The Dead Garden Test

A leader can look wildly successful and still be dying inside. Tonight we start with a simple question about a “good pastor,” then uncover the hidden math many of us use to judge ourselves: public fruit versus private neglect. The story of Wes and his daughter’s raised-bed garden makes it painfully clear how something precious can wither “20 steps out the back door,” not because we don’t care, but because the system only pressures what everyone can see.

From there, we open Song of Solomon and sit with the line, “They made me the keeper of their vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept.” We talk about the difference between tending and guarding, how overwork often comes from old disapproval, and why the Shepherd King refuses to score you. If you’ve been carrying ministry weight, family weight, or life weight mostly alone, you’ll hear a different voice than the internal accuser: “Behold, you are fair, my love.”

We connect that grace to Elijah’s collapse after victory, Jesus’ promise of soul-rest in Matthew 11, and the “easy” well-fitted yoke where he carries what you were never built to pull. We also name the way church culture can reward output while ignoring the inner life, then offer practical next steps: look at your neglected vineyard, water something that produces nothing, let a good thing die on purpose, get truly known, and let yourself be loved out of exhaustion.

If this helps you, subscribe, share it with one leader who needs shade, and leave a review so more tired people can find the table.

Transcript

Subscribe And Share With One Friend

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, before we get started, if this channel has been good for your soul, I want you to do two things for me. Subscribe. It's free, it only takes a second, and it's the single most useful thing that you can do to help this message reach somebody who really needs it. And then send it to a friend. Not everybody, one person. You already know who they are. The name came to mind when I mentioned it. So somebody send it to you once. Now pass it on. Now, a quick word for our ministry partners before we begin. On Saturday, August the 22nd at 10 in the morning, we're gathering in person right here in Covington, Georgia, at the Courtyard by Marion. This is a partners one day only gathering, and I want a room where I can be all the way honest and go into the deep end with the people who have been supporting this ministry and helping us make this happen. Guys, the gathering itself is free. The only cost is a meal ticket if you'd like to join us for lunch or dinner. And I hope you will, because the most transforming moments always happen around the table. The registration for this event, the link is below in the description. I hope you'll come join us.

Why Pastors Need A Safe Table

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What's up, everybody? Thank you for joining me. We're live. It's Tuesday. So excited, six in six days, guys. I turned 40 years old. So, in light of that, I think it's only right for me tonight to just keep continuing to do what we feel like God's called us to do. And so, guys, my heart is for pastors and leaders that their interior world would find wholeness, peace, joy in the presence of the Lord. Religion is so harsh. Um, and the culture is so harsh on pastors and church leaders. And so tonight I kind of want to dive into the real heart of why the Lord like established the shepherd's tent vision in my heart. Uh, years ago, I came here and planted a church. I thought that the church, that was the shepherd's tent. And uh, I'm not saying I'll never have another church again, but what I'm saying is I took a vision that the Lord gave to me and I put it through the lens of the only thing that I understood, which is church. And now I'm seeing a greater vision. And so I'm excited that we are back to original intent and taking moments like this to really pour into the hearts of pastors and church leaders. So if you're a pastor or you're a church leader and you're watching this or listening to this right now, we want to welcome you. We're excited that you're here. Also, if you know a pastor or a church leader that needs support, needs resources like this, make sure you share this with them. Okay.

The Good Pastor Question

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Guys, I want you to answer a question for me tonight. Okay. Um, and I want you to end it, and I want you to answer this like really honestly, okay, in your head right now, because what you answer is going to tell you something about yourself that I don't think you're going to enjoy. Okay. So let's just say there's a man, 47 years old, pastors of a church of 300 people, 11 years he has spent in the same pulpit. This summer, he decided to run a vacation Bible school that put 140 kids through his building. He preached through the book of James. He buried a 19-year-old. He sat with a couple of six weeks and uh sat with a couple for six weeks and did marriage counseling. And they're um, you know, trying to help them have a solid marriage. He covered another man's pulpit three times while that pastor had surgery. He answered the phone every single time it rang at two in the morning. And in those exact same 12 weeks, 20 steps out of his own back door, he let his nine-year-old daughter's garden die. So the question is is this man a good pastor? I don't want you to rush, okay? Because I know some of you have already judged this man in your heart. I know it because I know how the human heart works. But before you answer the question, because I'm not going to tell you tonight whether he's a good pastor, I'm going to tell you something that I think is far more important, maybe far worse. I'm going to show you before we're done tonight that the way you just decided it, you decided your opinion about this man is the exact same machinery that killed that garden. And it's running in most of us right now. So we're going to come back to that. So stay with me, okay? Now, before we get in deep into this teaching tonight, I want to say one thing to whoever's out there tonight. If you're carrying something right now, if you're a pastor, you're a leader, a mom, a builder, somebody who's holding a lot of weight and doing it mostly alone. I don't want you to just listen to me and then close the app and go back to carrying it by yourself. There's a table for you. I call it the Shepherd's Tent. It's our online community. It's completely free. No fee, no tears, no hoops. It's just a place to keep this conversation going with people who are walking the same road as you, where you can ask real questions, you can talk honestly and be discipled instead of just informed. So if you're a pastor or church leader, I want you to hear this part specifically. Inside that community, there's a monthly pastors and church leaders call. It's a seat at a table with other people who carry what you carry. No performance, no reporting your numbers, just encouragement, rest, and the conversation about what the church actually is supposed to be. It's included, it's yours. So go to connect.the shepherdstent.com forward slash the shepherd's table. And if you're watching this on Facebook, just comment the word table and I'll get it to you. All right, let's jump into the teaching tonight.

