10 Powerful Spiritual Practices to Help You Stand Strong in Ministry

Many leaders fall not because they were uncalled, but because they tried to fight spiritual battles with exhausted souls.

The goal of ministry is not merely to start well , but it is to finish well.

Paul’s testimony should become every leader’s prayer:

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” ( 2 Timothy 4:7)

Remaining standing in ministry requires:

   •   intimacy with God

   •   spiritual awareness

   •   emotional health

   •   supportive relationships

   •   perseverance in hidden seasons

When these foundations remain strong, leaders can survive storms that destroy others.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the MC Mann. Behind the service of the smells and the services of white woman. The weight of the couple. The weirdness of the soul. And the fight to stay faithful when strength is love. This is a space for honest conversations. People could choose and real encouragement for those standing and silent battles. If you've ever felt tired, stretched, or alone in ministry, you're not weak. You're in a fight. And you don't have to fight it alone.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Welcome to another interesting episode of the Unseen Battle. I'm your host, Apostle Gene M. Dantis. Today we are going to talk about ten practical spiritual disciplines that help leaders remain standing in ministry, even in seasons of pressure, loneliness, and spiritual warfare. Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his mind. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness, and against spiritual wickedness in high places. Ephesians chapter six verse ten to twelve. You know struggling pastors, leaders and intercessors often fight two battles. One is the visible responsibility of ministry and two the invisible war over their soul. Many pastors fall not because they lack the calling, but because they lack sustaining rhythms for the long war. The key to an effective ministry is not to trend and disappear after a while, but it is to stand and remain faithful until the end. The first spiritual principle that helped me stand until today is the practice of intimacy with God before ministry. This is where you guard your private life with God above your public ministry. Many ministers slowly replace intimacy with God, with activities, with sermons, with counseling, with meetings and spiritual warfare. And all those things are good, but they can crowd out the very relationship that sustains the calling. Nothing is to take the place of intimacy with God. Jesus also practiced intimacy. It is written that very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place where he prayed. According to Mark 135, listen, your secret place is not preparation for ministry, but it is survival for ministry. Let me repeat that. The first one you need to understand that daily quiet times in God's presence is not sermon preparation. Number two, you need to pray honest prayers, not just spiritual language. Number three, read scripture for your soul, not only for teaching. And number four, practice silence before God. There are times you need to just go there and quietly wait for the spirit. This takes time, but at long range, it is a powerful practice where you go and you wait for the spirit. Write that down. A leader who neglects the secret place will eventually minister from emptiness instead of overflow. The second spiritual practice is to develop spiritual awareness. Accept that ministry includes seasons of hidden warfare. Many leaders think something is wrong when they experience deep resistance, discouragement, or spiritual heaviness. But no, scripture reveals that spiritual resistance often confirms calling. Ephesians states, for we wrestle not against flesh and blood. Pastors and intercessors often face these problems. For example, unusual discouragement, isolation, attacks on their families, fatigue, and burnout. And here's a big one. Spiritual dryness. And last but not least, misunderstanding from people. Sometimes you may be misunderstood by even your family member, not to mention the church members. So these are signs of spiritual opposition, not failure. Get a hold of yourself. You're not failing. You're being opposed because you are effective. Whenever you feel stressed, discouraged, or under attack, always put on the armor of God. That is something you need to do on a daily basis. Next, always remember to pray before reacting. The enemy will push you overboard. Pray before you make any hastily decisions. That's gonna preserve you. It's going to protect you at long term. Number three, try to design spiritual battles instead of personalizing everything. Yes, it's happening, but listen, there's always an invisible world affecting you as a preacher. There's always invisible arms pushing you overboard as an intercessor. There's always a challenge for you to overcome. And many of time, its sources is always coming from the spiritual realm. This is what you need to remember. Not every problem in ministry is relational. Some are spiritual battles around your assignment. So as long as you are under assignments from God, there will be spiritual attacks. You need to be discerning. And that is one of the greatest advantages you will have over preachers, intercessors, and leaders that are not quote unquote discerning. They think everything is naturally happening around them, where there is a spiritual world that is in operation at the same time as the visible world. So if you are discerning, you'll become more aware. You will develop the spiritual awareness needed every time to overcome the wires of the enemy. Refuse the trap of comparison. Many pastors quietly suffer because they measure their ministry against others. Social media magnify this problem a lot. Other churches look larger, it makes other ministries appear more successful, and other leaders seems more celebrated. But no, calling is assignment specific. David was anointed king in 1 Samuel chapter 16, but he returned to the field with sheep. His public platform came years after his private anointing. Here's what we need to understand in comparing ourselves with other