Finding Hope in Ministry Discouragement

0:08 All right, men, let's maximize our time and let's jump forward. It's great to see a group in here. I was going to feel like I'd have to attend a seminar afterwards if only two people showed up. I would be discouraged. So I'm blessed by your presence, and I hope our time together is fruitful. So let me pray for us, and we'll jump in. Gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for your grace to us, abundant grace. What an incredible couple days it's been with such amazing teaching and fellowship and good food and good musical worship, Lord. You have blessed us beyond what we deserve, and we're grateful for it. Give us life, give us hope in this discussion of hope and the discouragement of ministry. Father, it's so real, so everyday life for us in ministry. So we pray that you would bless us with this time. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. I believe that discouragement in ministry is, frankly, as common as the common cold, if not more common.

1:19 And Mary said to her husband, who was still in bed, you need to get up and get ready for church. And he says, I don't want to go to church today. And Mary said, Henry, you really need to go to church. And Henry was like, I am not going to church. I'm just staying in here. And she said, no, you really need to go. He said, give me one good reason. And she said, well, because you're the pastor. And ministry discouragement can show up on Sunday mornings for sure. That's the truth. And we have very limited time here. We're scheduled to go about 50 minutes. And so I want to get right after the topic at hand. And I can tell you this. You're not going to have an aha moment in the sense of anything new. I'm not going to share with you anything new. but I do hope to remind you of a few things that you should never forget.

2:15 And that's my goal today. And in many ways, we could approach this topic a number of ways. We could talk about ministry burnout. We could talk about ministry laziness. That's an issue of itself. Ministry disqualification. But those are all important topics. But really what I want to talk about is ministry discouragement. And discouragement for us has a spectrum, you know, from complete joy over here to complete despair. And I don't know about you, but I can fluctuate on that spectrum for different seasons and for different reasons. And each of us in this room, as ministry leaders, whether you're a pastor, elder, deacon, just a servant at the church, we're on that spectrum even today somewhere we sit. And I think there's two types of ministry leaders. You're either going into a season of discouragement, or you are just freshly coming out of a season of discouragement. And so I just thought I would bless you with that statement first and foremost. And I want you to see, hopefully by the end of today, come on in, Guys, anywhere there's some extra seats, we have $300 seats.

3:36 You can stand, you can sit however you like. I want you to hopefully see and hopefully experience the fact that discouragement in ministry is God's sanctifying work in our lives. And He's doing something in us. and He's using it ultimately for our good and His glory. And I left the business world about 25 years ago, and we're going to... Hey, John, or Lonnie, we might need a couple extra chairs as guys continue to trickle in. At any rate, I spent about 20, 25 years in business, And in business, I had competitors. And there was always that sense of a competitor around. When I stepped into ministry, I realized I don't have a competitor. I have an enemy.

4:39 And there's a vast difference between competitors and enemies, for sure. And I think the most unbelieved verse in the Bible is Ephesians 6, 12, We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, therefore, or thereof, the darkness. us. And our enemy, our enemy, make no mistake, man, our enemy has really one goal, and that is to literally take you out, take me out of ministry. And he'll do that by ripping one of our kids, taking our spouse. I mean, any way he can get a foothold, you have a target on him, on you. And you and I wear that target every day. And the more God uses us, the bigger that target gets. And so we have to be silver-minded here in this topic, is that we don't have competitors.

5:32 We have enemies, an enemy himself. And so I want to be a boots-on-the-ground today, very practical. I'm not going to exegete a text, but I want to just talk boots-on-the-ground of what it's like. at least my experience, because that's the only experience I have. And I want to give you three things. Basically, I want us to talk about the reasons behind ministry discouragement. I want to talk about the recognition. How do you recognize ministry discouragement? And then finish with some practical, what are the responses to ministry discouragement? What are the tools that we can use? So let's begin at the beginning, and that is the reasons behind ministry discouragement. And this is by no means an exhaustive list. We all have our own list, but I think this is an essential one. And again, the issue of being discouraged in ministry is prevalent. Remember that verse in John 16, 33, when it says, your church will have tribulation, but Jesus says, take heart, I have overcome your church, or something like that. And everything, you may be in that season now where, man, I'm not overcoming the church, the church is overcoming me in this moment. One of the things that can be very discouraging in ministry is an extended ministry season of testing and trials, where it's not a test or a trial, but it is an extended season.

