Well, welcome back again this week to another podcast of Struggling Well. We're delighted to have you with us. Hope you're week has been a good one. we're joined again today by a good friend who many some of you know, many of you know. he's been on our podcast before. He's a local pastor here in Charlotte.
We flew him in.
We flew him in from Matthews. We flew him across the state line.
We did.
We did. Tim Briggs is with us and we're delighted.
Suzi, no autographs today. Okay.
Well, how can I can't go on, Tim, if I don't I have that 16 by20 over fireplace.
And if you could just sign the edge, that would be so good.
Yes, it would be good.
It would be.
I can feel that this is going to be completely out of control today, which is fine cuz that's kind of the way we operate. and Tim's with us because Tim has kind of a thought that comes out of his pastoring and we thought it would be helpful for us to have that conversation about what he wants to bring. So Tim, we'll turn it to you.
Yeah, this is really counseling for me. So we're just can record a counseling session.
The invoice is in the mail
and the millions of people listening can just follow along with the counseling session. So yeah, I'm a pastor and being a pastor is glorious. It is a an amazing job, profession, vocation. It's also very hard and there are times when you just feel up against it. And a couple months ago,
I had had one of those seasons where I don't need to get into the particulars, but it was just hard. I felt beaten down. I felt discouraged. I was low.
I was in a low place and I had met with a couple of pastor friends and they were so kind. They wanted to know how I was doing. They had had assumed things were hard and so they asked me how I was doing and I told them the particulars of the situation and how I was feeling. And I concluded that time by saying, you know, ministry is hard. There are times when you feel like you're operating with a negative ledger, that the withdrawals so far outnumber the deposits and that you run out, that you're running on empty. and in fact, sometimes it just feels like someone's stealing money from your account. You know, not even that the you're willingly letting the money go, but like sometimes it just feels like money is being stolen and I was running on low, running on empty. And one of the pastors, he meant well, but he said, "Well, why would you operate that way?" And I said, "Why? I don't want to operate that way. I'm just telling you how I feel. I It feels like a negative proposition sometimes, and this is the season of life God has me in." And he said, "Well, you know, listen, you should always be operating out of the overflow of God's good in your life. And I said, "Well, yeah, that's true. I do believe that. By the grace of God, I go, I know this. I'm just telling you how I feel. I feel pretty low. I feel empty. I feel up against it." And after the conversation, I realized I felt a lot of guilt and shame. And I think I was already feeling that, but after the conversation, I felt it more. And I think I was able to articulate that I was feeling bad about feeling bad.
that there was a part of me that thought, well, Tim, if you were just more mature, more sanctified, you could brush this off
and you could operate out of that overflow and it would be as if it didn't happen, as if you were just able to shake it off and go about life in ministry as normal. And I couldn't do that. And so I felt bad about feeling bad.
should I feel that way? What do you I think I know the answer. but I'm just telling you how I feel. But you guys tell me what would you what would you say to me?
My first thought is with the other pastor is what was it in him that wanted you to get beyond that and not sit with you in it? That's just a thought. I think that we get a little frightened when people that we love and admire are wrestling. We want it to we don't want them to be there because my gosh, you're the pastor for crying out loud. If you don't have this together, then how are we as a congregation or even me as a fellow pastor, how am I going to make it? I look up to you. I respect you. You got to shake this off, dude, and just move on.
Yeah. We're not comfortable. I don't think when our lives may be a mess or our ministries may be a mess. we want everything to have a smooth outcome and we want everything to be kind of a linear progression that if we do this then God will do this and if God does this then we will do this and it doesn't work that way. and I think one of the books that has been helpful to me in trying to sort through this is second Corinthians which I've said many times may have said it on this podcast at one time or another that it's Paul's most re feeling biographical look into his life and what he experienced. And if you read the first chapter in 2 Corinthians, Paul Paul's in some bad way. he just says, "I despared even of life." I don't think Paul was suicidal. I mean, I don't know that, but I don't think I don't read it that way. But I think it was the hardness of life that didn't have a simple solution to it. And he wants people to be aware of it. And he goes on in that first chapter to say, "So that you can be praying for us."
and not an easy fix type of situation, but rather one that he was going to work through in his life, in his ministry. And I think that there's truth to that still today.
There's in 2 Corinthians, and Jimmy's going to get to another verse there, but in 2 Corinthians 11:24, he gives an account of what had been going on for him. He says, "Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the 40 lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I was a drift at sea. On frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, in danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from the Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers, in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And apart from other things, there is this daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. Tell me, how the heck do you shake that off?
