Every pastor has a breaking point. Every congregation has a tipping point. and somewhere between the two, something either holds or gives way. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck opens the curtain on what pastors rarely say out loud. and what congregations seldom consider.
What he shares is honest, practical, and surprisingly personal. After all, he spent a lifetime watching ministries flourish and fail. He knows what strengthens the bond between shepherd and flock and what quietly destroys it. Teaching from 2 Thessalonians chapter 3, Chuck titled his message, Cords that hold pastors and flocks together. The minister is to be vulnerable.
He is to call for help. He is to let people see the cracks and gaps and needs in his life. That's why Paul asked for prayer. And the second thing I would list is a declaration of the objective. That's in the last part of verse 1.
Pray for us. And what am I to pray for? That the word of the Lord may spread rapidly. The word means to run. That the word of the Lord may put on sneakers and run the race.
That there would be nothing to hold it back. Pray that the word of the Lord will run with. with uh speed and that the word of the Lord will be glorified just as it did also with you. He's got great memories of the Thessalonian flock. He remembers when he ministered to them, the word of the Lord struck those people and they hit the ground running, and they're still running for the cause of Christ.
Pray that what happened in Thessalonica would keep happening wherever I go. I love the way he puts that, that it would keep running. Don't miss the affirming close, just as it did also with you. Third in the list would be a recognition of human opposition. That's in verse 2.
And while you're praying, I recognize that there's human opposition. that we may be delivered from perverse and evil men. For not all have the faith. Literally, there's a definite article, the faith. Look at the kind of men he refers to: perverse.
is a word that means capable of outrageous and harmful acts. Did you hear that? Did you hear that? Verse 2: that we may be delivered from people who are capable of outrageous and harmful acts against others. And evil Speaks of those who are thoroughly corrupted themselves and intent on corrupting others.
Now that's what the minister of the gospel must face. as he stands for the truth. In the face of people who don't love the truth, or as he calls it, people who. who do not have the faith. Back to 2 Thessalonians.
Opposition from The human element. But I love the balance, I call it the flip side of that. is the proclamation of God's faithfulness. You with me so far? The admission of need.
The declaration of the objective, the recognition of human opposition, and now the proclamation of divine faithfulness. Verse 3. But the Lord is faithful. Faithful.
Now that's the answer. See, rather than turning the pulpit into a hammer, To fight his battles, the apostle says simply, the Lord is faithful. He will take care of the opposition. I will not lose my target by getting involved in those sidelight skirmishes. The battle is bigger than that.
person or two or three. One of my messages to those young and older men in ministry was: don't get off target because you've got somebody that doesn't like where you're going. God is faithful. God will fight for me. He is there.
I can call upon him. He sees me through. He will never leave me. He will never forsake me. And even when the other person gets the upper hand, God is unintimidated.
He is the one that everyone else must ultimately change their course. to meet.
Now, so much for the pastoral side of things. Let's dissect the congregation. I've been looking forward to doing that for so long. From the flock. The Lord is faithful.
First of all, there is protection from attack. I love the way verse 3 concludes. Protection from attack. The Lord is faithful. He will strengthen and protect you.
from the evil one.
Now, the reason I love this is because all of the responsibility rests with the faithful God. Many a pastor spends sleepless nights worrying about his flock. Anxious over how they're going to behave and what they're going to do in this situation. And maybe another cult has moved within two or three blocks of that church building, as is the case with one man I spoke to. And I says, well, you have the truth.
Theirs is founded on error. You have the living, faithful God to uphold his message. He will do it. The protection of the flock is in the hands of the living God. And by the way, even when some wander and stray, they become a point of strength in later years.
I thought of that when I read in Luke 22 this week, verses 31 and 32, Jesus said to the apostles, Satan has desired to have you, plural, that he may sift y'all. Plural. That he may sift y'all as he would sift sand. But I prayed for you. And you, singular, Peter, you.
When you have turned around, you will strengthen the brothers. Same word is strengthened here in verse 3. He will strengthen you. If your past has been marked by wandering From the truth, and you're now back on course, you're part of the answer for a stronger congregation. God needs your testimony.
Or at least the flock needs your testimony. Let's put it this way: God can use your testimony in the flock.