Wes And The Garden That Died

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So the man I just described to you, let's just say for uh a name, let's call him Wes. Okay. Wes is not one person. Wes is about a hundred men and women that I've set across from at dining room tables, in hotel lobbies, in the back of church buildings after everybody else went home. And I need you to hear one thing about him before I go further, because the story does not work if you've already written him off. Okay. Wes is not a lazy man. He's not faking. He's one of the most faithful men that you'll ever meet. And his church would tell you the same. But last April, Wes built a garden with his daughter. She's nine. She's been asking for months. So one Saturday, he bought cedar boards and screws and $40 worth of soil. And the two of them spent the whole day in the backyard building a raised bed. He let her use the drill. She was so proud of that. They planted tomatoes and squash and a row of sunflowers along the back because she wanted something tall. Okay. And when they finished, they stood there with dirt on their knees and she looked up at her dad and said, Daddy, this is our garden. And he said, That's right, baby. We're going to take care of it together. And he meant it. He meant every word of it. Okay. I need you to know that. It's August now. He did this in April. It's August. And that garden is completely dead. Not struggling. Dead. The tomatoes went brown and brittle in early July and just stayed there like a skeleton in the dirt. The squash never made it past the flower. The sunflowers came up eight inches and stopped. Weeds took the back corner, and there's a hose lying in the grass about six feet from the bed, coiled up right where they left it in May. Six feet. That's how far the water was the entire time. Now here's what I want you to set with, okay? And this is the whole thing, so stay with me. Every single thing growing, okay, every single growing thing Wes was responsible for outside that backyard flourished that summer. 140 kids, a preaching series, a marriage, a grieving family, another man's congregation, all of it green all summer long. And 20 steps out his own back door, the only thing that he'd ever planted that had his daughter's fingerprints on it turned brown and died within sight of water. Now, friend, I know some of you are gonna judge this man. He didn't do it on purpose. That's the part where I have a lot of compassion. There was never a morning where Wes stood at the kitchen window with his coffee and thought, you know what? Today I'm gonna let my daughter's garden die. Nobody chooses that. It happened the way it always happens. Okay. A Tuesday when he went to water it, he got a phone call. A Thursday when he he had to go out of town. A week where he genuinely just didn't look out the window. Okay. And by the time he actually stopped and looked at it, there was nothing left to save. And it had been dead long enough that his daughter had stopped mentioning it. Okay. That's the detail that gets me. She stopped mentioning it. Okay. He said, Wes is like kind of recounting in his mind that she had asked about it about four or five times in June. Daddy, did you water it? And he'd say, I'll get it tonight. And then somewhere in there, he just she just quit asking. Not because she was angry. Nine-year-olds aren't really angry. She quit asking because a child eventually learns what's actually going to happen and stops spending her hope on it. So here's Wes in August, standing at his back door at 10:30 at night after a leadership meeting, looking at a dead raised bed in the dark, unable to explain how a man who kept 140 other people's children fed in July let $12 of tomato plants die six feet from a water hose. And there's a cheap version of this message that I refuse to preach. The cheap version says, Wes, prioritize your family. Get your life in order. Somebody hand that man a planner. I'm not going to preach it. Why? Because Wes has already preached it to himself every night since June. He has an internal accuser who says, listen, who can say it better than Wes could ever say it to himself. And that voice has never once made him a better father. It's only ever made him more tired, more ashamed, and a combination of those two that has never grown anything in the history of the world. See, friend, Wes's problem was never that he didn't care about the garden. Wes' problem is that he lives inside of a system, a system he loves, a system he built with his own hands, a system full of good people that has never once sent him a text message about his garden. See, somebody notices when the sermon's thin. Somebody notices when the funeral doesn't get done. There's a whole ecosystem of pressure and expectation and genuine legitimate need standing around every single thing in Wes' life, except the raised bed in his backyard. And the raised bed is the only thing nobody will ever hold him accountable for. And that's exactly why it died first. Now listen, because here's the thing that this whole teaching tonight is built on. What died in that backyard is really not a garden. I've sat, friend, listen to me. I have literally sat with pastors who could tell you the emotional history of every family in their congregation and could not tell you the last time that they cried about their own life. I have sat with worship leaders who have led thousands of people into the presence of God on a Sunday and haven't opened the Bible for themselves, not to prepare anything, but just to be with God in a year and a half. Like I've sat with mothers who have poured themselves into four children and have absolutely no idea who they even are anymore. Not what they should like, but what they're actually like. They can't even think about that. And every one of them is watering something faithfully, sacrificially, day after day after day. Just not the thing with their own name on it. And here's the real cruelty of it all, okay? Every one of those people is fruitful. That's what makes it so hard to see and so hard to stop. If the neglected produced obvious failure, somebody would have caught it in a week, but it doesn't. It produces a harvest, a growing church, a good reputation. The public vineyard is heavy with fruit. And everybody applauding it, okay? And and and when everybody's applauding it, has no way of knowing it's been, you know, that they've got a garden bed back at home that is dying. So, friend, you can be enormously fruitful and completely unwatered at the same time. The fruit will hide it for years. Okay. So if something in your chest went tight while I was telling that story, if you know exactly which bed, which raised bed in your life is brown right now, I want you to receive this instead of skipping past it the way tired people do. You're not lazy, you're not a hypocrite, you're not a fraud because your public life is greener than your private one. You did not fail at being a pastor or a Christian. You are a person who has learned and who has been watering everything that you were told mattered, and nobody ever told you that you mattered to, that your family mattered to, that your personal things matter too. And I want to show you tonight out of a book that most pulpits completely ignore and they're afraid to preach from. But it's so important because you need to hear this, man. And and and and God saw this coming a long time ago. And that when he finally speaks to the person standing in front of the dead garden, what comes out of his mouth is not one syllable of what you're expecting. You were loved before you were useful, and the shepherd king, we're talking about Jesus, has never once wanted your harvest more than he wants you. Now,

