When Jesus was baptized and, led of the Spirit, went into the desert to find Satan, he dragged Satan from behind his rock and put his heel on him. Satan was not stalking Jesus; Jesus was stalking Satan. Jesus wanted us to know he’d overcome the Enemy and temptation. There have been days in ministry when I needed to know that.
When I married my husband, Stuart, he was not a pastor. Only later did he abandon his first career for ministry. Now, after more than thirty-five years as a ministry spouse, I can say it’s tough not to lose heart in ministry. Satan is after our hearts, our ministries, and our marriages. He is, to be blunt, after us.
Saying the hard things about ministry is like a preacher’s mentioning divorce at a wedding. We want to think of positive things: “better … richer … health.” But it can be beneficial for the bride and groom to hear surprising words–even negative words–that they themselves speak: “worse … poorer … sickness … death.” It can be a positive thing to talk of negatives.
In that light, I’d like to talk about the three temptations we face in Christian ministry. In his ministry, Jesus faced temptation in three general areas: his legitimate needs, his spiritual gifting, and his personal worship. I’ve learned to face my temptations in ministry by looking at how Jesus dealt with his.
THE TEMPTATION IN LEGITIMATE NEEDS
Food is a valid need, but for forty days and nights, led by the Spirit, Jesus went hungry. Satan had a suggestion: “If you’re the Son of God, command these stones to become bread.”
Food is a legitimate physical need, but God hadn’t provided any for Jesus in that place at that time. The question: Would Jesus accept the will of his Father that this was a period of privation designed for his spiritual profit, or would he take matters into his own hands and use his own powers to meet his needs?
Shelter also is a legitimate need, but on many nights, the only roof Jesus had over his head was the stars he had made.
Relationships are a legitimate need. Yet Jesus was lonely–it’s lonely at the top–and often went into the desert alone.
It’s tempting to lose heart when our legitimate needs aren’t met. Some Christians believe God will never allow our needs to go unmet. Yet, when God dictated it, Jesus lived with some unmet needs.
For ten years God called Stuart and me to a place in ministry where we received an inadequate salary. Many of my legitimate needs weren’t met. Many of our children’s legitimate needs weren’t met.
It was tempting, as Jesus was tempted, to take matters into our own hands and resign from that mission position. But we had to answer the question: Would we accept a period of privation as our Father’s will? Could we see that he wanted us to depend upon him so that we might benefit and grow spiritually? Could we see that lean times can be part of his kingdom plan? We finally came to the conclusion that until God led us out as surely as he had led us in, we were to stay put.
If God leads us like this, we have to face the question, Do we know how to be poor?
“Of course,” we say. “We were seminary students.”
But what if we are called to remain poor? Do we know how not to lose heart then? Poverty can become extremely wearing, especially on the spouse who carries incredible stress taking care of young children. It’s hard to live on food stamps. It’s hard to put your kids in Head Start when other ministry families can afford nursery school.
I remember how hard it was for my husband, who wanted to provide better for his family. I remember his pacing up and down our tiny mission house saying, “If only I’d stayed at the bank.” We couldn’t get our kids’ teeth fixed. We lived in other people’s clothes, hand-me-downs. It’s tough never to have enough.
I desperately wanted a musical instrument for our youth work, so I put an advertisement in the paper. A kind lady who had a lot of money called me. I thought, I’m going to get my piano, and got so excited. She said, “I just got a new piano. Would you like our old one?”
In that instant, something happened to me. I said, “No, I’d like your new one.”
I didn’t get either piano, which serves me right, I guess. But I had gotten fed up with God’s work getting the old piano. Those are the times we can lose heart.
When we’re deprived of legitimate needs, we have to live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. At such times, all we can do is remain focused on God, fixed in his Word, and full of the Spirit.
I think the temptation not to do this becomes strongest when we see ministry affect our families. I remember being 3,000 miles away from our parents, who were dying of different diseases. We didn’t have the money to get in a plane and visit as often as we needed to. When my mother-in-law came to visit, she discovered one of the many cancers that eventually took her life. She had little money, no insurance, and no one to look after her at home. We had just arrived from England, so we had no money. We entered eighteen months of cancer surgery, chemotherapy, and medical care with no resources. We nearly lost heart.
When our legitimate needs are not met, we find ourselves tempted to abandon our call to ministry, to escape the time of privation. It is necessary for us to hang in there on the Word of God.
THE TEMPTATION IN SPIRITUAL GIFTING
The second kind of temptation for Christian leaders comes in our spiritual gifting. Satan tempted Jesus to use his gifts “for self-aggrandizement,” as John Stott puts it. Satan tempts us in the same way, and the greater our gifts, the more Satan has to work with. He’ll say, “Do something mega. Use your abilities to get the crowd. Throw yourself around the temple. Make a splash.”
When we get it right and do our best, our gifting can become a snare. John Stott says that a pulpit is a dangerous place for any person, because there we can lose our heart’s focus. We can, for example, learn techniques and hone skills that allow us to speak powerfully, yet apart from the Holy Spirit. That’s scary! It is possible, as G. Campbell Morgan wrote, to be “homiletically brilliant, verbally fluent, theologically profound, biblically orthodox, and spiritually useless.” If we focus on our gifts–homiletical ability or theological accuracy–instead of the Giver, God may say, “Preach on, great preacher, but preach without me.”
Yes, through my spiritual gifts I can give a solid speech, a nice sermon, a good word. But will it change people? Will marriages be mended? Will demons be cast out? Will God’s kingdom come?
