Bugenghagen 2021 Keynote — Consider the Ant
What follows is the text of the Keynote Presentation I gave at the 2021 Bugenhagen Conference in Racine, Wisconsin. I look forward to this conference every year. If you have not attended, or not attended in a few years, commit to it.
Introduction
In the Summer of 2020, the Weekend Edition of the Wall Street Journal ran an interview with Stephen Tanger, the owner of Tanger Outlets. I read this with interest because my small town had a Tanger Outlet. The interview focused on the company’s current business plan, and how the advent of Covid-19 had affected that plan. After describing the overall business model, Tanger said something that has stuck with me to this day. Tanger, speaking specifically of Covid but not exclusively, said, “Crises don’t build character, they reveal it.” Those words stopped me in my tracks, and almost immediately, like a kind of Dickensian ghost, I saw all the major events, all the crossroads, all the hills and valleys of life with a clarity, not so much of what happened, but of the character revealed in myself at each one.
This is not to say that crises never build character. After all, St. Paul in Romans 5 teaches that the product of suffering is endurance, and endurance character, and character hope. And yet I think that Tanger is right here. He has simply noted what comes between suffering and endurance, that is, the initial response to the crises we face, no matter how big or how small, reveal the character latent within. Only then, with endurance of that suffering, will a new character yield a hope that doesn’t put us to shame.
Truth be told, when I read those words that Sunday afternoon, I was ashamed. For I had seen my character. Like scrolling through a web page, I saw how I had responded to the current crisis, and many of the previous ones. I had seen how my responses to all the various obstacles and setbacks—personally and professionally, physically and spiritually—brought to the surface that fundamental character. It showed me who I was when things got tough.
The point is that what I had seen was not something new—in my life or the lives of any man. Nothing had overtaken me that was not common to man. But still I was stuck, mired in what I had done and what I had left undone. I regretted the decisions I made. I regretted the decisions I didn’t make. It seemed as though no matter what I did or didn’t do, I lost—a-heads-you-win-tails-I-lose situation. And so you kinda freeze. You’re stuck.
And this is what I want to talk about today, about being stuck. The way one gets stuck in quick sand. No matter what you do, furious activity or calm stillness, you sink further and find yourself more stuck than before. And this is sloth.
And so I am talking to you today about sloth, not as someone who stands above it or outside of it. It is an affliction that we all bear, particularly, I believe as those who are called to preach and teach God’s Word. I come to you today as a fellow wayfarer of sorts. One who has faced it and will probably face it again. What I hope you will take away from this is first that there are indicators, red flares as it were, that tell you that you’re dealing with sloth. And second, that it can be overcome.
What is Sloth?
The term sloth (elsewhere it is called acedia and akedia) is notoriously difficult to define because the term has such a great extension. Throughout church history, the term has been used in association with the physical such as laziness, indolence, inertia. It has described mental maladies as boredom and apathy. It has been characterized as melancholy and depression. It has been named a sin in and of itself in some places. And in other places, it is only a precursor to sin, a kind of malady that, if left unnoticed and unchecked, will lead the one who suffers from it into sin.
We should not be surprised, I think, by the variety of definitions. Most sins and spiritual maladies vary in scale and scope. This is how Lutherans distinguish venial and mortal sins. They have life in one man in a different way than another. They affect one man in one way, and another in a similar but not identical form. So perhaps we might say that sloth is the genus and all the diverse instances given above are its specific differences. The root of sloth remains but the fruit born from it has a different flavor, texture, and appearance.
What is that root? Perhaps some etymology might help. It comes from the East Anglian noun slothe, a derivative of the word slough (sloo), meaning a swamp, a muddy and miry place. And so the image begins to take shape: It’s the dwelling and domain of swine. It’s the place where things get bogged down, slowed up, stuck, and begin to sink. It’s whatever brings one to inaction on the things that they ought at that moment be acting upon.
Sloth, then, is boredom and apathy. It is melancholy and depression. It is laziness, indolence, and inertia. It is all of these things, and yet it is none of these things exclusively. To use a medical analogy: Sloth is the disease; all the specific differences are the symptoms. Or perhaps another medical analogy brings greater clarity: Like autism, sloth is a spectrum. Having one of these symptoms, places you on the sloth spectrum either to a lesser or greater degree.