Song Of Solomon And Your Vineyard

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I want you to turn with me. We're going to look at the book of the Song of Solomon. Okay. Now, I understand a lot of pulpits skip this like book of the Bible many, many times, but I've literally spent months of my life inside of this book. There was a season years ago in the fall of 2016. Some of you have heard me tell this where I had walked away from the ministry that I helped build, and I sat by a fire pit in South Carolina for the better part of a year. And this was the book that God kept me in. Not Romans, not Acts, the Song of Solomon. And I have never fully recovered from it since. And honestly, I hope I never do. See, the song is a love song. Eight chapters of poetry between a bride and her beloved. The church, if you understand anything about devotional writers, the church has read it for 2,000 years as a picture of Christ being the bridegroom and the Shulamite being the bride, the bridegroom king, and the one that he loves. And I'm going to read it to you that way tonight carefully. So if you look at chapter one and you look at verse five, the woman speaks first, which is worth noticing in an ancient document. And she says this, and I'm paraphrasing it, but I am dark but lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon. Now, understand what she's doing here. She is standing in a room full of women explaining her appearance. In her world, pale skin meant you were wealthy enough to stay indoors. Dark, weathered skin meant you worked the fields. So she's basically saying, I'm marked as someone of poverty. Anyone can read her labor off her body. And she stands in front of women who have never worked outside a day in their life. And she says, I'm dark, but I'm lovely. And I want you to hold on to that but, okay? That quote unquote but is the whole gospel. And she almost drops it. If you look at verse six, and here's where I want to camp out, because this is one of the verses that explain more of my own life to me than almost any other scripture. Okay. And then she says, Do not look upon me because I'm dark, because the sun has tanned me. My mother's sons were angry with me. They made me the keeper of their vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept. I want you to read that slowly again. Okay. They made me the keeper of their vineyards, but my own vineyard I haven't kept. Now, let's do some work here because the Hebrew is doing something that our English language uh literally can't do. The word for vineyard is karim, and karim is not a hobby garden. It's the most labor-intensive thing an ancient Israelite could own. Three to four years before a new vine produces anything usable. There are years of clearing stones and terracing hillsides and building walls and pruning and watching for foxes all before a single grape. Nobody plants a vineyard in that culture for a quick return. You plant one because you intend to be there in a decade. Okay. That's what your soul is. That's what your marriage is. Long, slow, patient, unglamorous, producing nothing impressive for years, which is exactly why it's the first thing dropped when something urgent shows up. Now I want you to watch the second word because this was this one's big. Okay. They made me the keeper of their vineyards. And that Hebrew word, that that Hebrew word there is natara, okay, from the root word natar. And here's what's fascinating, okay? The root is not the common gentle word for tending a garden. It's not the shepherd word. Natar carries the sense of guarding something with a sustained kept up intensity, watching over it, holding the post. It's the same root word that the Old Testament uses in other places for keeping a grudge. Leviticus tells the people not to bear a grudge against the neighbor. And it's the same idea of holding on to something and not putting it down. So whether it's a vineyard or a resentment, Natar is what you do when you will not let go of a thing. Okay. So the picture here is not a woman gently strolling through the rows with a watering can. The picture is a woman posted at a wall, okay? On watch, vigilant, holding a position she cannot leave, day after day in the sun, guarding a harvest. Because if she leaves the post, the foxes will come in and get the whole thing and ruin the fruit and they'll lose the whole garden. Friend, that is not gardening. That is guard duty. And some of you know exactly what I'm describing because that is precisely the posture that you've been in for 11 years. That's the posture that Wes has been in for 11 years. You are not tending your ministry, you're guarding it. You are on the wall, watching for the fox, holding a position you don't believe you're allowed to step away from, because you have quietly become convinced that if you leave the wall for even a second, even for a season, it's all going to fall apart and they're going to blame you for it. And then she says this line, but my vote my own vineyard within? That is another Hebrew word. And this Hebrew is emphatic, it's almost redundant. She's saying, My vineyard, the one belonging to me, I have not kept. Same verb, Natar. The very thing she does relentlessly at cost for everybody else's vineyard, she has not done once for herself. She is a