There may not be any A's. Handling ministerial stress. I'm the former pastor of this church. That's how I handled it. I just left. Yeah, that text. We'll deal with this when we get into the paper. That text and other texts like it are a great encouragement to me. And this is one of the ways I handle, handled, handle ministerial stress. This is Moses. Moses, this is close to suicidal. He's asking God to kill him rather than deal with these people. He had a couple more people than I've ever had to pastor, but still. Uh, if you will treat me like this, kill me at once if I find favor in your sight." So, we could have gone to 1 Kings 19, we could go to, uh, a bunch of, a bunch of other texts, but I tried to find the most depressing one and that was it. I haven't made copies of this paper for you, um, because I'm not, I think I can deliver it, but I don't know. It needs to be fixed up a little bit in its printed form. And this is the fourth time I've preached since Saturday, and I just don't handle that well. I'm under a great deal of stress. I just thought it'd be better not to hand out the printed version to you. I'm going to fix it up or dress it up or make it appear like what I actually said and I'll email it to Uno and he can get it to you if you desire it. I think it's in Packer's book, Quest for Godliness, but I couldn't find it. I went flipping through it to find it and I couldn't find it so it might be in another book. It retells the story of a medieval nun. being carried in a four-poster, four-shoulder chair. Two guys at the front, two guys at the back, she's in the middle. And one of them slipped, and she fell out into a mud puddle. And she got up and said, Lord, if this is how you treat your friends, it's no wonder you have so few. And Packard quotes the story. as a testament to a woman with a good faith. She was honest enough with the Lord to let him know that she didn't like the way he was treating her. And I don't know if that's the worst thing that ever happened to you. I'll just start with a couple of little stories like this. I don't know if any of you know Lloyd Markle, a friend of mine. He used to, he pastored a fellowship church in Markham when I knew him. and went to the Fellowship Ontario Convention one year. I don't know what year it was. And he was so down. And we talked and things weren't going well and he was just struggling. And the next year at the same convention, I saw him again and he was flying. He was just on top of it. He was happy. I said, Lloyd, it's so good to see you so much better. than you were last year. And what do you think he said to me? I'm a carpenter now. He left the ministry. And he said, the stress is just gone. Well, that's one solution to it. So how do you handle ministerial stress? We can make this a very short paper and just say, leave. No, I'm good. But if I flag you down, I know where to find you. OK, thanks. Then there's the Leadership Magazine cartoon of a man on the bus talking to the lady at the seat next to him. And he says, I tried to find this online too, but I couldn't. There are like five or six books of Leadership Magazine cartoons worth the subscription. I don't think they still produce the magazine. But for whatever you didn't like about any articles they wrote, the cartoon's covered up for it. Anyway, he's sitting on the bus next to this woman. He says, no ma'am, I'm not a pastor. I just haven't been well lately. And that's it. Ministerial stress. Ministerial stress is real. It hurts. It destroys. You gather together with a group of pastors to discuss how to manage it. That's not a bad idea. I used to have a theory that at pastor's meetings you could determine who was having the hardest time by gauging who was laughing the most. I'm still not sure that's false. I don't know why you would ask me to speak about this, but I've agreed to do so. I am not a trained therapist or a psychologist or a professional counselor. I have a Bachelor of Social Work degree from some time in the Middle Ages. It's served me well over the years. I doubt very much if it carries much significant weight in helping pastors deal with the unique stresses of their calling. In terms of stress in the ministry, My expertise is just having been a pastor for a while. Did I manage it? I don't know. I am sure that there are ways in which I handled it that could be helpful to you, and there are ways in which I handled it that probably would not. I begin this time with you in the sincere hope, really, truly, in the sincere hope that something said here today If you're going through anything, it will be of some help to any of you who are going through the waters that just seem to be too deep, and your fear is that you are about to capsize. I pray that you'll be able to put some things to use in your life that you can use later that will prove helpful. I have agreed to do this today in the hope that something said, something question asked and answered, will be helpful. This work This work is hard. Pastoral ministry is not for the faint of heart, and it is not for those who cannot handle difficulty. I don't know if things have changed in the training of pastors since I was being trained. But when I attended seminary, there was nothing given to us about handling stress in the ministry. I go to Faith Baptist Church in Oakville and we have just recently adopted an eldership. It's never had elders before. Les Clements has worked for two years working hard to bring in these elders and they asked me if I would be an elder. I told them that one of the requirements of an elder of a church is that he goes to church now, and I haven't been to church in six weeks because I preach around. But they voted me in anyway, and we had a Q&A after church one morning to quiz those whose names had been put on the list to become elders, and they asked me why I wanted to become one, and I said I didn't, but I had been a pastor for a long time and I just wanted to be there to support the pastor and that he would know that somebody's got his back. It's important. Because this is hard work, and pastors need helpful support. Some of you, or some who might listen to this later, need it. And I pray that this will be part of it. Part of the help that would help you endure it, or as the title says, manage it. Uh, I take the title seriously. Stephen called me wanting to know if I would talk about managing ministerial stress. So hopefully this'll do that. Stress is a reaction to things that are happening. Uh, two people can be going through similar things with one being as carefree as can be and the other thinking that his world is about to cave in. The problem is not the problem. The problem is how we react to it. I was taught