The Effects of and Response to Sloth
Having said all that, I’m not as interested in what sloth is or even the variety of symptoms it displays. I’m really concerned with the effect it has within us, how we typically, almost innately, respond to it, and what that reveals to us about us. And there is considerably less variation on that.
The intensity of the effects of sloth depend on where you are on the spectrum, but the effect itself is the same: the anticipation of pain. Sloth deceives us into believing that death awaits us if we continue on this course. It deludes us into thinking that suffering, discomfort, and distress are the cause of that death. Thus, it falsely promises life and comfort, happiness and contentment, relief and joy. It is the antithesis of the cross. Sloth promises life but leads to death. The cross demands death but gives life.
And so it reveals and cultivates the innate Epicurean spirit within. It teaches us not so much to seek pleasure. That was not primarily what Epicurus taught. Rather it teaches and encourages us to avoid pain, discomfort, and suffering. It trains us to revolt against discipline. It fosters an anti-Christ ideal. It is Satan in the wilderness, tempting our Lord to find another way. It reduces us to what C. S. Lewis described as “men without chests,” men who lack any mechanism to stabilize our thoughts and passions. The chest is the organ that brings the mind and the feelings together. It is the seat of just sentiments, regularized emotions, stable and civilized feelings. It makes us rational animals. To have no chest, then, makes us subhuman. We become swine in the slough. We become apes, like the weak-chested Shift in The Last Battle. It makes us living perpetual icons of the Dunning-Krueger Syndrome, where we think we know how to things and think we can do them, but never really do them because as we begin them, we find they are much more difficult than they first appeared.
Distraction and Diversion
With the threat of pain and suffering, and the death that lurks behind those, we respond in two natural ways: either by distraction or by indifference. These two responses are the flight of the flight or fight physiological response. We flee the oncoming pain. We avoid the suffering. We hide from death. This is of course an illusion because you cannot flee, avoid, and hide forever. It always catches up to you. It is inevitable. On our own, it cannot be escaped.
But we think we can. We think that if we distract ourselves with other things, the thing itself can be evaded. So we busy ourselves. We do lots of things that take our mind off of what lay ahead. It can be anything, even good things. And even in these good things we distract ourselves. While at work, we long for home. While at home, we long for work. While with friends, we desire solitude. While alone, we seek out companionship. We are so keen on and passionate about distracting ourselves that we need distractions from our distractions. Because we get bored with all of these things, and instead of facing that pain, we find distraction.
Paschal in his Pensees puts it this way: “[We] have a secret instinct driving [us] to seek external diversion and occupation, and this is the result of [our] constant sense of wretchedness. [We] have another secret instinct, left over from the greatness of our original nature, telling [us] that the only true happiness lies in rest and not in excitement. These two contrary instincts give rise to a confused plan buried out of sight in the depths of [our] soul, which leads [us] to seek rest by way of activity and always to imagine that the satisfaction [we] miss will come to [us] once [we] overcome certain obvious difficulties and can open the door to welcome rest. . . . All our life passes in this way: we seek rest by struggling against certain obstacles, and once they are overcome, rest proves intolerable because of the boredom it produces.” (Kreeft, 174).
Peter Kreeft commenting on Paschal calls this “‘the if-only syndrome’”: If only I do, get, have, X, then I can rest and be happy. Life will be all rainbows and unicorns. Is this not just what we do? If only my predecessors weren’t dolts, then I could actually have the type of congregation that [fill in the blank]. If only my DP wasn’t a dolt and kept an eye on the doctrine and practice of the district, I could actually have a good Winkel and brothers in the office near me I could trust like so and so does. If only the Synod President wasn’t a dolt and kept an eye on the doctrine and practice of the DPs and their districts, I could have it all. But the if-only syndrome “is the world’s most universally failed experiment—and the world’s most universally repeated one. It is stupid, self-deluding, wasteful and self-destructive. And we all do it, we all think it.” (Kreeft, 180). C. S. Lewis describes the problem as the absurd notion that the chief business of life should be the attainment of what we do not have rather than the appreciation and enjoyment of what we already have.” (Kreeft, 178).
We see the obvious insanity of this. But “The only thing that consoles us for our miseries is diversion. And yet it is the greatest of our miseries. For it is that above all which prevents us thinking about ourselves and leads us imperceptibly to destruction. But for that [diversion] we should be bored, and boredom would drive us to seek some more solid means of escape [like God in Christ], but diversion passes our time and brings us imperceptibly to our death” (Kreeft, 186).
