I suspect that many people will wonder, 'Why should we bother looking at health?' Young ministers in particular may claim that they know all they need to know or are interested in knowing about health. In response, I would argue that the subject provides a very necessary balance, a balance which is present in Scripture, between the message and the messenger. The apostle Paul reminds Timothy that not only has he to take heed to the doctrine but he has also got to take heed to himself (1 Timothy 4:16). Although, obviously, this is to be in the first instance a spiritual thing — his relationship to the truth — nevertheless, Paul goes on in that epistle to talk about practical health problems. There can be no question that a knowledge of ourselves must include the physical, for it is related to virtually everything which can influence the great work to which a pastor is called. The message of the grace of God does not come down from heaven in a vacuum, it comes through what are described as 'earthen vessels', frail men.

How can anyone doubt that this is a pressing, practical problem when we are seeing an increasing number of breakdowns in health amongst men in the ministry. At a recent conference a Christian psychiatrist, Dr Brian Harris, reported that he was seeing more and more ministers, especially older ones, who were breaking down under the strain, and increasing instances of ill health among their wives and families. These cases represent merely the tip of an iceberg; because for every man who is prepared to go and see a psychiatrist, even a Christian one (with all the guilt feelings which such a visit often brings), how many more are being dealt with by their GP or, even more disconcert­ingly, are just putting up with it, soldiering on, feeling weary and discouraged?

Stress Affects Everyone⤒🔗

The first important point that I want to make is that many men will admit the particular stresses on ministers but never dream that they will personally suffer any serious consequences from them. Whilst feeling that many weaker brethren may be afflicted, they confidently imagine it will never trouble them. Now this is a very dangerous presumption. For there is nobody who does not feel these effects and is not affected by them. Even if we do not recognise this truth from a medical standpoint, we ought to do so from a theological one.

The classic biblical example surely is Elijah. His history represents a singular warning that no man is inviolable. Here is a man of outstanding natural and spiritual qualities — surely nothing can upset him. He is held out in James as an example of faith. A man of like passions and yet by means of faith what magnificent feats Elijah is able to perform! But he is remarkable not only in terms of his spiritual faith; look at the kind of courage, authority and control that he showed in his confrontation with the false prophets. We may wonder whether there could be any man more secure than Elijah. Yet within twenty-four hours, what a change! He who could stand up to four hundred men falls before one woman. We find him saying what many a minister says today: 'Lord, I've had enough. I just can't go on.' And if they have not said it, they have certainly thought it. The reasons are very different from one case to another: sometimes it is personal; sometimes it is disaster in the church, yet it is always a sad reminder that the best of men are only men at their best.

But what really interests me from this standpoint about the story of Elijah are the various explanations which have been suggested for this turnaround. Arthur Pink, in his book The Life of Elijah, dwells entirely on the spiritual. What is the trouble with Elijah? He took his eye off the living God and looked at the furious woman. He was lifted up by pride and self-confidence, and had no need of faith. Faith was replaced by self-reliance — that is Pink's explanation. But Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones took a totally different view, although he would not have disagreed with Pink's spiritual diagnosis. He believed the trouble with Elijah was primarily that he was just physically and emotionally ex­hausted. Look at the excitement on Carmel — could there be anything like it? Not only that, he then ran eighteen miles in the pouring rain, which would kill many a marathon runner! And the Doctor drew confirmation for this view from the fact that the Lord did not remonstrate with Elijah; He said, what you need is a rest and a sleep. He did not deal with his spiritual problem until afterwards. Spurgeon has another explanation in a lecture entitled 'The Minister's Fainting Fits'! He says that when a man has an emotional high as Elijah did, then the Lord has to deal with him. Paul says, 'I know how to be exalted' and there has always to be a certain abasing to follow otherwise the man is going to be lifted up much too high.

So there is a spiritual side but there is also a natural side, and when a man is low in any sense he is vulnerable. It is when he is tired, low and exhausted that these things tend to happen. Elijah panicked. These things, tiredness, emotional excitement do affect men. I liked that reference by lain Murray to Spurgeon's sermon at the Crystal Palace on the occasion of the Indian Mutiny: the service took place at Wednesday lunchtime, then Spurgeon went to bed until Friday morning (The Banner of Truth, January 1991, p.17). You cannot go on, you see, with that kind of pressure. The Lord treated Elijah by dealing with the physical side before he came on to the spiritual problems. So the lessons are clear, these things can happen to anyone. Some of the reasons are natural, some are spiritual, and often it needs the wisdom of Solomon to decide the real cause in any individual case. That is why we have got to be very careful about judging other men who seem to succumb to life's problems.

