The Pastor's Home

[00:00:00] We greet each one in the name of Jesus. It's good to be here. It's good to be together and fellowship together in this way. I thought about making a bargain with you. How about I keep my topic short and we all take a five minute nap ahead of time and we'd all feel better and maybe more alert. It's an exciting subject. All of us are here. We all were, or nearly all of us were probably had homes before we were pastors. [00:00:42] And so we received a new responsibility. And sometimes, someone mentioned last night, he's glad to see that we're not handing out sympathy cards when someone gets ordained or another role or office. But that we're encouraging each other, blessing each other, and there's been times there's even been congratulations, but in a careful manner. In 1 Timothy 3, 15, the last part, it says that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God. [00:01:18] And that's one of the things that we need to work on is how we behave ourselves as pastors. In 1 Timothy 3, starting in verse 4, it's talking about the bishop then must be blameless in verse 2. In verse 4 it says, One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity. First of all, I would like to see a hand raise of how many of you came from pastor's homes? [00:01:51] That you grew up in a home where the dad was an ordained minister. How many grew up that way? Can I see your hands? Okay. Thank you. There's a good amount of you that have, and so I think you would probably have a lot of interesting input. And there's a lot of us that haven't. And so we're learning the things, maybe a little more the hard way of things to do and not to do. [00:02:22] But one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity. For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God? Also in 1 Timothy 4, verses 12-14, talking to us younger men. Let no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. [00:02:56] Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of hands of the presbytery And then we have Ephesians chapter 5, verse 25, it says, Husbands, love your wives And that's a command from the word of God, that that continues And then we also have in verse Peter 2 Verse 18 says, [00:03:37] As servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. And so we're dealing here with a lot of commands from the Word of God. And we are carrying, as Brother Tim brought out this morning, we're carrying glasses of water and plates and so forth. We chose our work, whether out of necessity or whether out of desire, we chose our work. We made a choice to get married and to have a family. And then you were chosen by God through the church to be a servant leader. [00:04:15] Does God really know what he's doing? Does he really know all that we have to do? If the answer is yes, then he knows we can accomplish his will with this load. And this is the exciting part that I see, is that God saw every one of you capable to handle this position. And he saw that you were the one needed for time and place [00:04:48] To get the work accomplished that he would have you to do He wants you to be personally faithful and pure He wants you to be a good employee or a business owner He wants you to be a good husband and a father He wants you to be a good servant leader in the local body And he knows you can do it, all of it Now, I look at it, if God knew that it wouldn't work, he would have had a different plan. He's not scratching his head, wondering how we're going to handle this. [00:05:22] But this is his plan, and he knew that you had the ability to do it. The thing that brings the most fulfillment in life will usually be the one that we give the greatest effort to. The thing that brings the most fulfillment in life is the one that we give the greatest effort to. Now, in thinking that through, you notice I didn't say the thing that brings the most joy in life, or the thing that brings the greatest peace in life, but the thing that we find the most fulfilling. [00:06:02] and what we need to do is check our hearts and check our thinking patterns. Why is this thing bringing fulfillment? Is it because it's status? Is it because we have a heart to reach out to the people? Is it the greatest fulfillment that we see is our families, our business? We can have a wrong motive in everything that we do and the important thing is let's determine why that's a fulfillment and fulfillment in our lives. [00:06:33] Now I ask you the question, can we afford to fail in any one of those responsibilities that God has given us? If we fall in our work, we could become a burden. If we fall in our work, that would be an added burden to those around us. If we fail in church, it will hinder our ability to lead. And if we fail in the home, that also will be a hindrance in our ability. [00:07:08] But we also lose precious souls that God has given direct care for us to care directly. Yet, God will not give us more than we're able to bear. More than we're able to handle. We get accomplished what we deem important. What about yourself? First of all, God made you as a person, and he has a will for you. [00:07:40] And as we heard this morning, we have our limits. and we were not given new bodies or new levels of energy when we were given the charge. And so we still need nourishment. We still need exercise. Some of us more than others. We need rest. Spiritual nourishment. We needed that before. [00:08:11] We still need it today. And