Pastor John, here's an anonymous letter we got, I pastor a church and I believe I have

a healthy desire for God. However, I don't always have a healthy or robust desire for

my people. They can make the ministry trying and unenjoyable. Pastor John, what advice

might you have for a pastor in my position? Well, I have a long string of ideas and probably

I do because I am this guy. God calls a lot of introverts into the ministry and these

introverts must set themselves to love unrelentingly in the way they can love and not going

to look the same as the way an extrovert loves his people and getting that clear can be

very helpful and very freeing. An introvert has no excuse not to love his people, but he

cannot beat himself up that he's not like so and so, who's so unbelievably gifted in the

way? He moves among people and therefore we watch him and we go home and we feel shoot. If

that's the way love is, do I have it? I mean, that's what pastors have to deal with if they're

not wired that way. So here's my several councils. Ponder the way Christ views His people. Acts

2028, pay careful attention to yourselves and to the flock of God in which the Holy Spirit

made you overseers to care for the Church of God. Here it is, which he obtained with his own blood.

The point of that last statement is to awaken the cost of the purchase and the preciousness of

what is purchased. We pastors have the stupendous privilege of serving the people bought at the

highest price imaginable in the universe. It's as if a king should call you a pastor and put you

over a region of his kingdom that he just paid for at the highest price than any other region he

ever bought. And he put you in charge of that position. So we should just stand in amazement that

these people that we are called to serve are the purchase of God at the highest priced imaginable,

what an incredible privilege. Second, we should ponder not only the purchase, but the aim of Ephesians 5,

25 Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her that he might sanctify her, having cleansed

...