The Only Cure For Pastoral Insecurity

“Insecure pastors! They drive me crazy!” Such was the rant of a mentor of mine who served for a number of years as the leader of a state-wide church association.

He didn’t say it contemptuously, but he was often frustrated with the many pastoral and congregational dysfunctions which find their source in pastoral insecurity. As a much younger man, I always dutifully agreed with him, while silently suspecting that I was probably pretty insecure myself – and I was.

As the years rolled by, I came to believe that all of us are insecure, to one degree or another, including all of us pastors, simply because we all fall short of our own standards, not to say God’s standards, every single day.

In other words, we’re insecure because we should be.  We’re not omnicompetent; we’re frail as dust.

The only exceptions would be the most extreme narcissists and sociopaths, who have no problem with self-confidence due to their delusional thinking.  May God spare us from that.

If our insecurity is based in our actual, incomplete, unfinished condition, and it drives us to Christ, then it’s a good thing, isn’t it?

Which brings us to the only real “cure” – at least for life in this world – that I’ve ever heard of: finding our security in God alone.  It’s easy to write this.  Words are cheap.  But I’m talking about really finding, grasping, laying hold of, a quiet confidence that comes from our experience with the living, loving God.

This requires coming to understand the extraordinary, unconditional, stabilizing love of God at a soul-encouraging, life-changing, get-up-and-face-our-enemies level.

Just as there is no microwaved path to Christian maturity or quick cure for neglected family relationships, you can’t suddenly tackle this project in the midst of a career-threatening crisis,

So how do we access the cure for pastoral insecurity: God’s transformative, electing, foreknowing, predestining, calling, regenerating, sanctifying, glorifying love? There is no answer besides the Scriptures.

If you are helped by poems, songs, stories and testimonies from those who have been blessed with a profound understanding of God’s love, just remember where that understanding came from: the Scriptures.

If you are helped by a loved one or two – like a really great wife – who does pretty well at loving you almost unconditionally, just remember where her rock-solid understanding of God’s love came from: the Scriptures.

If you have been helped – as I have – by one or more of the wonderful Christian books by authors who have dug deep into this subject, just remember where their strength-giving truths came from: the Scriptures.

The writings of Paul are arguably the greatest source material in the Bible to anchor us securely in the love of God.  You can’t hardly spend too much time in Galatians 2, Ephesians 1-3 and Romans 5-8.

Personally though, I am increasingly finding an even sweeter taste of God’s unconditional love from a Book which preceded Paul by hundreds of years: the Psalms.

Somehow David, in particular, without having heard the name of Christ, but with his faith securely grounded in God’s transformative, unmerited help and favor (we call it “grace”) wrote eloquently and intimately of his desperately-needed experiences of God’s love.

I Samuel 30 tells the unforgettable story of David and his band of “outlaw” warriors – collectively on the run from the wrath of King Saul – returning to their headquarters at Ziklag. Amalekite raiders had attacked the village, taken the residents captive, looted everything of value and burned the rest.

David’s men did what followers often do: they blamed their leader.  They were literally thinking about stoning David to death.  To my knowledge, no pastor has ever faced a mutiny which was quite this bad.  Amazingly, our writer tells us that David “found strength in the LORD his God.”

I don’t have a good explanation for how David was able to grasp the love God had for him to the degree that he did. But it is our blessing that he was able to do so.

I have soaked long in the words he has written about the love of the Almighty for a forgiven sinner.  I’ll end with a few examples and by simply saying again that grasping, rejoicing in, grounding oneself in the love of God is the only real cure for pastor insecurity.

“I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety.”  Psalm 4:8

“I have set the LORD always before me.  Because he is at my right hand I will not be shaken.” Psalm 16:8

“The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.”  From Psalm 23

“For the king [David himself] trusts in the LORD; through the unfailing love of the Most High he will not be shaken.”  Psalm 21:7