Why bother praying for your leaders?

Over the last 6 months or so I've come across a significant number of people involved in Christian ministry who are struggling with significant debilitating long term health issues.  Not just the ordinary run of the mill minor illnesses but ones which make their ministry increasingly difficult and which place limits on them well below their previous capacity.  Now there are potentially a number of reasons for this.

It could just be that they have burnt themselves out by working too hard and too fast for too long.  That is a very real issue in Christian ministry and for those involved in it.  And those who lead alongside them and the fellowship or organisation that has a duty of care to those ministers needs to ask the question is this the result of overwork?  If so the remedy may seem easy but it is rarely so because ministry cannot be confined to work hours because it involves people.  But steps must be taken to ensure those in ministry feel sufficiently resourced to carry out their ministry and sufficiently rested (days off and holidays) to enable long term sustained ministry without burn out.

I wonder if the other significant reason is one that we tend to overlook; spiritual warfare.  The christian life is a spiritual battle, Peter writes "Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour."  He's not a tame tabby or a feral but small stray, he is a lion on the hunt, a real threat.  We tend to live in the mundane and forget the spiritual reality that rages around us.  Revelation lifts the curtain and gives us a peak at that cosmic battle and our part in it, but then the curtain drops and we're back to the everyday.  But despite appearances that battle still rages, and at times Satan strikes at God's people with illness.

So we need to live and pray aware of that spiritual reality.  Aware of our enemy, but amazed at the opportunity to come to the only all-powerful sovereign God who we call Father and ask him to protect and shield those he has called to be set aside to bring the gospel to us and shepherd us.

Reflections on ill health

Last week was the first week since the final week in May that I have not suffered with any tiredness or illness, nausea or stomach pains.  I hadn't really realised just how normal it had become, until I felt back to 'normal' last week.  Sunday was the first Sunday when I felt the freedom to preach unconcerned about whether I would have a dizzy spell or need to conserve my energy to last the sermon.  It was also the first time I had led, spoken to the children and preached, and so far there has been no subsequent Monday collapse and 24 hours in bed.

I am incredibly grateful to God for my recovery.  It was refreshing to preach without feeling concerned about making it through, or conserving energy for later in the talk.  It has been a joy just to be able to do more with the boys and lift some of the burden of child care and housework that Lucy has patiently, willingly and uncomplainingly, had to bear for the last 6 months.  Thank you for your prayers and please join me in praising God our Father for a good week and pray for it to be a full recovery with no relapses.

I am also grateful to God for the illness, even the prolonged nature of it.  Whilst I haven't enjoyed it, it has given me time to reflect, it has made me stop and rest on my relationship with God, it has highlighted lots of undiscerned sin in my drivenness, my approach to ministry and my attitudes to others.  In short illness has been God's grace to me.

It also leads me to reflect that God knows me better than I know myself.  After my first month of feeling ill and being challenged a slight recovery led me to throw myself back into everything just as before, short term learning had no long term effect.  So, God graciously and lovingly, has kept on teaching me the same lessons over a longer period, drumming it into me so I don't forget (or at least that's my prayer).  Truly God is good.

Debilitating, isolating and depressing

God has graciously been using my prolonged period of illness to teach me lots of things about both illness, myself and caring for others.  Some of those lessons have been hard and painful to learn but it doesn't mean that they won't be useful.  One of the most helpful has been the experience of just being unable; unable to go out, unable to do, unable to contribute.  In that context what is debilitating becomes isolating as it cuts you off from people you see in the normal run of the mill.  Others are busy and they are not seeing you as the normal context in which your relationship plays out is removed.  Without a real conscious intentional effort that you can't make and often others aren't aware is needed someone who is ill can quickly become isolated.  Then isolation can very easily lead to depression, either very mild or potentially more serious.  Such depression can easily lead to bitterness.

Experiencing this sense of debilitation and isolation hasn't been easy, but I am grateful for friends who took time to send cards, write, text or ring to minimise the sense of isolation.  But that has taken real effort on their part, it has involved an intentionality, a breaking of routines and norms.  It has cost them.  But this is what the Bible pictures a church community doing.  It should be normal in the church, but often we are just too busy to stop and think about who needs a call, a letter, a text.  I'm praying that as things get back to normal I don't let the busyness crowd out this valuable lesson.  I need to live with margin, a space between my load and limit, both for myself and for others, so that I have time to stop, think about others and recognise need and ways to break or minimise the isolation of others.

Back in the saddle

So after two weeks holiday today sees the first day back in the saddle as it were, though also curiously not in the saddle.  After spending quite a chunk of the first week of holiday in bed (post viral fatigue syndrome is the doctors best guess) after starting on some health supplements the second week saw an improvement and I was able to be up and about all day, going to the beach, rock pooling etc with the boys and Lucy though at a reduced (frustratingly restful) pace.  Thus I have come back to Donny feeling much more rested than I went, though still needing to carefully structure my days so as not to exhaust myself, which seems to happen quite easily still.