7:06 And that can be because of health issues. That could be because of just ministry mishaps. It could be a group of people. You know, you realize you no longer have a choir. You have critics. And they're very different. Critics don't sing to you. And they're real and they're present. And you've learned this as fast as I learned it. You know, sheep are cute and cuddly and nice and deal, but those suckers will bite you. and even while you're feeding them, those suckers will bite you, and you're like, dude, I'm feeding you. What are you doing biting me? And you know how the sheep do it. They come up, put their arm around you, and they say that proverbial phrase, hey, I've been hearing. I've been hearing from a number of people, and everyone, I hear that beginning part. I'm like, oh boy, here we go. I've been hearing from, which basically means I'm too embarrassed to tell you this. I'm about to complain myself. So they all of a sudden, there's many that have been sharing this with you, or that phrase, they come up to you, and whenever somebody says, hey, I just first and foremost, I want you to know, I'm on your team. And I immediately go, okay, okay, yeah, I know what jersey you're wearing, and it's not my team colors. And God, at those moments, I have to come back, and remember Paul, 2 Corinthians 11, 28, and he was talking about, remember he said, the daily pressures of my, and he uses that word, my anxiety for the churches. And, you know, it was just great to know that you and I are in our good company, you know, that he struggled with this, and he struggled with it in a physical way, not only a thorn in the flesh, but beatings and shipwrecks and all kinds of stuff that you and I frankly don't experience in terms of ministry discouragement, but he did. And it's at those times I have to learn that God has providentially placed me in the furnace of affliction. And I'm not there by accident. I've been signed up and

9:15 enrolled in the school of affliction and the school of suffering. And so it can be ministry seasons behind it. It can be particular people that have become your critics. The ankle biters, like the Pharisees and the Sadducees that were constantly chasing Jesus around his ministry, the false teachers that seemed to always be right on the coattails of Paul. The moment he left the city, they were right back in there, you know, doing their business. And these particular people have maybe become your critics. It can be your critic. This is the crazy part, but let's be honest here. It can be a staff member. It can be one of your elders, and that becomes not your choir member, but your critic. And I've, you know, in 20 years, I've learned, and I say this because you guys are all going to leave, I'll never see you again, so it doesn't matter, is get rid of those people. You know, in a godly way of just saying, man, don't let the door hit you where the good Lord splits you. And because ministry is too demanding to have people that literally suck the joy and life out of you. God has given us the joy of our salvation.

10:35 And I say that, you say, well, what do you mean, get rid of it? You know what I mean, is just begin to pray that maybe God would move them on, not off the planet, but move them on in ministry. And God's answered those prayers, where just, you know what, I start praying for them, God, hey, bless them, use them, but maybe a different place in ministry might be the better place. It's a, we're not the perfect church. We're not the only church. I'm sure there's a place for you somewhere. So it can be particular people. It can be a personal or family struggle that creates this season. It may be, like I said, you're battling a health issue. I went through that, battling a health issue I'll talk about a little bit. And frankly, maybe it's at home. And there are some guys that for home, it's not a place of refuge.

11:33 It's a place of conflict. And you go from conflict in the church, and you drive home, and you step into conflict. And you're in this season where there's even this marital strife. You got a wayward son. You got a wayward daughter. That way is heavy on you and is a drag to the tailwind of ministry for sure. It could be losing your father to cancer. You know, there can be family reasons for ministry discouragement. Another big one is just missed expectations. Either expectations you've placed on yourself and your ministry, and you're not coming up short, or more likely, you know, is you're missing expectations of others that you didn't even know they had placed on you, right? It's like, well, I had no idea they were expecting. Of course I'm disappointing them. I'm not even focused on what's important to them. And you can feel like, man, I'm just missing the point because there's never been a level set of expectations there. And you can create your own personal expectations that gets you highly discouraged when you become very horizontal and you're basically chasing buildings, budgets, and butts. And if those three things aren't getting bigger, well, I don't mean the butt part, but the buildings and budgets, if those things aren't getting bigger, you're discouraged. Or even worse than that, those things are declining. And budgets are going down, and maybe the church is carrying some debt. And at the end of the night, it weighs on your heart, your mind, and you're carrying the weight of it. The last one, I think, is also the comparison shopping.

13:27 We're always comparing ourselves to other pastors, to other churches. And, you know, comparison is the greatest discouragement there is. And that's why, in many ways, social media is such a deadly force. You know, look at that church. Look at that pastor. He's just living the dream. Well, you know, you don't know 30 seconds after the snap, you know, really what's going on in that gentleman's life. But you've done this comparison shopping. And frankly, men, that's self-inflicted. For some of you in this room, you need to get off social media and stop tracing and tracking other people's ministry. Because it's a drag on you. And again, we're driving to the joy of our salvation. And frankly, if Satan can get you to start comparing yourself, he neutralizes you immediately. And you're not good enough.

