Sabbaths & Sermons
Welcome to the Uncut Podcast. I'm Pastor Luke. I am Pastor Cameron.
And this is the Uncut Podcast, where we have honest, uncut conversations about faith, life,
and ministry. Today, we kind of, we were sitting here talking about what are we going to talk about
in the Uncut Podcast today. And...
Yeah. It's not that we're running out of topics. We have lots of topics.
We have lots of topics.
It's, do we have the energy to address all of those, some of those like big, big questions.
On this particular day. Yeah, on this particular day, this particular morning.
You know, we've got plenty yet to talk about. It's just, yeah, some of those things
take some significant mental and emotional effort to parse through and say well.
And the unfortunate thing is that Some of those topics are really important.
So maybe next time we record, we should say, okay, when is our emotional and spiritual energy,
at its peak in order to tackle some of these things? Because usually Thursday's for us.
It's our Friday. It's our Friday, and it's our like, a little bit of a breakneck pace
to maybe get some things done so that we can enjoy our weekend.
Yes. And today's Thursday for us. I don't know if you're, whenever you're watching this,
we're recording it a little bit ahead of time because.
Yeah, this will be two weeks out from when it gets released.
So Cameron is not here recording on his vacation. Correct, yes.
But the last one that we did, last episode we did, we talked about, is it Shiny?
Shiny Happy People. Shiny Happy People, which was a pretty heavy episode.
We did that earlier this same week, actually.
I think maybe the reason we even had the energy to do that particular episode and wade into the weeds
much as we did was because we we did it on what a Monday?
Was it Monday or was it Tuesday? It was on Tuesday. Tuesday after staff meeting.
So we had a little bit more maybe energy than we do at the end of the week. So I don't know,
you know, that's, it's a worthwhile leadership thing to examine in yourself of like, where
Where your energy, I don't know, it sounds so super woo-woo to say it, but where's your
energy economy at throughout the week?
Well, this is kind of one of the things that we wanted to maybe start to talk about today
is what are the things that we would tell our younger ministry selves that we never
would have imagined or been able to experience or understood, you know, before we were in ministry.
Yeah. I, one of those would have been, I know you feel like you can go all the time and go at
a hundred percent pace and you kind of can, just don't.
Yeah. Well, that would have been like a little bit of like, and,
I would say you, I would kind of disagree with that. And I would say you can't.
You can for a season, but even the fastest and most conditioned sprinters
in the world can only sprint for so long until they collapse.
And you know, like one of the things maybe that I didn't anticipate, both early in ministry,
this would probably primarily be before ministry, In this, let's see, this year, 2023.
Will be 19 years of full-time ministry for me. And that's like, you know, when I say full-time
ministry, that's in general, you know, preaching week to week and doing pastoral work and meeting
with people and counseling and doing all that stuff. And I would say that there, I had no
anticipation whatsoever on the physical exhaustion that mental, emotional, and spiritual work
creates. You know, just like the brain drain. And I'm never more tired physically than I am Sunday
afternoons usually hits me around like three o'clock. Preached everything I've been working
up to that week, been in the community with the people, carried the burdens or helped shoulder
the burdens, prayed for people, all of the stuff that pastors do on Sundays, preached a message.
And then Sunday it's like boom, boom, it all hits.
And part of it I think that makes it even more exhausting is the.
I don't want to say dread because not I don't know like but but the the realization that okay
it's three o'clock on Sunday afternoon and I'm finally hitting like this point of like oh my gosh
I am spent on the week and Mondays tomorrow it's like yeah 17 hours later yeah it's time to do it
again. Yeah. To start all over again. Yeah. So that I mean, I guess that could be you could
change that a little bit by changing your day off. I've always had Friday as my day off.
Well, so I did it the other way. We, my last position, if we were the pastor to have preached
on Sunday, it was understood that we took Monday off. But we also had a slightly, there's two
different kind of schools of thought when it comes to pastoral work and pastoral hours.
And things like that. And so we were also of the expectation to work,
like it was kind of our goal to work around 50 hours. And so that was kind of just the,
It was kind of the goal.
It wasn't a big concern if we were consistently up in the 50 hours range of work.
And we took Mondays off. And what I found is that, for me, like...
Saturday and Monday ended up being my days off. And a lot of times Saturday, if I was preaching,
didn't end up being very much of a day off because sometimes I was still doing
some late prep work on that.
But what I found in my own need to recover is I really need two days back to back.
