It took me a while to realize that ministry had become all about me. On Sundays my wife, Gayle, got herself and our kids ready while I was busing everyone else’s kids to church. On our daughter’s first birthday, I ran to the church (“just for a moment”) and a guy snagged me to talk about his marriage problems. I got so wrapped up that I forgot my family was waiting for me! When I arrived home, the party was over, my daughter was in bed, and I had missed it all.
Another time the whole family wanted to have a picnic at the park. I didn’t want to, but I was overruled. I went, but I was irritable all day. Then it hit me: Your family always does everything you want. The one time you do what they want, you’re a bear.
Perhaps I was (a tad) selfish, I admitted. Unfortunately, the pastorate was perpetuating the problem.
I liked the feeling of being used by the Lord. I thrived on the attention and positive feedback. I couldn’t understand why I enjoyed church members’ needs me but resented my family’s requests.
But, dear, they need me!
Even though our church was growing at a healthy rate, I feared the whole thing could crumble at any time. While compliments made me feel like I was somebody, harsh words or misunderstandings would send me into a two-day slump. Whatever significance I felt, from a big Sunday or a kind word, was hollow and short-lived. It wasn’t enough to fill me with a sense of God’s pleasure.
There is a subtle but huge difference between ministering from a full heart and ministering in order to prove something.
After a dozen years of ministry, I settled into what I thought was a manageable schedule. I took Fridays off and had a weekly lunch scheduled with my wife. I thought it admirable of me to carve out this time for her.
Yet as Gayle and I were talking one day, she said, “I’m not sure I want to do the Friday lunches anymore.”
“Why not?”
“I feel like I am just another task for you,” she said. “You go to lunch with me, but you don’t seem to enjoy it. Your mind is always on what you’re going to do next. I don’t want to just be another duty for you.”
Thoughtful and sensitive guy that I am, I instantly thought, Who needs this? I go out of my way to spend quality time with my wife, and she doesn’t appreciate it!
I wound up distancing myself from Gayle. I had taken darts from disgruntled church people, and now from my own wife! It seemed everybody wanted something. Nobody ever asked me, “How are you?” Now it seemed home was the same way. Everything had become a duty—duties, duties, duties.
The more I tried to meet everyone’s needs, the more “me” wasn’t good enough. Something was wrong, and it started with “me.” In his book, Wild at Heart, John Eldredge calls that something “the wound”: a deep insecurity that causes men to create a false self, determined to make up for the insecurity by stockpiling accomplishments and accolades.
In my ministry, rather than pointing people to Jesus Christ, I had danced to center stage. And it was killing both my joy and my marriage.
It’s not about “me”
By January 2001, I was running on fumes. Our elders sent me to a place in Florida called Dove Shores for two weeks of counseling and rest. My third day there, I was walking a stretch of beach. I realized at that moment I was totally numb. I missed no one and cared about no one. I mumbled a prayer, “Lord, if you don’t do something in these two weeks, I’m going to disappear in South Florida and never go back.”
When I told this to the counselor that morning, she said, “I am going to pray you will hear the voice of the Lord again.”
Those days were the lowest of my life. John Eldredge wrote, “In order to take a man into his wound, so that he can heal it and begin the release of the true self, God will thwart the false self. He will take away all that you’ve leaned upon to bring you life.” He continues, “This is the critical moment in a man’s life, when all he has counted on comes crashing down.” Eldredge described perfectly what was happening to me.
Since Bible college, where I was introduced to Leadership, I have read each issue, so I naturally took the Winter 2001 issue for my time away. That night I read an article by M. Craig Barnes entitled, “It’s Not About You.” The subtitle was, “For a truly broken person, this may be the best news of all.” The article hit me deeply; in fact, it was the first feeling I’d had for a while.
Early the next morning I went for a run on the beach. From out of nowhere, I sensed a voice that wasn’t mine say, “I love you, son.” It cut me so deeply, I wept. The voice continued, “I’m proud of the work you’ve done—you have honestly cut yourself open and looked deeply inside. Now, I want you to know, this isn’t about you, it’s about Me.” I knew without doubt that the Lord was talking to me.
For the remainder of my time at Dove Shores, the Lord’s voice probed me on those morning runs. I’ve often cried when I’ve pondered God’s first words to me: “I love you, son.” Why didn’t he say, “After all I’ve entrusted to you, how could you?” For the first time, I understood his love at the core of my being.
Over those two weeks I learned that God wanted me to serve him, but only as a stagehand, one who would shine the spotlight on him, not to dance on center stage myself. He would bear the attacks of ministry (they were always meant for him, anyway), and he would receive the applause. My affirmation would come from him and him alone. If I could do that, he’d use me on his team.
But the Lord wasn’t done with me yet. He not only wanted me to surrender center stage, but also to surrender to my marriage.
And now, about “us”
Toward the end of the stay, one of the counselors said, “I want to challenge you to pray that God would fill you with such a love for your wife, Gayle, that it would meet her deepest needs.”
I agreed, knowing that I had been a pastor for 15 years, but other than at meal times, Gayle and I rarely prayed together. Honestly, I viewed it as another duty. I was more surprised than anyone at what happened next.
On my first night home, I said to Gayle, “I believe the Lord wants me to find a prayer partner.”
“That would probably be good for you,” she responded.
Then I said, “I think you are supposed to be it.”
She began to cry. “I would be honored,” she said.
After dinner we went into our guest room and knelt. I slid my arm around her waist. And as we prayed, the Lord began answering my counselor’s challenge. Over the years, I’ve been in some awesome worship services and I’ve visited some of the greatest ministries in the country, but I have never sensed God’s presence as strongly as I did that night—while my wife and I prayed together. The Lord was doing something special. A healing had begun.
When we finished praying, neither of us moved. It was such a holy moment; we began calling the room “our holy place.” When I got up off my knees that night, I was filled with a love for my wife like I’d never known.
“If you had a ‘honey-do’ list three pages long, I’d kill myself to do it for you,” I said. Each night for the first couple weeks of prayer in “our holy place,” the Spirit of God filled the room, and we wept, hugged, and prayed.
It has been almost three years since we started praying together. Because of what has happened in our marriage, I am more convinced than ever that God can change people. Perhaps the most startling evidence of the change is that our marriage no longer revolves around me. My wife is involved in ministries that keep her out a couple evenings during the week. I would have never given housework a thought before, but now, when she is gone, I am like a kid at Christmas. I unload the dishwasher, put laundry away—everything I think she would do when she got home. I want her to be able to rest. I get so excited when the garage door goes up and she comes home to a clean house!
Instead of Friday lunches, Gayle and I take day trips. Our kids are grown, so on my day off, we just surrender the day to the Lord and take off. The adventures, small towns, window seats in restaurants, and all the delightful things we’ve experienced are gifts from the hand of our Father.
For Mother’s Day I gave Gayle a nice kite. Now when we go to the beach, the first thing she does is get her kite in the air and let all the string out. It seems a picture of what the Lord has done for me, for us. I’ve been changed from living a life of duty to being filled with delight!
Scott Ranck is pastor of Believers Church in Chesapeake, Virginia.
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