14:27 You're not smart enough. You know, sitting there last night on the panel of Q&A, I'm like, what am I doing here? We got these two guys that are like a knife set, and they just surgically cut the red meat. And I'm sitting there, I feel like, you know, that spoon with the holes in it. and you're like, you don't even know what it's used for, let alone where do you even put it in the drawer, right? You know? And I was telling my wife last night, I just felt, you know, just weird, out of place. And so it's very easy for us to become, it could become discouraged. And I want to talk, secondly, not only the reasons, but I want to talk a little bit about the indicators. How do you know you've either hit the wall or you've at least hit some level of discouragement? So what is the recognition, if I could put it that way, because I like alliteration.

15:25 It's a disease I got. And the recognition of ministry discouragement. One of them is when you notice you've become irritable. Where not just something is bothering you, everything's bothering you, right? My wife will say, you know, is someone bothering me? And I'll say, no, everybody is, right? And I know that I have a troubled spirit at that time when it's not just one. It's not just one person. It's not just one issue. But I have become irritable, particularly at home. That's where the temperature is taken. And my wife, much like your wives, are great at helping us with this. Sometimes my wife will refer to me, oh, look, Mr. Grumpopotamus is here today, which doesn't help the situation, but she's a quick indicator of it.

16:23 You find yourself, here's another one, in terms of irritability, you find yourself quick to anger. And you just go, man, that's not me, but it is you right now. And that may be an indicator that you're depleted, that you're, you know, there is some discouragement going on. And the other big one in this irritable standpoint is that people become, they become problems.

16:50 And they're not image bearers. They're just not image bearers. And they become problems or they become tools for me to leverage. that's an indicator that man, something's wrong with my heart, something's wrong with where I'm at not only irritability, but you know you're facing some discouragement when you begin to isolate yourself, isolation, it usually comes from this hopelessness, this idea, it's not that everything's wrong is that it's the fact that nothing's going to change. And what is the pure definition of despair is the future has no change in it. And so what I have today is just now, this is what I live with. And all of a sudden, what does that do? Well, it knocks the wind out of you. It knocks the life out of you. And we just begin to do self-defense because ministry's taken a sucker punch at us.

17:57 And so what do we do? We put up our defense. And one of the easiest ways in ministry is to defend yourself, is to isolate yourself. So what are you doing? You're leaving the event early. You're leaving church early. I don't want to stay around because people are problems to me. You show up late or just in time or just what you have to do. And you get this bunker mentality where you feel like everybody wants a piece of you. You ever feel that? Okay, so I'm like the only one in this room that feels that? You ever feel like, man, if someone takes another piece of me, I'm gone. There's nothing left of me. And I feel like everybody's a straw, and they're just sticking and sucking the life out of me. And so the easiest way to deal with that is just isolate. The problem with that is exactly what you know.

18:56 Isolation leads us down dark alleys and dark paths. It leads us to what another issue of recognition is you begin to pick up poor habits and poor routines. and I say these range from poor habits to sinful habits, where we develop a kind of diet of junk food and comfort foods, literally speaking, you know, where you sit in the seventh bowl of cereal staring at the TV that's not even on, and you know, why? It's just because it feels good. And the problem with that is our appetites, we have flesh, and pastors put their pants on the same way every congregant does, and that's one leg at a time. And so we have the same temptations. And that's where pastors will start to self-medicate with, hey, I'm used to a glass of wine, but it becomes more than a glass of wine. And nobody wants to talk about that or say that, but that's a real issue. And you begin to medicate yourself because you don't want to feel what you're feeling because you're so discouraged. And so you sit there and your comfort food or self-medicate and you begin to rehearse. This is another indicator when you start rehearsing conversations with maybe your critics or a board meeting or something at a church and you're and you're thinking, man, I shoulda, coulda, woulda, and they shoulda, coulda, woulda.

20:31 And that is detrimental. Another one is perspective. You start to lose perspective. All of a sudden, you're just like, man, I feel like nobody's on my team. We know in Matthew 26, Matthew records that not some of the disciples left Him. all the disciples left Him. I mean, imagine that, you know, at the end of a ministry day, and everybody says, yep, I'm not with you. Maybe at the end of a ministry year, you just, you go, man, this has been a rough year. And your perspective gets cattywampus, and you start to see, you start to use hyperbole, everyone, everything. You use words like always, and you end up with the poor me syndrome. And maybe I'm just speaking to myself and you guys don't ever struggle with this.

