Being a pastor is more than preaching sermons and designing programs. It’s knowing that you need community, that you’ve been called to lead the community of love that is the church. That teenager attracted to the world needs God’s love. That single person facing the death of personal dreams needs God’s love. That immigrant brother or sister who feels so out of place and so misunderstood needs God’s love.

Life in this fallen world is hard. Preparation is hard. Change is hard. It’s easy to get discouraged. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Even in ministry, it’s easy to remain or revert to being self-absorbed. It’s easy as a pastor to feel alone. It’s easy to think that no one understands what you are going through. It’s tempting to think like Moses that God must have gotten the wrong address, that this trial couldn’t have been intended for your doorstep. It’s easy to give in to wondering if the hardships of ministry are worth the trouble. It’s easy to look over the fence and yield to debilitating envy. It’s easy to let go of good and godly personal spiritual habits. It’s easy, at the end of a long day of ministry, to try to numb or distract yourself by whatever temporary pleasure lies within reach. It’s easy to deceive yourself about the need to change, to grow in godliness. It’s easy in ministry to lose your way and give up. But it’s important for you to remember that life and ministry in the fallen world are hard, not only for you, but also for everyone in your care.

That’s why God has designed us to live with others in a community of love. When I read 1 Peter 1, I’m always struck by how God has placed a call to love at the end of a discussion of hardship. As Peter summarizes what God is doing here and now, he uses three words: “suffer, grief, and trial.” None of us wants these things! But Peter reminds us that they’re tools of refinement in the hands of a loving Redeemer intent on completing in us what he’s begun. Then Peter begins to lay out how to live productively in the middle of these hardships.

Listen to his final directive: “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart” (1 Peter 1:22).

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