Well, hello, I am Jonathan Lehman.

Welcome to this episode of the Nine Marks Pastors Talk, and I'm here with Mark Devere.

Grateful for this time to speak with you.

Nine Marks exist to equip church leaders with a biblical vision

and practical resources for building healthy

churches learn more at nine marks.org.

Mark, today I want to talk about a particular occupational hazard of pastoring and maybe I hope, ironically,

it will be an encouraging conversation, but in fact it is about discouragement.

Okay.

Why is discouragement such a frequent occurrence among pastors?

Well, I mean, theoretically, of course, because we're in a fallen world.

But I think the nature of our work is such that we have to rub our noses in the

fallenness of the world.

You know, there are some people who, with their jobs, I mean, you know, we're, we all

do, and we deal with each other and we deal ourselves.

But some people's jobs are

are at people when they look their best and you know feel their best and are thinking their best and are

but we're more like the doctors we're the doctors of the soul so we're people come to see us

often when things are not going well and when they're struggling and when

they're feeling the pull of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and they want help.

You see a lot of soul cancer and other maladies.

I don't know cancer, but yeah, yeah, certainly soul disease, yeah.

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