Fellow pastors, it’s the eve of the Lord’s Day. Prepare yourself to lead your people into the presence of the Lord tomorrow. Prepare yourself and your heart for battle so you can lead your congregation in fighting the good fight. Prepare yourself to give the comfort and healing balm of the gospel, as a physician of souls. Remember that you have nothing to offer your people in yourself; you can only give them what God gives them, and what God has given you, through his Word and sacrament. Do not grow weary in doing good.
Here is Harold Senkbeil summarizing the pastoral grind and giving you encouragement to keep going:
“[The pastor’s] work is never done; no sooner is one conversation finished than another beckons. Finish one sermon and there’s another to prepare. Welcome one wandering sheep into Christ’s flock, and there are hundreds more to evangelize. Baptize one new soul into the kingdom and he or she needs to keep on growing in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Comfort one anguished, fearful heart and another takes its place. Guide one soul safely through the valley of the shadow of death to fall asleep in peace and someone else is at death’s door. Jesus’ sheep need his voice to find their way. That’s where pastors come in. They are sent to preach and teach his word so Christ’s lambs and sheep can hear his voice. Jesus commissions pastors to do his work among his sheep in his name and stead, and that work is never done.
Christ’s sheep are not all that easy to tend. They have minds of their own. They tend to wander off in strange directions and get lost in the most dangerous predicaments. There are diseases to diagnose and treat, predators to warn against and fend off. And there is manure to shovel. There’s always one mess or another to clean up in the church. There’s good reason for that, because every believing soul is also a sinner, and sinners sin. Whether they sin against each other or their pastors, we are called to love them anyway and forgive them just as Jesus has.
And yet “whoever desires the office of bishop (pastor) desires a noble task” (1 Tim 3:1). The nobility of the office resides not in the man who holds the office, but in the Lord who has commissioned and sent him. And just as Jesus finds his delight in continually doing the work of the Father (John 5:17) so pastors continue to extend Jesus’ work among his people. And here’s the thing: The Lord of the church gives his ministry to pastors for their enjoyment; he gives them a front row seat in the drama of salvation. Pastors get to experience the joy of seeing Jesus at work through what they say and do in his name (John 15:11)…
When you take care to receive Christ’s own love and strength by means of his Spirit through his word, you have something to give to others without yourself being depleted and emptied. Daily and richly the heavenly Father gives his Spirit to those who ask him (Luke 11:13). Empowered by the Spirit, you have the satisfaction of knowing that Christ Jesus works in you both to will and to do what pleases him and benefits his beloved church (Phil 2:13). That’s when pastoral work becomes its own reward. Then you can find real satisfaction in a job well done, a foretaste of that joyous scene that awaits when Jesus welcomes all his servants to the eternal kingdom on the last day with the words: “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over little; I will set you over much. Enter into your master’s joy” (Matt 25:23). Yes, unimaginable joys lie ahead; you can count on that.
But tomorrow is another day. And tomorrow there will be more work to do.”
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