Some of the great messages that I have heard, I've heard from baptismal waters. I've heard from people who have gone Dipping their lives into the lowest dregs of society, and then they've come back. And they've turned completely around and they've declared faith in Christ. And now in those waters, they stand and they tell you the difference God has made now that they're walking with Him. What a strengthening point it is to our faith.
The protection from attack, and this is a word for violent attack. He will strengthen. You. The word is sterizo. We get that word for the drugs.
from this word strengthen. Steroids. to make one stronger. This is God's strengthening. and God's protection.
In the same way, I must trust to my God the protection of this flock. It isn't my task to look into keyholes and to check through window shades and to pry and peer into personal lives. It's God's job to protect this assembly. There will be times when I will be called in to confront when it becomes obvious to me that the body is hurting or is being scandalized, but for the most part, I rest easy. It's God's job to keep this body pure.
And he's doing it. In fact, the next verse, verse 4, talks about cooperation with the leadership. I'd list that also. protection from attack, and now cooperation with the leadership. We have confidence in the Lord concerning you.
That you are doing and will continue to do what we command. What a great congregation those Thessalonians were. I'm impressed with Paul's positive confidence. He is confident that they are doing exactly what he commanded. And if you want to trace that command back, he commanded them in chapter 4 of 1 Thessalonians to abstain from sexual immorality.
And he says in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, I'm confident you're doing that. Let me take off my ministerial mantle for a moment and just sit down by you. and tell you something. A little bit of my philosophy of ministry. I don't believe that it is the shepherd's job to skin the sheep alive.
I believe it is the shepherd's job to exhort and to reprove, but not to beat the sheep. Beaten sheep may look obedient, but actually, beaten sheep are whipped. and defeated. Every once in a while, it might be wise for you to say, I thank my God that when I leave the ministry of this place, I leave encouraged. I don't feel whipped.
beaten. That's on purpose. We commit ourselves to building up the saints for the work of ministry, not beating them into place. There is a place for discipline, but there is no place. for sheep beating.
I've had people come to me and say, one of the reasons I stick around is because I don't. I for the first time in my life, I don't leave. reminded of every dirty sin in my life. I know some of them are there, but I'm encouraged to deal with them. And you are.
You see, I try to take my cues from Paul's style, and that is to have confidence in the Lord concerning you. Interesting how he put that. He didn't have confidence in them. In the flesh, he had confidence in the Lord concerning them. It's okay.
By the way, You are behaving, aren't you? Yeah. You are behaving. You are walking with God, aren't you? I believe you are.
I operate from that point of view. I remember coming in from dates, and my dad, on occasion, would be waiting up. And he would say to me as I would stick the keys on the bureau, You did behave tonight, didn't you? I believe you did. Boy, what a What a stirring up it is.
even when I hadn't behaved. But it made me want to come to my dad. If I was in real need. We believe in you, son. That's why we trust you with the car.
I believe in your flock. That's why I trust you with the truth. I equip you with the truth and I believe you behave. That's why I suppose I'll live my life shocked. on occasion at the flock.
When I hear a scandal that has occurred. Because I believe the best in you. See, I think it works around this third principle, and that is cultivation of a love for God. Don't write that incorrectly. Cultivation of a love for God.
And may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of Himself. into the love of God. Let me explain that. It's easy to misread it. It's easy to think he's saying, and may you come to realize how much God loves you.
No? That's true, but that's not his emphasis here. His emphasis is: may God direct your hearts into. The responsibility of loving him. It was in 1707 that Isaac Watts wrote Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were a present far too small Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all.
What a switch! You would think he would say, Love's so amazing, so divine, makes me feel warm and cozy. I go blanket around. No. Love so amazing and love so divine demands that I love him.
with all my heart and soul and might and strength, and my neighbor as myself. The demands of the love of God. Great. His love drives me to holiness. His love for me unmasks.
My pride in my arrogance and says to me, you owe me your life and your all. The cultivation of one's love for God. You know, that's what caused Chuck Coulson to write his book, Loving God. I smile inside when I hear people talk about first buying his book, thinking it was to talk about. the love of God, and they found this as a book of exhortation.
about loving God in return. There's no question that he loves us. The question is, does my life reveal a love back to him? It isn't a question that my wife loves me. The question comes: do I love her in such a marvelous way that there's harmony in the home?
And she knows how significant, significant she is to me personally. Cultivation of a love for God. Now finally, determination to endure. for Christ. That's the last one.
