. We’ll go to the mountains or go to the beach or just go shopping together, strolling around the shopping center, whatever it may be. We do something absolutely different than you would ever do during the week.

Sometimes we read together. We are reading right now a book called The Hawk and the Dove. It’s about a monastery in the 14th century and the life within the monastery. And we enjoyed that and we read books together and so on. I have dyslexia, so I read very slowly, but if I read out loud, I get it. I pronounce words when I read. It makes it very difficult. If some of you are plagued with dyslexia you know about that, reading numbers backward and all kinds of crazy stuff. I’ve worked at that and reading is very important to me. And reading with Anne is important to me. We do that together.

I think you have to plan your day. One of the problems that I found I didn’t do, I didn’t plan my days off. We would get somewhere and say, “Well, where are we going to go now?” That’s kind of dumb to do. I think we need to plan our day off so we make it special or say, “Now Darling, today you are planning the day off.” How about you doing that? It’s going to come up on Monday or something and then maybe the next one’s my plan, but you need to plan your day off or you don’t know that you’ve had it if you don’t plan it.

What about your children with days off?

Well, the children were in school in those days, and we would sometimes take one of them out of school to make it a special day for them. We explained to the teacher that our own lifestyle is very busy and if we could do that, we’d appreciate it. And she always said yes. So we took one child out every once in a while, but they were in school. And of course, when they weren’t in school, we just took them along, unless somebody had volunteered to take care of the kids.

How do all the administrative things a pastor has to do affect purity, power, and passion?

I think it does affect them. It’s when we get taken up with them and they become more important than they really are. I think that’s a dangerous thing. I was talking with my buddy Lenox, and we were talking about building, and I remember when we had a building program, I made a covenant with the Lord that I would not go into that building until it was finished, that I wouldn’t walk around that building and spend my time giving myself to that building because the guys in the church were doing that.

Now sometimes they can do some things that you didn’t want to happen and so you risk that. But I found out that I would get too involved in it. I went to the building committee meetings, but I just said, “I’m not going to get into that building, I’m not even going to walk in it.” I walked around it and I would not go into that building until it was done. I think you have to say, “I will give so much to that, but I’m not going to make that the center of my ministry.”

With the administrative stuff. You have to think, “How can this adapt into your pastoral role?” When you’re meeting with your elders or other things, how can that develop? I think you have to pray, “Well, how can that develop?” So, it’s part of the purity and the power and the passion. How do I say, “Okay, now first of all, before we go into this, let’s get on our knees, or let’s do some praising, or let’s bring this to the Lord.” And one of the things about our ministry is that Christ would be first in everything in the church. If it couldn’t relate to Christ and putting him first, out it went.

Secondly, our relationship to each other in Christ was a second priority. Out of our commitment to Christ, we had to be brothers and sisters and love each other in the Lord and care for each other in Christ. And out of that relationship, whether this be small groups and all that kind of thing. Christ first, one another second, and then it was the world or the work in the world. And we in our board meetings, for instance, would say, “First of all, let’s give God some praise in this board meeting. Let’s turn our eyes Jesus-ward. Let’s glorify him and then let’s turn to each other, “How is it, brother or sister? How’s it going in your life? What can I pray for?” And we would divide up by twos or threes and share and pray. And then we went to the agenda.

Don’t ever go to the agenda first so that your ministry is tied into your administration stuff, your board meetings. Make sure you’re glorifying Jesus and you’re magnifying him. Care for each other and then go to the agenda. If you go to the agenda first, you just beat each other up. But if you go to Jesus first and you glorify him first, then the agenda goes better. Obviously, it’s under his lordship.

What would you say are the top priorities of the pastor?

Well, I think the overall umbrella work of the pastor is that he is the preacher of the word of God as the man of God. He is a discipler of people and he’s an administrator of the total work of the church. He’s the visionary. He’s the one who is the leader of the church. And I think that those three things comes the whole goal of the church, what you’re after. Are you after God and his glory and revival and you point it toward that in your administration.

What do you do when you’ve failed and how do you maintain your heart?

Well, it’s very hard as you may know. One of the things that I did was that I was angry and I had to confess that. I was embarrassed and I had to confess that. And it just brought me low before God. In order to deal with that anger, I was reading through the Book of Job, and the last part of the Book of Job says, “When Job prayed for his friends, God restored his fortune.” And I said, “Anne, in our time of prayer each night before we go to sleep, we’re going to pray for Mariners Church that God will not sock it to them, but bless them because they’re good people. It just didn’t work.” I don’t know, under the hand of God it didn’t work. I have prayed for 12 years now that God in his grace would give renewal, refreshing, reviving, and blessing to that church and God has done it. Now, I’m not saying it’s out of my prayers, but God has blessed that church. It’s a wonderful ministry. It’s going so well. The one who was the college minister now is the pastor there. They went through a couple of ministers since then and he is doing a marvelous job. I was there two Sundays ago just to go and show my friendship and so on, and it was a wonderful time. But I dealt with it by praying about it, by confessing, and any other word?

How do you define failure when you look at a ministry?

When I go back to Mariners, they say, “Look, we’re doing the things you told us to do now.” Before it was like a Sunday school class. It was like a Christianized Kiwanis club, and I said, “Look, we have to reach God here and we have to praise the Lord.” I tried to bring some dignity in the worship and they thought I was being stuffy. I know that. Now they say, “We’re doing what you told us to do.” So maybe I wasn’t all that much of a failure.

How do you say something is a failure? I don’t know. God knows. And God keeps the books. And as long as we keep our heart right with God and fight against these angers and these self-conscious, self-centered thoughts and turn to God and find our joy in God, we will be okay. Anne often says, “Ray, let’s never get our joy from our ministry. Let’s get it from Christ. Get it from Christ.” And she pastors me.