And here we see the greatest danger of distraction. It acts like a sedative: “it keeps us just content enough so that we don’t make waves and seek a real cure. It deadens our spiritual nerves, it muffles our alarm system.” (Kreeft, 186).
“It is,” Dorothy Sayers said, “one of the greatest tricks of sloth to dissemble itself under the cover of a whiffling activity of the body. We think that if we are busily rushing about and doing things, we cannot be suffering from sloth. And besides, violent activity seems to offer an escape from the horrors of sloth. So the other sins hasten to provide a cloak for sloth: Gluttony offers a whirl of dancing, dining, sports, and dashing very fast from place to place to gape at beauty spots; which when we get to them, we defile with vulgarity and waste. Covetousness rakes us out of bed at an early hour, in order that we may put pep and hustle into our business; Envy sets us to gossip and scandal, to writing cantankerous letters to papers, and the unearthing of secrets and the scavenging of dustbins; Wrath provides (very ingeniously) the argument that the only fitting activity in a world so full of evil-doers and evil demons is to curse loudly and incessantly at the “world”; while lust provides that round of dreary promiscuity that passes for bodily vigor. But these are disguises for the empty heart and the empty brain and the empty soul afflicted by sloth” in trying to avoid dealing with it (Sayers, 109). And so all those things simply end up being little more than well-mixed drinks served aboard the Titanic (Kreeft, 198).
The point of all this is not to say stop doing, stop achieving, sleep in, eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. The point is that we fail to achieve in the areas where we have been put and placed and called because in that place we are keenly aware of our wretchedness. That is where we feel pain. That is where by the sweat of our brow we eat. And so we avoid it by distracting ourselves to mollify the wretchedness within under the guise of doing other “work,” something really important, or some other such nonsense. Which of us have not made an excuse of calling on the delinquent because we were prepping for our sermon? Give me a break guys. We’re not that diligent in prepping for our sermons. And if we are, it hasn’t paid off. And it doesn’t take that long to call on the delinquent. But we don’t do it because it’s painful. So we distract ourselves. We dull the pain by doing what we like instead of killing the pain by learning to do what has been given.
And pastors, I think, are particularly well-suited for this self-delusion. We have no one looking over our should (at least daily in the flesh). We don’t punch a time-clock, and we make our own schedules. Will we really stand before the one who called us and say “‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours?’”
Indifference
Indifference is the second way in which we respond to wretchedness, to pain and suffering, and to death. But I think there are two kinds of indifference: a soft indifference and a hard-hearted indifference. God spare you if you find that you have been afflicted with the latter. That type of indifference is the thing that “believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and only remains alive because there is nothing it would die for” (Sayers, 108). Again, God spare us from being as empty and sallow as that.
But I doubt that anyone here is such, your presence proves the contrary. But I do think there are is a bit of the former kind of indifference among us: soft indifference. This kind of indifference is not so much that we believe in nothing, etc. But that we believe in merely some things, care for some things, seeks to know some things, interferes with some times, enjoys some things, loves some things, hates some things, finds purpose in some things, etc. We have not yet been consumed by the whole of it, but just some of it. And like a cafeteria or buffet, we get to choose what goes on the plate and to the rest MEH! Whatever.
And a good sign of this, I think, is reductionistic thinking. The best way for me to describe this is something that I’m sure you have encountered with members in your own parish. Say you’re teaching about baptism and the gifts and benefits that God gives through baptism. You talk about how it works the forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this as the words and promises of God declare. You talk about how, in this one act, God delivers to you here in time all the benefits of what Jesus won for us on the cross. You explain all this, and what’s very often the first question to comes out of those who are life-long Lutherans? [If I get all I need out of baptism, what’s the point of the Lord’s Supper and Confession and Absolution?] This same kind of conversation happens when you then teach on the Confession and Absolution or frequent, weekly reception of the Lord’s Supper.
Now what is that reductionistic thinking but an indifference toward enjoyment of everything that God has given instead of some things that God has given? It’s not an indifference to everything, but because they have by some emphasis or deemphasis of this or that doctrine reduced everything to a forgiveness-of-sins mathematical formula in a legalistic manner, they miss out on everything that God is actually doing and working among them. They’re indifferent to the all because they have reduced it to some.