as a social work student, I was taught that social workers should never get emotionally involved in the lives of those they were seeking to help. It's one of the top three doctrines. I call it, if you're a Trekkie, this is the prime directive to social work students. Do not get emotionally involved with your clients. We were also taught that without empathy, we would be utterly useless in helping people who need it. Now, I don't know how you can have empathy for people and not get emotionally involved with them. I just don't see how it's possible. And so become a pastor. I didn't become a pastor because of the prime directive of social work. But pastoring, if you don't get emotionally involved with people, you should become a social worker and just give up trying to pastor. Because these are people that we are with. These are people that we love. These are people that we care about. These are people that we want to thrive spiritually. And to say, don't get emotionally involved with people and have empathy for them is utter nonsense. I won an award when I was studying for my social work degree. I think it was the Newfoundland Association of Social Workers Student Award. And I think it meant most likely to succeed or something like that. He'll be something someday. But I couldn't stay in this work because you're not allowed to disagree with people. That's number two prime directive is you can never say they're wrong in the choices they want. You just have to help them make it. And as a Christian, I just couldn't do it. So I got into this. But when you say, I was telling Binbrook a couple of weeks ago, when I graduated, I went to the Yukon with Frontier College. And Frontier College as an organization still exists. They don't do quite what they did when I went out with them. But when I was with them, they, that's my phone. Just, just, oh. Your pizza's ready. Please put your phone on silent for the speaker. It's just, it's just, No, I'm going to turn it off. The first four numbers were 1-8-0-0. I went to Frontier College and they sent me to the Yukon. They got me a job in the silver mines there and said, find something to help the community, help people. And when I finished, they gave me a coin as a remembrance of what I had done there. And on the coin, it says Frontier College, and it says, I would not sacrifice the worker to the cause. And I still have it. And I look at that, and I said, that's not a quote from the scriptures, is it? I would not sacrifice the worker to the cause. You are more important than your cause. Nah, we can do better than that, guys. We are not as important as our cause. And our cause is worth dying for. But when pastors talk about dying for the cause, it comes in different ways. We think of it in different ways than the way it actually comes. We get into it. We are not emotionally detached. And the sacrifice comes differently than the way we thought it should. And so Jesus died for those he came to save. He sacrificed himself for us. And he said, follow me. This is our work, to die for people. He died for his enemies, and we've developed a few of those over the years, too. And does it apply to them as well? I need to get back to my paper. In getting emotionally, spiritually involved in the lives of the people that we pastor, we open ourselves up to stresses and pain that, in the words of the title of this paper, need to be managed. Pastoral work is stressful work. My doctor once said to me, that his work was the most stressful work there was because he had the lives of people in his hands. He was a believing, practicing Roman Catholic and believed in his doctrine in his church. So I said to him, Joe, I have the souls of men in my hands. And he relented. He said, OK, you win. He said, because he believes that people have eternal souls. There is something more important. And that's what we need to see when we preach in the morning. And that's when we visit people. These people have souls. And their souls are never going to die. And God has put them in our hands. And if you are not stressed about that, you're just not thinking right, I think. So we experience stress in our pastoral care of the flock. People of our theological persuasion get accused of being cold and unfeeling and aloof. I was a pastor before I was a soteriological Calvinist, and becoming committed to the doctrines of grace did not make me one bit less concerned for the lives and welfare of the people that I'm called to pastor. Not one. I think it actually enhanced it. It did not make me care for them less, and it did not make me hurt less. We sometimes think that if we have the right doctrines, the pain won't come. The pain is going to come. And when we talk about stress, we need to know what we're talking about. Pasturing is full of all kinds of things that can be properly called stressful. But when I talk about stress, I'm not talking about the hard work of putting a sermon together on a late night or visits to the cancer ward. That, to me, is not the stress. As demanding as those types of things are, and they are very demanding, they are not what I think of when we talk about stress in the ministry. There are many things that cause stress in the ministry. Time management. I have lots of time. I have no management. I'm not a skilled manager of time. And I suppose I have caused stress in my life because of my lack of it. But our wives and children need us. People need us. Sick people need us. Angry people need us. Sinful people need us. The church needs us to have a sermon that is properly prepared. Les called me yesterday. My pastor called me yesterday. I'm preaching at my church this Sunday. And he wrote me yesterday, sends me a message, and says, we need the questions to put to the people from your message, to prepare them for the message, by Tuesday at 9 AM. I said, Tuesday at 9? I'm not preaching till Sunday. What is wrong with you? Do you want me to have this ready by Tuesday morning? So. I said, I'll get some questions to you, and some of them might relate to something I say, but I have no idea what I'm going to say yet. He manages his time. Did that stress me? I suppose there's a level of stress there, but it's not what I'm talking about. There's the spiritual hardness of people that causes stress. We preach week after week and month after month and year after year, and still there are those who do not come. And Paul knew this. His unceasing anguish in his heart was for his fellow Jews. I could wish myself a curse and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brethren in the flesh. There are people who need correcting and who need discipline and who need to be exposed for their sins. There are the everyday