I have one day where I kind of crash a little bit. I kind of like, I need, I really need to zero out.
I don't like not a whole lot of heavy lifting of things and ideas and topics
I just need a little bit of just some,
Super downtime for me and then the second day I kind of feel more myself And I'm able to kind of come and do.
I'm able to engage in my day off a little bit more intentionally I'm able to do more at home things and other things that I want to do
hobbies that maybe take a little bit more energy and stuff and when I don't
have that when I have the two days are broken apart like that I take a Monday
off I take a Saturday off I don't feel rested the day the days of rest are kind
of broken up and so it you know for me that was never great and so when I came
here and like everyone's like oh yeah like Friday and Saturday are kind of the
days off. I was like, yes. And what that kind of does, at least in theory.
Is rather than if because if Monday's your day off Sunday ends up feeling like the end of your week and,
If you make it your first day of your week by taking Friday Saturday off,
You are able to come in a little bit fresh now. That is all depending upon how diligent you and I have been on like.
Closing Work at the end of the day of Thursday It's why we said here like Thursday can feel a little bit like a crunch day and that's because yeah
We're trying to put everything to rest enough so that we can not think about it for the next two days
yeah, if I if I leave the office on Thursday night and,
my sermons not done or,
Particularly, it's my sermon because that's usually like the thing that is what's usually the thing that can't wait, right?
Then if I leave the office on Thursday and my sermons not done I.
Can't I Can't it's very difficult for me to enter into any type of rest Either Friday or Saturday because I know at some point,
I'm back and I'm back at the desk prepping, you know and getting getting ready and,
I have a really difficult time like,
It feels like my soul knows that I still have work to do.
And so I really try, on Thursdays I often work late,
or later than normal because I would rather work late on my last day in the office,
and then have Friday and Saturday with no, like, rest.
Yeah.
And I was at a leadership conference once and one of the presenters there, a pastor and preacher.
Was talking about this and like, in terms of, you know, finishing your sermon at a particular time
of the week so that you could have the day of rest or whatever, and he basically just said,
to keep your butt in the seat until the hard work is done.
Meaning like it's not, that may be a misconception that a lot of people have about what it takes to prepare.
And I guess every, you know, like we're all, I mean, you and I are probably different
in the way that we prepare our messages and every preacher has their own method.
Yep. But not everyone may understand that, you know, it's not...
It's not necessarily just like this super ethereal spiritual download of inspiration where,
it just like you just know everything you're going to say and how you're going to say it and
it's all from the you know like sometimes like sometimes it's like it hits and it's like easy
right or like for me like they'll just be like oh that's the main point yes like whatever to do to
say that main point is what I got to do.
Like sometimes we'll get that clarity.
Other times it's, it's a, it is it's work.
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's yeah. Right.
It's just, it's the type of hard work that everyone experiences in their job that makes work hard.
Yeah. And it's always work.
Sometimes the work is easier than others.
Sometimes you have a lot of familiarity with a passage or you've preached it before right or.
You've planned this series out and so you kind of have an idea of what's coming and you can kind of like
subconsciously or even consciously plan for multiple sermons and
It makes it a little bit easier but
Sometimes you're coming in and you're like stone-cold on this on the text or the topic or even what it is that you're going to
say. We try and avoid that as much as possible, which is rare when we hit a week where we're like,
what's the sermon going to be? We have like no starting point. I don't think that happens very
often at all anymore. But sometimes you do come to like a, well that definitely happened during
the Minor Profit Series, we're like, nahum!
Who? Okay. A book I've never, like, I've read, never preached out of, and I've never done a deep
study on. I'm supposed to cover the entire book in one sermon.
Right. Yeah. That was a heavy lifting. Yeah. Well, you did most of that series.
I did. I did finish it out. So that was right when you were starting.
We did the more popular, not minor profits.
Yeah.
I took the popular ones. The popular ones. I gave you all the obscure ones after I left.
I think it might've been Zephaniah was the one that I struggled with the most. I was just like,
I don't know. That was a tough sermon. But there is a, like, I didn't understand it until,
because a lot of my professional life, I've done a lot of physical work. I'd worked as a
grocery clerk in a grocery store, done carpentry work, and things like that. And so, like, I was
I was very used to physical exhaustion.
I was very used to like putting in a solid eight hours, coming home and being like,
whew, yeah, it was like a good day to physically spend, right?
But I still had a lot of mental capacity a lot of times.