in this, I believe, we become a bigger target for Satan. We need to take greater care on how we behave ourselves. I'd encourage you. We struggle differently in different ways. But if there's an area in life that you may have been struggling as a lay person, deal with it. We need to get rid of our vices. [00:08:42] We're going to have a hard time dealing with those around us when we're still dealing with sin in our lives or vices in our lives. I think of David and Bathsheba's situation there. David had a sin in his life, and we notice his response when Nathan came to him. He reacted, and that is a tendency in our lives on the parts where we're weak in or the parts where we struggle in. We tend to become hard on others, is one way. [00:09:12] Or we avoid subjects in our messages, possibly, if it's something that we're dealing with. We need to take care of our situations. Transparency is another necessary thing. And again, that's not referring to, first of all, in transparency, we need to take care of our sins. We don't become open and honest in sharing all the dirty laundry. But we take care of those and then become transparent. Our people know that we're human, and they just don't like it when we don't admit it. [00:09:46] For myself, I need an hour or so a day, or a week, several hours a week totally by myself, outside of the daily Bible reading, but just to spend time alone, and I find that that makes a large difference for me in helping in clearer thinking. Then, not only yourself, but through your wife, the wife of your youth, you're still required, as an ordained leader, to love and to cherish her. [00:10:20] Nothing has changed there. God didn't say, okay, now that you're ordained, you can spend less time over here. She's still your helper. Before she was, before you were ordained, she was to be chaste, keep her at home, good, obedient to you. And when we start in life or in general, when we neglect something, it tends to wear out more quickly. [00:10:51] And I believe that's the same way for us husbands in loving our wives, the wife that we committed ourselves to. The less we give attention to her, the more quickly she will wear out. If you give your wife the proper attention that she needs, you will reap many benefits. Your children, we need to remember also that our wife is a permanent fixture with us till death do us part [00:11:22] But our children are for a time and a season as far as the teaching and the training There's that time in life where they need a lot more attention and that eventually fades away But we have a small opportunity to train them rightly in the way that they should go And when they're old, they will not depart from it. So we have an extra responsibility at a certain time in life that diminishes with the child training. [00:11:55] We're halfway through it. Our children are old enough that they can feed themselves, are potty trained. They don't crawl onto our bed with us in the middle of the night anymore. But the demands of those carers change. We don't have the immediate demands daily, but they are differing today. [00:12:30] How do you weave this added responsibility to your already busy life? We can't forget that God knows our abilities and He knows our limits. He expects you to be a good steward of your time and all that He's entrusted to you. If we don't take control of our time, others will. [00:13:06] There's three areas that I think we need to look at in all that God has given us as responsibility, in responsibility, that we need to probably more than anything rethink rather as to cut out or neglect that type of thing. One of the things, soon after I was ordained a number of years back, I talked to a fellow about another responsibility that I'm facing now. And he said, well, one of the things you need to remember is there are things that we need to delegate, but not everything can we delegate. [00:13:43] At work, we can't delegate, if we're a leader, we can't delegate the vision or the direction of the company. If we're an employee, we can't delegate our work that we've been hired to do. But there are other things that possibly, especially in a leader of a business, is if you have a business, there are things that you can delegate to have someone else do. Maybe someone else can write out the checks, or maybe someone else can do this, that you don't have to do every little thing in the business, and that's delegating other responsibilities. [00:14:14] In the home, we can't delegate being the husband. We can't turn that over to anyone else. It doesn't work. And that is something that we have to do. We have to be the husband of the wife that we're committed to. We can't delegate being a father. A father is against a calling that God has given us. And so no one else can take our place in being the father. Now there's a lot of other things that we delegate and can delegate. The chores around the house, can that be delegated? Can it not? That has to be a decision for each one of us. [00:14:48] But in delegating those things frees us, frees up some of our time for other work. In the church, if we're a minister, we can't delegate preaching. If we're a deacon, we can't delegate visitation. If the overseer, the bishop, we can't delegate the vision and the direction of the church But what we can do is we can equip And that again tells us in Ephesians 4 that the body is put together And there are certain members set in place for teaching and