Having the Spirit and the Spirit Having You

For six weeks we have been building the sustainable pastor. We started with the order Jesus set in Mark 3:14, being with him before being sent by him, and then we got practical: a rule of life, a guarded weekly Sabbath, real vacations and real retreats, and the constellation of relationships no pastor should lead without. If you have taken even one of those steps, your ministry is on firmer ground today than it was in July.

But I cannot close this series with a schedule. All of it, the rhythms and the Sabbath and the retreats and the relationships, aims at something deeper than a well-managed calendar. Because it is entirely possible to build every structure this series described and still miss the point. You can protect your day off, take your retreat, meet with your mentor, and quietly run your ministry on your own strength the whole time. Paul asked the Galatians the question that haunts me as a leader: "Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" (Galatians 3:3). That is not a question for backsliders. It is a question for hardworking, committed, disciplined people, which is exactly what most pastors are. It is possible to have the appearance of godliness while running low on its power.

I know that place from the inside, and some of you heard me tell this story at the closing rally in June. After I came to faith, once the newness wore off, I fell into the pattern of trying to be the Christian God wanted me to be in my own strength. I loved the Lord. I was committed. I was working hard. And I kept coming up empty. Then one night, home from a family vacation, sitting on the edge of my bed, I stopped asking God to fix me and told him he could have all of me. I held nothing back. And in that place of surrender, the Holy Spirit fell on me, right there in my bedroom. I had had the Holy Spirit the whole time. But that night, the Holy Spirit had all of me. My life has never been the same, and neither has my ministry.

Here is the conviction underneath that story, and underneath this whole series: you having the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit having all of you are two completely different things. Every believer receives the Spirit. Not every leader surrenders to him. And the difference shows up over time, not in our doctrine but in our power source. A pastor can run for years on competence, work ethic, and the momentum of a call received long ago. The machinery keeps turning. The sermons keep coming. But somewhere under the surface, what began in the Spirit is being carried on in the flesh, and the leader knows it before anyone else does.

This is why pastoral health was never really about health. Health is the means. Christlikeness is the end. Paul told the Galatians he was "in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you" (Galatians 4:19), and Romans 8:29 says God's settled purpose for every one of us is to be "conformed to the image of his Son." That purpose does not pause when you get ordained. The rhythms exist so there is room in your life for the Spirit to do that forming work. The Sabbath exists so you remember weekly that God runs the world and you do not. The retreats exist so you can hear him. The constellation exists so someone can tell you the truth about who you are becoming. Take away the goal of Christlikeness and all of it collapses into self-care. Keep the goal and it becomes formation.

And this matters for more than your own soul. Congregations are shaped less by what their pastor produces than by who their pastor is becoming. Your church will eventually take on the spiritual temperature of its leadership. A surrendered pastor, filled with the Spirit, formed a little more into the image of Christ each year, gives a congregation something no program can manufacture. That is where this series lands, and it is also where the next one begins. Starting Tuesday, September 8 (the day after Labor Day), we open an eight-week series called Marks of a Healthy Church: what health actually is, how to assess it, and how to build the Great Commission Plan piece by piece. The first mark of a healthy church is a healthy pastor, so everything we have done since July was already the beginning.

Before we turn that corner, sit with the formation questions this week. Do not rush them.

1. Who am I becoming under the pace I am currently keeping?
2. Where in my ministry have I begun in the Spirit and continued in my own strength?
3. Does the Holy Spirit have all of me, or does he have all of me except the part I am still holding?

Write your answers down, on paper, and pray over them before Sunday. If the honest answer to the last question stings, do not manage the sting. Take it to the Lord the way you would take it to the edge of your bed, and stay there until you have surrendered what you have been holding.