Now this type of indifference through reductionistic thinking, I think, is alive among us in different ways.
Heath Curtis gave us a great paper a number of years ago entitled “Set Free from the Shop Keepers Prison.” In it he sets forth the biblical doctrine of election. We are not the cause of people going to hell if we take a vacation or don’t have some other massive evangelism program at our church. The cause of man’s salvation is God’s foreknowledge and election, by means of the Word and Sacrament. But let me ask you this: Why would that at all alleviate our desire to take part in the means by which God achieves that end? In other words, it seems that we have begun to use the Doctrine of Election as an excuse to ignore God’s command to spread the Gospel to all nations, of which this nation is included, and thus also even your particular locale (use your Venn diagrams). That’s not what Curtis was arguing. That’s not what the Doctrine of Election teaches. It was not intended to make us comfortable in our inaction, but on the contrary, confident precisely in our reason to act.
But we’ve taken it as the former instead of the latter. We think we don’t really need to be concerned about evangelism. We think we don’t really need to reach out to those on our roles who are inactive or are falling away. We think what’s the use of instructing our people about God’s teaching about procreation, and what he envisions for our families. Why? Because of the Doctrine of Election. It’s God’s fault that someone is saved. QED. True it is God’s doing. Unless the Lord builds the house, those who labor in it do so in vain. But this is not to instruct us not to labor. It instructs us not to labor in vain, in worry and frustration. To paraphrase Luther’s comments on these words to the people of Livonia: “Work as though everything depended upon it, but go home thanking the Lord that it does not.”
Or perhaps it’s not a particular doctrine that we’re reducing everything to. Sometimes it can be practices. How about this? What would you say if a group of parents (let’s say their the really active ones who come to everything and are good givers), what would you say if that group of parents would like you to meet with their kids for an hour or two to teach them about some topic of your choice in the Bible for one week? What would you say? I suspect that we would all be pleasantly surprised and thankful, and would seek to accommodate that request. Now what if we called it VBS? And these people came to you asked you to do VBS? What would you say? I suspect that it would not be the same reaction.
These moves we make, these sleights of hand, do the very thing we despise in members who use reductive thinking to say “if we’re forgiven all sins in baptism, why then the Lord’s Supper, why Confession and Absolution?” These aren’t either-or propositions, they’re not disjunctive syllogisms. We can see it plain as day when members make these moves. Why don’t we see it in ourselves? Why do we use our rich theology to justify inaction instead of impetus for action? It’s because it is painful. It is difficult, demanding work, whose yield isn’t seen perhaps for years or only by those who succeed us. “But the only long-range solution to pain, whether physical or spiritual, is to listen to what it is telling us. It is a symptom. We must follow its clue, like a river, or a guide through a jungle, if we want to be healed. Perpetual indifference is like shutting off the alarm clock and going back to sleep when the house you are in, which you have built on the sand, is about to be washed away into the sea.”(Kreeft, 189). Again, will we really stand before the one who called us and say “‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’”
Consider the Ant . . .
So, what are we to do about this? How do we combat our immediate, knee-jerk reactions to sloth: distraction and indifference. Consider the ant. Solomon in Proverbs tells his son “Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest” (Prov 6:6–8). Here I’d draw your attention not so much to the sluggard part, but to the “consider her ways.” What does the ant do? She acts in accordance with how God designed and created her. She does what needs to be done. She does this not in a flurry of activity, but ploddingly. She executes; she keeps on keeping on until the thing that needs to be done is done. No one is standing over her shoulder telling her what to do. No one is driving her from the outside saying, “Get after it.” The ant just does because she knows if she doesn’t poverty will come upon her like a robber, and want like an armed man.
There is a parallel here for us, particularly as pastors. No one is watching over our shoulder. No one is driving us to do the work that must be done. To be sure, we have commands to do from our Father in heaven. We’re under orders, men under authority. But day to day, week to week, year after year, no one is checking in us to make sure what must get done gets done. But we know what must get done. We have the commands. We have our orders, not by design, not intrinsically within our nature, but from the outside. We know what is pleasing to Him who sent us. We are to preach and teach to the young and the old alike, we’re to administer the sacraments in accordance with the gospel, hear confessions and not reveal the sins we hear. But we’re not given the exact manner in which to do this. That is to say, we have been given some freedom to follow the course that suits our personality and circumstance the best.