exhorting and edifying [00:15:24] And the work is to edify for the perfecting of the saints And one of the things I think sometimes that we tend to do is we try to do it all ourselves rather as to equip our people to help out. An example of that is that I enjoy seeing is when you help a young man in your church with a sin issue and you step him through it and he's accountable to you and you work with him and he gets a grasp of it. [00:15:57] He finds victory through it and another one comes to you with the same situation You can delegate him to that person to take care of him And what you need to do is follow up with that person to verify that it's happening But when they can start helping each other It's a beautiful picture to where they have more time to take care of more and it's part of our responsibility as leaders that we edify, that we equip our people that they can help each other. [00:16:38] Figure out what you can delegate and what you can't and then follow through and delegate those things that you can. Again, we accomplish what we think is important. And with that, check our motive. Why do we think it's important? I, by Brother Jason's encouragement, we, working together in the ministry, had a situation. It was a non-member that called and said that they're going to go visit the deacon and wondered if I could be there too. [00:17:14] And I was busy studying for the topic and we were getting ready to leave, and it really didn't suit. It would have taken me away from the family and it was going to be a couple hour project probably. And I called the deacon and encouraged him to just follow through with it. And if he has any trouble, he can give me a call. But I had confidence in him that he could take care of the situation. However, I wasn't sure if that's the proper thing to do, so I called Jason quickly and said, did I do the right thing? [00:17:48] And he said, yeah, you made a good sermon illustration. and the point being is that I could have gone there but it would have taken away from family one more time. That is something that they could do and take care of and there could be the follow-up to verify that it took place and you can work with counseling and that point as well but we don't need to be at every situation and jump at the drop of a hat. If we don't control our time, others will. [00:18:26] To have a home that is pleasing to God is not just a requirement that has come upon you at your ordination or since you've been ordained. That was something that took place before. It needed to happen before you were ordained. And that's one of the requirements, again, in 1 Timothy, is that you rule your household well. And that was giving the guidelines of looking for a minister as a bishop in that verse. [00:18:58] But it's one of the responsibilities that we have. First steps toward a happy home is that the husband and wife enjoy a fulfilled marriage. On the same page, the rest will go easier. And these are commands that we have in scripture that we can't get around, not just because we have a new calling, can we drop this or that. These commands stay in place whether you're ordained or not. Command number one is husband, love your wife. [00:19:30] Wife, honor your husband. Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath. Mothers, be chaste keepers at home. And again, as our focus needs to be, it's to accomplish God's will for our personal life, our home, our church, and our work without neglecting any of them. Many times our homes suffer the most, and I believe it's a lot because we don't know where to adjust our time. [00:20:03] and we tend to adjust and make those suffer the most that are the closest to us. And I think rethinking can make a big difference. There's ideals and then there's less than ideals, but we need to discover what can work for both in the church and in the home as well as work. Men, when you were courting your wife, one of the goals that you had was to please her, to make her happy, and sometimes I believe we are accomplishment oriented, when we get that accomplished we think we're done, but we forget that our wives' desires change, their needs change, and our duty is to continue knowing her and figuring out what pleases her. [00:21:01] and makes her life enjoyable because she does, at the ordination, she does receive more work and responsibility as far as being available at the drop of a hat to bring someone into the home for a meal and a variety of things in that way and fill in when the husband needs to go to a meeting and so forth. Again, scripture tells us that it's important for husbands to know their wives so that our prayers be not hindered. [00:21:37] And have you ever tried preaching a message on the home or marriage relationships when your marriage isn't in good shape? Again, we would tend to probably avoid that. I hope we don't do it to preach it to our wives if that is the case. But it's difficult. And so it's work to be done so that it doesn't hinder the kingdom work in church. In the same way that the scriptures ask us to equip our people, I would encourage us men to also be understanding in the side of equipping our wives with the extra work that they may have. [00:22:23] They might need a dishwasher. Or maybe they need two clothes washers instead of one to get all the clothes washed in a timely fashion. But understanding our wives in such a way, what are things that we can help them with, provide for them, that makes