God’s Coming Kingdom

A friend of mine told me how he almost quit his first pastorate. He found it hard to endure the seemingly petty complaints from his congregants. Members in the congregation threatened to leave if they didn’t get their way. Some were overtly racist; others were opposed to women holding any roles of leadership in the church. He found it difficult to be patient, especially when people had their feelings hurt.

One evening, after a particularly contentious congregational business meeting, he felt he had reached the end of his rope and was seriously considering resigning as pastor. Discouraged and alone, he stood changing the lettering on the church bulletin board that announced the next Sunday’s sermon title when a strange, disheveled, bearded, old man wearing a worn-out overcoat walked up to him and said, “You’re the pastor here, aren’t you?” “Yes, I am,” my friend answered. “Well,” the man said, “I stopped by to tell you not to be discouraged and to be patient. You’re doing a good job! Things will get better. Just wait and see.”

When my friend asked this stranger who he was, the man answered, “I’m Jesus.”

My friend went home amazed by this surreal encounter. He told his wife about the weird man who had claimed to be Jesus and who had told him that he was doing a good job and to be patient.

His wife responded carefully, “Well? How do you know that he wasn’t Jesus?”

In Galatians 6:9, Paul writes, “Let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (kjv). In other words, “Hang in there!”