Truth Unites - How to Flourish in a Difficult Season

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

Here I share four strategies for how to flourish when you are in a negative or stressful season. Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

There's so many people out there right now in a difficult season of some kind or another. I think of pastors. I talk to a lot of other pastors. I'm a pastor myself during the COVID season. The last two years has been really challenging for many other jobs as well. Teachers, healthcare workers, so many others. I know a lot of people right now who are grieving the loss of a loved one. I know a lot of people who are in a challenging season of parenthood.

You know, having young kids during this pandemic season can be challenging when they're not at school as much and that kind of thing. And then there's so much transition, kind of institutional upheaval, people moving, companies changing. I think a lot about business owners who can't get enough staff. There's so many understaffed business owners right now. And so many, I mean, you could just go through different professions and just list everything. It's a difficult season. So I've been thinking about this a lot lately and I thought, you know what? I'm going to make a video trying to encourage people in one of those difficult seasons based upon a blog post.

I wrote five years ago called How to Make It Through a Difficult Season. It's going to be a more practical and devotional video. But I just think that people could benefit from encouragement right now. And just the basic reality that life is seasonal, seems like such a basic thing. You know, summer and winter feel very differently. Well, life has those dynamics to it. And ministry is seasonal to it. You've got ministry is seasonal.

You've got 1st King 17 and 1st Kings 18. Talk about this all the time with Elijah. The same prophet, equally gifted, equally faithful. In one chapter, his ministry is as modest as you can imagine. Just a Gentile widow and her son way up in Zarifath. In the other chapter, it's as dynamic as you can imagine. Fire falling from heaven and so forth. That's seasonal.

There's nothing that Elijah does that makes him more effective in 1st. Kings 18. It's about the season that he's in. And I just think it's really helpful when we're in a difficult season to remember those seasonal dynamics and to come up with strategies for how to make it. One of my favorite little lines in the Chronicles of Narnia book, The Horse and his boy, Swincius Lewis says, when things go wrong, you'll find they usually go on getting worse for some time. But when things start going right, they often go on getting better and better. Such a simple idea. But I think that's really insightful.

You know, betterment leads to more betterment. Good leads to more good. Bad leads to more bad. That's kind of how life often works. So when we're in a negative season, it's really important to kind of fight against the momentum of that. So hopefully this will be helpful. Before I get into it, I'm filming this in mid-February, 2022. Next week, this video will come out.

But I'm filming it now in anticipation of the fact I won't really have time next week because on Tuesday I'm doing a dialogue, and then on Wednesday morning we're going out to the desert for vacation. So this would be my video for next week. But the dialogue, I want you to watch. I'm so excited about it. Maybe, gosh, this one particularly of the various ones I've done because of the topic and the people involved. So it's going to be on Austin Suggs channel, Gospel Simplicity, and Brett Salkeld, who wrote this really, I put up on Twitter and YouTube, you probably saw a note about this book Transubstantiation. It's a fantastic book. It's really well written. And although I am coming from a different perspective, I think it'll be really productive to talk because it's so clearly

written. And he makes a great argument. So I've been reading through my friends, Thomas Cranmer and Peter Martyr-Ramegly. And just really drilling down into more of the depths and then also Martin Kempnitz and then also a few other contemporary books like this one is really interesting by George Hunsinger. I mean, whoa, such a fascinating book called the Eucharist Antichumanism. So anyway, we're going to talk about the Eucharist

next Tuesday. I don't know when it'll come out, but that's when we're recording it. I'm really excited, so you can keep your eyes peeled for that. I'm going to be defending a spiritual presence for you as you find in the reform tradition.

So anyway, that's coming out. All right, let me share four strategies for how to sort of this is a pastoral type advice, I guess you could say. I hope it could apply to anybody, whether they are a follower of Jesus or not, but especially for pastors, actually. Those are the people I have in my heart most in saying these. Four strategies for making it through a difficult season. Number one is give the people around you extra grace. Now, this sounds so obvious. But what I've discovered is that the times when you need to extend

grace the most are often the times when it's hardest to do so. Like on vacation, it's really easy to get along with people. You know, everybody gets along on vacation. Well, maybe not. Maybe if you got young kids, maybe not. But it tends to get easier. You know, your normal capacities for forgiveness and, you know, Proverbs 12 talks, I think it's 12, 16 talks about overlooking and insult.