their work easier as well. This is the next, or this is the necessary ingredient for the next part, for the wives. I want to address you wives. First of all, my hat is off to these mothers that needed to stay at home this week to take care of children while the husband could go and do the, enjoy the meetings here. [00:23:13] And many times that is for a season. As we were driving up here or flying up here, Ruth and I talked about it, that there was a number of ministers meetings that she skipped just because the children being young, it was a workout. It was okay if you were in a community where family was or so forth, but I think it's a good idea to have babysitters so that the wives and the mothers can enjoy being here as well. But the wife is a key part in making the ministry work [00:23:50] We've all seen and probably could name somebody that we know of that the wife hindered It was very obvious the wife hindered the work of the ministry And that's a sad situation But to you wives, the husband's calling is a call from God through the church to help lead the church. God knew all of this before you ever knew your husband. [00:24:28] He knew that your husband is who he needed to get the work accomplished for time and place in this life. He also knew that you would be the helper best suited for him through this work. That was long before you probably even knew each other, that God knew this. He knew this from the beginning of time, that you, as a wife, were the one that was going to be best suited to help get this work accomplished, all to his honor and glory. [00:25:11] I would encourage you, wives and mothers, to look at your responsibility as a blessing from God. I think of Mary in Luke when she said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord, that so be it accomplished according to his word. Mary surrendering herself into the work that God had for her. And in the same way, realize that God has called you to be the wife, the helper, in this situation. [00:25:47] Now, it's in your hands to either be that helper or hinderer. And my question would be, did God design you to be a hinderer, to hinder the situation? I think not. But a helper. And how can you help? things that are encouraging for men as ministers especially is that you pray for him and that you let him know that you're praying for him [00:26:17] he needs wisdom and especially when he's preparing for messages or a tough assignment in addressing an erring brother keep your wife on page to know the things that you're struggling and pray for him. Another thing that made a difference for me is when I was studying, it was one of the younger children would come running, [00:26:49] want to sit on your lap, and we know that that can be a hindrance or a train of thought and so forth. I was never comfortable with telling a child, you need to move on, I've got to study, or locking the door and closing the door and locking it. That is sending a signal what's important to you. And a mother can help a lot by coming along and picking up the child and say let's go do this or to divert the child's attention at that point during that time. And you can have the opportunity later as fathers to give that child the special attention it needs. [00:27:28] But as a mother, realizing that there needs to be a focus and an accomplishment here, and don't go, you stay out of there, because daddy's trying to study. That is, again, sending that message to the child that nothing is more important than his study right now, and I believe there's other ways of addressing that, and you wives are very helpful, can be very helpful in that. Don't criticize his messages or the way of delivery. [00:28:06] Every person is born with a different way of preaching, teaching. And one of the things that I've always consoled myself in is that God gets his will accomplished through his word. and it's not as much who the person is because he can even use a donkey in the process and who are you wives or the wives that can criticize. I would encourage that you give encouragement rather than criticize the responsibility and the messages. [00:28:47] Never complain to your children or in front of your children that dad's leaving again for church work. Rather blessing for you ones that have younger ones. Make sure that those young ones, if dad's leaving for a meeting in the evening and might be later than they might be in bed, make sure that they give him a kiss and a hug before he leaves. It lets the children know that you're on working with him and not against him. [00:29:27] And the other thing that you mothers, I'll just clue you in on this little one, that when you do that, it's going to make dad want to come home much quicker and try to get that meeting over with. Because there's a loving family at home. And I believe that part of criticizing, the part of making negative comments about other meetings and that type of thing can have a huge bearing on a child's thinking pattern as far as the church and God himself. [00:30:01] And that is, I just encourage you wives and mothers, you have a strong hold on that because you have a close connection there and can make the difference. Never discuss issues, church issues, in front of your children. Wives, you're a helper is what your calling has been. [00:30:36] You're the manager, as it were, in business terms of the home And you can sense the heartbeat of your children sometimes much better And maybe most times