And putting in like regimented, when I shifted to not having those physical outlets
and not doing physical labor as much, I realized, I was like, oh.
My brain and my heart and soul gets tired just like my body did You know, I
There will there have been days and these happen these happen when I've kind of maybe,
Overtaxed myself in some different in different ways, or maybe I've not Managed the time correctly or given myself enough breaks, but there will be days,
particularly like on a Thursday where I hit noon and I'm staring at the computer and I'm like
I have nothing in me. I don't have the mental capacity to put together two thoughts very well
to make this sermon. And sometimes I have to make the decision, is it better for me to sit here for
another four hours and force myself to write something that I'm going to come into the next
I'm gonna maybe look at again and end up deleting almost all of it because it was,
So bad like, you know, yeah, there is like a kind of a point of diminishing returns
Yeah, we're like and that has happened. I wouldn't say it happens regularly.
For either of us. No, but I think that there is but I you know, there's several times over the last even couple months where I'm like, you know, I
I need to set this down for a little bit because I, like you said, I don't have anything left,
and I'm not thinking clearly.
For me, usually the prep, if I can, If I can make the...
If I can get my introduction, how am I starting this? If I can do that, then,
usually the rest of it flows fairly easily because I tend to think through my fingers.
Yeah.
If I can get typing, I can keep moving because like, okay, now my brain is engaged,
and I'm getting there.
Well, it's interesting. I just didn't mean to turn into a whole sermon prep episode or anything,
but it's interesting because you and I have flipped how we prepare our sermons.
My most common way of prepping sermons would be to, like, do the research, do the writing,
do a little bit of free writing, make a very vague, big, kind of big movement outline,
and then write, and I would write my entire sermon. But I've, over the last six months,
I guess, I've shifted from doing that to writing. I still do some free writing,
try and kind of nail down the big idea, and then I make a detailed two-page outline,
and then that's it. I'm not sitting and I'm not writing what usually ended up being around
seven to nine pages of word-for-word my sermon, which has given me a little bit more flexibility
in my time, but also has helped me be a little bit... It's helped me deliver my message sometimes
in a little bit more relatable or conversational tone, and it's just a different way of prepping
and preaching that I think I'm leaning into to learn some things. And then you decided to,
that's kind of what you did for a very long time, and you've decided to switch back to what
essentially I was doing, which is writing it all out.
Yeah, essentially manuscripting it, which is not, yeah, like, probably for the last.
17, 18 years of ministry I have not been doing.
I've been generally creating a written outline that I understand, that I can follow,
that I know how I want to get from point one to point two or whatever. But, as I'm.
I'm just continuing to want to grow and be better in my,
Preaching. Mm-hmm was recognizing that I was not always Bringing the level of clarity.
That I wanted to bring to a certain point. Mm-hmm, because I was relying on
on my sense of just knowing what I wanna say in the moment and saying it.
And there were specific times or things where I wanted to be like,
I want to say this very, very clearly.
And so I'm gonna write it out so I'm not, I don't miss the moment of clarity.
Also, if you listen to me preach or watch me preach or whatever,
you'll know that I, you know, like, it's very easy for me to be tangential.
No, never, Cameron. You know, I preach for, I preach, you know, longer than 99%
of preaching professors and, you know, books will tell you that you should preach.
Yeah, like the recommended is, the sweet spot's like 20 to 20, like 25 minutes,
Somewhere between 20 to 30 minutes is like what I've heard. And I'm at least double that.
At least. Yeah. I mean, both of us are. Yeah, I'm in the 50 to 60 minute range very consistently.
It's what I've always done.
I think that I do think it's intent,
it is intentional for me. Yeah. And, but regardless, they're like in my preaching.
Moving from outlining to manuscripting, I'm trying to cut down on a lot of the extra filler words.
Okay, so, you know, like wanting to be really clear, not wasting anything, not wasting people's attention,
not wasting my words, not wasting my energy, you know, getting as much out as I can.
And sometimes it's better than others.
Yeah, well, you know, there's this really weird, Um, sometimes.
Preaching a long sermon is the easier thing to do. And so what we're not saying is that,
oh, if you're listening, a long sermon is better than a short sermon. We're not necessarily saying
that, because a lot of people preach long sermons because they're not very good at preaching yet.
They're... They actually don't know what to say. They don't know what to say.
So they say everything.