professional keeper who has kept nothing of her own. And friend, that is the most accurate description of a burnout leader ever written. And it was written roughly 3,000 years ago in a love poem, which tells me God has never once been surprised by what's happening to you and I in this culture today. And one more piece of this verse, because I think this is important. Because if we skip it, we'll misdiagnose this Shulamite lady in the way that we misdiagnose ourselves. Okay. She says, My mother's sons were angry with me. They made me the keeper of their vineyards. Her own brothers. And they were angry with her. The Hebrew has heat in it, okay? And out of that anger, they assigned her the vineyards. So catch this. Her overwork was not ambition. She wasn't chasing a platform. She took the assignment because somebody she was supposed to belong to was displeased with her. And she discovered that labor was how you manage displeasure. I'm going to say it again. She took the assignment because somebody she was supposed to belong to was displeased with her. And she discovered that the labor was how you manage displeasure. Work became how she stayed safe with the people who were supposed to love her back. See, friend, that's where the deepest and the most durable overwork comes from. Not greed, not ego. It's disapproval that you're trying to outrun. A voice, sometimes a father, sometimes a church members that made it clear a long time ago that you that the way that you stay acceptable is you got to keep producing. Okay. And once you learn that that at a young age, and you learn that young enough, you never have to hear it out loud again. You just install that into the hardware of how you think, and you become your own brother standing there angry, assigning you more vineyards forever. Okay. And some of you have never been able to figure out why you can't rest. And you keep treating it as a scheduling problem. It has never been a scheduling problem. You can't rest because somewhere in your history, stopping was not safe. And no calendar system on the planet can fix that. So here she is, dark from the sun, she didn't even choose to stand under, guarding what other people handed her out of their anger, publicly productive, privately barren, standing in a room full of women, apologizing for how the work has marked her. And the beloved has been listening the whole time. The shepherd king's been listening to this whole conversation. He's heard every bit of it. The apology, the self-consciousness, the exhausted confession that she's let her own life go. And watch what he says. Verse 15 Behold, you are fair, my love. Behold, you are fair. That's it. That's his response. She says, I'm dark, I've been in the sun. Don't look at me. I've let my own vineyard go. And he does not say, Yeah, we should talk about your priorities. He doesn't say, Yeah, I've noticed and I'm disappointed. He doesn't hand her a system. He doesn't even tell her to go fix the vineyard. He tells her, you know what? You're beautiful. Twice he says, Behold, look at this. Like he's calling witnesses together. And he's standing in front of a woman, embarrassed by what the work did to her body. And he is publicly and emphatically delighted in her. And feel how offensive that is to the religious part of us. Because the religious part of us wants him to correct her. We'd feel safer with a rebuke, because a rebuke would mean the rules still work and we still understand the economy we're living in. Instead, he calls her lovely in the exact condition the neglect left her in. That's grace, friend. Not the greeting card version of grace, the dangerous version. He does not wait for her to restore her vineyard before he calls her beautiful because the calling her beautiful is what restores the vineyard. Nothing in her was ever going to grow out of shame. Shame has never grown one thing. She can only go back and tend her own life once she believes she's worth tending. And the only place she'll ever get that is out of his mouth. And then look at what he actually invites her to do. Verse 8. If you look at Song of Psalm in chapter 1, verse 8, and he's already telling her this before she's fixed anything. If you don't know, O fairest among women, follow in the footsteps of my flock and feed your little goats beside the shepherd's tent. Listen, friend, besides the shepherd's tent, beside the shepherd's tent. Come sit down in the shade where the shepherds camp in the heat of the day. Stop standing on the wall in the sun. Come be near the flock, near the tent, near me. Friend, he does not send her back to the field with a better plan. He calls her out of the sun and into the shade. Friend, I want to say this to you. You were loved before you were useful, and the shepherd king has never once wanted to harvest more than he wants you. Now, I want to take everything that we just saw in the vineyard and I want to lay it next to Jesus. Because if the Song of Solomon shows us the heart of the bridegroom, then the gospel shows us that heart with a face on it and dust on his feet. But before we get to Jesus, let me show you the pattern all the way back because God has been dealing with people who let their own vineyard go for a very long time, and he has been remarkably consistent about it. So if

