What are some of the most subtle pitfalls
and attacks from the devil
that you can warn others about?
You know, Paul said we shouldn't
be ignorant of the schemes of the devil.
Jesse: It seems to me there's a summary
that Satan is continually working on.
Now, the means he will go about;
the schemes he will go about
to bring us to this place are innumerable.
But it seems to me it keeps
getting to one point, and that is this:
to get your eyes off of Jesus Christ
and onto yourself.
And so there are many different ways
he goes about this,
whether it's through different relationships,
whether it's spiritual pride, whether it's in sin, temptations,
but inevitably, as I talk with people
or look at my own life,
we come to find out
there's been a shift
and I'm no longer looking to abiding
in Jesus Christ.
And if he can get you to stop
abiding in Jesus Christ,
and get your eyes off of Him
and onto yourself,
then what John 15 says is true -
without Him you can do nothing.
It will just unravel very quickly.
So the subtlety of Satan
in so many different ways
to just slowly get your eyes
off of Jesus Christ.
I confess last year in the conference,
he did it with me in the area of ministry,
where I was finding identity in ministry
rather than the identity of a resurrected Savior in Jesus Christ.
And things began to unravel.
And as I would look at my life,
I would say what's wrong?
I'm reading. I'm studying. I'm preaching.
I'm evangelizing. I'm praying.
What's going on here?
Well, what had subtly happened is
is I no longer found my identity
as a person under Jesus Christ
or in Christ.
It was: I'm a pastor.
So it's very subtle, but usually,
you'll find that, oh, I've taken my eyes off of Christ.
Question: As you look back,
how did that subtly happen to you?
Jesse: Well, I began to see that I was
asking of pastoral ministry
what it could never give me.
I was asking it to be my functional savior.
And so you begin to put demands on things.
And you can do this with your marriage.
You can do it with friends, your job,
your workplace.
The moment you ask something to be
what only Christ can be for you,
then you put demands upon that thing.
And it will eventually begin to expose
and show, hey, you've done something wrong here.
And so, I was asking of ministry to be my joy.
I was asking of ministry to be my identity.
And I was so looking for it in ministry,
that I was willing to begin to neglect
other areas of my life that God's called me to,
namely, my marriage, my children.
Because I'm so wanting to find joy
and identity in ministry,
not in Jesus Christ.
Paul Washer - this has been 14 years ago.
Probably the first time I met him or second time.
He looked me in the eye
and he said, "Jesse, the will of God for your life is perfect."
I said, "What do you mean by that?"
He said, "God will never ask you
to forsake one area of stewardship
to fulfill another."
And you apply that to where I was at last year.
I don't have to forsake my wife
to fulfill my call in ministry.
There are always going to be strains.
There's always a constant reforming -
semper reformanda - we're always reforming.
We're always looking and examining.
But you never have to forsake the one
to fulfill the other.
And that's a sign that we're off.
Question: And I guess this kind of deals
with the one question.
Have you ever struggled with being burned out
as a pastor? If so, why?
And what helped you to get out of that season?
And what did you learn?
Jesse: In 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul says,
we ask you, brothers, to respect those
who toil, who labor among you.
And he asks them to respect them
because of the work that they do.
And so I take from that
that the role of the pastor
is going to be one that is a toiling
and an exhausting role.
And that's different though
than being burned out.
So when we're fulfilling our role pastorally,
we should be exhausted.
And that's not wrong.
The difference is being burned out.
And what I came to see is
I was beginning to be burned out
because I was relying on my own strength,
my own power,
and again, I was looking to ministry
to be my functional savior.
And it's a very subtle change.
It happens gradually over time.
You know, one of the evidences
you can see in this is
you'll fill your schedule with so much busyness,
that one of the things that will begin to slip away
is prayer.
And prayer always reveals pride.
In other words, the more I'm praying,
probably the less proud I am
and the less I'm praying, the more proud I am.
So, your prayer life is revealing your pride life.
Your dependency upon Jesus is seen
in your prayer life.
And so as I began to see
prayer begin to take a back seat,
and as I began to look to ministry
what it could never be
and ask of ministry to be what it never should be,
which is my functional savior.
And I began to be willing to give up things
to get from ministry what I was looking for
which can only be found in Christ.
And so, pastoral ministry in the true sense
has always been energizing
and exciting for me.
But when you see yourself beginning
to be burned out,
then you are looking to ministry for what it shouldn't be,
you're relying upon your own strength
instead of the power of the Holy Spirit.
Or, you've given ministry the priority
it should not have in your life.
Meaning, you're willing to neglect other things,
like your wife and your children.
And when you do any of those things,
you're going to burn out.
Because now you're in it alone.
And praise God that He brings you to that place.
Our church was very gracious with me.
My co-pastor who pastors me and I pastor him
came to me and said,
brother, you just need to take some time.
And so I stepped away.
I went and got with the Lord.
Question: How long?
Jesse: It ended up being three months.
That was the best and the hardest time of my life.
Because I woke up every morning, James,
with nothing to put before the Lord
for His approval -
in the sense of ministry.
Like, look at the sermon I preached.
Look at these people. Look at the counseling.
Look at the souls.
I had nothing.
I woke up in desperate need
of a resurrected Savior every day,
and found my identity and acceptance
before God in Christ alone.
And it was healing.
I repented to my wife.
Repented to my kids. Repented to the church.
And God has graciously restored me in that.
And the church was so gracious and kind with me.
And I think one of the great challenges
with pastoral ministry
is that when you begin to give it
a wrong priority - meaning, you neglect things
in your life that you shouldn't -
and I'm not accusing anyone in our church of this -
but it's almost accepted,
because you're doing kingdom work.
Where if someone was giving up their wife
for the stock market,
we would say, oh, look how impure this man is.
Look how ill-motive and wrongly prioritized he is.
But a man can do it in ministry
and people will almost applaud him.
And brother, it's wrong.
It's wrong.
So, yeah, by God's grace - three months.
And we stepped away from the church.
Because I knew if I was in the church,
I would pastor.
So we went to Mack's church quite often.
We went to a few other brother's churches.
We traveled some.
And it was a very restoring time
for the church
and a very restoring time for me.
So, praise the Lord.