Defining 'Health'←⤒🔗

Having seen that we are all vulnerable and that nobody can afford to be complacent, we can now explore the question, what is health? The dictionary defines health as: 'a state of being bodily and mentally vigorous and free from disease'. It is positive and negative. Not only the Greek and Roman idea — a healthy mind in a healthy body — but also a freedom from disease. The striking thing about health is this: like many other things in life it is something that when we possess it we are entirely unconscious of it. That is the importance of that negative, 'free from disease'. You don't notice good digestion, you only notice indigestion! In other words, disease means disease, contrary to ease. So we can define health as a state in which we are at ease — ease in every part of our composite natures: mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. As human beings we are made up of these several parts and we can never think of them in isolation because they all impinge on one another. But just as in theology we sometimes isolate things which we know are related in order to look at them individually and specifically, so I want to do that with these different aspects of the human personality, and to show that problems in every realm can affect our health.

The Physical Dimension of Health←⤒🔗

Let us start with the physical aspects of health. What a tremendous variation there is! Some men seem as strong as an ox; nothing ever happens to them, they never even get a cold. Other men, such as Spurgeon, are dogged by constitutional frailties all their life. And the question is, what attitude should we have to our health?

Discipline and Responsibility←↰⤒🔗

Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones' attitude appears in a sermon he preached during the last war at Westminster Chapel. The bombs were falling. People were in a certain amount of imminent danger, and they would come to him and say, 'I am very worried, just hearing the siren, I start to shake, I start to tremble, and I think to myself I can't be a Christian, I'm supposed to believe that all will be well, so why am I shaking?' The Doctor's text was 'Take a little wine for your stomach's sake', which he used to demonstrate the spiritual principles in­volved in exposing the difference between natural things and spiritual things, between, for example, faith and fatalism. When he had got through his three or four propositions he said, 'I can summarize it by telling you an incident that happened to me'. He recalled that once, when he was preaching away from Westminster Chapel, he went down into the vestry at the end of a service and, 'as was my custom, I began to get dressed up'. Now those of you who knew his habits in this connection will have some idea of the task involved before it was accomplished to his satisfaction! The church officer, observing all this doubtless with some surprise said, 'Doctor, it's so interesting. You seem to be careless about your life but very careful about your health.' 'And you know,' he said, 'that expresses my view perfectly.'

He was comparing the Christian's attitude and the attitude of the man of the world to life and health. The man of the world is very careful about both his life and his health, which is why there is such a craze on healthy diets. He has only got one life, and he has discovered that if you want to enjoy the pleasures of sin you do so better if you are healthy. Now the Christian's attitude, of course, is totally different. He is governed by something else and his attitude towards life in the spiritual sense is careless, he does not need to be concerned. He is in the hands of God — God has given him this life. If you like, we are immortal till our work is done. The Christian knows that, he believes that, his faith hangs on to that. The sovereignty and the certainty of God. Life to him, therefore, is a sacred gift to be treasured and used for the glory of God, so that he cannot be irresponsible in relation to his health.

When you leave here, for example, it is no good driving at 90 miles an hour down the motorway and saying, 'Well, I am in the hands of God'. Responsi­bility and discipline have got to characterise every aspect of the Christian life, including health. They tell me that in America the Roman Catholics have these St Christophers on the front of their cars, and with the most sophisticated ones, when you exceed the speed limit a voice comes out and says, 'You're on your own now!' You might not agree with the theology but the principle is good! It is sound and sensible to remember these things. I have got to ask you then: What is your attitude to health? Are you careful about your health? Do you ever think about it? Young people generally do not; the average British man has an ostrich philosophy in regard to health. We used to be told, 'they that are whole need not a physician'. Now we realise the importance of spending more time looking after the healthy in order that they might not become ill. Common sense dictates that we take care, yet how many of you have been for a health check recently? It is so easy today, there is no excuse. The government have actually sponsored this and doctors are committed to it. Everybody should have a health check to go through some standard things: blood pressure, urine, perhaps a cholesterol check and a review of the family history. This last factor is tremendously important in identifying those who could be at risk from serious disease such as heart attacks and strokes.

