Sorry If He Miss It

A few sessions back, our Pastor/Planter Track guys had some tough conversations about what the pace of a pastor’s devotional like should feel like. A couple of practical things that came out of that for me was dedicating this season to praying through the Psalms and devotionally reading a book called The Reformed Pastor (reformed as in changing/improving, not as in theologically reformed) by an old-school, verbose, fired-up Puritan pastor named Richard Baxter.

Today my devotional habits really connected well with some pastoral stuff going on in me.

We are in the middle of a marriage prep track that Grace and I are running with 3 Seven Mile couples. As I cataloged in my mind the previous participants in our marriage prep tracks, I got really frustrated, troubled, self-doubting, and unsure of myself. Out of 12 souls that have run through what is supposed to be a Gospel-centered, Biblically-shaped, Jesus-drenched track, 11 are not running hard with Jesus or our community today. Yeah, for you math geeks, that is 8.3%. For you baseball fans, we are batting under .100. All 11 stories and situations are different of course, but you get my point. Why aren’t those men and women responding to the Gospel, regenerated inside, determined to have their lives and marriages being shaped by the Gospel in the context of Jesus’ church? I know that we are 100% dependent on the supernatural, freely-given, sovereign grace of God to save sinners and grow us up in Christ. I know that some of those folks are genuinely Jesus’ and are just in a rough season. But my heart still aches, and I second/third/fourth guess my leading when this is the fruit so far of the tracks.

And so I start figuring that God basically like to make me work hard and see no fruit; that my road is just one of lots of sowing and no reaping; that there is something seriously wrong with the design of the marriage prep track; that praying hard and caring a ton is unwise because it is just setting me up for soul pain; that I’ll put my head down and do the work of evangelism and service and teaching, but not be expecting God to necessarily do much. This, I guess, is the way it is going to be in this culture.

But then I started praying through Psalm 20 and the tone rocked me. This Psalm is optimistic, and shamelessly so. Its context is that God has shown grace to the king, and glorious things are happening among His people. Life is good, and that is the way it should be. It is ok to expect God to do great things. We can pray with a sense of hope. We don’t have to always shrug our shoulders and figure that things won’t go the way our hearts desire. I desperately need that tone to inform my prayer for my soul, my wife, my sons and daughters, and our church. I am allowed to hope.

These verses jumped out in particular:

4 May he grant you your heart’s desire and fulfill all your plans!
5 May we shout for joy over your salvation, and in the name of our God set up our banners! May the Lord fulfill all your petitions!

May He! I don’t know if I have had that enthusiasm for our work lately.

And then I get to page 121 of Baxter’s book, chapter II, section 2, part 13 (I told you he was verbose) and the first sentence says, “If you would prosper in your work, be sure to keep up earnest desires and expectations of success.” He then goes on in old English to implore pastors that there must be a part of them that longs for the salvation of their hearers and get bent when nothing happens. This is a delicate line to walk, because we know that our ultimate joy cannot come in success or numbers or fruit, but in the Vine, in God. And yet that doesn’t mean that it is ok for pastors to just check in and check out without being desperate to see fruit come through their work “Let all who preach for Christ and men’s salvation be unsatisfied until they have the thing they preach for.”

And then Baxter asks this rhetorical question: “What if God will accept a physician though the patient die?” His answer is… He does, but it shouldn’t matter. Even though that is true, the physician (read: pastor) needs to be doing everything he can to ensure that the patient lives, and weep if he doesn’t. “He must, notwithstanding that, work in compassion, and long for a better issue, and be sorry if he miss it.”

I think that is where I am at. I am really sorrowful that 11 of 12 marriage-prepped people are not weekly/daily treasuring Christ and His Gospel that their marriage is unveiling to the world. I am really sorry that we still fit in a 140 seat hall. I am really sorry that I could list 50 names of just-north-of-Boston people who I have tried to declare the glories of the Gospel to, who have listened, shrugged their shoulders, and walked away. My joy is full in God regardless, but I still am broken that more fruit is not being born.

And that drives me to preach better this week and marriage prep better in April and pray with the anticipation of Psalm 20.

~ by Matthew Kruse on March 18, 2009.