To Do The Best With What We Have: A Counselor’s Meditation

Posted byChaplainmikePosted inSermons and Devotions, Theologia

crucifixion.jpgThe following incident is fictionalized from real experience.

I look at my watch. It’s time for a counseling appointment. I clear my desk, bring in the extra chairs and wait.

My appointment arrives and the conversation begins. This is a first time conversation, with someone I don’t know. I spend a lot of time listening. Then questions. More listening. I try to put what I’m hearing into some kind of order; to make some kind of helpful response.

I’m not a quick thinker. My feelings are always way out in front of my thoughts. So I have to be cautious in counseling to be sure I’m doing what’s needed and helpful.

My counselee says the conversation has been helpful. He leaves. It’s been an hour and fifteen minutes. Longer than I like, but not unusual for a first conversation.

What did I hear? I heard what it means to do the best with what you have, as God brings all things into himself through Jesus Christ.

I hear about a broken marriage. Silence. Distance. Public pretense. I hear about broken children. The fear of what’s next and the impact of what has already been. I hear about ministry; a ministry that goes on under stress that’s unimaginable to me.

I hear about faith and its stumbling steps to do what is right. I hear of guilt, the certain knowledge that one has fallen short. I hear the cry for restoration of broken relationships; the longing for Christian community and the church to be what family and friends have failed to be.

I hear about secrets and the reluctance to speak of them. I hear of the learned response of looking away; the habit of staying busy; of attending to “real life” and never looking at the inner world. I hear of the pain of sin’s lingering work, its blindness creating deception and its deep roots that drive us away from God, others and even ourselves.

I hear of persistent belief in God, prayer, the Bible, the work of the Spirit. I hear the ache for a pronouncement of forgiveness.

I hear the mystery of God’s call to be a servant and a minister when life is broken. I hear the mystery of God’s presence in the midst of brokenness that is not healed and darkness that does not lift. Yet, I hear of love for others and a simple, loyal, persistent love for Jesus and for the people Jesus loved.

I hear about doing the best you can with what you have, even when what you have is broken, wounded and bleeding from our human frailties and cruelties.

The world loves to point out hypocrisy among Christians. I want to point out the inexplicable, amazing absurdity of people who continue on with Jesus when any rational, reasonable person would abandon all hope. Of course, love is not reasonable or rational. Love suffers long, all the while rejoicing in the truth.

If you are a person who believes that all ministers and their families are picture postcards, let me break this to you gently: many ministers and their families are living in hell, and you don’t know it. Perhaps right in front of you. For them, the ride to church to face you may have filled them with fear that somehow you might see past their facade and into the failure and hurt.

The tendency these days is to project the image of the minister as young, absurdly happy, socially perfect and free from care and hang-ups. In fact, many ministers are living lives of pain and facing situations that would make you wince, if not curse. The price of being the shepherd of Christ is often high; so high ordinary persons could seldom stand to see it.

Perhaps some Christians are masochists. Or truly warped from being around so much need and paying too little attention to their own lives. I cannot say what is motivating an individual person to carry burdens that would break others, and do to it for the sake of Christ, his gospel and his church.

Part of me wants to say “Go fix your marriage. Be 100% available to your kids. Let the ministry go for a while.” That’s probably very good advice.

But another part of me senses that brokenness is part of ministry, and it is not for me to say to God or another person what forms of brokenness should stop the show, and what others can be carried on and through.

I do know that my eyes are opened, again and again, to the immense pain that surrounds me in the Christian family. So many of God’s servants are hurting in their body, families, marriages and in ways I cannot label or identify.

Yet these are some of God’s best servants and most Christ-filled saints. Some of his most useful, loving people. The crucible does not need to be approved by me or you to be effective. God chooses his own instruments, preparing, sharpening and equipping them as He chooses. His agenda is Jesus. Mine would be comfort, wholeness, happiness and so forth, with Jesus as the end result. God is only interested in making us like Jesus.

So the cross, and the instruments of crucified glory, are his doing. I am a listener; an observer.

I bow my head and pray for what I’ve heard and seen. I will do so many times in the future as I realize I am watching, in the midst of pain, a kind of holiness that is only a rumor for me.

We do the best with what we have given to us, or what we have left over or with what still works after the latest wreck. And God forms Christ in us, brings Christ through us, glorifies Christ in us and all in all.