Okay. In Matthew 18, Jesus talks about forgiving your brother from your heart. Our normal capacities for forgiveness and for overlooking an insult, whatever they're normally at, they get reduced when, we're under stress, when we're in a negative environment. And that's probably when we're in a negative season that often happens to everybody. And so basically what that means is, as you can tell, if you ever log on to Twitter, basically there's this escalation of negative energy and conflict. And that happens so often in particular organizations or churches or businesses or wherever you might be

working or in your family setting or wherever it might be. And so what I have found is so helpful in those seasons is to remember that dynamic and go into the day, each day, looking for opportunities to show extra grace. If you go into it expecting, people are going to be needing extra grace, and it's going to be harder to extend grace in this season. And you know that in advance, it helps so much. And what I found is so much of ministry, I think, is having eyes to see the needs that are all around us, not being aloof and oblivious. People are hurting. And that leads to ministry opportunities. But we have to kind of have eyes to see that and go into our day looking to see that. It's counterintuitive because we usually don't think to do that when we're in those

seasons. So it can be really helpful to do. So extending extra grace to others. And of course, in order to do that, we need to be receiving the Holy Spirit applying the grace of Christ to us first. That's where it flows out of. You can't just do that indefinitely. It's got to come out of a heart that's sensitive to our own forgiveness that we receive from the Lord constantly. Number two is make extra efforts to not take things personally. Okay, so if number one is more what we're extending to others, number two is how we manage what we receive from others. And the same kind of dynamic is true here where in a negative season, in a stressful season,

we will tend to receive more negativity from others, more criticism from others. and most of us have a tendency to take that personally. You know, if someone criticizes us, the instinctive feeling is to, you know, assume there's something we did to warrant it or to take offense and assume that, you know, and kind of respond in a personal way like that. And so it just helps to remember, in a negative season, in a stressful season, there's going to be a lot that comes at us that has nothing to do with us. So as a pastor, one of the pieces of advice someone once gave me is about half the time when you get criticism.

It's going to be more about the other person. About half the time, there's something you can take and it will be about you in some way that you can learn something from it. Now, the half the time, there's a very rough estimate. You know, it could be way more or way less in certain times. But the point is, you know, you can usually learn something from most criticism. but it's helpful to remember not every criticism is about you. Many criticisms, and in fact this happens to ministers a lot because you're associated with certain things for people. And so you can be a target.

So just remembering the discipline to take kind of your normal ability, your normal sort of filter to block certain things by remembering, this isn't about me. I just kind of need to let this one go. crank that up a little bit in those seasons and take to make extra effort not to you know just remember this isn't about me there's a bigger picture going on and I would just say that for pastors right now for every pastor in 2022 um if you're suffering and struggling it's not you okay it's not you every pastor that I know is somewhat weary and some more than others so the word weary would be too weak of a word for many. I don't know anybody who's feeling like, oh man, we're just cruising forward and

everything is grand. It's a difficult season. And I'm sure that's true in many other spheres of life, many other callings. And so just knowing that alone can help you so much if you just remember, this isn't about me. There's a bigger picture going on. It's hard, but just knowing that I didn't do something that merits this, that alone can be really helpful. Okay, number three, just got two more simplify your goals and productivity okay the

a difficult season is not a time to take on huge new projects it's not a time to expand your into new territory and take on new sort of amorphous tasks that you have to figure out and are stressful

go back to what you fell in love with about your calling drill down into the basics of why you took your job in the first place, if there are things that you're passionate about your job. Hopefully there's something. If not, try and do this in other areas of your life. Simplify and concentrate on what you love. You know, if you have subordinates, cast vision for them.