May the Lord direct your hearts into the steadfastness of Christ. This was a herding flock, remember? These were people who were being mistreated by cruel tyrants. And their tendency would be to slip and slide and to lose their moorings. And what they needed was that old word I was raised on.
It's an old home spun word called stick-to-itiveness. Were you raised on that word?
Son, you gotta have stick-to-itiveness. Stay at it. Stay at it. That's this. Determination to endure for Christ.
One man calls it the passion of patience. I was encouraged when I found in Eugene Peterson's book. A long obedience in the same direction. These words Stick-to-ativeness is one of the more inelegant words in the language, he writes. But I have a special fondness for it, nevertheless.
I heard the word a great deal when I was young. mostly, as I recall, from my mother. Yeah. Now he unveils a little part of his life. This is great.
I was a creature of sudden but short-lived enthusiasms. I had a passion for building model airplanes. And then one day, mysteriously, all desire left. And the basement was littered with half a dozen unfinished models. Then stamp collecting became an all-consuming hobby.
I received an immense stamp album. for Christmas and joined a club and acquired piles and piles of stamps. And then one day, unaccountably, the interest left me. The album gathered dust, and the mounds of stamps were left unmounted.
Next, it was horses. Each Saturday morning, my best friend and I would ride our bikes to a dude ranch two miles from town, get horses, and ride up into the Montana foothills, imagining we were Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. or less pretentiously, Gene Autry and the Lone Ranger. And then overnight. That entire world vanished, and in its place.
Girls. It was during these rather frequent transitions from one enthusiasm to another, I was slapped with the reprimand: Eugene, you have no stick-to-itiveness. You have stick-to-itiveness. Or are you kind of high and low? Up and down.
You don't move through life, you're a ricochet. Bounce from one fed to another fad, one fashion to another speaker, one singer to another kind of music, and you don't know where in the world you are. You lack steadfastness in Christ. You lack a long obedience in the same direction. He says later, I found that the church has a better name for it.
Perseverance. Perseverance. Give me or leave from me most qualities, but don't take away from me perseverance. That's what gets me beyond my feelings. That's what keeps me on target.
That's what gets a job done. How do pastors and flocks stay together? What are some of the secrets of long-term ministry so that we don't change pastorates about every time we change our minds? What are the secrets of staying together?
Well, this is no inspired list, but I got two or three things in mind. First would be uh Personal commitment to pray. A personal commitment to prayer. Let's put it that way: to prayer. You pray for me, I pray for you.
We pray for each other. We pray in season and out of season. We pray each other through highs and lows. We pray ourselves into the will of God. We pray ourselves through opposition.
A personal commitment to prayer. Second would be a mutual agreement on essentials. We can't get along very long if we disagree on essentials. Those non-essentials are many more in number, however.
So how you part your hair is up to you. Whether you want to wear a wig is up to you. And whether you want to dress in fashion or out of fashion, that's up to you. Whether you want to take a bath or not, that's up to you. and a few people who sit around you.
A lot of personal things, whatever kind of car you want to drive, drive that kind of car. It's up to you. Wherever you want to live, it's up to you. When it comes to the essentials of the faith, we've got to agree, or we can't get along. We gotta have the freedom.
And we got to have the stick-to-itiveness to agree on essentials. And don't make your list of essentials too long, or you start getting legal. You start getting petty. That's the sign of a young pastor. His list is longer.
than older pastors. Number three, sacrificial involvement in ministry. We gotta have that. And it can't be one way. I can't be the only one sacrificing.
And it's not fair for just a few of you. We've got to be in this together. That has to do with such things as how we spend our time and how involved we are in the financial support of a ministry. It has to do with what are we going to do when it comes to the Lord's Day and how much in service are we going to find ourselves? Are we going to be among those that just sit and soak and sour, or are we going to get in the action?
And it's going to involve sacrifice, or we can't get the job done. I can't preach when I feel like it. I've got to preach even when I don't feel like it. You could usually tell when that happens too. Fourth is a humble acknowledgment of need.
a humble acknowledgement of need. We all have to see ourselves as being in the same boat. We all have needs. And I acknowledge that. And you must too.
Sometimes I need a reproof.
Sometimes I need to be put back on course.
Sometimes you do too.