Elijah’s Crash After The Victory

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you go to 1 Kings 19, you're going to see a man by the name of Elijah. And this is right after the greatest ministry day in this man's recorded life, Mount Carmel. Okay. Fire out of heaven comes down in front of the whole nation. Rain after three years of drought. It was the peak, everything that this man had been building toward. And in the very next chapter, there's a queen that sends him a threatening message. And this man who just called fire out of the sky collapses. And he runs right into the wilderness, sits down under a broom tree, and asks God to kill him. It is enough, Elijah said. Now, Lord, take my life. Now, friend, I want you to notice the timing here. The crash didn't come during the drought, it came after the victory. Burnout almost never shows up in the middle of the fight. It waits until the fight is over and you finally stop moving. That's when the bill comes due. And some of you have been quietly terrified of your own vacations for exactly this reason. Now, watch what God does. Okay. Watch what God does with the most spectacular collapse in the Old Testament. Okay. He does not correct Elijah's theology. He does not say, Elijah, after Carmel, where's your faith? No, verse 5 says, He laid down and he slept under the tree, and an angel touched him and said, Arise and eat. And there was bread baked on coals and a jar of water. And so Elijah ate and he drank. And then this is the part that should literally undo us. Okay. And he laid down again and went back to sleep. And the angel came a second time, touched him again, and said, Arise and eat, because the journey is too great for you. See, this is extraordinary. Most of you have read that story, but you've never really read that story. God's first two acts of ministry to a suicidal prophet was a nap and a meal. Twice he let him do this. No sermon, no rebuke, no assignment. See, friend, before there is one word of instruction, there's sleep, there's food, there's sleep, and there's food, and a hand on the shoulder saying the journey's too great for you, which is not a criticism. It's not you should have been stronger. It's a tender acknowledgement of a fact. This journey that you're taking, this is more than your body can carry. And I know that. And I'm not angry about it. See, friend, I want you to know tonight, your father is not annoyed by your limits. He invented them. He's the one who stopped on the seventh day and called it holy, who put a full stop into the fabric of creation before there was a single sin to atone for. See, friend, rest is not the fire escape you use when you've mismanaged your life. Rest is original architecture. Now I want you to bring all of that to Jesus.

Jesus Offers Rest That Fits

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Okay. Go to Matthew chapter 11, verse 28. Everybody knows it. Say it with me if you know it. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Now, I've heard that verse quoted my entire life, usually softly, usually over a picture of a sunrise. But look at what he's actually talking, like, like look at who he's actually talking to and what he actually offers, because there's more here than a hobby lobby sign. Okay. The word for rest there is a Greek word, anapausis, okay? From anapah. And it does not mean unconsciousness. It's not the word for a coma. It's a word used for the pause that you give an animal that's been under a yoke. You stop the plowing, you take the weight off of its neck, and you let it stand there and breathe. It is literally a cessation, okay? It's literally a cessation from labor for the purpose of recovery. It's a rest that restores capacity, not one that just stops the clock. Okay. And then look at what he does two verses later. And this is where most people get confused. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, and you'll find rest for your souls. Now, Jesus just offered rest and now he's handing out farm equipment. That sounds a little bit like a bait and switch here. No, you need to understand what that yoke was. That yoke is a wooden crossbar built for two animals. Okay. And a farmer would pair a young, inexperienced ox with an older, stronger one. And the older animal carries the weight and sets the pace. The younger one is not carrying the plow. The younger one is learning how to walk. Oh, friend, you better hear this. You don't get out of the yoke by leaving the field. You get out from under a crushing weight by getting into a yoke with somebody who can actually pull the weight. Oh, and that's why Jesus says, For my yoke is easy. That word is crestos, okay? And it doesn't mean flimsy, it means well fitted, kind, fitted to you the way a good tool is fitted to a hand. Jesus is saying the thing on your neck right now was not built for your shoulders. Mine was. Because most of what has you exhausted, like right now in this season tonight, Jesus never handed you. Some of it your brothers handed you in their anger and frustration. Some of it was from a broken church culture that was handed to you. Some of it you picked up yourself at 25, trying to prove that you were worth keeping around. Friend, some of you've been dragging a plow for years under a yoke that was never fitted for your frame, and then blaming your neck for hurting. And look at the reason why he gives, like, listen, like, just look at this for a second. The reason that he gives for why his yoke fits. It isn't a technique here. Verse 29 says, Learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart. This is the one time in all four Gospels that Jesus describes his own heart. One opportunity in the whole record to tell us what he's like on the inside. And he did not say, I'm powerful. He did not say, I'm demanding. He said, gentle and lowly. So when you drag yourself in tonight with a dead garden in your backyard and a vineyard you hadn't touched in three years, and you brace for the response, what you get is what the Shulamite got. Not the rebuke that you've been rehearsing, gentleness, a hand on the shoulder, bread on the coals. And look at how he lived it. Because he was not just preaching a rest that he didn't practice. He withdrew to mountains to pray. He got up a great while before day and went to a solitary place. He was asleep in the back of a boat in a storm that terrified professional fishermen. And when the crowds pressed in, Mark says he told his disciples, Come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and let's rest for a while. Friend, there were needy people still in that town where it went like when Jesus literally said that. And a man who's not trying to earn something can afford to stop. And then there's Martha in Luke chapter 10, distracted with much serving. And the word means dragged in every direction, coming to Jesus with the most honest sentence in the entire chapter. Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Do you not care? See, friend, underneath the frustration about dishes is the real question. Okay. And it's the same one underneath your exhaustion. Does anybody see this? And he says her name twice, Martha Martha. See, friend, nobody says your name twice unless they love you. One thing, Martha, is needed. And Mary has chosen the good parts which will not be taken from her. And so in that story, Jesus is not shaming her for serving, he's telling her the truth about what serving cannot give her. And notice what Mary's doing. Mary's sitting at the feet of Jesus, she's accomplishing nothing. She's just near Jesus at his feet. And Jesus calls that the thing that cannot be taken away from her. See, friend, everything that you produce can be taken away. Every building can be sold, every ministry can end, and the crowd that showed up for you can show up for somebody else next year. There is exactly one thing in your life that cannot be repossessed. And it's the part of you that just sits near him and belongs to him. Friend, that's your vineyard. That's the one with your name on it. You were loved. I'm going to say it again because I want you to get this. You were loved before you were useful. And the shepherd king has never once wanted your harvest more than he wants you. Now,