Only if I resist the temptation to use my gifts to do something big, to make a show, to build a name for myself. Our words must worship God before they can go out into our world and make a difference.
Some years ago I was asked to write a daily devotional book. I thought, This will be easy. I already write in my journal. I can do that without taking time out from my other commitments. At the end of the year, I figured, I could just take my daily prayer diary and have an instant devotional book. At the end of the year, however, I found I was only a quarter of a way through the book. That experience taught me two things: I wasn’t daily, and I wasn’t devotional.
It took me two-and-a-half years to complete that daily devotional. At the end of that time, I wrote this in the front:
Give my words wings, Lord.
May they alight gently on the branches of men’s minds,
bending them to the winds of your will.
Give my words wings, Lord.
May they fly high enough to reach the lofty,
low enough to breathe the breath of sweet encouragement upon the downcast soul.
Give my words wings, Lord.
May they fly swift and far,
winning the race with the worldly-wise to the hearts of men.
Give my words wings, Lord.
See them now nesting down at your feet,
silenced into ecstasy,
home at last.”
I learned that unless my words have worshipped, they will never win the race with the words of the world.
But if Satan can tempt us through the expression of our spiritual gifting, he can also tempt us through the limitation of that same gifting. Sometimes we may be called to serve in a work that is well below our abilities. Then our giftedness can lead to frustrations that make us lose heart.
Before entering ministry, my husband was a bank inspector. At age 25, thanks to his photographic memory, he was assistant to the chief inspector in a British bank. He was offered a world of opportunities in that profession. But then he was called to a mission that had old-fashioned typewriters and sometimes an untrained staff. Their hearts were right, but the resources weren’t there.
I saw a poster about that time above a mission secretary’s desk: “We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much for so long with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.” That pretty well described our situation.
In such settings, we may feel frustrations that our gifts are underutilized. Then we will be tempted to prove our abilities, to show our stuff. We will feel swayed by the expectations of people around us. People expected Jesus to teach a certain way, to behave a certain way, to wave his miracle wand, to prove his points, to build his empire. Yet Jesus came, according to Isaiah 53, to be unspectacular and unhysterical, not to raise his voice in the streets, to refuse to publish his miracles.
Stuart and I know what it’s like to serve in a mega-church, with its own set of temptations, and I’ve learned that if God calls us to a mega-ministry, we need to pray for a mini-mindset, or we’ll end up a mega-nuisance to God’s kingdom.
THE TEMPTATION IN PERSONAL WORSHIP
When Satan came out from behind his rock, stamped his foot, and shouted to Jesus, “Worship me!” Jesus faced his Enemy and overcame temptation.
This third temptation is the hardest, I think. It’s that power encounter, no-holds-barred, when Satan comes and demands: “Stop worshipping God and start worshipping me.” He begins with the direct attack, tempting us to link into any power other than that of the Holy Spirit. Then he asks us to worship him: “Ask me for anything, and I will give it to you.”
I don’t think Satan has ever come to me that directly until recently. I had fallen into a trap, ordering a catalog of merchandise advertised on the television. A yogurt machine was offered in this little booklet as a prize, so I sent in a little slip–and I won! Then, when the little booklet came back, there was a prize offer for a toaster. Since mine had just died, I sent in the little slip–and I won! Without giving any money, I won five things straight.
Then one day, shortly after we had appealed for funds to build a new sanctuary, I drove into our church parking lot, which sat next to the building site. Suddenly Satan was right there in the car with me, and he said, “Ask me. Ask me, Jill. I’ll give it to you. I’ll give you the million dollars.”
In that still, horrible moment, I knew he’d come out from behind his rock and said, “Worship me. Just for a minute. Just see if I can do it.” That’s what he said to Jesus.
Satan comes with many kinds of offers, including offers of money, sex, power, to interfere with the things of God’s kingdom. Satan has the ability to give such things.
One of the strongest and most alluring offers is the temptation for illicit sexual pleasures. Satan says, “Be queen for a day. Be king for a day. I’ll give it to you.”
I once described sexual temptation that way while speaking at a conference for pastors and their spouses. I spent the rest of that conference counseling people who, since going into ministry, had bought the lie and lived as king or queen for a day.
One young wife said to me, “I never thought it was possible that I could do this. It happened while my husband was in seminary. He still doesn’t know. Should I tell him?”
Another extremely pretty woman said, “I thought I could never do that. Then this man came to live next door, and my husband was traveling for the mission, and I was very lonely.”
I said, “Like Bathsheba?”
“Yes, like Bathsheba,” she said. “And when I met King David, I fell.”
She lost heart, her husband lost heart, and their marriage fell apart. Today they’re out of the ministry.
In these three areas of temptation, Satan’s strategy is basic. He simply wanted to stop Jesus from doing the things the Father had sent him to do. Satan wanted to prevent Jesus from being the obedient, suffering Servant, with his heart focused on the Father, fixed in the Word, and filled with the Spirit.
Satan’s devices haven’t changed. I believe the more we try to be like Jesus and focus on God, the more we try to be holy, the more Satan will focus on us.
The role of minister can be hard, as can the role of minister’s spouse. And yet, the One who overcame Satan’s temptations is the One who can give us heart. He never lost heart, even though he hung from the cross. That’s why he can offer his heart to us. Paul, who knew all about hardship and stress, said, “Since … we have this ministry, we do not lose heart” (2 Cor. 4:1).
If we stay focused on the Father, fixed in the Word, and full of the Spirit, we will be able to face hard times and overcome temptation. We will not lose heart.
Copyright 1994 Jill Briscoe
Copyright © 1994 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
