Strangely, the one source of genuine help in such circumstances is the one that is literally in our hands as we seek to minister to others, but all too often fail to use as we seek to minister to our own souls. It is, of course, God’s word in Scripture. Indeed, we too easily forget the axiom that before we can effectively minister that word to those around us, we must first minister it to ourselves.

I was speaking with some ministerial colleagues recently about a conference one had just attended. The conference had been great, but to his surprise, after one of the sessions, a friend next to him put his head in his hands and said, ‘I’m a failure!’ Having just listened to an inspiring account of how a church on the verge of closure had been remarkably revitalised, this dear brother could only see what hadn’t happened in his similar situation despite his faithful labours.

No doubt there are many in the Christian ministry, serving as missionaries, or who have been involved in Christian work for more years than they care to remember who can identify with these words. They have laboured long and faithfully, but there seems to little visible fruit for their labours.

It may be tempting to try and analyse and resolve such tensions purely in terms of ministerial psychology. (Many Christian workers reach for such solutions in a desperate attempt to recover some sense of self worth or usefulness.) But such answers are little more than Band Aids that may provide some short-term comfort, but do little or nothing to explain the deeper issues or provide the wherewithal to press on in our ministerial or missionary vocation.

Strangely, the one source of genuine help in such circumstances is the one that is literally in our hands as we seek to minister to others, but all too often fail to use as we seek to minister to our own souls. It is, of course, God’s word in Scripture. Indeed, we too easily forget the axiom that before we can effectively minister that word to those around us, we must first minister it to ourselves.

Despite our failure to do that consistently, if at all, God has his own way of surprising us from his word: often from passages we have read repeatedly, but failed to appreciate in all their fullness. So when it comes to the sense of abject failure that grips so many pastors, the prophet Isaiah speaks words that are quite remarkable.

More accurately and even more surprisingly, it is not the prophet speaking, but the Servant of the Lord doing so through Isaiah’s message. It comes in the second of the four so-called ‘Servant Songs’ of Isaiah. Songs that are placed on the lips of the Suffering Servant who God had promised to send as the Saviour King for his people. We hear him say, ‘I have laboured to no purpose; I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing’ (Isa 49.4).

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