Diet←↰⤒🔗

I know some men are over-concerned about their health, but just because there is a modern preoccupation, you might call it a craze, for a healthy diet and exercise does not mean that it is right for us to react negatively to that. We must have a sensible diet, and we already know the general principles of good eating: high fibre, low fat, low sugar. It is also invariably true that we all eat too much. Grandma's famous dictum that, 'When you could eat a bit more, that is the time to stop' is very sound advice. Nothing makes a man more sluggish or mentally tired than over-eating. It is interesting to note that in those records of the Monastic life, when men used to do a lot of fasting, they talked of wonderful spiritual insights. Almost certainly what they were describing was a natural phenomenon — that is, when someone is fasting, or eating very little, his mind does seem to become much clearer. I am sure we ought to be very careful about the whole subject of eating.

Exercise←↰⤒🔗

Another crucial contributor to good health is exercise. There is nothing more sedentary than the minister's occupation. Gone are the days when you could ride around Cambridge like Simeon on his horse. We all drive everywhere and we sit about. The apostle tells Timothy that physical exercise is profitable in the short term. Medically, he is quite right, for you should exercise every day so that you really get your heart beating fast, at least for a short time. We are appreciating more and more the value of walking, swimming, even jogging. I knew a missionary once who lived in a city. He was extremely busy, there was nowhere to go so he got an exercise bike. He said to me: 'I lost two stone and I found it so helpful in my mental work.' Of course, the danger is that we create a whole theology that makes it God glorifying to have a fit and healthy body. You know the television pictures of the lean, tanned, muscular evangelist. Scripture, however, emphasises that it is our good works that are glorifying to God. No mention is made of good looks!

In fact, it is always disturbing when men start talking about 'their image'. It is politicians who are concerned about their image; we should be concerned about reality and above all being our natural selves. You have only to think of Spurgeon and Lloyd-Jones — they were scarcely sporting, athletic television figures but were nevertheless God glorifying. I remember hearing that the subject of exercise came up when the Doctor was chairing the Westminster Fellowship on one occasion. All were agreed on the excellence of exercise and one man in particular was waxing very enthusiastic about this — even describ­ing which roads he ran down. The Doctor was getting more and more disturbed and when this enthusiast had finished he retorted, 'That would kill me.' What, of course, he was emphasizing was the need to allow for individual variation — there is no such thing as a rule that applies to everybody. Notice that we keep coming back to the need for self-knowledge in every realm.

Sleep←↰⤒🔗

This element of self-knowledge applies to rest, too, including the amount of sleep we get. The medical evidence suggests that we do not need as much sleep as we think we do. At a recent conference on sleep and the effects of sleep deprivation, it was emphasised that the adverse effect usually attributed by people to sleep loss was more the anxiety and fear of what it might do to our health than on any effects per se. In fact, sleep loss will not do us the harm that we think it will, with the proviso that chronic sleep loss impairs thinking processes and should not be ignored as it frequently is an early warning sign of serious mental or emotional disturbance. A further observation is that we can train ourselves to sleep less. (Interestingly, we are told in John Owen on the Christian Life, published by the Banner of Truth, that John Owen early in life trained himself to do with four hours sleep a night). The final conclusion of the experts was, 'Provided you get six hours sleep a night you will be fine.'

In practice, you have to find what suits you. If, for example, you find that you need to sleep on Sunday afternoon in order to be fresh for Sunday evening, do not have any conscience about it, just do it. Preaching takes more out of a man than almost anything else. Sometimes only sleep is restoring. Often it comes down to discipline.

Smoking←↰⤒🔗

What about smoking? Spurgeon loved his cigars, did he not? But I do not think he would have smoked today, because the facts are that 75% of people who smoke are going to die prematurely, directly or indirectly as a result of smoking. That is just a medical fact. At the postgraduate education courses that doctors have to attend nowadays, they are told: 'If you can stop a person smoking, in that one act you will do more for them than everything else you are going to do for that patient in the whole of your medical career.' Some of us came into the Christian life as smokers and some very good spiritual men have awful problems with the question of smoking. But there it is.