How Church Metrics Hide Burnout

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I want to bring this into the church, okay? Because this is not just a private problem. You did not invent this by yourself. You inherited this, okay? Somewhere along the way, the church absorbed the metrics of the empire around her. We started measuring a shepherd the way a company measures a branch manager by growth, by output, by reach. And once that becomes the scoreboard, a man's inner life becomes completely invisible to the system he serves. Friend, there's no line on the report for your soul. And what doesn't get measured, listen, doesn't get watered. See, that's the arithmetic that I made you do literally when I began this message. You didn't invent it, you inherited it from a hallway culture where the first question anybody asks a pastor is, How big's your church? And not one person asks him, How'd you sleep? And I'm not standing up here to burn anything down. I love the church. I'm not leaving her, but I love her enough to say she has been quietly consuming her shepherds for a couple of generations now, and then have the audacity while complaining about the shepherds to call them to call their overwork faithfulness. Now, here's what makes me sure it doesn't have to be this way. The people who came before us knew better than we do. If

Desert Wisdom On Sustainable Leadership

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you go back to the fourth century, this is important, out into the Egyptian desert, when Christianity stopped being persecuted and started becoming fashionable. There was a wave of believers that went into the wilderness because they could feel what comfort and status were about to do to their souls. We called them the desert fathers. And their sayings got collected, okay? Short, strange, devastating little stories. Okay. There's one about a man by the name of Abba Antony, okay, and I cannot get away from this. There was a hunter that came out to the desert, found Antony sitting with the brothers, relaxing and enjoying himself. And the hunter was offended. He came to see the holy men punishing themselves, and they were laughing. So Antony said, put an arrow in your bow and shoot it. So he did. Shoot another. He did. Shoot another. And the hunter finally said, If I bend my bow all the time, it will break. And Antony said, This is the line. Ready? So it is with the work of God. If we stretch the brethren beyond measure, they will soon break. It is right from time to time to relax their efforts. Friend, that's not from a wellness conference. That's a man living in a cave who owned nothing and had every reason to be the harshest person alive. And what he knew, and we've forgotten, in a culture with hot water and a hundred books on leadership on my shelf right now, is that a bow kept at a full draw is not more useful. It's just closer to snapping. Friend, the tension is not the strength of the bow. The ability to release the tension is the strength of a bow. And a bow that can't relax isn't a weapon anymore. It's kindling. And then if we go to Augustine, opening the confessions with the sentence that follows the church for 1600 years, you have made, this is what he says, you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rest in you. See, friend, restless until it rests in you, not until it accomplishes for you. Augustine was brilliant. He was literally a brilliant driven man chasing status in the Roman world. And what he found at the bottom of it was that the ache in him was never going to be satisfied by more output. Because the ache was never an ache for output. It was homesickness for a person. And notice one more thing about those communities organized, um, like how those communities organized their lives. Okay. They built their whole day around a rhythm, fixed hours of prayer and work and reading, meals, sleep, and a repeated cycle. And people look at that and think it was about strictness. Friend, it wasn't about strictness. It wasn't. Or not only, okay. A rule of life is a fence. Okay. This is this is language you need to hear. A rule of life. Okay. And a rule of life's like a fence. It's it's a wall that's built around parts of a person that will otherwise get eaten by whatever else is loudest. They knew that if they left prayer and rest to whenever they felt like it, the work would take everything. Friend, we've done the opposite. We've built fences around our work and left our souls out in the open field where anything can graze them. Okay.

