Letting God's Word and God's Spirit Do the Heavy Lifting

After spending the first four decades of my career as a high school teacher, one of the things I noticed right away about the pastorate is how serious and heart-wrenching the work of a pastor often is.

As a high school teacher, most of the issues my students dealt with had to do with girls, grades, or games. As an adult, I could see those issues for what they are. Those kinds of issues seem deadly serious to a high school kid, someone whose identity and self-image are still forming. But I could see that in the broad scheme of things, the loss of that big game or the break-up of that romance or the damage that a C+ was going to do to her GPA… this wasn’t really the end of the world, even though that’s what it felt like to that kid in that moment.

As a pastor, when someone comes to me in despair because his marriage is collapsing, when someone has just received that devastating diagnosis, when children are estranged from their parents and reconciliation seems an impossible dream, I can’t sit back and assure myself (and them) that it will all be all right. Sometimes the pain is horrific.

Which is why I printed out a sign to hang in my office where I see it often:

Now, even more than when I was a high school teacher, I need this constant reminder that the tasks God had assigned to me call for resources far beyond my wisdom, insight, and experience. Letting the Word and the Spirit do the heavy lifting is a survival skill in pastoral ministry.

How do I let the Word do the work? I point people not to my own insights but to Scripture.

I have long thought that the main task of the pastor is hold God’s Truth before God’s people. This is obviously the task of the preacher in the pulpit, but it is also the task of the pastor in comforting the grieving, in confronting the rebellious, in counseling the bewildered and discouraged. Regardless of the nature or severity of the situation, we need to hear from God first.

It is not only that I want people to see that God’s Word speaks to their situation, it is maybe even more important that I teach people how to look to Scripture. I must help my people understand why it is essential that engaging in and reflecting on Scripture must be part of their regular routine. They need to make it a habit to listen to God and think deeply and carefully about what He is saying to them in His Word. This is a sustaining and essential habit for Christ-followers, listening to God in His Word.

How do I let the Spirit do the work? By teaching people to pray and by praying with them.

When you read about the troubles that Moses faced, you quickly see a pattern. He was quick to take those troubles to the Lord. Over and over again, as God’s man faces the difficulties of shepherding the people of God through the wilderness toward the Promised Land, as he deals with their grumbling and their rebellion, we see Moses on his face before God, pleading for help, interceding for the people.

Moses’s first instinct was not to get together with a focus group or brainstorm with his team to create a new strategy or confer with his counselors; Moses’s first instinct was to pray. When trouble came, Moses went to God first.

We even see this pattern in the life of Jesus. If anyone didn’t need to pray, it would be God Incarnate. Yet Jesus constantly went to his Father in prayer: the night before he selected the twelve disciples, early in the morning after a busy day of ministry, the night he was arrested. If Jesus needed to spend time talking with his Father, it is sheer hubris for me to think that I can do God’s work without seeking His face in prayer.

Letting the Spirit do the work means remembering that God’s Spirit is always working, silently, behind the scenes. He works in people’s hearts and minds in ways I wouldn’t even think to ask for. So when I’m dealing with someone’s problems, my first task is to help the sufferer look to God for the kind of help only He can give.

One of the ways that I let the Word and the Spirit do the work is by praying the Scripture with people. As they are telling me about their problems, sometimes a Scripture will come to mind that seems to deal specifically with the difficulty their heart is facing: the fear, the anxiety, the bitterness, the bewilderment.

Then we will close our time together praying through that passage of Scripture.

There are a several ways to pray the Scripture. One of my favorites is to respond in prayer to God’s Word, a verse or two at a time. In my counseling with people, we will take turns reading a verse or two aloud, then responding to God about what He has said.

Confused as to how to proceed? Let’s pray through those precious, familiar verses in James 1:

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. (James 1:5-8, ESV)

Then my first prayer might sound something like this:

“Father, I realize I’m in way over my head in this matter. I need wisdom, and I want to claim Your promise that You would give me wisdom. Help me to see what I need to see and not be confused by factors that are unimportant. Give me the wisdom You promise here in Your Word.”

Then the person I’m counseling reads the next verse or two and responds to God in prayer about what He said there. In this way, our prayers are shaped by God’s Word.

Another way to pray through Scripture is to insert the name of the hurting one in the biblical text:

Let’s say that John is overwhelmed with his life circumstances. I might pray with John through the first few verses of Isaiah 43:

But now thus says the Lord,
he who created John,
    he who formed him:
“Fear not, John, for I have redeemed you, ;
    I have called you by name, you are mine.
John, when you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
    and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
John, when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
    and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord, I am John’s God,
    the Holy One of Israel, John’s Savior. (Isaiah 43:1-3a, ESV)

When we pray the Scripture in this way, we are looking to God for His wisdom and strength. We are acknowledging our weakness, and we are telling God that His Word must provide the guidance, and His Spirit must provide the resources we need to face the troubles that are so vexing and discouraging.

Of course, it’s not just pastors who need to let the Spirit and Word do the work. One of the reasons God sometimes allows our circumstances into our lives is to teach us to lean on Him, to look to Him in prayer, to allow His Word to speak into our lives.

You may well be facing overwhelming circumstances as you read this. Let the Spirit and the Word do the work as you deal with those circumstances. Or you may, like me, find yourself in earnest conversation with someone seeking your counsel as they struggle with their own difficulties.

Let this become your go-to instinct. Let us teach ourselves and encourage one another to let the Spirit and the Word do the heavy lifting in our lives.  

Persevere,
Paul Pyle
Discipleship Pastor