matters of sickness and discipleship. No matter how well we delegate and apportion jobs to lessen the load, the concerns and the stresses remain. When I was here, Hassan, you go visit so-and-so, and Don, you go visit so-and-so. And they come back three weeks later to church, and nobody visited me, because I didn't visit them. And so I apportioned it out. I tried to get other people to lessen the load, but it wasn't good enough. The Grand Puba didn't drop by. Stress, the lack of rest, causes stress. But the one I particularly want to focus on this morning, and you know where I'm going with this, when I was being interviewed here, one of the leaders who was on the pulpit committee asked me what the most difficult job in the ministry was, and I answered, having to discipline an unrepentant sinner. I would change my mind now. The most difficult job in the ministry, in my opinion, is not the unrepentant sinner. It is working with people who are opposed to me, who want me out, who work against what I think is in all clear conscience what God has called me to do, and they don't want me to do it, and they work against me. That is stress to me. more than all the workload stuff that pastors have to deal with. Pastoral care for the flock, late nights preparing sermons, Bible studies, calls in the wee hours of the morning to go to the hospital, rescuing women from abuse. I took seven women out of their home in the 21 years I was here because their husbands were beating them up. This was not stressful. This was a joy to get them out of a bad situation. This is what energized me, was getting a call, come help me from this man. And I would go and get them out of the house and help them. Went to court with them. This was not stressful for me. This is the ministry. This is what I envisioned when I was in seminary. Helping people in real life situations and seeing that the word of God is what they needed that would contribute to it. I went to one woman's house, and she said, Pastor, can you come over? And I came over, and I opened the door, and her face was twice its normal size. He had just beaten her up. He had left the house, and she said to me, Does Jesus want me to stay with this man? If he does, I will stay. And I said, I'm taking you out. I'll take the hit from Jesus for you. You're leaving here. And it's... This is going on air. I was at her 75th birthday party last Sunday. She invited me and I said, Heather, do you know why we're being invited to this birthday party? Because I took her out of that home. That's pastoral ministry. That's just soul feeding. That's just the reason that I'm in this. So these are the things that attracted me to ministry. And to do this work, this great work, as hard as I knew it was, for the sake of the souls of others, is a privilege, and it was a privilege, beyond my imagination. And I could identify with the Apostle John when he said, and I said this in church, we had a youth choir here, and they sang one night and I got up and I said, I have no greater joy than to know that my children walk in the truth. And some of them have given it up. And there's nothing that breaks your heart more than that. Some of them have carried on. And you say, well, that's good. So the stress-producing elements were the various kinds and degrees of opposition within the church. That's what caused me stress, and that's mainly what I'm addressing here this morning. I can identify with Paul in some things, and I understand what he's saying when he says in 2 Corinthians 1.24 that his work was for their joy. I wanted my people to have real, deep, meaningful joy in their lives, and I sought to get it to them through various things. And to have those, I wanted to be joyful. There were people who I wanted, I tried to work for their joy and found out that their joy was getting me out, or doing something different, or doing it better, or causing people to oppose me. And I want to work for your joy, and they want to work for my ill. That's the stress. That's when I lost it. So when I talk about stress this morning, I'm thinking mostly of those stresses caused by opposition from within the church. And I think that the things I say will be applicable to other kinds of stresses as well. That's the chief context I'm talking about. My father was a pastor for 60 years. He died when he was 80. He was never paid to do anything in his life. He never got paid for doing anything except being a pastor. He started very young, 20, and never left it. I remember being afraid to tell him that I thought I was going to, that God was wanting me to be a pastor, because I thought he'd commit me after having lived the life that he had lived, because he had stresses too. He had trouble. But he didn't. But he said to me one time, I have never expected an easy time in the ministry. But I've also never grown accustomed to the fact that most of the trouble I've had comes from within the church. That quote is both tragic and it is surprising. It's tragic because it is true. My father was prepared to suffer for the cause of Christ. In fact, I think he was disappointed that he never experienced real life-threatening persecution from a godless world. He wanted to give his life for Christ. He didn't think that he had. He was wrong. He was completely unprepared for the life he lived of opposition from those in his church. It is surprising. That's the tragedy of it. His comment, his quote, that he never expected it from within the church is surprising because in the New Testament we see all kinds of hardships coming from within the church. This should not surprise us if we're paying attention to the New Testament that we read. The Old Testament, Numbers 11, is there for a reason. God has preserved that for us for a reason. The New Testament is not shy about showing us stress-causing events that come from within the Church. If we read the New Testament with both eyes open, we will see that churches are troubled organisms. When was the book 1 Corinthians written, 62 or something like that? Just a little over 30 years after Jesus ascended. Lawsuits, sexual immorality. drunkenness at the Lord's table, gluttony, a denial of the resurrection, lawsuits against one another. It doesn't take long. And if we see that churches are troubled, there are beautiful pictures of what the Church of Jesus Christ is meant to be and can be and should be. 1 Corinthians 12, all the parts of the body working together, all indispensable and so on. Ephesians 2 and 3, you know, the temple of the Lord rising up to become this beautiful thing. Ephesians 5. 