We must take time to mediate not just on our own pastoring but on the incredible responsibilities that most pastor’s wives have each week. 

My wife and I began to pray intentionally that the Lord would send replenishing relationships that would loosen me up and lighten my load. And he did. This experience has been life-giving.

At the end of the day, loving our spouse through darkness means doing everything we can to make sure they know they are loved.  Sometimes this means speaking hard truths to them in love, but many times this means entering into their state as a listener and a lover.

In pastoral ministry and in our Christian walk in general, we can easily ignore or lose sight of the reality of Spiritual warfare because it is an invisible battle. Paul’s plea to the church at Ephesus and to us today is, “Don’t become so sophisticated that you think people are your enemy or that you can become sanctified by sheer will-power.”

However fascinating and powerful the Bible is there are some days when our heart is as cold as Yakutsk, Russia. When our hearts are this way, we find ourselves reading the Bible in order to check it off our “I really do love Jesus list.” As Christians, let alone as pastors, this is a daunting and dangerous place to be. Being cold towards the word of God can lead us to disobedience, which can lead us to destruction. D.L Moody once said, “The Bible will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from the Bible.”