You need a little help in your life from time to time. Hopefully, the help you need is not very severe or not very often. The help you request could possibly refer to some type of emotional life, like a word of encouragement. The fact remains you need help from time to time.
Turn your attention to your pastor. He is faithful to preach, counsel, visit the sick, always in a joyous mood, among other things. Your pastor must prepare sermon after sermon week-in and week-out that are interesting biblical, and different from the past few Sunday’s sermons. Unless you have preached and pastored a church, you have no idea how hard that profession is on a person.
Looking at only one segment of his responsibilities, sermon preparation and appropriate delivery are intellectually and spiritually challenging. John Owen gives one facet of a good pastor delivering his sermon, “No man preaches his sermon well to others if he does not first preach it to his own heart.” That takes time in the pastor’s study.
Jesus’ half-brother, knew all too well the difficulties that pastors faced. To make sure men going into the role of pastor would take a step back and seriously contemplate that decision, he wrote, “Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will occur a stricter judgment” (James 3:1).
Pastors need a little help. Assist them by praying for them, of course, but also protecting them from the wolves in the congregation mixed among the sheep. Do not be naive and think your church has no wolves in it. Take your pastor and his family out to eat sometime, where you pick up the tab.
Pastors live a lonely life and you can be the balm that soothes the stress. Yes, give your pastors a little help, please.