1 Thessalonians 2 where Paul tells them he was like a nursing mother with these people. There's some beautiful pictures of the church in the New Testament. But as God's habit is, he does not shy away from showing us just what a group of safe sinners can be like. Demas. Paul says to Philemon, Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends greetings to you, and so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my fellow workers. Colossians 4, Luke, the beloved physician, greets you, as does Demas. 2 Timothy 4, for Demas, in love with his present world, has deserted me. Used to be his coworker. I checked the history of this. It's not true. But in the movie Braveheart, at the Battle of Falkirk, Robert the Bruce lines up with Edward Longshanks and tries to kill Wallace. And he's got the knight's helmet on. He can't recognize him. And Wallace chases him and catches him, rips the helmet off, and sees that it's Robert the Bruce. And he's stunned and he falls back and lies on the ground just waiting for somebody to run him through until his buddy comes and rescues him and so on. But the pain of it was not that he had been betrayed. He was being betrayed all the time. The pain of it was the betrayal by this man. who had been his companion, who he was fighting for to make the king of Scotland. It didn't happen, but it's a great dramatic moment in the movie. Is it Psalm 52 or 55? If somebody else had been opposed to me, but it was you, my friend, my companion, is what he is complaining about in the psalm. So there's Demas. We need to read our Bible with our eyes open. There's Paul and John Mark and Barnabas in Acts 15. I personally, you can disagree with me on this if you like, but I personally think Paul was wrong because later on, you know, Mark's a great guy, you know. We're not taking Mark with us, you know. He's not good enough. He quit. He won't persevere. Barnabas sticks with him the same way that he stuck with Paul earlier when nobody wanted him around. And the text says, and the division was so great that they divided and went their separate ways. Diatrophies loves to be first. And when I come, I'll shut them down. 1 Timothy, all these warnings about people. Division in the church is a major theme of 1 Corinthians. I hear that you're divided and I believe it. Chapter 1, verse 10. 2 Timothy chapter 4, I just focus on one of these texts for you, is for us. Paul is about to die, and he is preparing young Timothy to take the torch that he is passing on to him. And he begins chapter four with an uplifting reference to the God who calls us to ministry. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ who is to judge the living and the dead and by his appearing. God is over all and Jesus is coming back, therefore preach. That's fuel to preach. We serve a God who is over everything and the Savior who died for us and rose from the dead is coming back to get us. That's encouraging stuff. Preach the word. There can be no greater incentive to preach the scriptures than this. We have been called to a great and high calling. The sovereign ruler of the universe who is going to usher all the people who have ever lived in his presence to account for their lives calls us to preach what they need to hear so that they will be ready for this judgment. What a calling. I took homiletics. under Bob Braxton. You know him? Some of you do. Robert Braxton, what a great class that was. There were four guys in the class, and he would always start with a hymn, and I always showed up late, but kind of on purpose. But if anyone could paint a picture of the preaching of the word as the most glorious calling in the world, it was Bob Braxton. He could do that because it is. And I remember him telling us that there was a Prime Minister of England, maybe you know who this is, I can't remember, that there was a Prime Minister of England who had been a preacher of the word and stepped down from that lofty position to become merely a Prime Minister. That was the attitude that I was taught homiletics in, and it's a good attitude. All four of us in that class left that room just three inches off the floor. ready to find victims, you know, to preach to. Preach the word, Braxton said, and we left there looking for opportunity to do that. It was a grand thing that he did for us, and I'm grateful for it. And I step into the pulpit, and I say this so often, because I go to churches that don't know me and so on, and I say, what a thing this is. Heaven and earth will pass away. His word will not. And he lets me stand here and try to explain it to you. It's stunning. It's an incredible privilege. But it's not all that 2 Timothy 4 says. After Paul says, preach the word, why does he say what he says next? Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of seasons, when it's nice and when it's not. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort. Why does he say that? Because you're getting up in the pulpit to preach and you just have a vision of people, oh, right, we'll just do that. No problem, off we go. Well, that's all done, let's go to another church and do it. But it ain't like that. You preach the word and people get their backs up. You're going to tell me this is wrong? You're going to tell me I've got to change my mind or change my living or change my habits? Preach it, Timothy, but preach it and then reprove with people, rebuke people, exhort people with complete patience. Why does he say that? Because they're going to plant their feet and say, no, this is hard work. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching. Why should you preach the word? Because people don't listen to it. It's just stunning, you know. Preach the word because the time's coming when they won't listen to it. Preach the word, Timothy. If they're listening now, preach it hard. When they start not listening to it, preach it. This is our calling, to preach it with patience because they don't get it right away. In 2 Timothy 3, which I think is the preparation for what he says in chapter 4, I grew up hearing the first five verses of 2 Timothy 3 as an indication that Jesus is going to come next Tuesday. In the latter days, in the last days, there will come times of difficulty. And I can hear my father now. My father was premillennial dispensationalist. And boy, when he encountered this text, you knew Jesus was coming next Tuesday. People will be lovers of self and lovers of money and proud and arrogant and abusive and disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. And my father and other pastors I had growing up would just wax eloquent. And they'd say, in the world we have this and that. you know, not listening to the parents, and there's the rebellion, and there's the lovers of pleasure, all over the world. This is the world we live in. But they never got to verse 5. Having the