No pastor lives up to what he preaches, if he does, he's preaching too low.

You wrote that on Twitter a few years back, Pastor John, how does a pastor think through

this?

Talk to the pastor who is preaching high and feels overwhelmed and burdened because of

it.

Is this a healthy tension for him to feel?

Well, I sure don't want to solve the problem of the gap between the heights of our message

and the depths of our failure by lowering the heights.

I'm not going to solve the problem that way.

We are called to preach the Word, 2 Timothy 2, 4, preach the whole Council of God, preach

the glory of God as the goal of all things and so preach a great salvation and the unsearchable

riches of Christ and the pathway to pleasures forevermore and rejoicing always.

The aim of our charge is love from a pure heart and we have peace and don't be anxious

for anything and don't grumble and love your watch like Christ, love the church and

love your enemies and be perfect for I am perfect and it's overwhelming, right?

That's the message.

The message is as high as it can possibly be with the focus on God and the gospel and

our salvation, our eternal hope and the glories of knowing Jesus and all the radical ethical

call that Jesus gives us and so the effect that has, if we're faithfully lifting this

up, we're not going to be like the lawyers in the gospel of Luke.

I think it's chapter 11 where Jesus says, you load men with burdens, hard to bear and

you don't lift a finger to help them.

...