21:33 But you start to go, man, I deserve. I just, you know, nobody understands the weight I carry. Nobody understands I just came from the hospital and watched this guy die. And nobody gets my ministry. And you start to develop the I deserve, the McDonald's, you deserve a break today. And when I start thinking that way, I know I'm heading into discouragement, or I'm already there when I'm thinking I deserve. The last one, the last one is this idea of loss of joy. You know you're in discouragement when you've lost your joy. And joy, remember, joy is not a bad case of the giggles. Joy is, as somebody once put it, joy is the deep down settled confidence that God is in control of every detail of my life. It's a good definition for joy. You can write it down. It's the deep down settled confidence, deep down settled confidence that God is in control of every detail of my life.

22:39 and so I can see a season of discouragement through the eyes and lens of joy. Why? Because I realize God's sanctifying me. He's doing a work in me and I'm a work in progress at this moment instead of just becoming, you know, so self-absorbed, self-focused and your attitude changes. your home. Like I said, you become irritable at home and you develop this attitude. I mean, everybody, we live in a culture, everybody has attitudes these days. Have you noticed that? I was at the mall the other day. Even the mannequins. It was like, it's like, bro, what's up with you, dude? You're staring me down. And it's easy for me to get that attitude. And so I have a number of indicators. Like I said, this is not an exhaustive list, but I lose my joy. And one of the ways I see that is I realize people are avoiding me. And that's a humbling, startling moment when I see, like, people on my staff are avoiding me. Why? Because I'm a a grumpopotamus. And I'm not a joist. I'm a handful to be around. And so, you know, I don't know what your list is, but it's good to know in your mind what are the triggers that you know where, like, man, I'm in trouble. I'm in red. And the lights are starting to blink. Warning, warning, warning. And like I said last night, I hit the wall about six years into ministry.

24:28 and because someone had told me years earlier, it's better to burn out for Jesus than to rust out. And like I said last night, neither condition is helpful to the master. Burned out people, rusted out people. So there's no glory in burned out people. In fact, it's a bad case of stewardship in terms of your life. And so I hit the wall and, And you know, Psalm 23, our great shepherd, He makes us lie down in green pastures. And I always thought green pastures were Maui, money, and malls. And I learned that green pastures are hospital beds. and he doesn't tap you on the shoulder and say hey do you want to take a break no he doesn't ask he makes you lie down you know i don't know about you with your kids you know i don't want to go to bed i don't want to go to bed you know they're just toddlers you take them up and no it's time to go to bed you know they're tired and the more tired they are the more i don't want to go to bed and you just sit on their bed for a moment you just put your hand on them maybe you pray with them, and you just kind of calm them down, and within a couple minutes, they're just sound asleep. Why? Because you as the father, you know what your kid needs. They need rest.

25:50 And I think that's what our father does. That's what our great shepherd does, is sometimes he says, you need rest. We have a different word for it. We call it like hitting the wall, you know, of burnout. And burnout is like a whole other topic to talk about. But what I love about Jesus, He was very conscientious of the fact that He had slipped on flesh, and He slipped away from the crowds. The one thing I haven't learned exclusively what He did is that prayer was life-giving and rejuvenation. And one of the ways I know I'm burned out is that when my prayer life becomes a work instead of a blessing. And, you know, Jesus went away to rest, and when He rested, He prayed. And so I think it's very important, men, and again, I'm here to tell you things, not tell you things you don't know, but to remind you of things you should never forget, is you need to know what your trigger points are, what your warning lights are, before you're in full deficit DEFCON 5 mode.

27:04 Because that's a whole other subject to talk about. What do you do when you've landed into the pit of despair and a long season of depression? If you've never listened to, and Herschel was talking about this last night. I don't know if it was out in the room or not, but Tommy Nelson out of Denton Bible Church, go find his stuff. And he went through a season of depression and he's very, very transparent with it. And, you know, he didn't care if it was medicine. He didn't care what it was. He says, I would have eaten rat poison if it would have made me better. and his stuff is good because he loves Jesus, and he has a high view of the Scriptures. And so he's of our tribe, and he hit the wall. And that's a whole different subject.

28:04 I'm kind of just talking about that, those seasons of discouragement, not the season of despair. So I hit it, and I didn't realize my wife had been praying that God would do something and to slow me down. She had her prayer group, her lady she met with, and she was praying for months. And she had tapped me on the shoulder. She had done everything for me.

28:30 And I didn't listen to her. I didn't listen to her. And I don't know about you, but my wife's voice sounds a lot like the Holy Spirit. And I finally hit the wall, and her prayer was answered. And I ended up in the hospital with this thing called pancreatitis. And it was my adrenaline glands were running on extreme, and it just brought havoc to some of my organs, particularly my pancreas. And I ended up in the hospital seven days. No food, no water, with just excruciating pain in the center of your chest. And I was commissioned, uncommissioned, decommissioned for about six months.