appearance of godliness. Where are they? Where are the people with the appearance of godliness? They're in the church. That's who he's talking about. He's talking about church people. I don't know if my father pointed at the people in the church and said, you lovers of pleasure. I don't think he did. He saw it in the world. But it's not what the text says. They have the appearance of godliness. And this is God preparing us. And I went into the pastor, and it started happening to me. I was surprised. I'm Ken. How can you not agree with me? How can you oppose me? I don't know why my wife says I just need to get a good forgetfulness. I remember the insults too long. 1983, man said, the only reason God got you in the ministry is to show you that you don't belong there. And they left the church. They would have stayed if I had left. And I could give you 30 more. And why don't I forget those things? Because it hurts, and the scars remain. And Paul is preparing us here, and we tend to miss it. And then when you get to chapter 4 in 2 Timothy, there's this. As for you, verse five, always be sober-minded, okay? Endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, and fulfill your ministry. The seminary I went to talked about educating our minds, get sober-minded, do the work of an evangelist. We're told how to give the gospel, what the gospel is. Fulfill your ministry, pastoral, care for people, visit people, do this, do that. But I don't remember ever being told to endure suffering when I was at seminary. Why do they skip over that one? It's there. And then when it comes, we're surprised. We didn't think it would be like this. But this is our calling, not just to suffer, but to suffer unjustly. That is stress producing. If we do wrong and we suffer for it, That doesn't generally give us stress. Because somebody says, look what you did, here's the consequences. You say, right. If I hadn't been so stupid, if I hadn't said that or done that, I wouldn't have caused people to be angry and people wouldn't be working against me and so on. This is my fault and I'll repent and try to fix it up. And we don't get angry when we know it's our fault. But listen to Peter in 1 Timothy 4.12. Do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice in so far as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory and of God rests on you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. In other words, you should be upset if your suffering is because you've done something wrong. You should rejoice if your suffering is unjust. And we think just the opposite. And this is part of the reason why we don't manage our stress real well. We've got it back to front. Acts 4 or 5, 529, I think. The disciples left there, their place of persecution, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer for the name. Not us. I haven't done anything wrong, and you're opposing me and beating me and hurting me. This is unfair. We're going to the Equal Rights Commission, the Human Rights Commission, right now. That's not it. Peter says, be upset if you deserve to suffer. Rejoice if you don't. And that's what we just need our theology of suffering fixed up a little bit. A lady sat in my office, said, Pastor Davis, why is the Christian life so hard? It's neat preaching this stuff here with the pastor of the church right there. I could tell him who it was neat, no. Why is the Christian life so hard, she said. And I said, because God keeps his promises. He said it would be. It wasn't what she wanted to hear, but I showed her. Take up your cross and follow me. My cross is I didn't have any cream for my sugar this morning, or for my coffee this morning, you know, not quite. And this is why the ministry is stressful, because God keeps His promise that He has called us. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, the invitation of the gospel is come and die. And it is. And maybe we would be better equipped to handle ministerial stress if we had a solid understanding that that's what God called us to. Maybe. I'm not saying I've handled it well over my time. The causes of our stress are many and varied in the pastoral ministry. 2 Timothy 3, 1 to 5. You've got those people. You've got your workload. You've got all that other stuff. But we must at least be prepared to see if what people are grumbling about and refusing to cooperate with us is our fault. I think the beginning place to manage stress is to see, have I said, done, or been anything that is sinful in this situation? Did we handle the difficult situation inappropriately? Do I need to apologize for anything? It may be that when we do a good search, we will find nothing in this particular situation that we could say was sinful in the way we handled it. But we may find something. So the first thing I think we need to do in handling ministerial stress is to make sure we have not brought any of them upon ourselves. That doesn't mean becoming so self-focused and introspective that we take the blame for everything, because we're not guilty of everything. But it does mean that we do not hide behind our position if we, as if we can never make a mistake, at least consider it. and let the people know, okay, I'll check this out and see. If we are never willing to at least examine ourselves to see if we've been guilty in some measure, then we are being poor examples to the flock, and maybe a reason why the problem is not reaching a satisfactory conclusion. What have you learned from all this? The man asked me, who had been giving me more trouble through a crisis here than anyone else, I think he really hated me. He had threatened to sue me. He wanted me out. I had just given him Eric Wright's book on forgiveness. He was having none of it. What have you learned in all this, he asked me. And I replied, I am the author of my own misfortune. I replied, what I've learned is that no matter what I do, there's nothing that you find acceptable. That was true, but it shouldn't have been said. It didn't help. It backed up the problem even further. He never did sue me. The church he had run to, the pastor told him he shouldn't sue me. My comment, even if it was true, was not helpful and I shouldn't have said it. If Ephesians 4.15 is true, it was not speaking the truth in love. I was wrong to say it, and in saying it, I made things worse. One of the elders came to me and said, it was true, but Ken, he said, what were you thinking? And I said, well, maybe that was the problem. So we need to assess ourselves when the stresses hit us. Where am I wrong? Just to put this guy in a better light, two years later he called me on the phone and said, would you have lunch with me? I said, oh, yeah, okay. And I went and we sat down