When as a pastor you are living every day in the confession and forgiveness pattern of the gospel, you are forsaking your way for a better way. Your relationships are no longer a daily competition for who has power and who is going to get his way

One thing you can know for sure, pastor, is that in the course of your ministry you will be sinned against. You’ll be misunderstood, falsely accused, and unfairly judged. Often this will happen in your relationships with those with whom you are ministering.

When that happens you can choose to carry a list. You can give way to the temptation to punish the other person. You can choose for disappointment to become distance, for affection to become dislike, and for a ministry partnership to morph into a search for an escape. You can taste the sad harvest of relational détente that so many church staffs live in, or you can plant better seeds and celebrate a much better harvest. The harvest of forgiveness, rooted in God’s forgiveness of you, is the kind of ministry relationship everyone wants.

Forgiveness stimulates appreciation and affection. When daily we forgive the people we live and minister with, we do not look at them through the lens of their worst failures and biggest weaknesses. As we talk honestly, weep and pray, and repent and reconcile, our appreciation for each other grows and our affection deepens. We quit looking at the other person as the enemy. We stop protecting ourselves from those who work and live nearest to us and begin to work together to build walls of defense against the many threats to ministry relationships that exist in this fallen world.

Forgiveness produces patience. As we respond God’s way in a daily lifestyle of confession and forgiveness, we begin to experience things we never thought we would see in our relationships. We begin to see bad patterns break, we begin to see one another change, and we begin to see love that had grown cold becomes new and vibrant again. When we experience hard moments and God gives us the grace not to give way to powerful emotions and desires that would take us in the wrong direction, we experience the practical help and rescue his wisdom gives us again and again.

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