And I think there's a sense Tim that I would say I people love to have a simple solution to what are complex issues. And Paul goes on in that 12th chapter to talk about the fact of his weaknesses. And then he says this, but Christ said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you. my power is made perfect in weakness. And then he goes on and this verse in the 10th verse gets I think oftenimes misqued. It says for when I am weak and then what I've heard many people say then he is strong. But that's not what the verse says. For when I am weak I am strong.
And so it's in my weakness many times that God calls me to give out to other people. Calls me to go ahead and pursue doing what I know he's given me to. to do that doesn't take away the feeling of I don't I'm overdrawn to use your illustration of the bank account. I'm overdrawn and I think there is legitimacy in feeling that way and acknowledging that but at the end recognizing his grace is going to be sufficient. I doesn't it doesn't tell me when this is going to end. This season is going to end. it just tells me that I can keep rolling on. because of his grace and that there actually is a strength and I personally think that there's a strength when I can when you can pastor, you can minister, you can preach, you can do whatever when you don't feel like you have anything in you to give. because it is a showcase for his grace working in our lives. it like I liken it back to some of the psalmists who talk about their laments before God and they end up acknowledging that God is the one who is they find their trust, their faith, and their hope in. But they also say, "This is where I'm at." And I don't think there's anything wrong with acknowledging that. People don't like that because like Suzi said earlier, they expect if you can't figure this out as a pastor, what hope is there for me?
But here's the thing that I think is so important as a pastor, as you're being real and authentic, and I don't want to go too crazy on that stuff either, cuz our whole society now has taken that to the end. degree, but as you are and like what Paul did as expressing his anxiety, his weakness, his concerns over his own emotional and physical and mental health. It what that does, I think, to a congregation is it says to them, you're struggling and so am I. But we can God's going to do something in the midst of our weakness and we need to be weak so that he is, you know, when I'm weak, I can't do anything. And that's when he shows up. Oh, that's not what I want to say. That's when he can be seen better than me
because I, you know, I have I personally have a tendency to try to come off as strong. I don't think that's very helpful. What I think is helpful is when I am honest about where I'm at and God shows up, the spirit intercedes. He does something that is totally for his glory because Obviously, it's not me.
Yeah. And so, you know, what you felt after meeting with those pastor friends of this guilt that you needed to get it right to me is not what scripture wants us to feel. Scripture wants us to lean on each other and to be able to find strength from another person, not to feel the guilt like you don't have it right. Cuz I don't think there is a right or wrong. I would say if you share that with me and you have my hope is I encourage you by going I can pray for you. I don't have an answer to the situation maybe, but I can come alongside you and pray for you and I can as it says elsewhere in the New Testament, I can help bear your burden.
So, I don't know if that answers your question or not.
No, it does. I mean, I Suzi, as you were talking, I was thinking about how I'm good Midwestern stock, right? Like, so
there's something innate in me when something hard times it's like, well, just pick yourself up by your own bootstraps, you know, grit your teeth
and you're going to be fine. And then you mix that with some probably bad theology I've picked up along the way of well, just belief. It's just easy. Just believe that God is good and he's working all things for good and you'll be fine. And when you mix those two things together, there is this sense of I should be fine. I should be able to do these things. But you're right, you read the scriptures, that's not what's presented.
Isn't that what Job's friends tried to tell him to do in some way? They were saying, "Okay, it's got to be sin." But basically, they were sh saying, "Shake it off.
It's you.
Get going."
You know, I just this just came to my mind, and I hope I get his name right. I think it was Gordon McDonald, not the old one, but
no.
Wonderful pastor, wonderful author, and he went through a very dark time in his life. And if I recall, one of the things in his biography, autobiography, him he said that one of his one of the things that was that happened to him is he didn't share where he was at with anyone. He didn't tell them the truth of the emptiness inside of him and not sharing that led him to make choices to fill that emptiness which we all do. the scripture is replete with men and women that were struggling and were sharing the honesty of their struggle. I mean, Moses, he shared that all the time. and I love the picture, and I hope I'm not pulling this out of context and making my own theology, but you know, Moses is exhausted and his two guys come and hold his arms up cuz he wasn't ashamed of being exhausted, but somehow we've made it. Gosh, Tim, you need to like pull it together. You've got people following you. You got to walk straight and, you know, carry on.
Yeah. So, whether you're a pastor today listening or whether you're just a Christ follower listening. in those times of weakness, in those times of having overdrawn your bank account, so to say, reach out to others that you trust and it puts you in a vulnerable place, but allow them the privilege of sharing your struggles with you, praying for you, and helping us to help bear the burdens that you have. Have a great week. Thanks for joining us. To learn more about the Struggling Well podcast, visit tandemspirituality. com.