The Ministry of Illness←↰⤒🔗

The effect of illness is a big subject, and while there is not time to explore this in any depth, I must touch on the experience of Spurgeon. I wonder how many of you realize that he lost seven of the last twenty years of his pulpit ministry through illness. Listen to what he says, especially in view of modern ideas: 'In the matter of faith healing, health is set before us as if it were the great thing to be desired above all things'. Then he adds, 'Is it so? I venture to say that the greatest earthly blessing that God gives to any one of us is health, with the exception of sickness ... Sickness has frequently been of more use to the saints than health has ... Sick wife, newly made grave, poverty, sinking of spirit, all teach us lessons we can learn nowhere else so well ... They drive us to the realities of faith.' That was Spurgeon's experience. He believed that sickness was used by God to give him an understanding and sympathy with others. Sympathy means fellow-feeling. When a man has been through these things he has a certain authority and reality in his pastoral ministry. A man like Paul, who had been lifted up to the third heaven, speaks in 2 Corinthians 12 of his thorn in the flesh and shows that God providentially, by means of this illness, gave him a deeper self-knowledge of that pride with which all of us are constantly struggling.

How do we get that self-knowledge? From the Holy Spirit's enlightening through his providential dealings with us. Paul's health problem led to his self-knowledge. He prayed about this thorn in the flesh, but God was not automatically going to take it away. So Paul was led to that glorious conclusion: 'I will gladly welcome anything that results in my knowing the power of Christ with me.' What a tremendous re-orientation of thinking about health this spiritual dimension brings! It is an attitude totally unknown to the world. All this nonsense about health and prosperity is completely contrary to the experience of these great men. In fact, perhaps the sense of the uncertainty and brevity of life in previous ages were real factors in the urgency and consecration of men like Martyn, Brainerd and M'Cheyne. They knew that they literally could be here today and gone tomorrow.

We now come to something much more important than the physical health of the pastor, and that is: his mental health. Spurgeon used to say that there are tools to every trade and if there is a tool to the minister's trade, it is the mind. And the greatest danger with all tools is letting them get blunt or rusty. That is why Paul exhorts Timothy in the fourth chapter of that first epistle to 'give yourself continually' to 'reading, doctrine, meditation' — that is all mental work. I am not in the ministry, but I do see what ministers have to go through. In medicine, the longer you are in practice the easier it becomes. You get to know the people, and diseases do not change all that much. However, in the ministry it gets more difficult. Lloyd-Jones once said, 'You know, when I first started I used to get the sermons given; as time goes by I have to work harder and harder.'

Another point of strain is the unique and almost artificial aspect to the work of the ministry. For example, unlike most other types of work there is no job description for a minister. What is your work? Well, it is ultimately spiritual work which defies assessment by purely human standards. It involves lonely work in the study which is wearying in a way that physical work is not. It demands discipline which must be self imposed. It is so much more difficult to spend time alone with God wrestling in prayer and study than it is to go out and do other things. You find all types and all personalities go into the ministry and some love to mix and it is a real problem and struggle for them.

Ministers also have to produce original work constantly. They have to try and maintain freshness for the benefit of the people. They have to bring things old and new and it is a relentless pressure. A non-Christian psychiatrist, when all the aspects and stresses of the ordinary ministerial life were explained to him said: 'that is a recipe for breakdown: I cannot think how men can stand it.' The important thing to emphasise again is that we are not talking about spiritual things, we are talking about natural things. The biggest cause of breakdowns in all professions is chronic mental overwork, men driving themselves too hard. Psychologists talk about the vulnerable 'type A' personality: the empire builder, the whizz kid. They are found in the ministry as well. Now you do need men of drive and of action, but if they are not careful they get this awful condition known as 'burn-out'. It is a reality and the causes are often purely natural, they are not spiritual.

Rest and Relaxation←↰⤒🔗

How essential in the practical sense it is for a man to know his limitations. If he is not careful he takes on too many commitments, which is a recipe for panic and for chronic fatigue and exhaustion. We have to learn from experience what we can realistically do. I had an experience with a business man once. He was going into hospital and, very foolishly, I said to him, 'How are they going to manage without you?' His reply was a bit of real, natural wisdom: 'Oh,' he said, 'I realized long ago the cemetery is full of those who were indispensable!' In a sense, that is what happened to Elijah: 'I, I am the only one you have, Lord'. You are not, although you may be tempted at times to think like Elijah that you are. We ought to be conscious of our opportunities and responsibilities, but we have also to realize our limitations.

