Room To Grow In
“The trouble with you preachers,” said the doctor, “is that you really don’t practice what you preach. You tell other people to obey the laws of God and you don’t obey them yourself.”
“My suggestion is that you stop burning the candle at both ends and start taking time off for rest and relaxation. You’ll live longer and do a better job.”
We were ministering in Chicago when my doctor preached that sermon to me, and he was right. The schedule I was trapped in was both tempting God and destroying me. But when you are a workaholic, what do you do?
Understand what relaxation is.
It is definitely not wasted time, when you wear yourself out worrying about doing nothing. Nor is it only free time or a nervous truce between wars. It is not extra time that you have earned because you have worked so hard and been a good boy.
The English word “leisure” comes from a Latin word that means “to be permitted.” Leisure time is time that we control, time that we have set aside for ourselves, come what may. We don’t feel guilty for enjoying it, because we know we need it and God wants us to have it.
Each week, most of our people have the Lord’s Day-plus a day off-for relaxation and re-creation; but the busy pastor works harder on Sunday than on any other day. And as for that day off, well, one crisis in the church family can quickly claim it.
“I have no sympathy with those who say the Devil never takes a vacation,” said the late Vance Havner. “I am not following the Devil but the Lord who said, ‘Come ye yourselves apart and rest a while.’ If you don’t come apart, you will come apart? and you’ll go to pieces.”
Understand why you need it.
Obviously, your body needs a time of rest and re-creation; otherwise it starts to rebel and create problems for you and the people with whom you live and work. No matter what kind of insurance you have, good health is much cheaper than good coverage.
How strange it is that servants of God, who would never think of using tobacco, alcohol or narcotics, will nevertheless follow a schedule that produces stress, physical damage and eventual burn-out.
Your mind needs relaxation. The most gifted person can’t do creative work under constant pressure. The work of the ministry is tough; and if the Lord is going to give us what we need as preachers and pastors, we must take time to wait and listen. We need margins in our lives, occasions when time stands still and eternity takes over. We need room to grow in.
Doctors tell us that burn-out is “the product of unresolved emotional conflict.” It’s not the demands of our work that destroys us, but the way we respond to those demands. Many a pastor has listened to his nerves instead of to the Lord and ended up looking for a new vocation, when what he really needed was a vacation. If you value your emotional life, take time to relax. Don’t become a martyr by blowing all your fuses at once.
“Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10) is a command. If you want to know God, you have to take time to wait before Him. It’s amazing how the Lord brings spiritual refreshing when we take time for creative relaxation, to think, to meditate and pray, to read, to laugh, to enjoy…and not feel guilty about it.
Understand what hinders it.
Let’s start with pride. We are so important that we can’t take a day off, or even a few hours off, after an afternoon of intensive visiting or counseling. The church might fall apart during our nap. There are pastors who phone Dial-A-Prayer daily to see if there are any messages for them, but they eventually learn that they are not God. Sometimes they learn it in the cardiac ward of the hospital where the tuition is very high.
Another hindrance to creative leisure is fear. The insecure pastor must show his people that he is very busy; otherwise, they may fire him. The fear of man still brings a snare (see Prov. 29:25), and the first evidence that we are trapped is our desire to please everybody. The perfect epitaph for this minister is, “He was beloved by everybody, but he did not know how to say NO.”
“He did not learn to delegate” might be another suitable epitaph for the minister who didn’t have time to rest but who did find time to die. After all, other people in the church have spiritual gifts and should be given opportunities to exercise them. Let your people grow as they help you carry the load. You’ll all be better off.
Sometimes it’s a false view of ministry that robs you of leisure time. “I must win the whole world!” is both a noble ideal and a shortcut to the hospital. “I’d rather burn out than rust out!” sounds spiritual, but are those the only alternatives? Why not just “work out” your own salvation as God works in you (see Phil. 2:12-13) and keep going as long as you can?
Some principles to follow.
Let’s start with the ancient adage “Know thyself.” What is your best time for study? When do your “creative juices” really flow? Never mind how Spurgeon or Billy Sunday did it. What schedule is best for you? Once you have determined this, share it with the church leaders and tell them why. If you feed the flock from the green pastures of the Word, they will be glad you are taking time to relax and experience recreation.
Plan your work and practice saying “No” in a gracious way. The younger pastor may have a problem here, but it’s not impossible. We serve the Lord as His servants, and a part of our obedience to Him is that we take care of our body, His temple.
Get a head start on the day by getting up earlier and having a satisfying devotional time. When we rush into the day, we often create our own problems. Live a day at a time and take some time each day to be alone for relaxation and renewal. Even thirty minutes invested this way can do wonders for your outlook and your outcome!
In a previous issue of Prokope, we recommended Gordon MacDonald’s Ordering Your Private World (Nelson), which has now been reissued in an expanded edition. Read it and take its message to heart. After all, if you and the Lord don’t control your time, then somebody else will; and the results may be disastrous. Your home, your life and your ministry can take on a whole new atmosphere of enrichment and enjoyment if only you will learn to balance work with relaxation.
©2002 WWW Used by permission. This article is copyrighted by the author and is for your individual use. Reproduction for any other purpose is governed by copyright laws and is strictly prohibited. This material originally appeared in Prokope, July-August 1987.
Dr. Warren Wiersbe (1929-2019) was an internationally known Bible teacher, author, and conference speaker. He graduated in 1953 from Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lombard, Illinois. While attending seminary, he was ordained as pastor of Central Baptist Church in 1951 and served until 1957. From September 1957 to 1961, Wiersbe served as Director of The Literature Division for Youth for Christ International. From 1961 to 1971 he pastored Calvary Baptist Church of Covington, Kentucky south of Cincinnati, Ohio. His sermons were broadcast as the “Calvary Hour” on a local Cincinnati radio station. From 1971 to 1978, He served as the pastor of Moody Church in Chicago 1971 to 1978. While at Moody Church he continued in radio ministry. Between August 1979 and March 1982, he wrote bi-weekly for Christianity Today as “Eutychus X”, taught practical theology classes at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and wrote the course material and taught a Doctor of Ministry course at Trinity and Dallas Seminary. In 1980 he transitioned to Back to the Bible radio broadcasting network where he worked until 1990. Dr. Wiersbe became Writer in Residence at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids and Distinguished Professor of Preaching at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary. In his lifetime, Dr. Wiersbe wrote over 170 books—including the popular Be series, which has sold over four million copies. Dr. Wiersbe was awarded the Gold Medallion Lifetime Achievement by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA).