And so they say everything. They're dumping everything. They're kind of just regurgitating
everything that they read. That was me early on. I still remember I was doing, I think I was
preaching Daniel, and there was some confusion over which exact king this story was related to,
and I did all this archaeological reading and all this stuff, and I came to like this thing,
and I was like, all right, I've come to the decision which king this was, and like exactly
where it fit in Persian history and all that stuff. And I went and I asked somebody, I said,
all right, where should I put this in my sermon? And they're like, Luke, why would you put it in
your sermon? No one cares. And I was... Oh, like, you're sure? Because I really wanna put it in
there. So long sermon doesn't necessarily mean a good sermon, but if you are going to preach long
and you're going to do it well, takes a lot of work.
Yes. Because you, and there are a lot of benefits. Like I think one of the things that at least I've,
I've experienced in, cause I've, I've done both.
I've done the 30 minute sermon on a consistent basis. I've done closer to your length, which since I've come here
and you are able to get much deeper and farther.
Into people's lives and communicate more complex ideas ideas in a larger sermon.
If you're trying to do the 20 minute TED Talk.
You're not gonna be able to show as much of your work and you're not gonna be able to like,
you just can't get there, you can't get as deep.
Right, well, and you know, and like, I.
I don't ever want the sermon to be reflective of how theologically insightful or astute,
or how much work I've done.
I don't ever want someone to sit through an hour sermon and be like, wow, that was an hour long.
He's so insightful, or he has so much theological, I don't, that's not my purpose at all.
It comes to me from a more methodological standpoint of like what it takes to really take the word of God,
and understand we're talking about things that are.
A interrelationship between the work of a man and preaching the word and the primary work
of the Holy Spirit to take the word as it's proclaimed and to put it into people's hearts.
Yeah. Right.
But what, you know, so understand that there is that nuance and do believe that in that nuance.
But like, if you think about the work of preaching and what it takes to make that happen,
you know, like think of, like, you just can't, You can't drill deep.
In 20 minutes. No, you can't you can't be meditative in 20 minutes, right? You can't like you just,
like if it takes five minutes to set the drilling rig up,
And it takes five minutes to take the drilling rig down Yeah, and you preach a 20-minute sermon you got 10 minutes to drill. You can't drill very deep,
Yeah at all. You can barely get through the surface of someone the hardness of someone's heart. Mm-hmm. And so
And so all of those elements tend to be for me a little bit longer.
Introduction tends to be a little bit longer.
The body is obviously longer. The conclusion tends to be a little bit longer,
because I think that there's a.
I don't know.
We cheat people out of the depth of the experience of God's word when we assume that they can't
pay attention to something more than 20 minutes.
If you're preaching for 20 minutes because people don't pay attention for more than 20 minutes
then the problem is not them not paying attention.
The problem is, I mean, the word of God, we're not talking about something that's disengaged from someone's life.
If we as preachers do the hard work of understanding the critical connections and what the word of God
does and says into the applicable sections of people's lives today, right now,
then it is the most like foundationally applicable substance that there is known to man, right?
And it will take root if we give it time to.
So I just can't, I would, I...
I fear the day, that's like, or I shouldn't say that because I don't anticipate this
would ever like happen, but where like the elder team or, you know, the church as a whole
would be like, you need to preach for a half hour, tops.
That's the time allotted that you get.
I think I feel so strongly about this that I would be like, then you need to find a different pastor
because I'm not your man. I'm not the guy.
Like if that's what you want, if you want 20 to 30 minute sermons,
I am probably not the pastor that fits that dischurch or that desire or whatever.
I'm just not. I don't think I feel quite as strongly as you do,
Partly because I've been, I've done the 30-minute sermon for, I did that for two-plus years.
So, you know, and so I do think that there, it is definitely a different way of preaching.
And I think given the option, I would generally choose the longer for the reasons that you've
highlighted.
I do think, you know, like, and I'm not saying that there's not a room for, this is a kind,
of somewhat tangential and perhaps so esoteric or deep that anyone who's listening is not
very interested in this, but there is like a type of preaching that comes out in the
like 10-minute sermonic thought that, like, when I've given more informal, shorter sermons
that are like even shorter than 20 minutes there's a type of almost like.
Contemplative simplicity that sometimes comes out in that kind of writing.
And I've not known how to access that in a longer sermon as much as I know how to do it in a shorter sermon.
And I've personally reflected on the dynamics of that and tried to articulate that.