29:27 And it was a full year, and they were chasing everything. They were chasing pancreatic cancer and some serious stuff that really sobers you up. And, you know, I said it last night, I thought Jesus said that Todd would build the church. And it was a season of me remembering that I'm not the Savior. Jesus is the Savior. And I am, in fact, I'm a detriment to ministry if I think I have to do everything. I am limiting our ministry under that way of thinking. And so I came out of that with a completely rearranged life, completely rearranged life. And that's a whole other rhythms. Actually, I think Herschel York is talking on rhythms of life. And so what I want to do is give you seven.

30:28 And you say, why seven? I couldn't think of eight. And I thought more than six. and then I said, well, it's the perfect number too, so go with it. And I'm praying that maybe two of these, maybe one of these, you go, that's life-giving to me, okay? So I want to give you seven. They're not in any particular order.

30:53 This is the moment in time where I've recognized I've hit discouragement. I know I'm in the red. So what do I do? You know, I'm a Home Depot guy. Tell me what to buy and how to fix this. And so these are not simple fixes. This is, you take this, whatever this, these seven are, and times them by time. And that's your equation. And so it's these things over a long period of time that gets you back on your feet. because you didn't know, but you backpacked into a deep, dark forest, and you didn't listen to the indicators of your soul and your mind and your body, and you finally have hit the wall, and God says it's time to lay down in green pastures, and now you're in a deep, dark forest, and you're thinking, where's the helicopter ride out of this sucker? And there is no helicopter ride, and you got to hike back out. And so I want to give you seven things, seven ways to hike back out. Number one, they all start with the letter P. Number one is you got to embrace God's providence in your life. You have to come to terms with the providence of God. Ephesians 1.11, Paul reminds us that He, God works not most things, not some things. He works all things according to the counsel of His will. And you know what those all things include? Includes Pastor Todd's discouragement, that He's using that. I don't know about you, but as a preacher, I think God's providence is as great as miracle. To think that He can be sovereign and providential over man's free will and still accomplish all of His purposes? You know, I can't accomplish all of my purposes with my own kids, let alone all of creation. So I think God's providence is His single greatest miracle.

32:55 And I have to see that the season I'm in is a season of providence. As John Piper says, when you believe God is not engaged in your life, you must remind yourself that He's doing a billion things at that time. When He seems totally silent and your prayers are bouncing off the ceiling in your mind, is that, man, I got to preach to myself that God is absolutely providential. And what I mean by that is get really practical. God, You have providentially placed me to pastor this church during this COVID season for such a time as this. and I'm not here by accident. I'm here for a purpose and a plan, and I have to start to preach to myself God's providential way in my life. I must see all the seasons of ministry in light of God's providence. That, man, that in the midst of this discouragement is God has plans.

34:01 He really does have plans for me, and He really does have a purpose for me. And I, you know, don't claim Jeremiah 29 11. We all know that one. That's the worst verse to give somebody as they're going in for surgery. Oh, it didn't turn out well for the Israelites, so be blessed. But I want you to think biblically, theologically, is that this season of discouragement is God's plan. And He's not worried about it. Okay? I'm worried about it, but He's not worried. God's not up in heaven, and because of my life, He's not up in heaven tossing back Maalox, wringing His hands. Thinking, well, Smith's got himself, you know, pretty wired up here on this one. Is I got to start thinking about the bigness and the greatness of our God. And Tozer had a great point in his knowledge of the holy that God is...

35:05 Well, let me read the quote. He says this, God lives in an everlasting now. Let that sink in for a moment. God lives in an everlasting now. And He's already lived our tomorrows, and He has already lived our yesterdays. And so, when ministry is weighing heavy on me and I, you know, we're in the midst of a church discipline, possibly, situation right now. And, you know, I'm dreading some of these meetings. Not elder meetings, but the meetings with the individuals. And I have to come back and say, God, You're already there. you've already been at this meeting, and I trust you in this moment. It's not I trust myself. It's I trust you in this moment. And I think you have to remember, as Tozer says, God is the everlasting now, and He's ever-present. And He hasn't left us and forsaken us on a Sunday night.

36:18 You know, Alistair talks about that a whole bunch, of how, you know, for years he'd come home every Sunday night and quit. And his wife would give him a sandwich and say, yeah, you'll be better in the morning. Which, by the way, just a word of thought, if you don't do this already, don't take Mondays off. You should never feel that bad on your day off.