In view of these things it is vital that ministers realize their need for mental relaxation. This is when that old tool, the mind, needs sharpening, a change and a rest. You have to have relaxation to retain your mental vigour and without it a man gets weary and dull to himself and his congregation. How does he find relaxation? That is the question! It is different for every man, there is no universal answer. Some find it physically — for the mind and the body are interrelated — others do a bit more reading.

Dr Lloyd-Jones once confided to fellow ministers how he personally found relief when theological problems were going round and round his head. 'I just get the car out and drive through Central London — but it has to be in the rush hour!' It seems incredible, but the sound psychology involved is that immi­nent danger to life wonderfully concentrates the mind. Another contrasting method which he found helpful when the textual division seemed impossible was to listen to music — after which he would frequently find the problem resolved. Every man must discover what helps him personally. Do not forget the day off. Insist on it — even for your wife's sake!

'No man can sustain a spiritual ministry without divine help', 'the Doctor' advised, 'However great his natural ability it will crush him.' Spurgeon said: 'All mental work tends to weary and depress, but ours is more than mental work, it is heart work, the labour of our inmost souls ... How often on Lord's Day evenings do we feel as if life were completely washed out of us. After pouring out our souls over the congregation we feel like empty pitchers which a child may break.' That is a real experience I know many men share.

The Emotional Dimension of Health←⤒🔗

Then, after the physical and mental, there is the place of the emotional life in the health of the pastor. The commonest disease is in the realm of the feelings. The universal complaint is 'I do not feel well'. We must realize that handling our feelings is the most difficult, yet the most essential thing we have to learn in the Christian life. Feelings, you see, are the end product of so many variables — often undiagnosed factors. They are beyond our control. You can say to yourself, 'Tomorrow morning I am going to wake up feeling well', but you either do or you do not and there is not much you can do about it. We cannot produce them, they come from a combination of physical and temperamental factors: some men are cheerful; some men are gloomy and pessimistic; some are steady and even, others are up and down. Either way, there is a tendency for these feelings to control us, whereas we have to bring them into subjection to our understanding, and especially to our faith. In Psalm 42 the Psalmist said: 'Why are you cast down?' He is asking himself a question. When you are cast down you can often say, 'I do not know what is the matter'. And what you have to say is what he says, 'Never mind why — hope in God; I will yet praise him'. And that is what you have to do. You have to follow him, trust him and praise him. You do not have to feel anything to continue to go on in the Christian life in a way which is glorifying to him.

The common problem generally is an over-concern with feelings. We live in an age dominated by feelings. Romans 8 says we are led by the Spirit, but some ministers are not happy unless they feel led. 'Feeling led' is such a problem. They are very unhappy if their feelings are absent or they are not fitting in with what they think is suitable. If they do not feel that they have had a good service they are cast down. They are not happy if they do not hear a few 'Hallelujahs' or see people weeping. Well, these things are right and good but if you start trying to produce them your efforts will end in disaster. We all know something about that, do we not? Ministers feel they are flagging, that there is not much authority in the preaching, so they start to work up both their own feelings and those of the congregation. Truth alone produces real feelings and true emotion. What a confusion there is these days between what might be called natural emotional release in religious services and true spiritual worship. Today it appears that congregations love it, they demand it and they totally fail to differentiate between the natural and the spiritual.

The Need for True Emotion←↰⤒🔗

Of course, there has to be a place for feelings and for an expression of feelings in public worship. Yet what we need is true emotion. We are short of true emotion. The ministry is full of emotional highs and lows at the best of times, but we must not be afraid to express our feelings. The apostle Paul was not. He talked about his tears, his prayers, his concern and his agonies. Look at 2 Corinthians chapter 6. After all the Corinthians said and did to that man, how many other men could really say as he did: 'Oh Corinthians, we have spoken openly to you, our heart is wide open'. There are true feelings. It helps people when the minister can express such things. Indeed, my conclusion from observation over the years is that only when a congregation sees a real sense of love and concern for them does a minister gain any true and lasting spiritual authority. There is no authority in saying, 'I am the minister, listen to me'. He has to exert a spiritual authority and he does that by showing himself to be a loving, caring pastor. And to share his own spiritual struggles is an encourage­ment to people. It helps them to avoid the danger of putting him on a pedestal and thinking, 'Oh, the minister does not know anything about this'. A minister has to be himself. There is nothing worse than the ministerial format in every sense, expression, manner, voice.