But what do we do? Do we make use of that freedom to begin building up the body of Christ? To find in our communities the elect of all nations? To press even VBS into service for teaching the young and the old? Or do we allow this freedom to stymie us? Do we use this freedom to chase distractions from the pain of that work, to become indifferent by way of reduction that since I have done it on Sundays, I have done it, full stop? Is that really the sum total of our call? The sons of this age are more shrewd with their own generation than the sons of light are with theirs. Consider the ant.
Zeal in Believing and Acting
And be zealous. Be zealous in believing what God has promised. St. Paul in 1 Corinthians says something quite extraordinary. He says: “you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” You are not lacking in any gift of the Spirit. You have the gospel, the power of God unto salvation, not only for you but also for everyone around you. You have the Spirit-filled and life-giving Word of God, the prophets and the apostles, which is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. You have the ascended Christ, seated at the right hand of God, working all things for good for those called according to His purpose. You have no lack here. You have everything you need. So be zealous.
Be zealous in believing the promises of God. For zeal is commanded by God. For he gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works (Tit 2:14). We are not called to be moderate with respect to God and the things of God. Let zeal for God’s house consume us. For does he not say, “because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of My mouth” (Rev. 3:16).
And in believing with zeal, we are then also to act with zeal. And, here, I do not mean that this has anything to do with volume. It has to do with perseverance. It has to do with keeping at the task at hand despite the pain. And so what does that zeal and perseverance look like. It means staying in your cell. That’s what the monks were told when they began to suffer from diversion and indifference. They were told to stay in their cell. To combat the distraction, to stand up against the indifference by staying put, by plodding along in the thing that they were doing at that very moment.
Stay in your cell. Perhaps we would say, stand firm. But I think a better word is discipline. It requires discipline. If you can’t be disciplined you have no business in the ministry. For discipline is the very essence of what it means to be in the office. You are a man under orders. You are under authority. You are required to be disciplined in that rank—attentive, oriented, maintaining but never complacent. You are keeping watch. And an undisciplined watchman is worthless. For without discipline you are either a tempest (having a flurry of activity with no direction) or you are a slug, having neither. And either of these leave you stuck. You are to be disciplined in carrying out the charge the Lord has given you.
So be zealous in your action, in what you were called to do. And when you are tempted to stop short, when you’re tempted by diversion, on the one hand, or indifference on the other, then you must be zealous in your believing and carrying out what you are called to do.
How do you do that? Let me tell you. It’s how you do anything else that needs getting done. You need to get up early, so you set your alarm clock for the time, and when it goes off, you get up. That’s it. You get up. You want to get in shape for a marathon, so you train to run by running. How do you do what needs to be done? You do what needs to be done. There are no sweatless solutions. There is no silver bullet, no life hack, no panacea. It is just plain work; it’s whack-a-mole. There is no set it and forget it. There is no autopilot. There are weeds and thistles. And they must be attended to. You do it.
So how do you remain zealous in carrying out what you are called to do? Here’s what you do. You remain zealous in carrying out what you are called to do. “Perseverance is the cure for sloth and it’s symptoms, along with the execution of all things with great attention and the fear of God. Set a measure for yourself in every work and do not let up until you have completed it” (Evagrius)
Set a measure for yourself . . . in every work . . and do not let up . . . until you have completed it. You do the thing appointed. You attend to where you have been put and what needs to happen there. You make a plan. You plan the years and the months, the weeks and the days, and most importantly the hours. You manage your time. Because time management is pain management. And by that discipline you will be managing your pain. For all our distractions and all our indifference are simply a way for us to escape and avoid pain. So we plan out our pain. We know our orders. We know what must get done. We attend to it in every way. We plan. We plan when we will endure the pain, and we plan for how long. And when that time comes, we do it until that time is up. There really is no other way. We just have to do it. [That means no social media or YouTube when it gets tough. And i like YouTube, I learned woodworking on it. But it’s not a diversion from pain. It’s a tool to be used at planned times. When it gets tough, we stay in our cell. We persevere, knowing full well how our Father in heaven blesses us in that discipline, knowing what he creates in us.