36:41 Right? I mean, who wants to, why would you want to feel that bad on your day off? I take Fridays off. I want to feel great on my day off. So for Mondays, for me, it's pure sermon prep and menial tasks with nobody around, just me drooling. And I get my study done. Back to the point here. Not only the providence of God, you've got to get a hold of God's promises. You've got to get a hold of some God's promises. And what I mean by that, I should put it in a singular way. You've got to get a a promise that you can live on. As Jeremiah said, I found your Word delightful, and so I ate it. And what you have to do is, in my seasons of discouragement, I have to go find a promise. 2 Peter 1.4, remember what Peter says? He says, by which He's granted to us His precious and very great promises. One guy said amen. I mean, that was a great amen moment, and you pastors missed it.

37:46 His promise is that they're precious and they're very great. And He's given them to us for those seasons of discouragement. And I've got to be able to draw down on something, because my internal truth is all cattywampus. I need external truth, and what I've got to do is I've got to draw down, because, man, I never want to doubt in the dark what God has promised in the light. And so what I want to do is go back to the light of Scripture and find out a promise of God. And men, let me just say it as bluntly as I can, is stop listening to yourself. Stop listening to yourself and start preaching to yourself. Preach the providence of God in your life, like I just said, and then preach the promises of God. He'll never leave you. He'll never forsake me. He's not unjust to overlook my service for the saints. Nothing can separate me from the love of God.

38:49 No weapon formed against me is going to stand. He keeps the tears of my life in a bottle. God will supply every need of mine according to His riches in Christ. He who began a good work in me, He will bring it about. He's going and gone to prepare a place for me, and someday I will be with Him. His grace is sufficient for me. His power is made perfect right now. Right now His power is made perfect in my weakness, and my ways are not His ways, and my thoughts are not His thoughts. And man, I can live… Yeah, I think it was Mark Twain who said he could live off a good compliment for 30 days. I can live off a promise of God for like six months. And I will take that promise of God, whatever it's speaking to me in that moment, three by five it, put it wherever I can. And man, I just, I'm not a name it and claim it theology, but I'm a name it and claim it when it comes to the promises of God. And so that for me is, I got to get back and to preach to myself.

40:03 I love Lamentations 3.21 when the writer says this, he says, But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope. Don't you love that? He's preaching to Himself. In the book of Lament, this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope. Okay? You know, disastrous board meeting, disastrous counseling situation, but man, I claim this promise of God, and therefore I have hope. And I have to feast on that. You need an arsenal of God's promises that you can pull down on in ministry. Not only providence, not only promises, but practices. Practices. The practices of spiritual disciplines, of prayer and praise.

40:58 Loved ones, you'll never feel your way out of discouragement. You're going to have to think your way out of discouragement. and what I have to do is out of discipline, I have to get back to my practices of prayer and praise. For me, I need some hymns, some doctrinal truth that I can sing by myself and literally sing to myself. And we all know music, there's something about it that God has given beauty to that, that just lifts and energizes our physical being. And so, man, draw down on a hymn and sing that hymn to the glory of God. And it's through those, I start to treasure. I start to treasure the Lord. I start to treasure His promises, His very great and precious promises. And I want to treasure those things.

42:01 Because, remember Jesus, He said in Matthew 6, 21, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Now, I know He was talking about money, but He really gave an eternal truth there. What you treasure is where your heart ends up. So, my heart is in despair. Well, I don't want to treasure despair. I don't want to nurse that. And so, what I want to do is, I want to treasure the things of God. I want to treasure worship. And one of the things my wife and I regularly do is because you gotta—for me, I spent 20 years on that side of the pulpit. And so I miss worshiping. And so Stacey, my wife, and I, there's a church down in the valley that's got a Saturday night service. And we'll go to it. We'll go to it and just sit together and worship together. Because I need to sit under the preaching of God. I want to be with my wife. We were going so often that my kids thought we had become members of the church and had joined a small group because we were, like every Saturday night, we were going down to church. But you may just tell you, that ministers to my soul. Being preached at inside the body of Christ, yeah, tapes are good, you know, the MP3, that's great, podcasts, but there's nothing like being in the house of the Lord with God's people singing out His praises.

43:32 And so when I'm on the pity pot of life, man, let's go worship together. I got to get my perspective looking up because the horizon looks horrific, right? What's that great hymn, Before the Throne of God? you know, when Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within, what does he say? He says, upward I look, and I see Him who made an end of all my sin. Upward I look. And so when I'm in seasons of discouragement, I can sit and sour over this situation, or I can get my eyes to go vertical. And for me, that's worship. That's praise. That's reading the Scriptures. It's examining my own life to see if I have a pet sin.