and he said, can you forgive me for the way I treated you? So then it had a happy ending, at least that part of it did. I was reading 1 Peter in my devotions the other day, not trying to find anything for this, but here's what I did find. I don't know how many times I've read 1 Peter. The Bible's a great book. You read the Bible again and again for the first time. Peter is quoting a psalm. It's not a great quote. changes it under the inspiration of the Spirit. It says, do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless. For to this you were called that you may obtain a blessing for, and this is the verse that grabbed me, whoever desires to love life. I'd never noticed that before. Whoever desires to love life. I desire an easy life. I desire a prosperous life. But do I love life? And the pastor can take your love of life away. And when we talk about examining ourselves, here's what Peter says. If you want to love life, the encouraging thing is you can be a Christian and not love life. It needs to get fixed, but you're still a believer. Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil, his lips from deceit, let him turn away from evil and do good, let him seek peace and pursue it. And you'll love life. I want to love life. I want to get up in the morning and say, another day. My father-in-law is 94 years old. He wakes up every morning and says, oh my, God, let me live another day. God, let me see the sunrise again. Incredible guy to talk to. And that verse just grabs me. Whoever desires to enjoy life, to love life. Stresses are very great, and you can have them and still love life. Just don't be a contributor to what's going on. If we do find out we've committed some sin, then we lead by example and repent. Okay. Now, just on our side of this, no one is perfect. If we search deeply enough, we will always find things that are sinful. But it may very well be that we are not guilty of a sin in a matter, and the fault is not ours. There are those people who think the biggest sin you've ever committed is to disagree with them. And while we should be men who are more than willing to repent when we find out we have sinned, we do nobody any good for repenting of the sins of others or of sins we didn't commit. We must never lose sight of this one grand truth. This isn't about us. or those who fight against us, this is about the glory of God. Even this struggle is about the glory of God. So while we're talking about sin, I think it also needs to be pointed out that the mere existence of stress in a pastor's life is not necessarily sinful. One of the top five verses, favorites of mine, is Mark 8, 12. Pharisees come to Jesus asking for a sign. And Mark 8, 12 says, he, that is Jesus, sighed deeply in his spirit. I can go for miles on that. The Pharisees just come and ask for a sign from heaven. And Jesus' response is to first sigh deeply in his spirit. There is hope for us. John Gill, if I'm going to quote commentaries to you, they will always be very old. It's just because I can't afford to buy new ones anymore. But Gill says this, in his human soul, and this shows that he had one, and was subject to grief and sorrow and all passions and infirmities except sin, This deep sigh was on account of the hardness of their hearts, the malignity of their minds, the insincerity of their intentions, who had no view to come at truth by this inquiry but to ensnare him. So pastors need to ask ourselves, yourselves, have you had to deal with real hardness of heart, malignity of mind, and insincerity of intention from other people? Rejoice in this. Your Savior has been there and he knows your frustration because he too was frustrated. He sighed deeply in his spirit. He knows the weariness of heart because he was weary in heart. So you are not necessarily wrong in your feelings of frustration and weariness and a longing for it to end. It is sometimes OK to sigh deeply in your spirit. Oh, Lord, how long. Carson has a book with that title. Oh, Lord, how long. Managing stress. I don't know what time I'm supposed to stop. I never ask until I get started, and then it's too late. I don't want to sound like the kind of guy who just reads the Bible and pray. But that's what we're going to talk about, reading the Bible and praying. Psalm 119 verse 50, in terms of managing stress, Psalm 119 verse 50 says, this is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life. And we need to focus on the promises of God. It's amazing how in afflictions, how often we are directed to the fact that Jesus is coming. Get your sights set right. Psalm 119 verse 76, let your steadfast love comfort me according to the promise to your servant. So as we begin with some stress handling stuff, we first of all go to the scriptures. And we could talk a long time about this, but I just want to I just want to go to this. The Bible says this. Go to the Word of God and hear this. 1 Peter 5.8. Be sober-minded, be watchful, your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. But there's a verse 9. Resist him firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. You are not alone. The Bible tells me that. My brother called me one time. He lives in British Columbia. And he said, this is happening, this is happening, this is happening. And I said, well, that reminds me of this, this, and this. He said, you mean there's others going through that? He said, you have no idea how much that helps me. And that was the end of the conversation. All he needed to know. But it's in the Bible. Peter says, resist the devil, because you know you're not the only one going through this. Resist the devil. Resist the evil one's effort to destroy you through this stress-producing event. You know why you should resist him? Because others are going through it. That's what the Word of God shows us. We should find comfort handling stress. We should find comfort in the sheer quantity of biblical texts devoted to the great heroes of the faith buckling under the stress. They buckle. Moses in Numbers 11, take my life. Elijah in 1 Kings 19, it is better for me if I die. David all over the Psalms. Jacob in Genesis 32, hiding from Esau before the Lord comes to wrestle with him. Paul talks about his worry for Titus' well-being. Find it in the Bible. It's encouragement. God tells us. God calls these losers. The vast majority of the men that he called to serve him in the Bible are losers. The only ones I can think of, and you can correct me, you know, I think of Daniel and his three buddies. They were all-stars all their lives. Hate those people, you know. But we can settle in on Moses. The murderer, David, the murderer, Paul, the murderer, this is who God calls. Peter with the foot, you