Five Practices To Water Your Life

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So let me get very practical here because I don't want you to feel something tonight and change nothing on Thursday. So first, I want you to go look at your vineyard. Okay. An actual look, not in the vague, guilty way. Okay. Specifically. What is the thing in your life with your own name on it that nobody's going to text you about? Your marriage? Is it your body? Prayer that isn't preparation for a sermon, a friendship that used to be real and is now just occasional. I want you to name that thing out loud. Okay. Because, and why am I having you do that? Because you cannot water something you won't look at. And most of us are managing our neglected, or like literally managing our neglect by refusing to make eye contact with it. Second, water something this week that does that produces nothing. Okay. One thing in the next seven days with zero ministry application, something not something that, like literally, that you can't use in a sermon that won't make you more effective in anything, go fishing. Sit on the porch with no phone. Take your wife to dinner and refuse to discuss the church. The first 15 minutes will feel like a waste because you've trained yourself to feel guilty when you're not being productive. But I want you to sit in and let that pass. That feeling of guilt while you're sitting there relaxing. That is not the Holy Spirit. That's a taskmaster who followed you home for a literally a long time ago, and he only has the authority that you keep giving him. Third, the one nobody wants. You ready? Let something die on purpose. You have a hundred vines and you cannot water a hundred vines. So everything gets little and your own gets none. Okay. So there's something on your plate right now, a good thing that you said yes to, that you need to lay down so the thing with your name on it can live. And you have to decide, literally, you have to decide it and tell somebody because unstated intentions have never freed anybody. Okay. Every real pruning is a small grief. Okay. But do it anyways. It's the difference between a vineyard and a jungle. Fourth, get in a yoke with somebody, not a coach, a brother, a father, somebody who knows what's actually happening in your life at your house. And here's the hard truth about isolated leaders, okay? We're not isolated because nobody's available. We're isolated because being known frightens us more than being tired. We know how to survive tired. We have no idea how to survive being seen. So we choose the exhaustion because at least it's familiar and nobody finds out. That's why we created the shepherd's tent. Guys, that's why we created this for you resource for you. And I'd take that seriously if I were you. Okay. And fifth, and this is the deepest one, okay? Stop trying to rest your way out of exhaustion and start letting yourself be loved out of it. I'm gonna say it again. Stop trying to rest your way out of exhaustion and start letting yourself be loved out of it. See, rest is not fundamentally a practice. Rest is a person. Hebrew four, he Hebrews, the book of Hebrews, chapter four, says there remains a rest for the people of God. And the argument of that whole passage is that Joshua's generation entered a land and never entered the rest. Because the rest is entered by believing, not by scheduling. So you can take a sabbatical and come back to the same interior treadmill in just nine weeks. And a lot of you have already done that before. You went and did the sabbatical, you went to the conference, you learned, and then you came right back and went back to the interior decisions that gave you the same interior world. Friend, the only thing that ever actually stops a driven person is the moment they finally believe they are loved without producing anything. Friend, that's the whole cure. Everything else is a coping strategy. See, friend, the Shulamite didn't get free by finding a better system. Okay. She didn't get free by finding a better system to manage all of her brother's vineyards. She got free because a king looked at a sunburned, embarrassed, overworked woman and said, Behold, you are fair, my love. And she believed him. I just will say this to you. You will never talk the shepherd king out of loving you. Some of you have tried. You've brought him your worst weeks and the version of yourself. You'd never show your congregation. And he was not moved one inch. See, friend, he is not tolerating you until you get your vineyard back in order. He delights in you tonight, exactly as you are. Dead tomato plants, coiled hose, all of it. Friend, you were loved. Say it again. This is the this is the crux of what I'm talking about tonight. You were loved by God before you were useful. And the shepherd king has never once wanted your harvest more than he wants you. So now,

Put Down The Ledger Of Worth

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I told you from the very beginning, I'd be coming back to something. I asked you a question. I asked you whether Wes was a good pastor. And some of you already made that judgment, and every one of you answered in about a second and a half. And I would bet that most of you answered by doing a little arithmetic, just a little math. 140 kids, a marriage saved, a funeral preached, set against one dead garden, and then you wait it. You put the public column against the private column, and you came out with a verdict. And here's what I need you to see. And it's the reason why I made you do it. That is exactly what West did. That is the precise mental move he makes every single night standing at the back door. He runs the numbers, he sets the harvest against the neglect, and he decides what kind of man he is. Some nights the math comes out in his favor and he sleeps. Some nights it doesn't. And the answer, the actual answer, is that the question is the disease. Because the moment that you can weigh, that you can be weighed, you can be found wanting. And the moment your worth is a calculation, you'll spend the rest of your life making sure the numerator keeps growing. Friend, that's not faithfulness. That's a man trying to win an argument with himself that he will never ever win because there is no score high enough to end it. Ask anybody who's gotten everything that they were chasing. The Shulamite, literally, the Shulamite did, she did the math too. She stood in a room, she totaled it up out loud. I kept their vineyards. I didn't keep mine. I'm dark. Don't look at me. And the king, you know what, didn't do the math. He didn't weigh her columns. He didn't render a verdict. He looked at a sunburned woman with a felled ledger in her hands and he said, Behold, you are fair, my love. He refused to answer the question because he refuses to be the kind of God who scores you. So no, I'm not going to tell you tonight whether Wes is a good pastor. I'm going to tell you he's a beloved son who let a garden die, and that both of those are true at once. And that only and only one of them is load-bearing. And so are you. So I want you to put the ledger down. Let me talk to a few specific people as we close. Some of you are Wes. You're standing at the back door at 10:30 at night looking at something brown, and you've already tried to fix it with resolve and it didn't work. Because resolve has never once watered anything. Hear me. Your father's not standing behind you in the dark with his arms crossed. He's the one who put the ache in you that made you go out there and look. That ache is not condemnation, friend. That's grace getting your attention through the only door that you left unlocked. So go water it tomorrow. Not the whole vineyard. One thing. Your daughter does not need the garden to be what it was in April. She needs to see her dad in the dirt on a Saturday. Just start there. Some of you are the Shelamite. You've been on the wall so long that you've forgotten what your own life feels like. Your garden things you never chose, handed to you literally by people who were angry with you, dark from your son that you never asked to stand under. Hear the beloved's actual voice tonight instead of the one you've been listening to. He's not disappointed in you. He's calling you out of the field and into the shade beside the shepherd's tent. And the invitation is not to fix yourself first. It's come as you are, marked by the work, and let him tell you what he thinks about you. And some of your leaders, and there's a voice in you telling you it's too late. You've built something you now have to keep feeding, and there's no way out of this stage. That voice is lying to you about the size of God's mercy. The bow can be unstrung. So I want you to start this week with one honest conversation and one thing that you lay down. And then there's some of you that have been faithfully serving God and haven't felt him in a long time, and you've assumed that the distance is judgment. Hear me, you are not far from God. You are far from stillness, and you have never once encountered God at the speed you're currently moving. Elijah didn't hear him in the wind. He didn't hear him in the earthquake, he didn't hear him in the fire. He heard him in a low whisper after sleep, after bread, after somebody made him stop. Friend, you may not need repentance. You may need a nap and a meal and one quiet morning, and then you'll find he's been there the whole time. And some of you aren't tired exactly. No, it's worse. You're numb. You stopped feeling much of anything a while back, and you've been calling that maturity. Friend, numbness is not the same thing as peace. Numbness is a vineyard so far gone, you've stopped being able to feel that it's dry. And the same king who calls a sunburned woman lovely can raise a dead garden. And he is remarkably unbothered by how long it's been. So wherever this teaching finds you, the back door in the dark, the wall in the sun, the broom tree in the wilderness, the invitation tonight is not a task. There is no assignment at the end of this message. It's just come sit down beside the tents in the shade, in the middle of the work day with him, and let him tell you who you are before picking up another thing.