44:37 You know, let's be honest. We battle sin. And so maybe my discouragement, and the Spirit of God has reminded me, hey, the reason you're so discouraged, Todd, is you got this pet sin that you just, oh, look at little sweetie. She's just so sweet. He's so sweet." And it's like, no, that's a roaring lion, Todd. Stop playing around with it. And you know, I often say to you, the longer you walk along the edge of the Grand Canyon, the more likely you're going to fall in. And so, you know, this praise and prayer is an examination of my life. Not only providence, not only promises, not only practices, but physical, physical. Remember, we're body and soul. We're body and soul. We're not like a Chicken McNugget, where we have a billion parts. We're body and soul. Men, I commend to you, make sure you get an annual physical. It's a spiritual discipline, getting an annual physical. Get moving. Sitting for me, I've never sat my way out of discouragement. Right? I've never sat and clicked my way out of discouragement. Get moving. Get active. Get outside. Get upward. Get creation. Go up to the mountains. Go out to the beach. Go out somewhere where creation is awesome in your state or your area and realize how small you are and how small your problem really is to God Almighty. And so the goal is physically get rest. Remember Elijah? What did Elijah basically need? God says, I'll deal with you after you take a nap and you eat something. My wife tells me that too. Like, I'll deal with you after you take a nap and eat something because that changes everything.

46:34 It changes everything. And man, you want to practice the hygiene of self-care, and I don't mean that in a self-centered way. I just mean take care of yourself and get that annual physical. And trust that sometimes God answers your question, He answers it with a nap and a snack. And that's okay. And let him answer it that way. Not only physical, we got to keep moving because we're coming up to the end of our time here, is pace. You're probably at the wrong pace in terms of extremes. You're either at a too slow of pace, and frankly, you're lazy. and laziness will lead to despair. It doesn't lead to joy.

47:31 Or you're running at hyperspeed. And so you're at one of the two extremes and so your pace has got to change. And I've read every book on balance. On balance. I mean, I've read every book there is on balance. And I've come to the conclusion it's a farce. There's no such thing as balance. Do you know why you have balance? It's because you were out of balance. And the reason you lose balance is because you're about to go out of balance. Balance is the never-never land. I believe God hasn't created us to live in balance. He's created us to live in rhythms. All creation—think about it with me, men—all creation is hardwired for rhythms. From the sea to the seasons, a woman is reminded every 28 days she's a woman. Why? Because there's a rhythm to her life.

48:35 God's creation has a rhythm. There is a hibernating season for bears, and then there is a time to be outside collecting. And so what I try to do, what I try to do is live in a rhythm where I'm going to be totally out of balance this week. And that's okay. I'm not stressed about it because I've already built in the aftermath of this week for me. And so I'm not preaching this weekend. I know that I got my date day with a smoking hot lady on Friday, and I can't wait for that. You know, I'm totally out of balance right now, but I have a rhythm set up. And men, your calendar becomes your best friend or your worst enemy, and it's your choice. And if you're going to use your calendar as your best friend, you've got to learn how to say no. A mentor of mine probably told you years ago, learn to say no. No is the most sanctifying word out there.

49:42 I love Bob Goff in the fact he says, I quit something every Thursday. And I love that. I quit something every Thursday. He says, and the second benefit I found out is nobody calls me on Thursday because they don't want me to quit on them. And so he says, I get less phone calls on Thursday. It was Charles Spurgeon who said this, learn to say no, it will be of more use to you than to actually read and write Latin.

50:15 Learn to say no, it'll be more use to you than learning Latin. And I think Spurgeon was on to something. Physical pace, number six here, two more to go. Number six, this is a person or people. What you have to do is, A, make sure you have a safe group of guys around you that are even outside of your ministry, that they're your refuge. And instead of isolation, isolation, you need exposure. But you need exposure to the right person or the right people, where you can go and you can pull back your tunic and just say, this is me right now. Because if you don't get that out to somebody, it's like suppressing a beach ball below the surface of a pool. That works for a while, but when it comes up, it comes bursting up and it's ugly.

51:14 And so what I got to do is I got to get around a safe person where I can just be me. I don't mean, therefore, I can sin, but I can just be raw and just be really clear of like, I'm really struggling with this situation or this person or this issue.

51:38 I would encourage you men, and some of you guys may not have this, but I pray you have it. God has blessed me with it for the last 20 years. I have elders that are safe elders. I can be real with them. They know I have clay feet and they're concerned about me and I mean, I can tell them, I can tell them, you know, this is a hard week. Pray for me. This is a hard situation. You know, there was times where, you know, we raised teenagers, which no human should ever do.