You obviously seem to know what I'm talking about. Yeah, well, because we do it sometimes here,
like Good Friday sermons, Christmas Eve,
and stuff like that, where we do a more meditative, reflective, like for lack of a better term,
devotional thought on the narrative or the story or whatever, and just kind of let it be what it is.
And sometimes that connects with people more.
Some of the sermons that people have told me that, oh, that was like the best.
I was like, that wasn't really even a sermon.
It was like a thought, you know? sometimes that's all it takes.
And so I'm very much a person of context, like what is it that I'm doing?
What's the goal? What's even the text? One of my favorite sermons was,
I think it was by, you know what, I'm not even gonna attempt because I'm not 100% sure of his name
and I can't pronounce it.
But pastor came to a conference and it was this big conference.
Was being like recorded and all this stuff and these pastors were coming and
it was kind of a bit of a flex to come in and do these big long sermons in this
conference. And he came, his text was.
Christ's exhortation to his disciples, does not your father in heaven know how to give good gifts,
if you as earthly fathers know how to give good gifts. Very simple kind of text. He didn't give
any, he's just like, I'm not going to give you any fancy illustrations or really clever stories,
because Jesus already did that. He simply took the parables that Jesus mentions there,
kind of retold them, and then he was like, the point of this passage is that all of you in this
room should pray more. You have not because you ask not. Let us believe that. We don't know the
mystery of how and when God decides to answer prayer, but it seems here very clear that God
wants us to seek Him more and pray more. He was done in 20 minutes, and then he walked off the
stage and the entire conference had no idea what to do. So they improvised like a giant gospel
performance for the next 45 minutes, and all the students who were there wanted to go home,
because we were required to be there. But I remember that sermon very clearly, and I remember
it being probably the best sermon I sat through that entire week. I sat through like a week of
like... I was listening to like three or four sermons a day during that conference, and that's
That's the only sermon I remember.
Yeah. Well, and it's interesting, too, because people approach sermons, not pastors, but people
in congregation approach sermons for different purposes.
Some want to be inspired, you know, they want the inspiring, like somewhat charismatic presentation. one.
To be educated. Yes Some want to be challenged and convicted. Mm-hmm.
And so and probably, you know a couple other Reasons that people yeah, or they want to approach it. Yeah, and so the question then becomes,
You know, is it the job of the preacher to meet each one of those?
Those expectations, you know, maybe not in like, oh, so-and-so has this expectation,
so I better, I better, you know, make, you know, meet their expectation.
But should there be some, you know, should our presentation be charismatic
from the standpoint of it being engaging?
Yes, it absolutely should. It is like cardinal sin of preachers to bore people with the word of God.
Like, come on now, right?
So yeah, we wanna have good presentation.
Do we want to educate people? Yeah, of course. In the word of God, do we wanna inspire people?
Yes. Do we want people to experience conviction?
Yeah, because godly conviction produces repentance, which leads to new life.
So we want those things. each one of those things is not in itself preaching. Education is not preaching. Inspiration
is not preaching. Conviction is not preaching. Those are byproducts of faithful preaching.
Right. And so you go about the act of preaching, understanding that people are going to either
Receive or not receive those things according to their own like willingness to hear them. Mm-hmm, but.
So, yeah, we said all that to say, Thursdays are our days off.
Or our last day and Fridays are our days off.
Oh, yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, Thursdays are our last days. And we often are very tired,
emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and then physically, because of the work. And so,
it's nice to have two days off in a row.
Yeah. Well, you know, this truth really hit me when we closed the church in Chicago and I
was looking for the position that ended up being here and came here. I was able to take a couple
of months off. It kind of ended up being a semi-forced sabbatical of types, although I did
end up doing different types of work during that time. While I was job hunting and one of the,
I just kind of collapsed for like a good couple of months. And that was, I got as, like during
that time, I got the sickest I had been in like any recent memory. I was like, just exhausted.
And in some ways, I look back now at my time in Chicago.
And this is really, this isn't like, this is just me. This is just me looking back and saying like,
I did not hold like good boundaries for myself.
And I went too hard for too long, and it wore me out in a way that like has taken me
It's taken me years to figure out how to not be that way.
And so it's like, like back to what you originally said, like, ultimately I agree with what you said.
Yeah, you can't go that hard for that long because you eventually do have to pay the piper.
And so that's, you know, you.
You do need to find a sustainable rhythm. Otherwise, you do end up kind of just,
crashing at some point. Well, we're not even I'm not even talking like.
