We seek to do the church good while hoping others do more good than we ever could. Threats become brothers to us again when we learn to long for others’ success where we have failed, when we long for others to take God’s people across the Jordans we never could. When we begin to pray, “Feed the sheep by any hand.” This love for Christ’s bride shakes us free from posturing for her attention and admiration. We play our parts, knowing that loving her is loving him, as Jesus himself reminds us: “Pastor, leader, minister, do you love me? Then shepherd my lambs” (John 21:15–17).

I often need to check myself as to whether I am placing the emphasis on “the Lord’s ministry through me” or “the Lord’s ministry through me.” I suspect most pastors and leaders know what I mean.

The weed grows quietly. How are my articles doing? How is my small group maturing? How is my book selling, my podcast rating? Are my Sunday-morning prayers especially encouraging? Is my preaching, my marriage counseling, my evangelistic effort particularly effective?

I am not talking about the holy ambition proper to a minister who loves souls and the glory of Christ (Romans 15:20). I am talking about a self-congratulatory spirit that pats oneself on the back and thinks better of the work simply because it is his. I am talking about tangled motives. The silent smirk or sunken shoulders. The slipping of some glory into one’s pocket. The temptation captured in John Bunyan’s response when someone told him he had preached a delightful sermon: “You are too late; the devil told me that before I left the pulpit.”

The success of others, even close friends, can reveal the drift. The warm sensation that washes over when they excel in the area where your strengths also lie. The gnawing suspicion, the feeling of threat, the envy, the bitterness, the embarrassment, the self-pity. Instead of rejoicing that God has advanced his own name and benefited souls, all is not well simply because the eternal God chose to use them instead of me.

The temptation stands to full height, however, when others succeed in the very place that we have failed. Someone else takes the people higher than we could climb, leads them farther than we could walk. We, like Saul, have conquered our thousands, yet the people sing of another who has conquered his ten thousands. We are the lesser light. The comparison drove Saul mad. He hurled a spear at David to kill him (1 Samuel 18:10–11). What is our response?

We might pray, however much ministry still lies ahead of us, that we have the shepherd’s heart that Moses did in his final days.

Looking at the Promise

Let’s appreciate the difficulty facing Moses at the end of his ministry. After Moses had “refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter”; after he had chosen rather to be “mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin” (Hebrews 11:24–25); after bringing Egypt to its knees, leading Israel through the Red Sea, climbing Mount Sinai, and wandering for decades in the wilderness, his journey ends overlooking — but not overstepping — the boundary to the Promised Land.

Old age, you may remember, did not bar the prophet from the land of milk and honey. “Moses was 120 years old when he died. His eye was undimmed, and his vigor unabated” (Deuteronomy 34:7).

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