Sometimes I need a good shake from the hand of God or from a brother who loves me too much to let me play in the traffic. And sometimes you did that too. There's one thing we certainly need, and that is to be preoccupied with the living God. Don't let me get in the way of that. Don't let me steal the show.
I love the little note that was written to Phillips Brooks. When he got discouraged, he would return to these little notes he filed away. from people who loved him. One man wrote, I am a tailor in a little shop. near your church.
And whenever I have the opportunity, I always go to hear you preach. Each time I seem to forget all about you. For you make me think of God. Let's bow together. I want you to be comfortable in the Lord's presence for just a few moments, please.
Just a few moments. How much time have you spent this week thinking about God? Oh, I mean, even if you weren't working on your Sunday school lesson, or you weren't preparing your sermon, or you. or you weren't getting ready to give a talk on On spiritual things. I mean, just when you weren't thinking about anything.
Do you think about God? Maybe that's the reason your life has been marked by a lack of joy rather than the presence of joy. Maybe that stick-to-itiveness is getting a little thin. Because you're thinking only about yourself. Rather than the greatness of God.
Ever made a trip to the cross? Ever bent in the shadow of the cross and told the Lord that you need him? And you take him. as your Savior. Come on.
Time for that journey. You've never made it. Yeah. And if you're one of these people still trying to fight your own battles, I'll tell you, your opposition is going to win. There's too many of them.
Rest in the Lord. Wait patiently for him. He will reward you. Let him fight for you. Even if you know you're right.
Let him fight for you. And so, Lord, today we thank you for the Church. This was your original idea. Your son announced that he will build the church and the gates of Hades would never prevail against it. And we have lived all through these centuries and realized that that promise is still good and will be forever.
Thank you for the privilege of being able to communicate these things today. and I pray that this message will be used as an effective and sharp in the lives of those who lead the church. as well as those who are a part of Uh your family. of the body of Christ. I pray that as a result of digesting these truths that changes might occur.
and good might result. and ultimately greater glory be brought to your name. As we serve You through the local church. Thank you, our Father, in Jesus' name for the privilege of being able to. Participate in this eternal work together.
And for your blessings and for your favor we ask. as we continue to serve you in this manner. In the name of the Lord Jesus, I pray. Amen. What holds a pastor and congregation together isn't just shared theology, it's a shared commitment.
Prayer that goes both directions, honesty that flows both ways. and determination to endure together for the long haul. You're listening to Insight for Living. If this message from Chuck Swindahl stirred something inside you today, whether you lead a flock or belong to one, we'd love to put some resources into your hands that'll help you take these truths deeper. First, Chuck's message, cords that hold pastors and flocks together, is available in its entirety.
And it's one that we think every pastor, elder, and faithful churchgoer needs to hear. It's from his eight-part series on 2 Thessalonians called Steadfast Christianity. To purchase the eight audio files from Insight for Living, call us at 800-772-8888 or download the Insight mobile app, where listening is always free. As a companion to this series, we want to tell you about a classic Chuck Swindahl book, because today's message wasn't just about pastors, it was about leaders. And if you're honest, that includes you.
Whether you're shepherding a congregation, managing a team at work, or raising children at home, you're leading someone. And the pressures that Chuck described today are pressures you know personally. Maybe the work is hard right now. The critics are loud. The opposition is relentless.
And some days you wonder if it's worth it. Nehemiah felt all of that and he kept building anyway. brick by brick, day by day. Chuck's book, Hand Me Another Brick, will show you how Nehemiah led through opposition, silenced his critics without losing his focus, and finished what God called him to build. and it'll remind you that the God who was faithful to Nehemiah is faithful to you.
We'll send you a copy of Hand Me Another Brick when you make a much appreciated donation to support Insight for Living. Whatever amount you choose to send will be channeled toward reaching more people, folks just like you, with Chuck's Bible teaching. Call us at 800-772-8888 or go to insight.org/slash donate. Once again, that's insight.org slash donate. Yeah.
Are you finding yourself getting bored at church? I'm Bill Meyer, inviting you to hear Chuck Swindahl elevate our vision for the local church tomorrow on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Chords That Hold Pastors and Flocks Together, was copyrighted in 1986, 1991, 2002, and 2024, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2024 by Charles R. Swindahl, Incorporated. All rights are reserved worldwide.
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