And when, in that cell, we are tempted by distraction and indifference, we must contradict it. For we often lie to ourselves in order to avoid the pain of discipline in the moment. Think back to the if-only syndrome I referred to earlier. We think, that is, we lie to ourselves, that our current pains are the fault(s) of someone or something else and since it is their fault we have no duty to deal with the issue at hand. We use all-or-nothing thinking in a similar fashion. Here we let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We think we’re demonstrating our dedication and steadfastness, but we’re really only giving in to indifference. We must contradict these things. To begin to counteract these thoughts, you first have to get them out of your head. In your head, everything seems reasonable. So you have to get them out of your head and say them out loud, or write it down. Only then are you able to hear or see how stupid it really sounds.
Going back to all the if-only scenarios I listed previously: If only my predecessors weren’t dolts; If only my DP wasn’t a dolt and kept an eye on the doctrine and practice of the district; If only the Synod President wasn’t a dolt and kept an eye on the doctrine and practice of the DPs and their districts, I could have all of the things I want, need, in my place.
So even if all these things are true, which I’m not going to argue with you about, your predecessors, your DPs, and the Synod President were dolts, does that change, even in the slightest degree, what you have been called to do in the place you were sent? So, okay, an enemy has done this. So, what? Does not that rather prove rather than disprove the necessity of you doing what you’ve been called and placed to do there in that place? That you should, indeed must, do all those things? Because no one else is going to do them for you. Just as the Doctrine of Election in no way tells you not to preach and teach, not to talk about these things as you walk on the way, at the gate, in your house, etc, but rather gives you the very reason and confidence to do these things, that God works through it and promises to bless it. In other words, just because we think they’re not doing what they’re supposed to do in no way indicates that we should lack zeal for what we’re supposed to do. That’s why you’ve been put under orders. No one is taught in an emergency with crowds to say “Someone call 911.” Because no one will do it. You point to specific people and tell them to do it. You’re the man in that place. No one else is responsible for it. It’s your place. It’s your cell. Figure it out and do it.
Again, consider the ant. The ant zealously, without bit or bridle, without whip or lash, ploddingly gets it done because that is what must be done. She thinks not of the pain. She doesn’t get distracted by other things. She isn’t given to be indifferent about what fruit it will provide. She does what must be done. She does what she was ordained to do. Do what you, as a minister of the Gospel by God’s Word, were ordained to do. For you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
But when you are tempted with indifference, when you’re tempted by distraction, you must contradict it. So if you find yourself looking for the sweatless solution, the hack, you recite Gen 3:19, “By the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for dust you are and to dust you shall return.” When you’re looking with impatience to get the fruits from work done now, you recite Gal 6:9, “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” When you’re setting the bar of your study and the extent of your preaching and teaching too low, you recite Deut 6:6–7 “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” When you want to give up, when you’re feeling the pain of the work and you’re losing hope, thinking that it’s all for naught and we’re losing, you recite Deut 28:7 “The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways.” or Psalm 27:13–14 “I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” or Psalm 42:5–6, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” When you think you don’t need this and would be better off a construction worker or business man, Psalm 37, all of it but you could just go to verse 34 “Wait for the Lord and keep his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land; you will look on when the wicked are cut off.” When you think that the pain of discipline has no meaning, recite Hebrews 12:7, “It is for discipline that you must endure. God is treating you as sons.” When you want to complain about how bad you have it, recite 1 Cor 10:10, “nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer.” and remember what the Apostle Paul wrote he suffered in 2 Cor 11:23–28. When you’re tempted to avoid discipline: recite James 1:2–4, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” or Romans 5:3–5, “we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
In doing this, you are contradicting the lies we tell ourselves with the truth of God’s Word. And in the same instance, you are receiving comfort, help, and courage from the Spirit to stay the course, to press on, to endure and persevere. You are receiving the will and the ability to stay in your cell.
Conclusion
You are not lacking in any gift. You have everything you need. God has called you. He has put you in the place were you are. He has equipped you and armed you with every means of resisting the enemy. He has dressed you for action. Stand firm in your place, giving no room for distraction or indifference. We are better than that. For we are not men without chests. We are not swine or apes. We are called and ordained servants of the almighty and living God! And the church of Christ deserves it; our Lord deserves it. So “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood” (Acts 20:28) and “shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory” (1 Peter 5:2–4). Take up this charge, stay in your cell, and get after it. You’re just the man for the job. That’s why our Lord called you to do it. Thank you.