When I was old enough to begin working in the public, I was given the task of dusting all the items in my father’s furniture store. I remember that it was a vast single floor business filled with endless lamps, sofas, chairs, tables and the like. I vividly remember looking out across that large display of furniture and other items and thinking that I would never be able to dust all of that inventory. It seemed that it would never end and that’s the way that I spent every Saturday for several years. Then, when I turned fourteen, I was asked to go to work for a man who was a doctor at the Georgia Coastal Plain Experimental Station. But, first, I had to go and get a Social Security number in order to be employed. I went to the proper office and was issued my lifelong Social Security number. I still have my original card issued to me when I was fourteen years old. The job was hard. It was grueling as I worked long hours in the blistering sun of South Georgia. Man,…it’s hot down in a South Georgia field in the middle of Summer!
Over the years I had a number of jobs but I found that there was no deep, fulfilling sense of accomplishment in any of them. While in my last two years of High School and for several years thereafter, I worked in radio. I was a top forty disc jockey at a new station that had come to Tifton which featured the rock and roll of the fifties. It was a very enjoyable line of work but there was something I was searching for that I could not find in radio. I worked for my father again but I didn’t want to be a furniture dealer for the rest of my life. Clean work but no fulfillment. I tried selling insurance. Wasn’t for me. I worked in a men’s clothing store and really enjoyed it but the fulfillment of doing it faded as well. Later, after college (I didn’t start college until I was 26) I became the personnel director of a large carpet manufacturing company. It was fun and I enjoyed the people but I knew in the back of my brain that there was something else. It gnawed at me often. You see, God had called me into the ministry when I was at that tender age of fourteen. All my life I searched for fulfillment but could not find it because I was holding that Call from God in a little secret room in the back of my mind knowing that some day I would finally do what He told me to do. Once He has selected a person to be a preacher there is no getting away from it. I relate the experience of God’s Call upon my life in another article I have written entitled, The Call. It’s on my website if one is interested.
But, one day when I was 31 years old, I told God that I would do as He had told me to do if he would simply take the burden off of me because He had been “eating my lunch” about it for many years. So, I surrendered my life to Him and immediately I found what had been eluding me for a long time: peace with God and peace about what I was to do with my life.
I have now been in His Work for fifty years. It hardly seems possible but its true! I don’t know where it all went. From the first time I ever preached in that little church in the country of North Carolina until today, I have never doubted my call and I have never had even one thought of doing anything else with my life. I found my peace when I did what God told me to do. I have told many young men considering entering the ministry that it is the most glorious thing in the world to serve the Lord in the capacity of Pastor of a local congregation. But, I have also told them that if there is anything else that they can do, choose it. I also quickly follow up by saying that if God has called you, there is nothing else you can do with your life that will make you happy until you do as He has told you to do and surrender to His Will. One cannot perform correctly as a Pastor until they have that sense of being exactly where God wants them; Preaching to and being the Shepherd of one of His flocks.
Being a Pastor is the hardest job I have ever had. There is no way that one can fill that role without having the help of God’s Holy Spirit to guide you and encourage you along the way. Every church, being made up of people, will have those church members that will always support and love their Pastor. Praise the Lord for them! But, mixed in among the sheep are some goats. Every church has them as the Lord tells us. Trying to be a blessing to them is often very difficult and discouraging. Nothing pleases them and there is no way to answer their questions to their satisfaction. These people are good for one basic purpose: driving the Pastor to his knees praying that God will change them. The larger the church, the more of these people will be present. But, with the Holy Spirit’s encouragement, the Pastor will make it through. It is in times of discouragement that a Pastor needs, indeed, must have a sense of divine calling to this lifelong endeavor. When things are not good and he is under pressure, a pastor can fall back on the moment God spoke to him and called him to His service as a pastor. Without that assurance it is difficult for a person to stay the course for very long.
I have reminded young pastors who are having difficulty and considering relocating to another church that the Bible never tells us that God’s work will be easy. In fact, it is the hardest job in the world because your adversary who will oppose you at every hand is none other than satan and his demons. I have never worked harder or longer at any job than I have at performing my duties as a pastor. Many people think that the Pastor only works a couple of hours a week while he is delivering sermons. How wrong they are if he is faithful to the task given him by God Himself. If he performs his work for the Lord properly, he will put in long hours taking care of the flock, writing sermons to feed them and administering the everyday affairs of a congregation. He spends hours writing the sermons he delivers on Sunday mornings and then there is another one Sunday night (until recent days when Sunday evening services have been cancelled in many churches). I calculated the number of sermons I delivered at Abilene Baptist in the thirty-two years I was there as Pastor. I averaged 96 sermons a year considering both morning and evening services and then there were the Wednesday Prayer meeting services where I usually taught the scriptures more in-depth than I could in Sunday services. That total was astounding to me. In my preaching at Abilene, I delivered a little more than 3000 Sunday sermons and then another 1500+ Wednesday evening Bible studies. It was always my goal to give the people something worth coming to church to hear and I always wanted them to leave the church service having learned something they did not know before and something they could use in everyday life. Now, my friends, THAT was a task. If you don’t believe it, just try it some time.
But, I want to say very profoundly and loudly that there is no more glorious way to spend one’s life than being a God-called Preacher and pastor (shepherd) of a group of people who are saved by the Blood of Jesus. Some of the finest people on earth are found in God’s churches. Yes, there are many challenges but there are many more rewards for God’s faithful pastors. What an exuberant experience it is to lead someone to Christ! What a wonderful experience it is to baptize them as the Lord says to do and then watch them grow into the Christian the Lord wants them to be. Nothing can compare to those experiences because they have eternity attached to them and the pastor is the one selected by God to help bring salvation and a changed life to these people. There is just no job in the world which offers such benefits. No matter how much money one makes, no matter how important the position they hold or how famous they are can match the joys and fulfillment of being a God-called pastor of His people.
Church members should be thankful that God cares enough about them to provide a Shepherd for them. He is someone to preach the Word, administer the church, and take care of the flock (First Peter 5: 1-4). If every church member could walk in his shoes for about two months, they would appreciate the man who stands before them each Sunday to bring them God’s Word and then ministers to the flock all week long. He never really has a day off. The Pastor is always in the presence of his Boss who is watching intently and he is charged with the most important task in the world. If he is not faithful, God knows it and the unfaithful servant will have to stand before Him and give account one day. God will see to his punishment if he is unfaithful. First Peter 5:1-4, mentioned above, tells us how the Pastor should view his work and act as he fulfills his God-called task. If a man will follow that passage, he will help himself greatly in the work the Lord has called him to do.
A lawyer decided he wanted to be a lawyer. A doctor chose his own profession as well. A teacher decided they wanted to be a teacher. But the obedient Preacher, Pastor and spiritual leader of God’s people did not have a choice. He will either do as God says or he will live a miserable life, never truly finding himself and always remembering the time that God called him but that he did not answer. Praise God for those people who listened to Him, followed Him and then entered into The Greatest Endeavor in the World.