52:23 And, you know, we struggled with our teenagers. You know, hey, when you struggle with your teenager, that's on your job description. And our men was a safe place. You know, I wasn't worried about, you know, being disqualified because I shared with them, hey, I'm struggling with my middle child or my oldest or whatever it might be. You need to be able to get it out with them. Remind your elders, all you have is clay feet. I'm a broken pot. I got cracks. And, you know, we talk about you want to be the first among equals. Well, be the first among equals to be authentic and transparent with them. and you say, well, I got a guy on our board that we can't. I go back to point number one.

53:16 Get rid of him. You know, you just have to work through that. So you got this physical, you got this pace. Let's just finish off with this one. We'll call it a day. Is perspective. Perspective. You've got to, in a season of ministry discouragement, is you got to get a change of perspective. We've talked about some things, going outside, going vertical.

53:43 Let me tell you, the way out of ministry, though that would be an interesting seminar, is it comes down to how you choose to think. General James Mattis, you remember him? He was Trump's first Secretary of Defense. He's a general's general. In fact, I can't quote most of what he says. But he would drill into his mind. He would tell them, men on the battlefield, the most important territory is the six inches between your ears. And I heard that and I'm like, that's a good word. That's a really good word. The most important territory in a pastor's life is the six inches between your ears. how you choose to think.

54:37 I mean, have you thought about the fact that Paul literally wrote a verse? Think on these things. You know, he was very blunt. Like, think on these things. And so, what I got to do is I got to be Psalm 51.10, Lord, renew my spirit. I got to be Romans 12, where, man, the renewing of my mind is I got to, you know, I come home and I tell Stacy, I go, our church is falling apart. It's horrible. It's like nobody's going to come back. And I've created a total nightmare. And she, you know, she's just waiting for me to be done. And then she'll ask me, she'll say, Todd, do your emotions match the situation?

55:24 I'm like, well, of course they do. The reality is, no, they don't. They don't match. Everything's not falling apart, you know. and she helps me to make that change, the renewing of my mind. I got, you know, you got that critic. You got that one ankle biter that's always after you. Man, just pray. Pray for them. Why? Because what you treasure, that's where your heart will be. Your heart will soften if you pray for them. Pray that God would move them on. Pray that God would move them to a different part of ministry. But what you have to do is you can't become so encumbered by that person, by that critic, that you lose sight of your mission. Your mission is too important, men. Your mission is too important than a couple critics in your congregation.

56:17 And so you have to renew your mind and just go, wait a minute, I got to think differently about this. What's that song we used to sing, Count Your Blessings? Name them one by one. You do that for a while, and all of a sudden your perspective changes. When people's opinions — and let's face it, everybody in the church has opinions, right? They're like armpits. Everybody's got a couple. And everybody has these opinions. And let me just tell you something. You don't count opinions, you weigh them. Don't sit there and be crushed by the number of critics or opinions. Weigh them. In other words, are they really worthy of the angst in me? Are they really worthy of the time and attention? And let's be honest, sometimes they are. Critics are sometimes God's gifts to us.

57:11 And we have to weigh that. And so the point is that you have to change your perspective. And when your perspective starts to change, then your ministry starts to change with it. Those are seven. They're not inspired. But I do find them essential ways for me to battle with this. Let me just close with you on this. You know, ministry in life is, if you could picture a big long conveyor belt coming down towards you. And just picture in your mind, it just goes as far as you can imagine. And about every 10 feet, there's a green apple every 10 feet. And that apple represents a 24-hour period, one day of your life.

58:10 and you just see them coming down. You see them coming down. Discouragement in ministry can cause two things as that present apple is coming towards you. You can end up thinking about the apple that's already passed, the good old days, or you can spend your time just thinking about the next apple or the next three apples. and the reality is you miss the bite and the delicious taste and the enjoyment and the pleasure of that apple that's right in front of you. Our God is the everlasting now. Let's be like Him and see our life, as they say in Missouri, be where your feet are and let God provide His mercies each and every day.

59:09 Amen? Amen? Let's pray. Father, thank You for the patience of these guys. I pray that my rambling, Lord, maybe there's a nugget there that we all go away with and we just go, man, that was really helpful this week for me. I pray that it's true for each of the guys in this room. Thank You for Your grace. Thank You for the food that we're about to eat even though we shouldn't be eating it. Lord, bless it to our body somehow in some way. We love you, Lord. We trust you and we desperately need you. We pray this in the powerful name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.