Curated by It’s That Part™ — Originally published by Faith and Proverbs on .
Many a pastor hears himself in the words of J. R. R. Tolkien’s character Bilbo Baggins: “I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.” You don’t even need to know the context of Bilbo’s words to get a sense of what they mean. They convey heaviness. Exhaustion. Weariness. Pastors who don’t hear something familiar in these words probably haven’t been pastors for long.
What motivates weary pastors to persevere? That they need such motivation should be uncontroversial. Pastoral ministry, after all, is difficult. Pastors are called to endure seasons of difficulty, disappointment, and hardship. Like our Lord Jesus Christ, pastors aren’t to flee from a life of sorrows but are instead to bear in their own suffering bodies the marks of Christ’s life.
They endure moral and natural evils inflicted on their lives and vicariously through their congregants’ lives. Sometimes they’re even called to endure slander and ill-repute for Christ’s sake. Pastors aren’t called to a life of ease but rather to a life of suffering that requires endurance.
But endure unto what end? The biblical and historical answer to this question is the beatific vision, and the pastor who comes to understand this answer deep in his bones will thereby find a reservoir of resources for perseverance.
Beatific Vision as Motivation
Endurance for endurance’s sake is morbid. God hasn’t called us to this—as if we ought to simply grit our teeth and muscle through this world’s hardships for the sake of hardship itself. We’re not like that Greek mythological character Sisyphus, doomed to a life of repetitious tedium, struggling to roll a boulder up a mountain only to have it roll back down so he has to start over. This is good news for us, because such a short-sighted view of obedience (“Just do it because you must”) has no sustaining power.
In Revelation 2:8–11, our Lord charges the church of Smyrna to endure—even to the point of dying—to receive the crown of life. To receive it, according to this passage, is to be spared from the second death. The highest experience of that crown is what John concludes his Apocalypse with: happiness in God’s presence forever (22:1–5).
This is the great hope for pastors. In fact, this hope is the telos of all desire in this life. This is what God made all of us for, pastors included. The hope of this heavenly longing is hinted at in all our experiences by the sheer phenomenon of desire itself.
Augustine, the fourth-century church father from North Africa, articulated this phenomenon well when he prayed, “You made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you.” The restlessness of the human experience exists to be satiated in God.
The restlessness of the human experience exists to be satiated in God.
Christian theology calls the climactic experience of this satiation “the beatific vision”—the blessed vision of seeing God in glory. This is what makes heaven heaven. It’s not that we’ll be reunited with loved ones, or that our bodies will be new and free from decay, or that the cosmos will be free from the futility of corruption, as glorious and nonnegotiable and certain as those realities are. No, what makes heaven heaven—the burning hearth of heaven that enlightens and warms its entire domain, and the experience that gives all those other benefits their splendor—is that in heaven, we will see God. “In your light,” says the psalmist, “do we see light” (Ps. 36:9). All roads of desire find their end here, in the beatific vision.
How does the beatific vision contribute to the pastor’s perseverance in ministry? One crucial way is that it transforms how we view suffering.
Suffering Pastor
Scripture routinely links suffering to the hope of glory (e.g., Rom. 8:18–26; Heb. 12). One stand-out example is Paul’s reflection in 2 Corinthians 4:7–5:10. Paul doesn’t minimize suffering, but he relativizes it in light of the glory to which the suffering, under God’s providence, contributes.
It isn’t as if Paul says suffering will be worth it because glory will be better. Rather, Paul goes so far as to say that, somehow, present suffering will make future glory more glorious. We’re consoled with the promise that we’ll have glory not merely despite our suffering but because of it.
Think, for example, of the fact that our Lord keeps his scars after he’s gloriously raised. Christ’s resurrected body is rendered more glorious because of his suffering, as evidenced by the trophies that are his scars. In this way, the tables are turned on suffering. The greater the suffering, the greater the promise of glory.
This ought to be a profound consolation, especially for pastors. Pastoral ministry, it’s worth repeating, is incredibly difficult. It comes with unique expressions of suffering—not only do pastors face fears within and dangers without, but they also experience the daily anxieties of the church (see 7:5; 11:24–29).
The tables are turned on suffering. The greater the suffering, the greater the promise of glory.
That means that in addition to bearing their own suffering, pastors bear the suffering of so many of their church members, whose pains they feel more acutely than anyone else in the church. This is no complaint! To share these burdens is a sacred privilege, but it’s a privilege of suffering.
How do pastors endure? In part, by taking Paul at his word and viewing all that suffering as a promise by God for them. They should develop the reflex to expect glory from suffering. And they should teach their flocks, likewise, to have such a heavenly perspective—the promise of the beatific vision in glory doesn’t mean suffering isn’t real; it means suffering isn’t wasted.
Hope for the Weary Pastor
Brother pastor, as you feel suffocated by the weight of needs and pains of pastoral ministry, let this be a gentle reminder of God’s promise: “They will see his face” (Rev. 22:4). This is your end. In this sight, you’ll find the culmination and fulfillment of every partial and temporal joy in this life, and the vindicating transformation of every sorrow experienced here. The sight of God there will be more glorious because of our suffering here.
Amid your suffering, let this hope serve as a break in the clouds and a burst of light to cut through the firmament—a joy that transcends the suffocation of temporal hardship and weariness. Your suffering isn’t wasted. It will, somehow, make the infinitely sweet joy of seeing God even sweeter.
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Originally sourced via trusted media partner. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/beatific-vision-weary-pastors/