Say, hey, look, we're in a tough season. You know, we can't control. There's a lot we can't control right now. But here's what success looks like for us in this season. Here's the goal for us. Here's the target. a more modest target than it would be another time, you know, and then pursue that. So, you know, for me in Ohio, sometimes in Ohio, it's, we don't have seasons as much as a lot of places. We lived in Chicago before here and the last place in Southern California we live. I remember those

seasons, okay? The Midwest gets more distinct seasons. But one of the, so Ohio's got a lot of, there's so much about Ohio that I love. One of the things about Ohio is it is smaller. It's a more rural place and it's actually shrinking because it's getting so expensive because a lot of people are moving here during the pandemic so for like to have a second home like a vacation home so a lot of people who like young families are moving out of the area so you know ohai can feel uh isolated from the rest of the world especially during a pandemic so one of the things i've done is just set goals based upon what i love and what i feel called to do so with my family i have certain goals with my church. I love pastoring our church. As much as I talk about being a pastor is a hard thing right now,

I actually feel really blessed. We have a wonderful church that's so supportive. And so I, you know, every Sunday I have joy. But focusing on what I, you know, this is why I went into ministry. Focus on those things that you love. And it's amazing. And so, and then in addition to that, I have other certain goals. I say, look, I can't travel as much right now. I'm not involved. I'm not going to this seminary. There's other things that I used to do that I would love to do that I can't do during this season of my life. So what can I do? I'm going to focus on the things that I feel called to do and that I love to do. And one of those, so part of that is book projects and things.

One of those things was starting a YouTube channel, you know. And it's amazing. The lesson, I guess, for this is it's amazing what God can spin out of those difficult seasons. If you just keep going and you kind of simplify your focus, it's amazing what God can produce and what can come out of it. And I look back at like three or four seasons like that where transition seasons, times of stress, whatever it was, and I can look back every time and see unique good

that came out of it in the midst of the difficulty. So in this pandemic season, you know, for three or four months into the pandemic, I started this YouTube channel and it's been such a fun experiment. All right, the last one is seek God's perspective about what you're going through. Seek God's perspective. What I find is in a negative season, there's so many different opinions and analyses that will be coming at you that you just have to kind of take with a grain of salt or altogether ignore.

And it's helpful to continually go back to this basic question of what is God doing through this? Because for a lot of us, I think we forget to ask that question, you know. and so if you're saying, okay, what is the Lord doing in the midst of this? A lot of times the perspective that God will have on those difficult seasons is very different from what our flesh will instinctively react to. So instinctively, if you're like me, in a difficult season, you want to complain, you want to only see the bad. But a lot of times what I have found is that God can use those seasons in his own ways

for good that we could never have imagined. I already mentioned 1st King 17 and all the good that God spun out of. I mean, Elijah could have been tempted to give up up there in Zarifath. I think my ministry is not going anywhere. He had no idea what was coming. Or you think of other, there's so many examples of this in the Bible, but the biggest one, of course, is the cross, where Jesus Christ himself, you know, if you're just looking at that from a human perspective,

from the perspective of human wisdom, you're going to look at Good Friday and you're going to think, this is a colossal failure. You know, it's just everything is, everything is over. And yet, of course, that was this, that was the one thing in all of history that God used to bring about the greatest good. And I believe that pattern plays itself out in our lives and in our ministries over and over again.

So if you can say, Lord, what are you doing in the midst of this? And how might you use this for good? And how can you make me an agent of good in this situation? That is such a hopeful thought to come back to. So in my last comment is this. remember that the season won't last forever. In God's grace, the winter season eventually melts into a spring. And it's so happy.

If you can remember back on how you've seen that happen before in your life, it's so encouraging to remember that in the middle of it. It won't always feel like this. My wife and I have been through seasons where we've had to remind each other of that. Just remember, it's really hard right now. It's not always going to feel like this. And I think a lot of us who are going through difficult seasons. in the world right now have to remember that right now. It's a weird time. The last two years

has been probably harder on us, I think, in some ways than we realize the amount of just the psychological impact of this weird pandemic we've been through. And so remembering, it's not going to feel like this forever. It helps us get through it. All right. Hopefully that will encourage someone out there. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to like the video and subscribe if this was a value to you. and my next, I'm really excited about some future videos. I think the next one I'm going to do is going to be a Christian response to climate change. I'm really excited to share that with you. That's actually an issue I'm really passionate about.

And it's the cultural issue I've decided to focus on a little bit more in my studies this year. So I'm going to be, that video will probably come out about a week or so from the time this video actually comes out, but two weeks from the time I'm recording this. So you can look forward to that as well. And don't forget to check out the dialogue with Brett over at God. Simple simplicity Austin Suggs channel. Hey thanks for watching. God bless you.