This isn't even like a good self-care principle. This is biblical. Well, yeah,
it's one of the Ten Commandments, isn't it? You know, we're yeah, we're not talking about like,
well, if you if you can find it within your schedule, you're very busy doing everything
for God's schedule, try to honor Him by obeying one of the Ten Commandments.
Paul Yeah. Have we, if we talked about that before, how like sometimes the Sabbath is the one Ten Commandment that everyone thinks doesn't matter
anymore? Ken I mean, I don't think we've talked about it directly.
Paul Yeah.
Ken Like I mentioned something similar to it this past week. I've preached on the Sabbath many times,
You know, yeah, God does not, you know, God is not impressed when we abandon solitude,
and time with him in the name of serving the church or serving him. You know, it's not,
that's not impressive to God when we run ourselves so ragged that we
that we have literally not the physical or spiritual or mental or emotional capacity to be in.
Restful, life-giving relationship with him.
So, no, I don't know that we've talked directly about that, but it certainly is true.
Yeah, well, because I heard it for a long time.
People like to make a distinction of the Old Testament law, and they're like,
well, there's the 10 Commandments, which are the moral law, and those are universal, continue to be applied,
like, we should honor the Ten Commandments, and there's the rest of the stuff which is
mostly ceremonial, which was all fulfilled in Christ, and we are not necessarily bound to those things.
That's why we wear blended shirts and things like that, or eat seafood, or selfish bacon.
And so that's kind of a theological distinction that is often made, but one of the caveats
to that ends up being, well, all the Ten Commandments except for the commandment of Sabbath, because
they go and they look at the teachings of Christ, and they say, well, Christ says that
like, essentially, they make the interpretation of what Christ says when Christ teaches about the Sabbath.
He says, Sabbath is not, you were not created for Sabbath, but Sabbath was created for man.
They take that as a license to say it's a gift, and so I can either choose to pick that
gift up or I can choose to set that gift aside in the name of doing things, and it becomes
an excuse to not do the Sabbath.
How prideful and full of ourselves have we become to imagine that we would say no to to a gift of God.
Like, if Jesus were to walk in the room right now and say, Luke, Cameron, I have a gift for you.
And we've already talked about, like, okay, the gifts that the Father gives are immeasurably
better than any gift that our human fathers could give.
I've got a gift for you. We're good now. I mean, seriously.
Thanks, Jesus. Keep it. I'm pretty busy this week. We're just gonna keep going.
Yeah, I'm gonna keep going. I don't have time to open the gift experience what you have for me in this,
Come back next week and if I have enough time, we'll see and then he comes back next week like nope. Sorry, just I,
Too busy for it this week, too What in the Sam hell is going on?
In your mind When you can read a passage like that the you know Sabbath was
made for man. It is a gift, you know, for us. And for us to say, yeah, I know it's a
good idea, but it's just not practical with my schedule.
We have the freedom to use it if we want, but we don't need it.
Like I just, that mentality absolutely blows my mind.
And in the same regard, like my, you know, the heart of sin,
the flesh does want to rebel against it.
Want to rebel against it. You know, not even like...
Physically speaking where I'm like, okay. Well, I'm just gonna on my day off. I'm gonna go home and work all day,
I'm gonna mow the lawn and do the weed eating and like, you know, but do all that,
because you can certainly have days off and,
Still not be present to the Lord,
Right, but there definitely is like.
There is like Any day that we walk out of this office and we go home home, we know that there is... we are 100% confident that there's more than 40 hours
of work waiting for us when we come back into the office.
There is not a day where you and I sit and look at each other and say, gosh, Cam, what
should we do with our time? Wow.
I got all the work done last week, I don't have any left for this week.
I leave more work on the table to be done than I get done in any week.
The sinful temptation, at least for me, and I'm guessing at times for you, is to,
believe I can get it done. If I… Myself.
Myself. If I just crank harder, if I just go, if I maybe omit some of the space in my week,
If I just was to just hustle, if I just worked harder all the time, I could get it done,
and I could get it done better, and I could do it.
Nope. God has a way of telling us that he can't, that we can't.
Yep. There's a way of knocking that out of us. Yeah.
You can do nothing apart from me, says Christ. Yeah.
And so, what are we doing? If we're doing the things of ministry for God,
but we're not doing them with God.
