The Heart Of A Good Pastor

January 11, 2026

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Do today. Our meditation text comes from 1 Corinthians 3, verse 6 through 7. And if we can read that together, these are the words of the Apostle Paul himself. Let us read. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who makes things grow. Amen. Amen. I hope you would meditate on that during the week as you do your fast. Hold on to it, it'll bless you. Then our main text, I want to encourage you to read all of Galatians chapter 4. But we're going to focus in on verse 19 and this narrative that Paul shares with the churches in the Galatian region. This one verse really stands out as his purpose statement for his life. And here's what he says My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed. And I want to talk about the heart of a good Catholic. Again, I'm not trying to toot my own heart, really not. But I am trying to show you my goal. And what I believe God has called me to do, what my assignment is, for Christ's community for each and every one of you. I do want to talk about the one work that I am confident that God is doing in all of us here. From the pulpit to the pew, from the oldest in the faith to the newlyborn. God's priority for all of us is found in the words of the Apostle Paul. And I want to help us get it with this story. Most of y'all know, if you've been with me for a while, that Pastor has a brown thumb. Lisa is the horticulturalist in our family. Plants flourish under her care, whereas plants come to die under my care. Lisa can create an oasis whereas I will create the Mojave Desert. And so while Lisa was on her mission trip to Ghana last month, she took a step of faith and left me in charge of her plants. She wanted to ship them out to somebody else. But she trusted me. And to be honest, I was determined to get this thing right this time. Previously, I did everything I was supposed to do, but I forgot to do one thing. I forgot to open the blinds and give the plants sunlight. Gave them water, gave everything they need. They didn't have any sunlight. And so this time I said to myself, I am not gonna make that mistake again. So Lisa left her instructions, and I was determined to get it right. So every day while Lisa was gone, first thing in the morning, I opened those cotton-picking blinds. I told those plants, you are going to thrive under my care. Every day I made sure those blinds were open. Well, does Lisa still look bad, y'all? Well, by the sixth day, the plants began to look a little skimpy and a little wretched. Of course, I said, that's on you, I'm doing my job. When Lisa got back, she took one look, she just looked at me and said, What did you do? I said, Slow your roll. I did everything you told me to do. I opened the blinds, I did everything. And then she asked that one Johnny Cochrane question that ensured my conviction. She said, But did you water them? And of course I said, I don't remember you saying anything about water. Of course, she just turned around and walked away. Next year, thank you, thank you. Tell somebody that's still Grace. Truth is, she cares about plants more than I do. But I must admit I learned something since. Lisa immediately began to care for her plants again. To me, they looked like it was over. It looked like they were ready for the trash can. But Lisa didn't give up on it. Because she recognized that though they looked wretched and haggard on the outside, there was still something striving, dry, uh, I'm sorry, thriving on the inside. Underneath the soil, for what she could not see, she knew there was life trying to bud. And even last night as we were talking, you can see she was there in front of her plants, caring for her plants, and they were thriving as if they had never been through anything. Of course, they tremble when I pass by them. But that taught me something. I learned very quickly. How do we know a pastor has a good card? And here it is, a good pastor knows that God is doing something underneath the soil of all of our lives. That we may not look the way we ought to look on the outside. But aren't you glad God doesn't focus on the outside? And he's always looking at what is on the inside. And a good pastor, if he's a good pastor, he works with God, with the work that God is doing on the inside of his own people. A good pastor doesn't force, doesn't cajole, doesn't threaten God's people, but supports and partners with God in the work he's doing in their hearts. That's why I think our meditation text is so appropriate here. Paul said, I planted Apollo's water, but it is God that causes the growth. Neither one who plants nor waters is anything. We're just servants in the kingdom. But at the end of the day, God is behind the scenes of our lives causing the growth. And I don't know what God is up to specifically in your life. But I can say this most confidently: God is doing something underneath the soil of your heart. He's growing and nurturing something to life. That's what Paul's trying to convey to the Galatian churches here. Paul is a good pastor. He has a heart of a good pastor. He wants them to know look, I'm not after your money, I'm not after your praise and accolades, I'm not ego chasing. I simply want what God is doing. I see God has planted something in you, and I'm trying to nurse it. I'm trying to birth what God has planted in your heart. When he writes this letter, he writes it out of frustration. He writes it out of bewilderment. There's a little bit of back and forth in the letter going on between Paul and this congregation. Paul here in the first three chapters, he kind of sets the record straight. And there's a