Simply Being True

In his weekly devotional, retired pastor Lee Eclov shared some insight about finishing well:

I don’t think pastors fail because the burdens are too heavy or the enemies too fierce. I wonder if the difference between finishing and failing—the one test that is up to us—is simply being true.

The silent, secret pressure upon pastors, in ways no other Christians face, is to fake it. To put on our preacher voice, our shepherd’s bathrobe costume, to let prayers roll off our tongues having never passed through our souls, and to preach sermons we ourselves haven’t heard. We don’t have to be legalistic Pharisees to slowly become hypocrites.

Being true is more than a singular individualistic endeavour, it is the enterprise of the community of persons. No person can run alone in this life; we need encouragement; we need someone to pick us up when we fall; we need each other. Being true is more about increasing honesty with ourselves, with others, and with God about who we are at this moment.

Though Eclov writes to pastors, it is the exercise of every Christ-follower to pray as Augustine confessed:

Let me know you, O you who know me; then shall I know even as I am known.

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