In such colors, the Spirit paints the Incarnation every day, and presents the painting to the Father. And each picture looks more and more like the Jesus we have never seen with our eyes.

Or have we?

16 thoughts on “To Do The Best With What We Have: A Counselor’s Meditation”

  1. Having lived on both sides of the thin divide you have described, what filled me most with wonder and encouragement (as both the wounded and the wounded healer) is your amazing statement of hope at the “absurdity” of continuing on. I get it. Despite the repeated efforts to prove to God was a bit nuts in His pursuit of me, He quietly, stubbornly, kept pursuing. I could try to pretend to be somebody else, but at the end of the day, I was still His, and still called by Him.

    Having progressed through my self-image models from David (I’ve blown it and found grace) to Samson (I’m out of control) to Saul (I’m completely crazy) to Paul (the chief of sinners, who is who he is by the grace of God), I am now free to say to other pastors and their families: “The end of the story hasn’t been told about you yet.”

    Thank you for the most profound description of this dynamic I have ever read.

    Like

  2. Thanks for this post. I linked you to a pastor’s wives forum, and 14 women responded having read your post with tears, goose bumps, or generally a feeling of relief that someone understands.

    Like

  3. I turned 60 Thursday with some 32 years of service as a pastor. My wife and I talked a little about retirement which is only a few years away. She talked about us starting some kind of ministry for pastors and families who face the very issues that you discussed so well. I like the idea, and we will continue to pray, discuss, and share the idea with others to get insight and wisdom that they may have. We have had pain along the way, but have also been blessed with an incredible group of friends, most of whom joined us last night for a birthday celebration, including our bishop.

    So, we will be asking God to lead us in this ministry and would appreciate any advice, insight, suggested resources, etc.

    Like

  5. Michael:

    Very good post. Such honesty wouldn’t be permitted under the gospel according to Osteen: something is obviously wrong with your inner-communication.

    Paul said that works not performed in faith are sin. Our works are always imperfect and are only sanctified by the blood of Christ. I think this is often left out of American evangelicalism, to the destruction of both pastor and parishoner equally. If pastors feel under the thumb to be supermen, it’s no wonder they burn-out so quickly. Parishoners should preach gospel to their pastors, as much as pastors should preach gospel to them. (Ah, liturgy to the rescue again: “The Lord be with you, congregation.”…”And also with you, pastor.”)

    Like

  6. The tendency these days is to project the image of the minister as young, absurdly happy, socially perfect and free from care and hang-ups.

    i.e. what Totem to Temple called “Shiny Happy Christian (TM)”.

    Well, I’m not “Shiny Happy”. I’ve never been wrapped all that tight, and I know it. Sometimes the only thing that keeps me going is what the Marines call “Charlie Mike”: Continue Mission.

    Like

  8. Thank you Michael. I get very discouraged in my own brokeness as I consider what God has called me to. Your words cut through to the quick of what’s underneath. Thanks again.

    Like

  9. Another home run! Man, brother this article and the other recent one that you wrote about not quitting have been very, encouraging to my soul. Have you considered writing a ‘Pastoral Theology’ handbook? 🙂

    Like

  11. “His agenda is Jesus. Mine would be comfort, wholeness, happiness and so forth, with Jesus as the end result. God is only interested in making us like Jesus.”

    There are people in my life who honestly believe God’s will is for his people to be comfortable. I don’t know how they explain the vast numbers of Christians worldwide who have little or nothing, or Paul’s constant, uh, “discomfort,” but it’s the sort of thing that makes me wonder what the local pastors are reading as they prepare their sermons.

    Like

  13. Thank you, Michael. I am relatively new to you blog and appreciate your writing a lot. And this is the first time I am saying “thanks” to you, though I had to do it much more earlier 🙂

    This post of yours has helped me to think more deeply about our struggles as Christians. It helped me not to judge others who I think are acting like hypocritical pharisees when in fact they are struggling to balance between ministry and their own lives before God.

    May God help all of us to remind ourselves the gospel of the forgiving and saving grace of Jesus so that we never lose our comfort in Christian ministry.

    Like

  15. wow–that was stated so clearly. I think that it could be further applied to most, if not all, Christians in the church. Each Christian is supposed to use his gift for the benefit of others, and they, likewise, struggle the same stuggle you have so graciously expounded on this post. What you have explained reminds me of Henri J.M. Nouwen’s, The Wounded Healer. Thanks.

    Like

Leave a comment