better than your husbands can The fathers And something that has happened in our home different times is My wife will say, look, I think it's time that the boys have a day of fishing Or a day of garage sailing or something Because just their responses at home, she realizes I've been extra busy here, I've been extra busy there [00:31:10] And so we husbands, that's what we want from our wives, is to give us those clues And then it's our duty and responsibility to do something with it Again, it's not that we're neglecting, but we don't always understand where the needs are and we can learn in that way and then put it into practice. Now together as a husband and wife, it's our duty to stay as a family. [00:31:44] Even after ordination, we still have to be family. And let's not forget that there's probably people in our church that aren't ordained that don't have good homes. And so it's not because we're ordained necessarily that our problem is great or frustrating or struggling. It's those even outside of the ministry that also struggle as well. Include your children in your church work or business work or board meetings where you can or where feasible. [00:32:27] Now, if you as parents or especially as fathers have to be gone for a weekend trip or even a week trip, make it an effort, make it a point that you give family special attention when you come home. That it's not you run off to work as soon as you get home and there's no interaction with that. But plan a weekend or a week getaway or whatever you find that's enjoyable as a family. Another thing that I believe important is that at the family altar, pray for each other audibly. [00:33:06] Thank God, let your children hear you. Thank God for your wife, name her by name. And the privilege of bringing you together as a husband and wife. And thank God for the privilege of sending you the children, giving you that opportunity to take care of them. And again, naming the children by name. And if you do that, they realize when they're gone that probably it will continue. Also, pray that they will grow up serving God. When one's absent, pray for their safety. The others will know that when they're gone, they will be prayed for. [00:33:49] and thanking God for them is again for the children is they realize and it does wonders for the spouse as well. If you pray for your wife that God would bless her and that's easier done when you bless her as well. But if there's struggle and strife within the marriage, you still need to. That's not being hypocritical. If you're struggling in a marriage, continue to pray that God will bless her, and that helps through the process. [00:34:28] Another encouragement that I would give is don't make your children behave a certain way just because they're PKs. Now, that's not saying that they can live loosely or do whatever. First of all, we have a command here in scripture that says that we need to keep house, that we need to order our children, and so forth. And so having a godly home is first of all essential. But if the children want to do something and you tell them, well, because I'm the preacher, you can't go, [00:35:06] is going to do, again, one of those things that we've seen before is get a bad taste in their mouth for the work as well as the church and Christianity in itself. Secondly is be consistent. Practice what you preach. And I would encourage, do an inventory on your messages. Are there any that you're avoiding because of something you're dealing with in your own personal life? [00:35:42] And is it right to just avoid it? Not really, or not at all, but rather take care of it and then be able to preach and be consistent, practice what you preach. If you're living a double standard, you will provoke your children because that is very confusing to them. If dad is one way at home to his family and he deals with things in church a different way or he preaches something, I've often wondered when you preach a message and you address a certain issue and a child has a parent that he knows, [00:36:20] the child knows that the parent is living in sin in that area, I've often wondered what that does for the child. and even more so if the preacher preaches something that the child knows is he's living in sin. Don't live a double standard. Again, the goal is to accomplish God's will for our personal life, our home, our church, our work without neglecting any of them. [00:36:57] And so, my encouragement is, God saw you fit to handle the work. And he's given you the ability to do so. It's a matter of rethinking some things to get it accomplished. But when he asks, when he laid the charge upon you, all the other things that he already commanded you to do, stay in place. You still continue to love your husbands, teach your children, take care of business. But pray for wisdom in rethinking how to get all those things accomplished. [00:37:34] You know, I've already wondered what would happen if the ministry would be removed. Where would my extra energies go that we don't think we have time for now? Where would they go back into? Would we spend more time in the family? Would we spend more time in the business? Would we spend more time in the leisure? Where would we go if we wouldn't have the calling that we have? And that probably is, again, determined by what we think is important in life [00:38:09] or the things that we're going to get accomplished. We get accomplished what we deem important. God bless you.