ministries. One can become insecure. Number two, one can become jealous. And number three, discouraged. You can lose your focus easily because instead of focusing in doing God's work, you focus on looking at what other preachers are doing. Instead, whenever you feel like that, ask yourself these two questions. What did God ask me to build? Because assignment is specific, calling is specific as well. The second question: Who did God send me to shepherd? Because we cannot all shepherd the same people. It is our orientation and our specific in ministry that will determine the kind of people that come and follow us. Keep that in mind. We are all shepherd, but hired to fulfill different purposes. We are all shepherd, but hired to fulfill different purposes. Faithfulness here matters a whole lot more than visibility. Remember this faithfulness matters a whole lot more than visibility. Don't fall into the trap of comparison. Next, that is number four. Build a circle where you are not the strong one. Many pastors have people they lead, but very few have people who lead them. So you gotta have somebody who can speak into your life. When you make mistakes, that will stand up to you and tell you, so you were wrong, you should fix this and fix that. Keep in mind that isolation is one of the most dangerous places for spiritual leaders. This is what you need. You need a mentor or a spiritual father or mother. You need a trusted peer who can speak honestly to you, and you need intercessors praying specifically for you. And last but not least, a safe place to confess your struggle. Because you will make mistakes, you will fall under temptation, or you need to confess, you need a safe place to confess your struggles. Check this out, even Moses needed Aaron and her to hold up his arm. According to Exodus 17, verse 12. Strong leaders who try to carry everything alone always collapse under invisible weight. Here's what you need to remember humility is not weakness, but it is protection. Let me repeat that. Ministry wounds are real. Pastors and intercessors often face betrayal, criticism, rejection, misunderstanding, and spiritual exhaustion. So many leaders suppress these wounds because they believe that they must always appear strong. But no, very pain eventually becomes bitterness, emotional numbness, burnout, compassion, fatigue, etc. Healthy processing includes what? Prayerfully lament. Like David in the Psalms, he would lament all the time. Trusted conversation with someone whom you can trust. You can also do journaling of what is happening. And last but not least, intentional rest. You will not believe what rest can do. Rest is extremely important because it prevents you from burning out. It prevents you from, you know what, becoming overloaded. God never asks leaders to be emotionless. Even Jesus wept at one point in his ministry. So try to understand the pain while you are also expressing it in a way that is conform, that is helpful to you, to prevent you from going under the water, to prevent you from drowning. So know that our Savior Jesus Christ also showed emotion. So you can also show some emotion as well if you're going through a painful situation. The sixth spiritual principle to help you stand firm in the ministry is to maintain rhythms of rest and renewal. Hear this burnout in ministry is rarely caused by work alone, but it is usually caused by work without restoration. God built rest into creation. For example, in Mark 227, it is written that the Sabbath was made for men. So practical rhythm that protects leaders is crucially important. Because if you are an intercessor, if you are a pastor, if you are a leader, you need to be rested on a regular basis. You need to be rested on a regular basis. Because the enemy is going to wait for you when you're tired and take you under. The enemy is gonna wait for you when you lack sleep to take you under. You cannot wage good warfare while your body is tired. So therefore, you have to make sure that you have good practical rhythms that protect your leadership. For example, what you can do is on a weekly set one day apart for rest. Secondly, you can have seasonal retreats where you go and spend time with God. Third, you have to make sure you take care of your physical body. Get some regular sleep, exercise regularly. Um, fourth, time with family. You gotta have times with your family. Also, that helps bring joy to you because these kids grow up so fast. What you can do now at 25, you cannot do it at 35. What you can do at 35 cannot be done at 45. Yes, you can do it, but it's not gonna be the same strength. Last but not least, make sure you have periods of spiritual renewal because you're gonna fight, because there's gonna be an intense war around you, because there's an intense war around you that requires for you to renew yourself on a daily, to renew your mind on a daily, to renew your prayer on a daily basis, otherwise, you will be spiritually dried, you will be burned out. So, hear this: rest is not laziness, it is obedience that protects longevity. Rest is not laziness, but it is obedience that protects longevity. So the more you rest, the better you can do ministry. The less tired you will be, and the more effective you will be. So make sure you set some times for spiritual renewal, make sure you put some time aside for rest and restoration. The seventh spiritual practice to help you stand firm in the ministry is remember your original calling. During difficult seasons, leaders forget why they started. You need to revisit the moments when God called you. If you are to be effective in the ministry, you cannot be a forgetful person, you cannot be an imitator of anybody because ministry is specific. Ask yourself these questions. What did God speak to me in the beginning? What burden did he place in my heart? Who was I called to serve? If you cannot answer these questions on a daily basis, you don't have a mission, you don't have a clear vision, because these things, these two things, the mission and the vision that helps you helps you find. Focus in the ministry. Paul encouraged Timothy to stir up the gift within him. According to 2 Timothy 1:6, fend into flame the gift of God, said the Apostle