know, the apostle with the foot-shaped mouth. He says, it's just, it's who he calls and he makes something of it. And we go in there and we find, this guy's really upset. And Moses says, take my life. And then we see God's response. He says, you need some help. You need to get the elders working with you. That's what he says in the verses that come after the text we read this morning. What God does not say to him, he doesn't smack him around. Sometimes he smacks people around. He smacked Joshua around when Joshua got all upset about AI. But he doesn't smack Moses around. He says, oh, OK. He doesn't say, oh, like he's surprised. Do this. And in the text in Numbers 11, the presence of the Holy Spirit in Moses didn't stop him from being stressed out. God did not upbraid Moses for any sin in him that caused the stress or the outburst. Moses actually blamed God. He actually said what the nuns said, you know, this is how you treat your friends. And God just comes and says, you need some help, son. And here's what you need to do. Elijah in 1 Kings 19. Personally, I believe if you can master 1 Kings 19 and then Philippians 4, rejoice in the Lord always, you can just about counsel anybody through anything. Do we believe that Elijah was a man with similar passions to ours? Do we believe he was a man like us? Well, if you believe your Bible, you should. And then we see him in 1 Kings 19. He says, I am the only one left. I'm worse than my fathers. And what does God do with him? Two naps and two meals. How long did he sleep? I have no idea. The angel comes to him and lets him sleep. And then he wakes him up and said, This is too great for you. I got you some food here." And Elijah eats it, and then he goes back to sleep. And then the angel comes back and says, now you're ready to go. And gives him another meal. Two meals, two sleeps. Walked for 40 days, and God says, what are you doing here? And Elijah's still grumpy. He says the same thing again. Can you imagine that? Wouldn't you like to have tagged along, Elijah, for 40 days? He's just grumbling the whole way. And God comes finally. And the last thing, the last thing he says, and we'll get to this one in a minute, the last thing he says to Elijah is, you're not alone. I got 7,000 others. and we make our situation worse. But we need to read these stories. This is how we manage stress, is to read the stories. Moses, Elijah, David, Paul, all these guys. Then there's prayer. When should I stop here? This isn't just about prayer, but it is about prayer and the word. You remember several years ago, I think it was 99 or 2000, we had Don Whitney speak at the pastor's retreat. And he taught us how to pray the Psalms. And he had us practice it there. Pick a psalm, read it, how would you pray this? This week in preparing for this, I looked up all the Psalms that confess to God about affliction. I listed them as far as Psalm 83, and then I said, I haven't got time for them. And it just goes on and on. It just keeps going. Find the Psalms. I was using Nave's topical Bible to find the Psalms that deal with affliction. I don't know what tools you have, but look them up. My favorite is verses 4 to 9 of Psalm 77, where we read this. You hold my eyelids open. That means he can't sleep. I'm so troubled that I cannot speak. I consider the days of old, the years long ago. I said, let me remember my song in the night. Let me meditate in my heart. Then my spirit made a diligent search. Will the Lord spurn forever and never again be favorable? Has his steadfast love forever ceased? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Pray the Psalms. Whitney taught us to pray the Psalms. How do you pray that? Lord, this is how I feel sometimes. That's real. Get into those Psalms and pray them. Oh Lord, you caused David to feel like this. I don't know if this is how I feel or not, but stop me from getting as bad as he was. You can pray that. But read the affliction song and pray them. And I think God will help us. We need to be honest in our prayer. A woman said to me, I feel like God just isn't listening to me. Same woman who asked me why the life was so hard. And I said to her, Have you told God that? No, I wouldn't say that to God. I said, do you think he knows? Yeah, he probably knows that I don't think he's listening. Tell him you don't think he's listening. See if he helps you. We need to pray with, from the gut, in deep honesty. Would you pray like Habakkuk prayed? Lord, what in the world are you doing? Oh, let me tell you what I'm doing. What do you think of that? This is worse than the first problem, he says. You're using somebody worse than we are to punish us. What in the world are you doing? Have you ever prayed like that? Or what are you doing? I think we should read in the Bible the prayers of the Bible, especially the affliction Psalms when we feel we're afflicted, especially Habakkuk. There's a book in the Bible called Crying. Read it. If you can get past chapter three, God bless you. I find it hard to get past chapter three. I have forgotten what happiness is, Jeremiah says. Who's he saying that to? And at the end of that same chapter where he says he forgot what happiness is, he says, great is thy faithfulness. Something happened. And we need to pray like that. We need to see how great servants of God pray and say, Lord, this is how I feel, even if you can't say it. September 13th, wrong. September 17th, 2003, I got a telephone call. Stuart's dead. Stuart was my best friend. I was still a man other than a relative that I love more than anybody else in the world, although he's not around for me to tell him. I said, ah, this was his wife calling. Stuart's not dead. I said, what happened? He said, well, we had a fight, and he went out in the barn, and he hung himself. He said, I can't tell his father over the phone. I want you to go and tell. It was Morris Russell's son. So, Heather and I got in the car and we went up to Hamilton. And I told his father and his stepmother. And then we got in the car and we went to Burlington and we told his sister. Then I got on the phone and I told his other sister and his two brothers. And it was just one of the worst nights of my life. Then I went to Scotland and did the funeral. Then we came back here and did another funeral. We started burying the guy, and then on another day, we buried him. And at the end of the night, at his sister's house, I prayed. What do you pray? He hung himself, I believe, he had just been saved less than a year, and he hung himself because of a twisted interpretation of Psalm 139, verse 16. All the days ordained for me were written down before there was one of them. If God wants me to die, then this'll kill me. If not, I'll be