There is another danger, of course, and that is wearing your heart on your sleeve. Some men are full of anecdotes about the family and though people love it, yet it is not the same thing. There is a kind of 'mate-yness' coming into relationships between ministers and the church that we are not used to — especially those of us who are older. But one thing is certain: a minister will necessarily be involved in the emotional life of his congregation. If he is not, he will not be able to exercise any real ministry.

New Emotional Demands←↰⤒🔗

Another element in this emotional sphere — and this has increased tremen­dously in recent years — is the nature of the problems that a minister meets in the life of the church, which in the past would have been unthinkable, and which are the effects of the low state of spiritual life in the churches. Adultery, moral problems, marriage, divorce, re-marriage and many other things were unheard of years ago, yet they are almost the bread-and-butter of ministerial work these days. They often involve hours of counselling, and counselling at any level is a most exhausting thing. When you add these different emotional pressures together they sometimes represent a level of stress which can be crippling. And the important thing to emphasis is that the Christian is not exempt from these things nor delivered from them automatically by his faith.

Dr Gaius Davies wrote a book on stress entitled, Stress: A Challenge to Christian Caring, published by Kingsway. It is an excellent book and is about much more than stress, and for those who do not want to go too deeply into the complex area of psychology and counselling, yet want a basic grasp of all the issues, I recommend it as essential reading. It tackles a lot of subjects and deals with them in a most sane and sensible way. The key, however, is this: to be an effective minister you need both sensitivity and resilience. In that sense it is rather like medicine — you have to take these problems and listen and struggle with them, but you must retain a certain objectivity otherwise the emotional demands will completely crush you.

Applying our Knowledge←⤒🔗

These, then, are the three realms: physical, mental and emotional. How do they affect individual men? Timothy, for instance, was obviously an anxious man. We are familiar with the church problems that made him subject to fear and depression, and these things go together, but in 1 Timothy chapter 5 he receives this very practical advice from Paul on the matter of health. Unlike Paul, many men do not fully realize the effect on the body of what is going on in the mind. Paul knew that Timothy was suffering from nervous dyspepsia, a psychological condition. If you mention the word 'psychology' to some ministers, their hair stands on end and they think, 'This is all of the world!' It is not, there is sound common sense in some of it. If we examine Paul's advice we can see some important principles in how we should deal with these things.

Note what Paul does not say: he does not tell Timothy to pray about it; he does not tell him to read the Bible; he does not tell him to go to a healing meeting; nor does he tell him to ignore it; and he does not tell him to pull himself together. Now certain counselling techniques attempt to do that — 'pull yourself together', they imply. Are you anxious? Well, the Bible says 'Be anxious for nothing'. If you are anxious, that is sin and it is about time you confessed it and stopped it. You cannot do that, of course, and I think Paul understood this because I think he was a similar type of man. In essence Paul is saying, 'Do not be afraid to use the wisdom and experience of men, even though they may not be Christian.'

However, what interests me even more about this passage is that it raises the whole question of conscience — a common cause of emotional disease. Luther once said, 'An over sensitive conscience is a very uncomfortable bedfellow.' Often, ministers would go and see 'the Doctor' with seemingly intractable problems and when they came out they would say, 'Oh, he helped me greatly.' But when you analysed his advice it boiled down to, 'You are quite right, just do it'. In other words, he gave them reassurance. He gave them what the psychologists call 'permission'. He was adept at getting out of them what their conscience said, and then told them 'That’s right, do it'.