Paul. Your calling must be revisited, remembered, and rekindled every day. Know your statement, know your mission, know your vision. It will tell you why you are called and what kind of mission that you are undergoing. The eighth spiritual practice that will help you remain strong in ministry is to fight to keep your heart soft. That's a big one. One of the greatest danger in ministry is hindering of the heart. This is where you feel betrayed. This is where you have gained disappointment. This is where you know you experience criticism, and there you will be exhausted. Then you can become cynical, you can become distant, you can become emotionally guarded. So you have to make sure you watch out for those things because you cannot do ministry with a heavy heart. You are somebody who's in the middle of a spiritual warfare, you cannot do ministry bitterly. So you have to always try to cultivate a soft heart. Somebody hurts you, but you're not gonna let that take you under. After you cried, after you go to the corner, make sure now you forgive. You may not be able to forget right away, but make sure you forgive so that you can continue to do ministry the way you're supposed to. Ministry requires a shepherd's heart. So you cannot say, Oh, that sheep hurt me. I'm not going to take care of that one. No. You are called for everybody, even the bad sheep. How can you protect yourself? How can you develop a soft heart or tenderness by staying in worship? Worship. There are times when you're hurt, go worship, find a secluded spot in the house, go to your church, find a corner somewhere. Go ahead and begin to worship God. The next thing you can do is to pray for the people who hurt you. Pray for them. And at times the prayer is not going to be God, go get them, attack them, kill them, destroy them. No. At times you ask God to forgive them. In the case of Jesus, he says, forgive them, Father, for they do not know what they do. Another thing that is interesting you can do is practicing forgiveness. 77 times 7, you have to forgive. That's the command of Jesus. Forgiveness is important. Even before you would give your offering, put the offering at the altar and then now go and reconcile with the person that you have a problem with and then not come back. Jesus made it clear that we need to be forgiven. We need to forgive somebody. How many times have God forgiven you before? You gotta remember that yourself. You're not exempt as a preacher, as an intercessor, as a leader from forgiving people. You need to be an example in this domain. I know how hard that can be myself. But this is something that I have practiced. Not because I'm perfect, but because I have come to the realization that unless I forgive somebody who hurts me, I cannot effectively minister to that person. So therefore, I have to forgive the person. Remember this a hardened leader may continue to work, but his spiritual authority slowly fades over time. So it's to your advantage that you keep your heart softened, that you practice forgiveness, and you try as much as you can to move on from any hindrances that can cause you to become beater. The ninth powerful spiritual practice that will help you stand out in the ministry and remain for a long time. Oh mind, this is a big one. Is to learn to separate yourself from your ministry. Your identity is not your church, your identity is not your platform, your identity is not your influence, nor is your identity your title. You are first and foremost a son or a daughter of the Most High, and that is your identity. Here's what is crucially important to understand. When leaders' identity become tied up to ministry success, leaders experience emotional collapse when ministry struggles. See, in the life of Jesus, we can see that he was grounded. His identity was first and foremost the Son of God. Before he began ministry, he set that straight. So you can see in Luke 3, verse 22, you are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased, said God. Jesus was first and foremost a son. So if you are in the ministry, try to become that first before you escalate yourself in all the acclamations, in all the achievements, money, expensive cars, expensive house. Those are not really the sign that you are a son of God. No. Basically, is where you learn to control your identity and also become more intimate with God because you can own the world and you don't have God. You don't have an identity when it comes to uh in heaven, you don't have that. So this happened before ministry, before crowds, before preaching. Learn to identify your identity before miracles, before crowds, and before preaching. That is very important so that you know nothing shakes you, nothing made you but God, nothing is crucially important, or nothing is more important to you than cultivating a relationship with God that's gonna give you your identity. Now, write that down. Leaders must learn to live from being loved, not from being needed. Because you might be doing ministry, you're helping everybody, but you're not needed. You might be doing ministry, and you're not even loved by certain people in your congregation, but they come every day, they receive the grace, they are kept by the grace over your life, but deep down on the inside, they don't really love you. Like you think they would love you and be, you know, loyal to you. No, because they are being pushed by the enemy, they are being manipulated by the enemy, so therefore, they may not even love you. So now, but understand that God loved you indefinitely, so that is the reason why you must learn to live from being loved by God, not from being needed. The number ten, last but not least, spiritual practice to help you stand in the ministry. My God, this is the biggest one of all. You need to learn to persevere through invisible seasons, leaders, preachers and intercessors, every ministry journey includes hidden seasons where nothing seems to move for you. But God does his deepest work in hidden places. Now, this is very powerful because you can take your life over thinking, you can spend sleepless nights just trying to understand why things are not working on your behalf. You know how many people develop sicknesses due