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Perseverance in Ministry:
A Meditation on Psalm 90
by Ken Garrett
(Continued from Page 3)
WE NEED GOD'S COMPASSION
Do return, O LORD; how long will it be? And be sorry for Your servants.
Beginning in Sunday School and continuing throughout our Christian education, we learn that God is everywhere at all times, and that He will never leave us. While we hold these observations as sacrosanct, how is it that one of the heroes of our faith pleads with God to return, and to have compassion for His servants? At first read, it seems this verse is describing a God who was once was with God’s people . . . but now is gone. What a devastating possibility to consider, one that I have often felt but been hesitant to identify because it seemed to challenge some of the wonderful truths about God to which I hold. The Hebrew word for return is the same one often translated repent—even when it speaks of God. Now, the implications of God repenting usually rates at least a page in any good theology textbook. Would God ever change His mind about anything? Yet, here Moses here asks God to do just that. I suspect many would like to let God off the hook and explain that Moses wasn’t really asking God to change - that it just seemed that way. Moses, however, was not confused about the doctrine of the immutability of God. These are song lyrics expressing the feelings of a complex, sensitive, faithful, lonely leader. Looking at it from this perspective, I can understand how Moses might feel abandoned, and I actually begin to experience a bit of camaraderie with him. Pastors, we aren’t alone in our frequent battles of the soul, for the cry, “Eli Eli, lama sabachthani?” still resounds to the farthest reaches of the universe and down the darkest halls of our souls. Apparently I am not the first or only of God’s servants to face the truth that I, too, am in desperate need of His compassion.
WE NEED GOD'S CONSOLATION
O satisfy us in the morning with Your lovingkindness, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
Our day starts in the morning when we awaken and begin our activities. But in the first chapter of the book of Genesis we are given a clue as to the different way Moses understood what constitutied a day, and when that day began. Six times he writes, “ . . . and so there was evening and there was morning, one day.” To Moses, and subsequently the nation of Israel, each new day began at sunset. This concept of a day being comprised of a time of darkness followed by light (exactly the opposite our definition) is found consistently in the Old Testament, particularly in the prophetic writings. In fact, the Day of the Lord describes a time of world-wide darkness (war, suffering, discipline of God, etc.) followed by a time of light (blessing, Messianic rule, reception of promises, etc.) Here Moses asks the Lord to bring satisfaction (a sense of fullness and lack of want or need) in the morning—after the darkness of night has passed. And he asks that this satisfaction would last forever, for all our days.
Brother pastors, after the darkness of the sufferings you face in this earthly life - those of your own doing, those resulting from mistreatment by others, those experienced by your residency in a fallen, sin-ravaged creation—your hope of deliverance and joy can only be found in God. Satisfaction and lasting gladness are gifts from Him, beginning, of course, at the cross of His Son, and continuing on into the very fabric of our daily experiences. Remember, Moses was a redeemed (or, saved) member of the covenant community when he wrote these words, yet he prayed for a lasting satisfaction from God for both himself and his people. Could it be that perseverance in the ministry demands not simply the blessing of salvation but also a continued desire for the blessings of salvation?
WE NEED GOD'S RESTORATION
Make us glad according to the days you have afflicted us, and the years we have seen evil.
We’ve all prayed for gladness, in one form or another, and we probably hear our people ask for it at every prayer meeting. I am struck, however, that Moses’ request included a qualification: that the gladness would be proportionate to the days and years the Lord had afflicted them. What were these days and years? The wilderness years; that specific period of time beginning with a devastating failure, followed by 38 years of discipline that ended on the day the people of God finally crossed the Jordan River to begin the conquest and occupation of Canaan.
They had been on the edges of this land before, at a place called Kadesh-barnea. From this desert oasis Moses had sent twelve spies into the land to assess the quality of its agriculture, the military strength of its cities and villages, and the nature of the people who lived in it. The twelve spies reported that the land certainly was all it was reported to be - “a land flowing with milk and honey” - but they added “ . . . the people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large; and moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak (giants) there” (Numbers 13:28). Although two of the spies saw the challenges of conquering such a people as irrelevant in light of the presence and promises of God, the remaining ten argued that such a military endeavor was unthinkable and certain to fail. The majority of the Israelites decided that the plan of invasion must be abandoned immediately. They even felt a change of formal leadership was in order, as Moses certainly did not have the best interests of the people at heart. For their faithless and stubborn insistence on doing things their way instead of following the Lord’s command, they were sentenced to wander in the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula for thirty-eight years, bringing the total number of their nomadic, rootless existence to forty years—one year for each day that their own spies spent in the land of Canaan.
Hence, when Moses asked God to bring gladness according to the days God had afflicted, he placed a specific qualification on the gladness. He asked that it be commensurate with to the years of painful and heart-wrenching discipline endured by the sons and daughters of Abraham in the desert wastelands. To his last day, Moses never forgot the wilderness, even when he stood at its edge and viewed the land of promise. To him, the gladness requested would not be fully appreciated were it detached from the pain remembered.
I’ve never met a pastor who hasn’t suffered in and for his ministry—at least not a pastor I’d want to follow. Affliction endured and remembered is the price tag of the deepest appreciation of joy in ministry. Pastors who persevere in ministry are those who have made peace with affliction. In their hearts the troubled years are woven together with the years of gladness, and they should never be pulled apart lest the whole tapestry of a lifetime of ministry lose its unique shape and beauty.
WE NEED GOD'S ILLUMINATION
Let Your work appear to Your servants and Your majesty to their children.
We often know more about what God has done in the past and will do in the prophetic future than we know of what He is doing in our midst, before our very eyes. We miss the obvious, often blind to the fact that what is happening is a result of something that began in the endless, inscrutable mind of God. We are by nature overlookers of the obvious. Rarely do we see the forest through the trees, unless it is pointed out to us. As Moses ends his song of praise, confession, and supplication, he asks that the servants of the Lord would be given the spiritual eyesight to see the hand of God behind the workings, events, and movements of the world around them. This is the kind of revelation we still need today.
