What Happens When Some Pastors Gather?

I got together with some of my pastor friends today.  We meet on a monthly basis to talk about life, and church, and our relationship with the Lord, and other issues that come up in the life of ministers….Did I mention fistfights in the church parking lot?

And we spend some time praying for each other and for our respective churches.

By the way, I’m just kidding about the fistfights in the church parking lot.  That one hasn’t happened for any of us, yet.

...I don’t think.  (*NOTE: Fellas, if you’re reading this, feel free to correct me at our next meeting, if necessary.)

You might be thinking, “Wow, a small group of ministers sitting around talking!?!  That must be a thrilling time of white hot excitement.  Hey, Dan, can you video tape the meetings for us and broadcast it on the Internet?”

I tried to do that, but the folks at YouTube rejected the video.  They said it was too explosive and they feared that people might have heart attacks or other types of debilitating physical episodes while watching something that exciting. 

“There’s a limit to how thrilling we can get with the videos we allow on our site,” said the YouTube People.

At one point in our pastors meeting, we were talking about prayer.  And we talked about the tension that can exist when we pray in faith, truly believing God will answer our prayers—the Bible instructs us to do this—and yet the prayer may go unanswered, at least, as far as we can tell.

What do we do with the tension of this reality?  It is a reality that is known and experienced by anyone who has spent many years following God and bringing requests to Him in prayer.

We may pray for many years for some good thing, like the salvation of a loved one, and yet the person remains resistant to God.  If this happens, how do we remain hopeful and faithful and, even optimistic, when we pray?

We talked about these questions and other similar ones.  We talked about trying to help people who experience these types of genuine struggles in their prayers.

Pastors—at least the ones I know—are folks with terrific hearts for people.  Pastors have a very good and understandable desire to help the people in their churches.  And it seems reasonable to believe that there are many times when it would be proper and right for pastors to help minimize some spiritual struggles that people are experiencing, if we can.  But, today, as we were talking about this tension that can be experienced in prayer, it occurred to me that sometimes “the struggle” that may happen in our seemingly unanswered prayers is important.  Perhaps we might even say that “the struggles” that may occur in the wake of our seemingly unanswered prayers are necessary.

Please understand, I’m not intentionally looking for any more struggles in life, however, it may be that this struggle regarding our prayers might bring us into a form of interaction with God that we wouldn’t experience any other way.  And it might just bring a new dimension of strength and depth to our relationship with Him.

When we pray earnestly, looking to God in faith, truly believing, and yet we do not see the results that we’ve asked for, I do not believe it is because God is callously and arbitrarily playing games with us.  He has His reasons.  Even in our struggles—even when we don’t understand—He has His reasons.

I don’t take times of struggle lightly.  I realize that sometimes they can be heartbreaking and demoralizing.  But I hope and pray that even our struggles would help us to be closer and more dependent on Him.