Transcription
Jesus said it best, and John 15:5, "Apart from me you can do nothing." As a pastor, you learn you either learn early to write that over the door of your heart, or you don't last in the ministry. It's really just that simple.
One of my favorite passages of the last few years in ministry—or my first few years in ministry—it was more like 426, 228, where Jesus tells the parable of the seed growing. The farmer plants the seed, and it's just very pithy; there's just a couple of verses. The farmer plants the seed, and then he goes to bed, and then he gets up, and the seed, lo and behold, has germinated; it's grown, and he knows not how. Of course, we know how; we know it's the grace of God.
And so you realize pretty early that the pastoral—the call of pastoral ministry—isn't like anything else you're gonna do in life. You're not gonna have product at the end of the day, likely. You're not gonna have, you know, widgets that you've made; you're gonna have a byline at the top of the page or anything like that. You're gonna be going to sow the seed, and then, Lord willing, God's gonna pour His grace on it through His spirit, and it's gonna—it's gonna germinate and grow. But you may never see that; no, you're never gonna live to see the end of it for sure.
And so you learn really early that you are dependent upon Him, that you are weak, that you are a clay pot, as Paul puts it again in 2 Corinthians 4. I go back to that so much. But you really—you're just kind of Walmart crockery. Your God has invested this gospel truth in you, and but it's not about you, because you can't do anything to save people or sanctify people. And as much as you want to do that apart from Him, you can do nothing. And you either learn that, and it humbles you, or you don't last very long in your ministry.