I am very gratefully to God for the two weeks rest which have a made a massive difference and enabled me to take time to talk through some longer term decisions which need to be made after some serious overwork last year.  Looking back on it it is hard to know exactly when it all started and why, but basically I said yes to too many things in too many areas too much of the time which led into a cycle of unhealthy work and rest patterns.  There were lots of people around me warning me about it, and who very graciously haven't said 'I told you so', in the two months since the problems started.  But God having warned me through others has now enforced a rethink of my time in his love.  It is something I can say I am thankful to God for.

This next month I am on sabbatical.  I'm going to spend lots of time reading the Bible, possibly writing the Proverbs 1-9 material we've been studying up in to a series of bible studies to do as dad with my boys when they become teens (less that two years away - gulp!), and catching up on all the reading and study that has been neglected this year.  Again I am thankful to God for his love shown to me in a church that has given me this time to recharge.

The joys of a continuing saga...

I posted last week about some of the things God has been teaching me through my time having to throttle back on life due to illness.  Things have yet to get markedly better, in fact I'm at the hospital tomorrow for 6 more blood tests, it's now not thought to be stress related IBS but possibly either Glandular fever or Post Viral Fatigue.  Neither is brilliant as both will be slow at clearing and really just need rest and to boost my immune system.  But God has continued to be gracious and bless.

One of the greatest blessings and joys has been the chance to spend more time reading the Bible.  When you have to spend a couple of hours in bed in an afternoon it has been great to be able to read whole books of the bible at a time.  You can't help but get swept up in the vast, sweeping, swift paced and action packed story lines of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and Samuel.  Even Leviticus proved a blessing read in two sittings where I could really see God's concern to purge sin from his people because of the dire consequences it would have if they didn't.  Just enjoying God's word and revelling in the history has helped me see God's character clearly in stories that I'm often tempted to dissect and mine rather than simply read and appreciate their sweep.

As I've read it has warmed my heart again to see how great God is, how gracious, how patient, and how concerned for his people's holiness because that is what is good for them and what he calls them to by his grace.  This longer in-depth reading for no other purpose than enjoying scripture and God has fuelled my prayers and praise.  I'm always aware of the feebleness of my prayers, and as I've read more and more of God's word I've begun to wonder if that's because in studying the Bible I have begun to miss so much about God that is praiseworthy, true, and beautiful.  I'm hoping that's another of those lessons that sticks post illness (praying that comes - though after 7 weeks I'm beginning to wonder) when I'm back to full speed.  That I just need to read and enjoy scripture and marvel at the God who has called me and saved me and adopted me as part of his eternal cosmos changing plan.

God and Illness

I hate being ill.  Let's get that confession out of the way, I know it's not startling but I am beginning to realise that God is using illness to teach me specifically why I hate being ill.  At half term I was laid up for about 7 days with what at the time was diagnosed as a stomach virus, rest was the remedy, after blood tests showed everything else to be fine.  It took weeks to get back up to speed with lethargy and tiredness remaining a problem.  Finally last week I started feeling back to my old self again until the weekend when the same thing hit again, I managed to preach Sunday but pretty much spent the rest of the time in bed, where I have largely been ever since.  The new working diagnosis is a stress related IBS with accompanying medication which has yet to really start working, though that seems a little like a best guess.

God has been using this time laid aside and a little frustrated to teach me a number of things, which I'm hoping are lessons I won't forget when I'm recovered:

My identity is too often formed around what I do.  I know the theology that my identity is secure in Christ, but functionally I tend to live as if my identity is in my role; father, husband, pastor, teacher, governor.  Without being able to fulfil any of those other roles it is easy to see how I have tended to confuse the two functionally.  They are each roles but they are not my identity, my identity is that I am God's child wonderfully and gracious saved in Christ.

I have not been good at rest.  I am a 'yes' man in the worst possible way, not in terms of agreeing to everything someone says but in terms of saying 'yes' to almost every invitation to do something or speaking at something.  Why?  I'm not sure I've fully untangled that one yet, but it will be a mixture of wanting to please, wanting to serve, wanting to be recognised.  When I am back to health I think it is time I sat with good friends and godly leaders as we prayed through what I should and can be saying yes to and what to say no to.  I need to build rest in as part of my ongoing ministry.

Ignoring God's command not to be anxious. “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."  Matt 6v34.  I've read it, I've used it pastorally with others but I haven't really rubbed it into my heart and put it into practice in my ministry.  I take things to God but then tend to do all I can to solve them, especially when it is people with problems, which is when the anxiety kicks in that my efforts aren't enough.  It's not that I'm a gibbering wreck, it probably isn't even particularly noticeable to others, but I can now see that as an underlying issue.  It is something I have had to confess to God and repent of and ask his help not to repeat.

I'm sure there are more lessons God is going to teach me either as he heals me of the problem or as I learn to live with it.  But having seen those three things so clearly I am praying that I will learn the lessons and practically do something about them.