Partner Support And Closing Prayer

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Guys, I'm gonna say this one last thing before I pray for you. Everything that you receive tonight, the teaching, all of it. Your invitation to the shepherd's tent for pastors and leaders, the call for pastors and leaders, all of it is free because of a group of people that decided that it should be. That's what our partners do. It's called the family table, and it's what keeps this teaching literally open and the table set for pastors and church leaders who they literally can't afford one more thing. The leader who's about to quit, the person who's never once been told they're loved before they're useful. And when you partner with our ministry, you're not buying anything. You already have all of it. You're pulling out a chair for the next tired person who walks in. So if you want to build with us, I want you to go to connect.thshepherdstent.com backslash family table. And if that's not your season, you're just what listen, we're just glad that you're here. You're always welcome here. The table's open either way. And now let me leave you with one thing that I want you to carry out of this. Okay. You were loved before you were useful, and the shepherd king has never once wanted your harvest more than he wants you. Father, I want to thank you tonight for this amazing privilege to preach the word, to teach the word, to invite people to encounter and experience you. Father, I pray for every leader watching this, every pastor watching this, every person who is literally just in the hustle and the grind. May they hear the invitation tonight, Father, as you speak to them. You are not going to chastise them. You're not going to shame them. You're not going to ridicule them. You just want them to come away with you and sit in the shade of the shepherd's tent. So, Father, I pray for grace to come upon these leaders, for them to hear your voice, for them to come away, for them to be refreshed, for them to relax, for them to be able to enjoy themselves. Father, I just pray there are many watching tonight. You have, it's been a long time since you enjoyed your life. And I hear the Lord saying, you need to change your pace. Just change your pace and hear the whisper of beloved identity speaking over your life. You, I want you more than I want the harvest. I want you more than I want you being productive. I want you, and I've wanted you before you were ever pastor, before you ever did the ministry, before you ever produced one thing. I loved you then. And if you'll let that whisper be the root of your life, you'll never burn out again. So, Father, may grace come for people to find rest in you tonight. And as they say yes to that rest, I pray for just a rejuvenation of their spirit, soul, and body, that their triune being would be overwhelmed by the presence of the triune God. Father, I bless the people watching this tonight. I pray, Father, that you'll do amazing things in their life. In Jesus' mighty name, everybody said amen. Guys,

The Family Table Invitation

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thank you for joining me tonight. I hope you have a great week. I want to tell you about something that we call the family table. Almost everything we make here, we give away. The teaching, the resources, the tools that we put in the hands of pastors and church leaders who are running on empty. It's free because we believe it should be free. And it's free because a group of people quietly decided to pay for it. Friend, that's the family table. Monthly partners who fund this work so that somebody who could never afford it can walk in wholeness, anyways. You're giving those three things. It gets free resources into the hands of individuals and churches. It plants family table communities all across the country, and it helps pastors and church leaders find the wholeness that they've been handing to everybody but themselves. Friend, family table members get exclusive content, early access to new resources, and a monthly Zoom call with me and my wife, a real one where we talk about what we're actually doing, a little behind the scenes and casting vision for the future. So if that's you, you want to be a part of the family table, want you to go to markcasto.co backslash donate, set up your recurring gift, and we'll send you the details shortly. We'd love to have you at the family table.