sense that he doesn't apologize for what he's been preaching to the churches, that the gospel he preaches is a gospel of grace. He said, I love you, but I ain't gonna apologize for that. This gospel doesn't come by works, it's a gospel of grace. And then in chapter 4, his tone shifts to the relationship he had developed with the Galatians. He had been there on all three missionary trips. He had spent time there. There was a kinship there. And he reminds them of his original purpose in verse 19. He said, I was there because I wanted to see Christ formed in you. And I like the two metaphors he uses in this verse. The first metaphor is a picture of a woman in labor. What Paul says, with great pain, I brought you to spiritual life. You're saved because of my ministry. He says, like a mother that labors in pain to bring a child into the world, I labored, I worked to bring you to faith in Christ Jesus. But look what he says. He says, I am again in labor. And I'll deal with that a little bit later, but Paul is saying, I got to start all over with you again. I got to go back over the ABCs of the gospel. All my work has been destroyed. That's why I'm frustrated. That's why I'm bewildered as to what happened to you. Like a mother cares for their child. But then he uses a second metaphor to describe what God has done in them. On the one hand, he describes how God used them to bring them to faith. On the other hand, he flips the metaphor and shows them how God is nurturing their faith and what faith is. In the word he uses their form, it has the image and the picture of an embryo. And Paul here says God has planted an embryo in you, a Christ-like embryo. And that embryo is growing. In a word, God is doing a work of incarnation in every single one of us. That every believer has its own advent reality. And if we're not careful, we can abort what God is trying to bring to life. That's what Paul is concerned about. He says, I'm trying my best to bring the full term what God has planted in your life. And here's my thesis statement this morning. God is more focused on what is in you rather than what he has for you. How do you know God is working in your life? He's more concerned with what he has in you rather than what he has for you. Why? Because if you can never get right what is in me, he knows he'll never have a problem when he gives something for me. And the reason why we mess up what God has for us, because we're not focused on what God's trying to do in us. Y'all don't hear me today. And I really think this is a real issue, church. Hear me, hear me well. I think sincere Christians mistake the Christian faith as something like joining the local gym or like joining some social club. We think Christianity is like joining a fraternity or joining a sorority or becoming a member of a wholesale shopping club. The Christian faith at its core is about a God who has planted his life in our hearts. The life of God lives in us. And that life is not meant to be stagnant. Just as Lisa understood that those plants want to thrive, God has put something in our hearts that wants to thrive. It wants to grow. That's what Paul means when he said, if any man be in Christ, he's a whole new creation. That means is on the outside, he may look like a new uh the same person, but on the inside, God is recreating something brand new. John said something similar. He said in John 1, verse 12 through 13, yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision, or a husband's will, but born of God. We have the life of God living in us. That's what Paul, not Paul, but that's what Jesus meant when he was talking to Nicodemus. Nicodemus, we would say, was the standard bearer for a good person. Nicodemus was the standard bearer for religiosity. But Jesus said, no, that's not enough when it comes to a relationship with God. He says, no, verily, verily I say unto you, you must be born again. Born again is not a denomination. Born again is a reality that God procures in my heart when I place faith in him. To convert to the Christian faith is not to join a new religion or to find friendships or a new community. To convert to Christian faith is to be born of God. The very life of God lives in my heart. And God is working in my life to nurture and bring that to full term. Tell your neighbor, you're pregnant with Jesus. If you know Jesus. So a couple things I'm gonna get on out your way. Here's the first one. Number one, what does a good pastor do? He sees our detours. That's what a good pastor does. He sees the detours of life that can bring harm and damage to the Christ that lives in us. Paul says, just like there's some things that are not good for pregnant mothers, there's some guitars that are not good for us who carry Christ. That's what Paul means when he says, I am again in pains of childbirth. I gotta do this whole thing over again. Oh, I'm preaching too much, ain't I? I gotta do this whole thing over again. Give me a minute, y'all. Here we go. All right, here we go. We're good. Digital technology, here we go. He said, I gotta do this whole thing over again. Verse 9. But now that you know God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you're turning back to those weak and miserable forces? They were saved by grace, but they were trying to grow based on the law. They started on the right path and then they changed course. And they misunderstood grace. Paul says, look, if grace saves you, grace has to keep you. They left grace. Grace is the one that holds you and grows you and matures us. We like to talk about how grace saves us. But how many of y'all know grace will keep you if you let it? So when we talk about grace, here's what we