A Great Encouragement

This post is just a little mental wandering in regards to how God has encouraged me lately.  I am so grateful for God’s Word; it meets my every need at just the right time.  God is good in his church, but lately I have been discouraged by the lack of fervent spiritual desire in his assembly-both in my local church and in the church as a whole.  It seems that so much of this life so easily gets inthe way of true loyalty to God and his bride.  I have been a senior pastor for almost a year now, and this has been the hardest year of my life.  Men of God who shepherd congregations for years upon years, I salute you! It is emotionally, spiritually, and sometimes physically draining to be in that position of leadership-What I learned in theory, I now have learned by experience.  The ministry is difficult, but it seems like my personal situation has been extreme this past year.  Fighting through slandering, financial trials, variety of manifested sins, and many other issues that many pastors experience in a lifetime of leading but has been condensed for us into one year, has made me question God on several occasions.  Yes, that is right, I questioned God!  Wait, I will be even more open for all the world (or at least those few who read my blog) to hear.  I challenged God fiercely.  I know it was wrong, and I have confessed and repented of my actions and thoughts, but I simply wanted to know, “Why me?  Why have you chosen me to lead your people.  I am a youth. I have no experience to deal with these situations.  I have asked aged men their advice, and they have not dealt with these issues, so why have you placed me in this position of leadership?”  I also will bear my soul and confess that I begged God to release me from His service, to allow me to go work at Walmart or some such thing, but God instead turned my heart to the Old Testament in His holy Word.  I was compelled to read the prophet Jeremiah. . . and I couldn’t put it down.  I have read that prophecy many times, but I was enthralled in the story as if I had never read it before.  As I read, I realized that Jeremiah was a reluctant prophet–he was a youth and felt that he had not the experience nor the gray hairs to proclaim the authoritative message of God; yet God chose him.  At one point, he gave up; and I would have too.  He began preaching probably around the age of 20 (although scholars are up in the air about the timing) and for over 40 years he proclaimed a message of which he was told by God before he ever preached, that they would not respond to it.  He went from one dungeon to another, was threatened with death, ignored, rebuked, hated, considered a traitor-a defector to the Chaldeans.  He was not allowed to get married (for an object lesson), had to walk around for days wearing an oxen yoke, and routinely starved to the point of death.  But listen to his own words, “Because the Word of the Lord was made to me a reproach and a derision daily.  Then I said, “I will not make mention of Him, nor speak anymore His name.”  But His word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones;  I was weary of holding it back and I could not.”  I began to think then of all the young men who were God’s servants who faced difficult ministries (which for the Biblical authors is probably an understatement)–Jeremiah, Isaiah, Samuel, Hosea, Zechariah, Timothy, Daniel, and the list goes on.  These men were all young when they began and old when they finished and humanly speaking, saw little results from their ministry.  Who then am I, who has never even come close to facing the trials of these young men who devoted their lives to God’s service, to complain against the holy Creator.  Yes, they were young, inexperienced, and scared to death, but the Ancient of Days has no beginning or ending.  What they lacked in experience, He more than makes up for.  God encouraged me greatly with the following words from Jeremiah continuing with his inability to hold back the proclamation of the Word of God, “For I heard many mockings . . . but the Lord is with me as a mighty awesome One.”  (Jer. 20:8-11).  I am still faced with great uncertainty about how to deal with these many convoluted issues; I am still faced with a grief of soul over the spiritual state of God’s people; I am still in wonder and concern over what will happen in this church; but I know that the Lord is with me as a mighty awesome One!