Navigating the Mess

By Pastor JimYesterday was a strange and long day.Among other things, I talked with someone who was on the tail end of being mad at God and at me, spoke to a man about his pornography habit that was ruining his marriage, and then got a call at 10:30pm from a member who was with a friend who was going to commit suicide and most likely was under some spiritual (demonic) oppression. Instead of heading to bed, I headed over to help. It was dark and messy. Life is sometimes.As I finally got into the shower at about 12:30 and began praying through these things, I wondered why God had these different events for me today. While I'm sure there was a lot he was teaching me and showing me, the one thing he seemed to lay on my heart was, pastoring is messy.Pastoring is messy. Because life is messy. And much of pastoring is helping people navigate through the mess.Sundays for me are hard physically and mentally, and sometimes I encounter some of the mess if someone comes back for prayer or counsel in response to the sermon, but for the most part hundreds of our people just walk by with nothing more than a smile and a hello. Sundays are restful, they are a brief respite out of the mess as we are encouraged by the Gospel again, singing together of the grace and love of our God—we are sabbath-ing.But then on Monday you enter back into the mess. And much of our lives are not spent in gathered worship where there is solace and a refuge from the bitter winds of life, but, instead, most of our time and energy is spent in navigating the mess. My job is messy because our lives (yours and mine) are messy.As I thought on these things I wondered about this weekly rhythm: Gathering together on Sunday and fighting together during the week.1. Gathering Together: Because of Jesus we can worship in “spirit and in truth.” We can (and should, and must!) worship outside of Sundays also; we can draw near to God in prayer, in the Scriptures, and through the Spirit. But there is something special, different, powerful about the gathering of the Saints. We need that gathering. We need that break. We need the Scriptures opened and expounded, we need the collective harmonies of wartime saints singing battle hymns to our God, we need the bread and the wine. The church gathered is a temple, a house—shelter from the messy weather of the outside elements.2. Fighting Together: Embrace the mess in your heart. Your heart is a mess. If you took an honest look in there you would find the remains of a battle already won. Jesus was victorious, but torn limbs and broken hearts still remain on the battlefield. And much of the Christian life is spent applying the same Gospel that won the war to the cleaning up of the aftermath. Christ was victorious, but it takes some time for us to learn how to live as victors and not victims. Embrace it, don’t numb it, don’t ignore it—preach the Gospel to it.And other people are a mess too. Our ministry as their brothers and sisters is to embrace the mess of their hearts. Don’t be surprised by their sin—we are sinners! That’s what sinners do, we sin. But also don’t underestimate the power of the Spirit in them and in you to fight the battle of the mess in our hearts. Fight together!Navigating the messiness of our lives and the mess of others brings about a humility and a unity in us that pleases the Spirit (Eph. 4:3) and fosters a love for one another that shows the watching world the treasure that is Jesus (John 13:35).