Yeah. And then in that scenario, you're not actually even doing it for God,
you're doing it for yourself, to prove your worth, to prove your calling, to prove your,
gifting, you're no longer doing it for God because the things that we actually do for God,
we do in obedience to Him and not apart from Him.
And that, like this idea, what we ended up just talking about, the whole idea of concept of Sabbath,
isn't just for pastors.
To make that clear. Not at all. It's for everyone. It's for everyone.
Yeah. We. Jesus wasn't speaking, the Sabbath was not given for ministry leaders.
The Sabbath was given for humanity.
Yeah, so we tell our younger selves to Sabbath. Sabbath more.
Yep, Sabbath more. Yeah, I don't think we'll.
I don't think, you know, I don't know when I'll retire in ministry.
You know, I'll think I'll be, by God's grace, you know, it'll be like,
you know, I'll have like a 50-year career in ministry, maybe. Occupational ministry.
Right. It is hard when I like tell people that like, because I think technically I'm
I'm around five years of professional full-time ministry.
It doesn't feel that way because I've been so involved in church life and ministry and schooling and all of that.
So sometimes it feels like, has it only been five years?
It's a lot longer. I don't think I'll ever be done teaching the Bible,
teaching the word of God or shepherding people, whether I'm doing that as a pastor or-
Whether we're getting paid or not. Right.
But at the end of whatever my career, professional career will be, I don't think that I'm going to say, I really, really wish I would have just put more
hours in.
I think if I have a regret, it's going to be like, I didn't spend enough time
with my kids, didn't have spent enough time with my wife.
I didn't spend enough time with the Lord. Yeah.
You know, I think that's going to be the regret. if there's regret, and I just like looking forward,
like looking ahead, I'm like, I don't, I'm not gonna have that regret.
I refuse to have that regret.
I refuse to have my kids someday look at me and be like, you cared more about the church
than you did about us.
You know, there's, I think, I hope that this is, I think this is a broader experience and movement of the Spirit in our, in our generation of ministers and pastors and ministry leaders. But the, I remember, I had to take a class on like missions and history of missions and stuff like that. And we had to read like these, like biographies and stories of all of these great missionaries.
Went and did really awesome things to advance the gospel in foreign countries and things like that.
And one of the things that was almost laughable at a certain point was, like,
and their fifth wife died of malaria. Like, you were reading these stories and these.
Missionaries would get married and bring their kids on the mission field,
and then their entire family would die. Or to take it even and make it a little bit,
kind of closer to home, is if you look at the revivalists in America and you examine their
marriages, I cannot remember which particular revivalist. I think him and his wife, his final
wife. I think his first wife died at some point. And then I think his second wife, I think he,
they spent a laughable amount of time together. It was like a handful of weeks in actual person,
contact, and then they're buried in entirely different states. And I don't see those things.
I think you can look at those and say, oh, look at the sacrifices for the gospel.
And I'm just like, I don't know that God called us to sacrifice the calling of being fathers
and husbands and faithful in those areas on the field of.
Ministry. I think that's a misunderstanding of both Jesus' and Paul's teaching on singleness.
I see that as like, you neglected the teaching of singleness.
And in doing so, you caused great harm to others. And yeah, I don't think that's honoring.
No. You know, I think there's a, you know, and it's really sad when I do hear people who
grew up as pastor's kids or pastor's wives.
It was actually a really scary thing when, like, when Oxana and I were getting engaged
we were getting married, some people were coming and like telling us horror stories about like,
they're like, Oh, well, get ready for all of this miserable experience of being married to a pastor.
And I was like, No, that's not the life I want for her for me. You know, we were just, I was like,
Nope, like, we're gonna have different boundaries than that. That's not how we're gonna live as a
a couple and as a pastor. Yep. Right. Exactly. So, and that's the unique application to us. But like, to anyone, if you've
got a job, and you've got others to call a teacher, business owner, work, construction, or a nurse, or whatever, whatever you
are, right, you can fall into those same patterns and habits
doesn't matter.
Yep. fall to the urgent or fall to the sense of importance or significance, and neglect the other things in your life. Yeah.
But then also, if you are single, like, perhaps consider how that can be a gift to you, and to others. So we probably do
a whole podcast episode on single singleness. Yeah. I have lots of thoughts there. Yeah. Let's do it. Yeah. Okay. All.
All right, well, I think we're gonna end today. Yeah.
Wonder what we'll title this one. I don't know. Thoughts on preaching and Sabbath. Yeah.
As always, if you have any questions that you'd like to text into us,
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Music.