mean by grace. The test of whether I've really received grace is how I respond to grace. It's not whether grace has been given to me. The question is, how is my reaction to grace? So many of us grew up with a mother that said, if somebody does something for you, what are you supposed to say? You're supposed to say thank you. But if somebody does something for you and you don't ever say thank you, guess what? You don't know anything about appreciation. That's what grace is. Grace is, I recognize you've done something in my life, therefore, the natural response is to show some kind of appreciation. That's why we worship. We're not worshiping trying to get something out of God. No, we're worshiping because God has already been good to us. We're responding to the goodness of God. In Luke 17, there were ten lepers. And they cried out to Jesus, have mercy on me. And Jesus said, Go on on your way and show yourself to the priest. And while they were going on their way to show themselves to the priest, all ten of them were healed. All ten were walking in one direction. But one leper said, Wait a minute, wait a minute. God's been good to me. He turned completely around and came back to give thanks to the Lord. And even Jesus was baptized. He turned into the disciple. Now, wait a minute. Did I hear ten lepers? And only one came back. I think God says the sunny thing again. I've been blessed so many folk, and only one came back. But if you know the God has done something in your life, are you the one that turned around and said, I'm coming back to blessing? I'm the same thing for what you've done in my life. Tell your neighbor it's not enough to receive grace. You gotta respond to grace. So let me let me let me let me let me let me let me walk through this this rough patch right here. I gotta walk through this. Fasten your seat belts. Trade tables in the upright position. What's our detour, Pastor? Here it is. We struggle with effort. That's our struggle. We think effort is opposed to the gospel. A lot of Christians make detours in their faith because a lot of Christians won't put any effort into their faith. Now watch this. Don't confuse effort with earning. I'm gonna say it again. We confuse effort with earning. God is opposed to earning, but he's not opposed to effort. Oh, I wish I had some women in here, some mothers that can testify that when it came time to give birth to that child, you had to put forth some effort. That the doctors was on your side, the nurses were coaching you, the husband was holding your hand, and you were thanking God for the epidural in your body, but even with all that, you still had to put some effort to get that child out of your body. And I'm here to tell somebody the same thing. If God's gonna do something new in your life, it's gonna take some effort in your life to produce what God is trying to do in your life. Oh, I'm gonna preach this thing. So hear me well. Prayer requires effort, worship requires effort. The word requires effort. Ministry requires effort. Giving requires effort. Compassion requires effort. Love requires effort. Forgiveness requires effort. Reconciliation requires effort. Repentance requires effort. Confession requires effort. Conflict resolution requires effort. Family requires effort. Penance requires effort. Making a difference requires effort. Singleness requires an effort. Marriage requires effort. Close requirement effort. God and the woman holding requirements and effort. God is opposed to money. Tell your neighbor, put your back into it. Put your back into it. Good pastor sees the detours. Number two, a good pastor envisions Christ formed in you. That's what he said. He says, until Christ is formed in you, spiritual formation is a process. Faith, you've heard me say it a thousand times. Faith is not perfection, but what? Y'all done heard me a thousand times, and y'all remember that. Faith is not perfection but a process. Too many churches expect perfection out of people. I can't change you. The Lord is the only one that can change you. That's why I gave you the meditation text. I can water, I can put something in the soil, I can I can put you in the sunlight. But how many of y'all know God is the one that does the change? So faith is not perfection. God already knows you and I can't be perfect. But we do have to put some effort in the process. It's a process, and the tension in the process is that we can rush it or we can stall it. And as pastors, many times we're guilty of rushing the process. They tell me that that when a rose buds, when a rose buds Blooms, that's what gives its beauty. But if you take a rosebud and you try to make it bloom before it's time, it'll die and never bloom. And a lot of times as churches, we try to rush this process. We rush it. But then also, too, we got to recognize God knows the pace that we need to be at. Some of us need a little pushing, amen. But there's something about slow cooking the process. Anybody know how to cook collard greens up in here? I'm just asking. You can't rush collard greens. Not good collard greens. Come on now. You gotta slow cook them bad boys. Cook them all the bitterness out. Cook them all the toughness out. Put some flavor in them. Y'all don't hear me today. See, that's what God's trying to do in my life. He trying to fast cook me in microwaves, but he's trying to slow cook me. Y'all don't hear me. And when he slow cooks me, he's slow cooks with the bitterness. He slow cooks all the elements out of my life. He looks like in the process. He knows how to do it. Here's what I'm talking about, y'all. We have to have a rule of life. Or better, a routine of life. It's called in the spiritual life a