Finding the healthy tension
One of the hardest things I've experienced so far with TXC is finding a healthy tension between encouraging people to live more like Jesus and giving them time to change (or giving God time to change them). It's way too easy to slip into pharisee mode and declare that "if you don't change...you're done! And God won't love you anymore!" I don't think I've said these exact words but I've had an attitude that could be equivalent to them at times. I've had to learn the hard way how easy it is for me to get to that extreme and through a few errors I now know when I need to take things extremely slowly so my little pea brain doesn't start thinking that I've got it all figured out.
I know that as a pastor, part of my responsibility is first to be taking steps towards Jesus in my own life and then to be encouraging others to do the same. I try to be as open as I can with my personal struggles with different things in my life and let people know I'm not perfect but I'm trying my best to move towards Jesus. It's just hard for me to know how to navigate through the waters of encouraging people to move forward but not becoming a pompous freak at the same time.
What I'm learning is that it's not my job to change people. Period. It's my job to lead people towards Jesus, but if they don't want to move, I can't do anything about it. I'm learning that I can't get frustrated when people don't want to move ahead. I have to be able to trust that God is in control and I don't have to get my little fingers in there and mess it all up. I can only hope and pray that my mistakes will one day be redeemed and,in the future, I will be more attentive to what God is saying to me and stick to what is my responsibility and let God be in control of what is already his in the first place.
I know that as a pastor, part of my responsibility is first to be taking steps towards Jesus in my own life and then to be encouraging others to do the same. I try to be as open as I can with my personal struggles with different things in my life and let people know I'm not perfect but I'm trying my best to move towards Jesus. It's just hard for me to know how to navigate through the waters of encouraging people to move forward but not becoming a pompous freak at the same time.
What I'm learning is that it's not my job to change people. Period. It's my job to lead people towards Jesus, but if they don't want to move, I can't do anything about it. I'm learning that I can't get frustrated when people don't want to move ahead. I have to be able to trust that God is in control and I don't have to get my little fingers in there and mess it all up. I can only hope and pray that my mistakes will one day be redeemed and,in the future, I will be more attentive to what God is saying to me and stick to what is my responsibility and let God be in control of what is already his in the first place.