to stress in the ministry, and for you now to really putting a daily stress on top of what you're already encountering in the field is a big problem. So if you can understand that I need to persevere through invisible seasons because it's an invisible war, every ministry journey includes hidden seasons where nothing seems to move, nothing seems to work, then you will rest at peace knowing that I'm going through one of the seasons, but God does his deepest work in hidden season, he's preparing you, that's what he's doing. You may say, How long? He's been preparing me for 20 years, for 30 years, my beloved. The person who's speaking to you right now, God has been preparing me for the past 24 years. We just celebrated 24 years in the same church. I'm waiting for God. He says, wait on the Lord, he shall raise you to inherit the land. No matter how long it takes, I'm going to wait for God. David had the field. Joseph had the prison. Paul, on the other hand, had the desert. Jesus had the wilderness. In Luke 4, we see before public ministry, Jesus came out of the desert from a 40-day, 40 nights prayer. Then he was tempted by the devil. Now, if these key people that we read every day, we pray David every day in the Psalms, we also use Joseph as examples of somebody who exemplified faithfulness as a typology of Jesus Christ. If we study Paul, his great ministry, his leadership, if we are truly disciples of Jesus, if Jesus came out of the wilderness, ladies and gentlemen, we will also experience the wilderness. But this is not the end of our ministry. This is not a place where we stop producing. This is not a place where we stop trusting God, but it's a place where we understand that we are being prepared by God. There are four benefits to hidden seasons that I want to talk about with you. Deeper character is developed while you are going through your hidden seasons. Number two, you develop spiritual authority while you're going through your hidden season because you will pray more, you will search for God's face at a highest level, you will trust, you will grow in your relationship with the Holy Spirit. While you are waiting, He's teaching you how to stand, how to pray, how to make powerful declarations, how to command the bones to become alive. And number three, you're being refined in your motives. So sometimes it's good for us to really understand. We fall here, we get up there, we fall there, we get up over there. But you know what? Every time that you go through a season, you can look back and remember where God has taken you from. And then your motives is renewed on a daily basis, knowing that this is not the end of my ministry, no, it's the end of my life. Last but not least, hidden season will teach you to depend upon God. God is not going to promote anybody who's not totally dependent upon him. So when you go through hidden seasons, you've exceeded everything you know, what to do, your strategy, or the things that you have imitated from the pastor next door who seems to be doing well, and nothing really works, or the vision that God gives you for five years, and you think you can make it work right away. So once you exceeded all these things, guess what? Now you will learn how to totally depend upon God and you say, God, whenever you want to do this, I'm ready. So, nevertheless, I've already enrolled. I am enrolled in the army of the Lord, and I've come thus far, and I will not look back, and I will not look to the left nor to the right. You're a good God, and you know what you're doing, you know what I need to succeed, and you know how long it's gonna take me to succeed. Jesus was prepared for 30 years, for three years of ministry. So, you know, many a times, you know, um we wait for God because we don't know exactly what he's gonna do. So the key while you're going through your hidden season, your invisible seasons, learn to totally depend upon God. Now, remember this. If you remain faithful in the hidden seasons, God will often entrust you with greater influence later. The key is to be faithful with the little things that He has given you. That's what scripture says. If you remain faithful in the hidden seasons, God will often entrust you with greater influence later. My fellow intercessors, pastors and leaders, please remember that leaders fall not because they were uncalled, but because they tried to fight spiritual battles with exhausted soul. Very important conversation today. I want you to remember also the goal of ministry is not really to start well, it is to finish well. Another thing you gotta remember from the life of the apostle Paul, he displays the testimony from the beginning to the end that he was called, and he remained faithful until the end, as he declared in 2 Timothy 4 7. He said, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have kept the faith. But a powerful thing to remember that the apostle Paul was not just talking, but he lived the life. In this podcast today, we learn that intimacy with God is extremely important, and we have to also develop a spiritual awareness, and also um we have to understand that uh emotional health is important to continue in ministry. We have to develop supportive relationships. Last but not least, we have to persevere in hidden season. I pray that you are blessed as you fight the unseen battle, as you stand tall to keep up the kingdom of God, whether you're suffering or not, listen. Remember that it's not the end until it's finished, it is not the end until you say, just like the apostle Paul, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have kept the faith. That's when everything is finished for you. I'll see you on the next podcast. Until next time, stay blessed, fight the invisible war. Remember that God is on your side.

SPEAKER_00 41:25

Thank you for listening to the unseen battle. If today's episode names something you've been carrying in silence, let this be your reminder. God sees the fight, he honors your faithfulness, and he strengthens those who keep showing up. You are not failing, you are enduring. You are not forgotten, you are being informed. Until next time, stay rooted, stay faithful, and remember grace is still sufficient for the unseen battle.