rule of life. And John Comer, he defines it like this a rule of life is a schedule and a set of practices and relational rhythms that create space for us to be with Jesus, become like him, and do as he did, as we live in alignment with our deepest desires. It's a way of intentionally organizing our lives around what matters most, God. John Comer. Just like many of us got a routine every morning. Every day. Anybody on here got children? Mine are grown, but still. They need attention how often? Every day. Somehow, if Christ is gonna grow up in us, every day you gotta feed. And trust me, he's hungry. And some of us, he's starving. Tell your neighbor, you catch that on the way home. So let me share, and these are these are not, I got a few minutes. Okay. Let me share some practices that helped shape me. I was gonna share some practices, and then the Lord said, No, just share what I did in your life. Then the Lord is good. I said, That show is a whole lot easier. So I'm gonna share how God, from the moment I trusted him years ago, when I was in my early 20s to today, how he continues to shape me, how he began to shape me, and how he shapes me. But it is God that gets in these processes. And the reason why I'm sharing them, because they're gonna be different for every person. I share mine, you say, okay, some of them may work for me, some of them may not work for you. But you need something every day, every day that shapes your life. So obviously, number one for me it was prayer. And I always took the heart, I've never been a real prayer warrior, but I've always been impressed. My goal was Daniel 6, where he prayed three times a day. So once in the morning, once before I go to bed, and one time during the day. It took me years, say neighbor, long years to get to three times a day. It was hard, but it was something I had to do every day. Even the days I didn't feel it, y'all. I had to do it, do it every day. And over the years, it began to become a part of who I am. And that's how it shaped me. Sometimes prayer is talking to God. Sometimes I would journal. Sometimes prayer is simply listening to God, hearing his voice. Sometimes prayer is talking with God. And here is not even talking about my own priorities, it's talking about what his priorities are. His priorities for the world, his priorities for this country, his priorities for the church, the universal church, his priorities for Christians. Praying about that. And then sometimes just being with God. Just relax my mind. Because these folk are getting on my nerve, anybody know the Lord will relax your mind if you just let him? That was prayer. That helped me. The second one, people. God had a way of just bringing people in my life that knew how to advise me with godly wisdom. A lot of good people. So many good people. On this one, I really missed my father. Because when my dad was called to preach, he never ever pressured me to be a Christian. He just accepted me for who I was. And that did more to convert me than anything. He reaffirmed his love for me, his support for me, but he never pushed me into being a Christian or even to be a minister. You got to do what God calls you to do. So people, as iron sharpens, iron sword, friend sharpens friend, Proverbs 27:7. The third one, the scriptures. And here's what I mean by this. You gotta read the word for yourself. We we we too much social media stuff out there about the word. I'm gonna say how Pastor Haynes used to say it. He said, the problem with the church is we have fallen in love with chewed up food. What do you mean by that? When the preacher preaches, I'm regurgitating what I've been chewing on all week. So really, you getting it second hand. He said, What God wants for all of us is to get it fresh and firsthand. That means stop running to YouTube, stop running to Instagram and find out what this pastor said or that pastor said. And you do need preachers to lead you and help you in your understanding. But at some point, you gotta read the word for yourself. And for me, when I read it for myself, I could hear God for myself. I didn't need anybody to tell me what God was saying. I don't need the preacher to give me a revelation. No, I said it like grandmama. No, he walks with me and talks with me and tells me I'm on his own. Well, this is what God told me to tell you. What he didn't tell me today. And when you know his word, you know when folks uh God has talked to them and when God has not said a word to them. And I'm telling you, 99%, not I shouldn't say 99, 90% of the stuff out there, God ain't said a word to these people. But you ain't gonna know that until you read it for yourself. And I ain't gonna go through all the programs. There are plenty of programs that'll help you through that in terms of getting into the word for yourself. And here what I mean by that is I'm not talking about academics. Because academics can make you arrogant. And there's a lot of pride and arrogant that masquerades Christianity in the church. Just flat out arrogant. You just think you know more than somebody. How is it that you can read the word and be meaner than the devil? I never understood that. No, the word is not about acquiring knowledge more than my brother. The word is about getting wisdom on how to live life. I don't study the word to master the word. I study the word to be mastered by the God of the Word. So the Word is not only a place in which I learn, I am gonna learn Bible history and theology and all that, but it helps me to see God's wisdom over time. And as I discover God's wisdom over time, I discover how God is working in my life. For solitude. This is more recent, not in my earlier years, but in my