One of the greatest blessings any pastor can experience is the prayers of the people he serves. There are people in the church I serve who regularly let me know that they are praying for me and there are others who, although they do not tell me in so many words, demonstrate a prayerful interest in me and my responsibilities. I am among those blessed pastors who can confidently, as Spurgeon put it, “take it for granted that his people are praying for him.”
But I am confident that if the people I serve knew more of the depths of my need for prayer, they would pray even more. Many of the needs are evident. The deepest needs are known—and that only partly—only to the pastor’s own heart.
My wife, Donna, and I are reading again this year Octavius Winslow’s Morning Thoughts. I am not sure how many times I have been through it myself or the two of us together. But each time it has proven to be a helpful instrument to help frame our thoughts for the day ahead. Recently we read his meditation on Romans 15:30 in which he expounds on the need that pastors have for the prayers of their people. Once again, I was moved deeply with a sense of gratitude and a fresh awareness of how desperate my need is of that which only God can supply.
Because of His grace and mercy toward us in Christ, He does supply it. And He supplies it through the prayers of His people. I commend Winslow’s words to you with an encouragement of my own, that you make it matter of studied, heartfelt discipline to pray for your pastor.
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“Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that you strive together with me in your prayers to God for me.” Romans 15:30
The Magnitude of Their Work [1]
There are many weighty and solemn considerations which powerfully plead for the prayers of the Church of God, in behalf of her ministers and pastors. The first which may be adduced is- the magnitude of their work. A greater work than theirs was never entrusted to mortal hands. No angel employed in the celestial embassy bears a commission of higher authority, or wings his way to discharge a duty of such extraordinary greatness and responsibility. He is a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ- an ambassador from the court of heaven- a preacher of the glorious gospel of the blessed God- a steward of the mysteries of the kingdom. Properly to fill this high office- giving to the household their portion of food in due season- going down into the mine of God’s word, and bringing forth to the view of every understanding its hidden treasures- to set forth the glory of Emmanuel, the fitness of His work, and the fullness of His grace- to be a scribe well instructed, rightly dividing the word of truth- to be wise and skillful to win souls, the grand end of the Christian ministry- oh, who so much needs the sustaining prayers of the Church as he?
Their Own Insufficiency
Secondly. The painful sense of their insufficiency supplies another affecting plea. Who are ministers of Christ? Are they angels? Are they superhuman beings? Are they inspired? No, they are men in all respects like others. They partake of like infirmities, are the subjects of like assaults, and are estranged from nothing that is human. As the heart knows its own bitterness, so they only are truly aware of the existence and incessant operation of those many and clinging weaknesses of which they partake in sympathy with others. And yet God has devolved upon them a work which would crush an angel’s powers, if left to his self-sustaining energy.
Their Peculiar Trials
Thirdly. The many and peculiar trials of the ministry and the pastorate ask this favor at our hands. These are peculiar to, and inseparable from, the office that he fills. In addition to those of which he partakes alike with other Christians- personal, domestic, and relative- there are trials to which they must necessarily be utter strangers. And as they are unknown to, so are they unrelievable by, the people of their charge. With all the sweetness of affection, tenderness of sympathy, and delicacy of attention which you give to your pastor, there is yet a lack which Jesus only can supply, and which, through the channel of your prayers, he will supply. In addition to his own, he bears the burdens of others. How impossible for an affectionate, sympathizing pastor to separate himself from the circumstances of his flock, be those circumstances what they may. So close and so sympathetic is the bond of union—if they suffer, he mourns; if they are afflicted, he weeps; if they are dishonored, he is reproached; if they rejoice, he is glad. He is one with his Church. How feelingly the apostle expresses this: “Then, besides all this, I have the daily burden of how the churches are getting along. Who is weak without my feeling that weakness? Who is led astray, and I do not burn with anger?” To see a Christian pastor, in addition to his own personal grief, borne often in uncomplaining loneliness and silence, yet bowed down under accumulated sorrows not his own—others looking to him for sympathy, for comfort, and for counsel- is a spectacle which might well arouse in behalf of every Christian minister the slumbering spirit of prayer. We marvel not to hear the chief of the apostles thus pleading, “Brethren, pray for us.”
(This is taken from the entry on August 1 of Winslow’s Morning Thoughts)
[1] I added the subheadings.