Knowing Our Temperament and Our Conscience←↰⤒🔗

What we are seeing, if you like, are two factors: temperament and conscience. And they are both tremendously important! Because there are obviously some temperamental characteristics which are advantageous in the minister and others which are disadvantageous. Take a man like Peter, for instance. A bold, incisive man, a natural leader — surely ideal for a minister. But Peter often acts first and thinks afterwards, and when you get Peters in the pulpit they blurt things out and offend the congregation, which causes endless trouble and allows the devil to get in. All sorts of things happen because, in that kind of man, his temperament is controlling him, whereas he should be controlling his temperament. Professor Hallesby works all this out in detail in his excellent book Temperament and the Christian Faith, and in a further book on conscience reminds us of the part this plays in our emotional experiences.

There is nothing we need more than a self-knowledge of our temperament and of ourselves. No wonder there is such an emphasis in the Scripture on the tongue — not speaking in tongues, there is not much emphasis on that — but controlling the tongue. The glory and the possibility of grace surely is this, that a man can be changed and that his temperament can be refined. Look at the apostle Paul. I should think Saul of Tarsus was an extremely unpleasant man: aggressive, arrogant, conceited, but what a change! Only grace through the working of the Holy Spirit can work that kind of transformation. Know yourself, be yourself, but seek grace to have that self in subjection. One of the biggest tragedies in the ministry is to see some men go from one church to another, always experiencing trouble. Now, you cannot judge that. It may well be that the church in every case is the problem, but sometimes there is just the thought: 'Is it that the man has never realized that he has problems in himself that have not been dealt with and that really are a major factor.'

Depression←↰⤒🔗

I must deal briefly with the subject of depression for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is very common in ministers, many of whom are conscientious and introspective. It tends to be under-diagnosed even by doctors because the symptoms frequently suggest a physical condition: tiredness, early morning waking, lack of energy, etc. Secondly, it has a profound effect on their general health, family relationships and the quality of their ministry. Spurgeon described it as a 'cloud' which came over him and he would say that in this state it used to take him all day to do what at other times he could do in half an hour. Sadly, without treatment he would have to wait 'until the cloud passed'. Today, however, there is effective medical treatment which may need to be prolonged. I have had to spend much time encouraging ministers to take and persist with such treatment.

'Cultivate Equanimity'←↰⤒🔗

Let me conclude by saying that the state of a man's spirit is the thing that has the greatest effect on his health and ministry. Sir William Osler, a famous physician at Barts' Hospital, used to say to his men, 'Cultivate equanimity': that is the quality of heart and mind which comes through discipline and control of the whole personality. It is a wonderful thing and, of course, its essential source is spiritual. When we begin to compare our problems with those of the apostle; when we look at what he went through as described in 2 Corinthians 6 and 11; when, as the writer to the Hebrews says, we consider Christ and the hostility that he endured, then we will not become weary and discouraged in our souls. Why? Because of faith. Faith is the only thing that can help us triumph over all adversity.

Many men in the ministry have had to endure becoming, in Spurgeon's memorable phrase, 'a doormat for Christ'. But, they say, the gospel is so glorious and the privilege of being a preacher of it so amazing to me that these things are as nothing. That was the apostle Paul's attitude. These trials are nothing, he said, when I compare the glory of the gospel and the privilege of being a preacher — I can put up with them all. Spurgeon agreed. He once said during the time of the 1860 revival:

The time was when our ministers thought that preaching twice a Sunday was the hardest work to which a man could be exposed. But now we find ourselves able to preach ten or twelve times a week, we find we are the stronger for it ... I meet my brethren in the ministry, they preach day after day, not half as fatigued as they were. I saw a brother minister this week who had been having meetings in his church every day and the people were so earnest that they kept him up from six o'clock in the evening till two in the morning. 'Oh,' said one of the members, 'our minister will kill himself.' 'Not he', said I, 'that's the kind of work that will kill no man. It's preaching to a sleepy congregation that kills good ministers.' So when I saw this minister his eyes were sparkling and I said to him, 'Brother, you don't look like a man who is being killed.' 'Killed', he said, I'm living twice as much as I did before. I was never so happy, never so hearty, never so well, I sometimes lack my rest and want my sleep when they keep me up late and so on, but it doesn't hurt me. I should like to die of such a disease, the disease of being so greatly blessed.

That is it. That is the ministry. That is the effect on a man when God comes. For we are not alone. He is with us and we must keep on preaching and we must keep on praying and we must keep on glorying in the gospel and in the Lord Jesus Christ and that will keep us in real health.