latter years, where I just get away and just sit silently before the Lord. Some will call it prayer, I call it solitude. It could be prayer, and just sit and allow God to speak to me. Means I gotta put that phone down. Turn it off. I challenge you during the fast. Can you turn the phone off for one day? If we can't, there's something wrong, y'all. And don't fool yourself. Every routine is shaping you somehow. So if your routine is to constantly pick up your phone every day, you're being shaped and formed by your phone. Imagine if you picked up prayer or the word the same number of times you pick up your phone. Some of y'all putting it down now, turning it off. Fasting. And I'm not a pro-faster. Um, I I don't like this time of the year every year. I'm being honest now. Damn, Lisa just laughs. How you gonna be a pre- I don't like it. I don't. Shoot. But every time I do it, God just he man, he speaks to me. And and I come out focused and I come out closer to him. Because it takes some sacrifice, it takes some surrender, it takes some denial. Um, community. Um John Oberg said it well, my we sin alone, but we heal together. Um here's the oxymoron about community. Your deepest wound can happen in church. Most of us will say amen to that. But your deepest healing can also happen in the same place. I don't know what it is about, gathered community by the Spirit of God. It'll heal a broken heart every time. And so community has shaped me. Witness, anytime I talk to somebody about the Lord, it seems like God is doing something in my life. Don't matter. Uh generosity, whether I give of my resources or my time, or I make a sacrifice in any form, it's like a divine encounter for me. I'm just saying for me. And then, of course, service, ministry, um, serving, um, serving and meeting the needs of somebody else. Those are those are the practices that have been habits that have been formed in my life. And I haven't done like all at the same time. Sometimes I do four or five, and I may do the other four and five. It just depends at different forms. But but we all need some kind of routine in our lives every single day that God uses to shape our lives. Let me give you the last one and I'm out of here. Good pastor remains patient with us. And that's what I think Paul had to learn more than anything. We see his patience come out of this in verse 20. Now I wish I could be with you now and change my tone because I am perplexed about you. I'm confused, I'm bewithered. But we see his patience, and he goes on in chapter 5 and talks about what it means to live under grace by walking by the Spirit. And so here, Paul understands that in the same way God is patient with us, we need to be patient with one another. And as a pastor, many times as pastors, we we rush the vision. We we we want to see it happen because we know what God has shown us. Now, some do it out of ego. Amen. I'm not gonna deny that, it's just what it is. But sometimes we can be impatient about what God is doing, and we have to remember that God has been patient with us. But I share this because I want us to know what it means to handle God's business. It's the business He's put in each and every one of us. And it's the business that I want to focus on the most discipleship, nurturing the Christ that is in us, that we might be fully formed and made like him. That's really all that matters. Because when we get Christ in us, we can take over the world. Can't nobody stop us. So I want to, I want to really, I want to really close this out so that you hear my heart on this. And I came across a story of a professional violinist who was giving a concert. He was renowned and well known, and he gave this concert, and when he finished, the crowd just jumped to their feet. And I mean they gave him a 15-minute rousing ovation, somewhere yelling encore. But the violinist bowed one time, walked off the stage in tears, as if he was defeated. Afterwards, somebody came up to him and he said, Why did you run off the stage in tears? Why did you walk off the stage in tears? That has to be by far the best performance that we've ever seen. He explained to him, he says, Yeah, a lot of people were jumping up and it was received well by the community. He says, But there was one man that was sitting in the audience and he didn't stand. He was my trainer and he was my father. And if he wasn't happy, nothing else matters. If my father's not happy with me, none of this ever matters to me. Lord. Still amazes me that this is where I am. Forgive me for the times that you've been incredibly patient with me. And I've been impatient with you. Thank you that you didn't give up on me. Because you saw the Christ that you had planted in me. I want to deal with Christ's community. I want to deal with the men in this church, the wonderful godly women in this church. Students and the children. Because Lord, I believe just like Lisa, you planted something underneath the soil of our hearts. And even me, I sometimes don't understand. But I know you do. And so lead us, Lord, to be a church where Christ is formed in us. Lead us to be a church where we handle your business, which is that spiritual formation in our life. We might really give glory to you. That the world may see Christ in us. In Jesus' name. If you would, as the Lord leads you, just take a moment before the Lord's supper. Bow your head and pray about what the Lord has ministered to you. This point in your fast. Not fasting. This is how God is speaking to you. You can finish the seven days if you'd like. Love for you to join it. Let God just minister to your heart. Ask him how he wants to grow the Christ that is in you. What is he doing in your life?