A Healthy Frame Of Mind

I once mentored a young youth pastor for a few years. He gave credit to me for the success of his youth group, which he grew in size five times over, in the first year. This, he said was due to what I taught him about marketing.

A great deal of his success, however, was due to his personality. He seemed, most of the time to be excited. We would meet on a mundane early morning and he would ask me, “Are you excited?”

“Well, no, I’m not excited. I’m tired.”

It is impossible to be excited all of the time. The human psyche is not designed that way. James Dobson, the Christian psychologist, who ran a successful national radio program for several decades, once said, “For every high there is a low. It’s the way we are made.”

You remember when Elijah faced the prophets of Baal and called down fire from heaven to burn up the offering on the altar? It was probably the high point of his career. This very high, high, was followed by a low, low. Shortly after this huge victory, the wicked queen, Jezebel, threatened to kill him and Elijah ran into the wilderness to hide in a cave. Here, he no doubt experienced one of the lowest points in his life. He was thoroughly discouraged to the point that he asked God to take his life.

Here is the key: the Christian life is mostly getting up every morning and putting one foot in front of the other, being faithful in what God has called you to do, no matter if you are excited or not. Being thrilled and excited is the exception, not the norm. The norm is doing your work every day, whatever God has put in front of you, whether your emotions are tweaked or not.

If you are expecting to be thrilled, excited, dancing on the mountain top continually, you are setting yourself up for a fall, because your Christian life is not going to play out that way, and you will be disappointed.

My pastor of 25 years built his church from twenty or so people gathered in a trailer house, to a congregation of 4000, gathered in a quite elaborate sanctuary. It took him 40 years to accomplish this task. He accomplished it by getting up every morning and putting one foot in front of the other. Through much of this time, he spent two hours in prayer every morning, four days a week, from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m.

Did he feel like jumping out of bed every morning, and driving to the church in sometimes, sub-zero temperatures to pray? You can bet that many mornings he felt like staying in bed. But he didn’t. He stuck to the plan. Every morning, four days a week, he went to the church at 6 a.m. to pray.

He once said to me, “People just see the glory of it all. They see that every Sunday morning I preach to a large sanctuary that is filled with people. The fact of the matter is that being a pastor is mostly hard work.”

So how does one avoid the “big fall?” By being faithful. By every day doing what God has asked you to do, whether you feel like it or not, whether it is exciting or mundane, to just keep being faithful to what God has called you to do.

I love what Jesus says in Luke 17:10 (NIV):

So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.”

The young pastor I spoke of in the beginning of this article eventually left the ministry. Disappointment got the best of him, and he went on to another profession. He didn’t have enough of the “keep on keeping on” quality. He wanted everything to be exciting, and it wasn’t.

Ministry can be very exciting. There can certainly be huge victories, but the majority of the time, it’s not exciting. It’s just hard work.

As a boy of 12, when I was first aware of the calling of God on my life, I saw myself standing in front of large crowds of people, preaching the gospel and seeing many people come running to the front to give their lives to Christ.

That vision came true, but not in a way I saw it as a young boy. Yes, following the call of God, I have seen very large crowds of people gathered to hear the gospel, with large numbers going forward to receive Christ. The only difference was that I was not the one on the stage preaching the gospel. I have been the one behind the scenes, for months working diligently through long and exhausting hours to put the event together, so that someone else could stand on the stage, preach the gospel and get all of the recognition.

I am okay with that. It has been tremendously fulfilling and I would not trade it for anything. However, throughout the whole process, I usually never appear on the stage and when the event is finished, the vast majority attending have never seen me or know who I am.

It’s fine. I love it. I feel incredible fulfillment in my calling.

What is the lesson here?

Whatever God has called you to do, do it with all of your strength, and when you have done what God asked you to do, consider yourself an unworthy servant who has only done his duty.

Log on next week to learn more about the Big Fall, posted right here

Photo designed and taken by Lorraine