spared. Tempted God and lost. And We had a prayer meeting and I started, they were just standing around the living room and I said, Lord, why didn't you break his ankle as he went to the barn? What are you doing here? But you didn't. And here we are. Can you get us through this somehow? Just pray from your gut. And if you can't pray from your gut, go to the scriptures. and see guys who prayed from their gut. Habakkuk, Jeremiah, David in the Psalms. And finally, and I'm just, this'll end it, and you can have your party. Get into the word of God and see your heroes falling. Get into the word of God and see how to pray in affliction. Never, ever, wrestle all by yourself. We are saved for fellowship. And there's so many texts here, Ecclesiastes 4, the man falls into a ditch by himself, there's nobody to lift him out. There's a great scene in our favorite television show, Heather and Me, is West Wing. And we've watched the whole thing. We've watched the whole thing, I think, about three times. And there's a great scene in one of the seasons. I don't know which season it is. But one of the guys has been shot in an assassination attempt, and he's not doing well. And another member of the staff comes along and tells him a story. He said a man was walking along, and he fell into a deep hole. And a priest came along and said, God bless you, and went on his way. And then a doctor came by and said, here's a prescription and threw it down on him and walked on his way. He said, then his friend came along. He said, oh, you're in a hole. He said, yeah, can you help me out? He said, sure. And he jumps in the hole. He said, you idiot. He said, now we're both stuck down here. And he said, but I've been here before, and I know how to get out. If you want to handle stress, guys, Don't just wrestle alone. You need somebody in the hole with you who's been there, or at least will listen to you. What did Elijah say to God? I, even I only, am left. What does Timothy say to Paul? Demas has deserted me. I'm alone. Be sure to come and visit me. He had Luke in there. The loss of Demas affected him. Ecclesiastes, 1 Peter 5, we mentioned already, others are suffering the same way. Hebrews 12 says, in verse 12, Lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees and make straight paths for your feet. And we have this picture of a guy running and he lifts his hands and he straightens out his knees and so on. But that's not, he's quoting Isaiah 35 where Isaiah says, lift their hands and their knees so that they can finish the race. And that's what he's saying. Lift your drooping hands, it's not you who's running, it's you who are seeing the runner whose hands start to droop. Have you ever seen... I don't know what you should Google for this, but the guy running the 400 meters, an American athlete, and he pulls a hamstring, and down he goes. And a guy in the crowd comes down, puts his arm over his shoulder, carries him the rest of the way. He's disqualified, of course. But that was his father. He said, you're going to finish this race. You're going to lose, but you're going to finish. And that's what we are. I don't know if any of you are former alcoholics, but in AA, You go to the AA meeting and you join up and they give you a man's name or a woman's name, a fellow alcoholic's name, and they put the number on it and they say, whenever you want to have a drink, you call this number 24-7, any time of day, it doesn't matter where they are, they will come and they will help you. We need this. This is the Christian principle. On Facebook the other day I saw, they said, what's your favorite theme song from a TV show? And my favorite theme song from a TV show is Cheers. You want to go where everybody knows your name. You want to go where you're accepted and loved. You walk in, Norm! And they're just glad to see you. And that's to be us. Ephesians 6, 10-18, the whole armor of God. And we get this picture in our head of some guy putting on the armor, going out to war all by himself. He's not going to last very long. Watch the first half hour of Gladiator when they're fighting the, I don't know who they are, the Vandals. They're coming in and this Roman legion starts moving and it's a wall and all their shields are hooked together and they've got a wall here and over their heads And they march as a unit. It's a tank. And we get this picture. They'll put on the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, all that. And we get up in the morning. Off we go to war by ourselves. Picture it. Picture it. Here's the US fighting somebody in Iraq. And we've got to take them over there. Bill, go. Bill's going to be dead in six seconds. Well, that didn't work very well. Let's send Joe instead. And so he starts to go. And by the end of the day, you've got 400 bodies piled up, and nothing has happened except you've lost your men because they don't march together. Surely that is what God is telling us in Ephesians 6. And I think one of the greatest travesties of English translation is there is no longer a plural you in the English language. And we need a plural you when we read our Bibles. You all put on the whole armor of God. March together. That's what this is about. Bear one another's burdens, right? You have had trouble so that you can take the consolation that you got and pass it on to somebody else, 2 Corinthians 1 says. Why do we not do this? I think one of the reasons we don't do it is because we're afraid that if I confess to you what I'm going through and what my struggles are, that it's going to be on the news by six. And we just need to create an atmosphere where I can go to somebody and say, help me. God has given us everything we need for life and godliness. And one of the things is you. And that's just glorious. That's too good to be true, except it's true. There's a lot of other stuff. Humor. I started this morning with three jokes, hoping you would laugh. It's a little bit of a help. A night out, getting away, When we had the scandal here, some of you know what I mean when I say that. I don't want to get into it. But for the next two years, it was just hectic, going to court all the time. We had a youth leader who was sexually courting, grooming young men in our church. And I was fried. And we found a thing called Pastor's Retreat Network. One in Ohio, one in Wisconsin, and one in Texas. We went to the Ohio one twice. We went to the Wisconsin one six times. And we would go away six nights, seven days. Heather and I would go. And we just vowed we would keep on going, because it did us such good. It's good to get away. You can try that. There's all kinds of things. I hope this has been some use to you. I'm sorry for taking so long. God bless you.