{"id":274,"date":"2018-04-20T06:55:41","date_gmt":"2018-04-20T13:55:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/?p=274"},"modified":"2018-04-20T06:55:41","modified_gmt":"2018-04-20T13:55:41","slug":"praiseworthy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/?p=274","title":{"rendered":"Praiseworthy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Rod Long<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Do you want to know what\u2019s especially hard about being a pastor?<\/p>\n

The praise.<\/p>\n

If that sounds weird, let me explain. Believe it or not, pastors are as insecure and unsure of ourselves as the next guy. We have that same voice in our head constantly second-guessing ourselves and telling us that we\u2019re not good enough. \u201cI can\u2019t believe you made anyone get up out of bed this morning for THAT sermon.\u201d \u201cHow on earth did you NOT think to apply THAT passage in that conversation, you bonehead?\u201d \u201cYour seven year-old could counsel couples better than you.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so, as you might imagine, when you tell us after the service, \u201cNice sermon, pastor,\u201d it feels great. For a few moments, your encouragement and affirmation shut out our insecurity and we\u2019re on cloud nine.<\/p>\n

But then something else can happen. There\u2019s another voice. It isn\u2019t the voice of insecurity, but a different voice.\u00a0 Just like that, a word of encouragement or a genuine compliment can send our insecurity packing and open the door to a most unwelcome, yet all-too-frequent guest: the voice of pride. \u201cWell if he said THAT about my sermon, then my preaching must not be too shabby.\u201d \u201cIf everyone nodded their head in agreement at my suggestion during the meeting, then maybe I AM a pretty good leader.\u201d \u201cThey don\u2019t ask just ANYONE to write for this publication or to speak to that group.\u201d<\/p>\n

So why is this hard? Praise feels good, and it\u2019s nice to be liked, but we didn\u2019t become pastors for more likes. We didn\u2019t become pastors to pursue praise for ourselves. We did it to point more people to Jesus, the Savior, since our relationship with him is the one thing that matters most in this life and the next.<\/p>\n

When we receive praise, while we appreciate it, we are immediately concerned about the possibility that Jesus just got relegated to the warm-up act and we\u2019ve become the main attraction.<\/strong> And while we each have this part of us that secretly (or not so secretly) thrives on that (hello, Old Adam), we also have this other part of us that is absolutely devastated by it. Jesus is already an afterthought for too many, too often in life; the last place he should be an afterthought is in the life of a pastor. And that can happen if we allow compliments to crowd out Christ.<\/p>\n

So how do I overcome this struggle? I don’t. He already did. The solution to this struggle is the same as it has always been: weekly – daily! – I must be first to run to the cross, the tomb, the table, and the font, before I ever lead anyone else there. And there alone do I find peace and forgiveness that only Jesus provides. Then, and only then, am I ready once again to point others to him, and direct their praise to him as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you want to know what\u2019s especially hard about being a pastor? The praise. If that sounds weird, let me explain. Believe it or not, pastors are as insecure and unsure of ourselves as the next guy. We have that same voice in our head constantly second-guessing ourselves and telling us that we\u2019re not good… Continue reading Praiseworthy<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p842FN-4q","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions\/280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1thingmatters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}