I wake up with a to-do list in my head. It’s taken me a long time to realize that I will die with a list of uncompleted tasks. No matter how hard I work, I’ll never get it all done.
Some things matter more than the tasks we accomplish. George Müller accurately described the priority that matters above everything else:
The welfare of our families, the prosperity of our business, our work and service for the Lord, may be considered the most important matters to be attended to; but, according to my judgment, the most important point to be attended to is this — Above all things, see to it that your souls are happy in the Lord. Other things may press upon you; the Lord’s work, even, may have urgent claims upon your attention; but I deliberately repeat, it is of supreme and paramount importance that you should seek, above all other things, to have your souls truly happy in God himself. Day by day seek to make this the most important business of your life. This has been my firm and settled conviction for the last five-and-thirty years. For the first four years after my conversion I knew not its vast importance; but now, after much experience, I specially commend this point to the notice of my younger brethren and sisters in Christ. The secret of all true effectual service is joy in God, and having experimental acquaintance and fellowship with God himself.
I taught a group of pastors. One of the privileges of teaching a class is that you get to give assignments that interest you. I told the students to find an older pastor they admired, one who had not only stayed faithful but was growing in godliness and was admired by others for their character. I assigned them the job of finding such a person and interviewing them to discover how they had stayed faithful.
The results were fascinating. The interviewees were different in personalities and in many of their disciplines. All of them, though, came back with variations of Müller’s advice. They’d discovered ways to consistently make their souls happy in the Lord.
One pastor made it a practice to begin praying to God before he got out of bed. His prayers had previously been formal. He found it necessary to learn to speak plainly to the Lord every morning as he woke. He’d pray something like this: “Good morning, Lord. Thank you for another day. I need you today, so please help me.”
Others spoke of the importance of slow mornings, of guarding time for what matters most in the early hours of the day. Their practices varied according to their personalities, but it struck me as I heard the results: each of them found a way to temporarily push away the demands of the day and simply delight themselves in God.
This is important for everyone, but it’s especially important for pastors. “Preaching, caring and leading are vitally connected to the pastor’s sense of God’s presence and power,” write Joe Trull and Robert Creech in Ethics for Christian Ministry. But ministry presents a danger. “Scripture can become preparation, prayer can become a task, and worship can become a performance.”
“Faithful ministry requires the disciplined practice of engaging in those ‘holy habits’ that keep one attentive to God.”
Other tasks will crowd in, but our first and most important job is to attend to this job first. Delight in God is everything. How we cultivate this delight will vary, but nothing else on our to-do lists even comes close.