Every leader knows what it is to feel spiritually famished – stretched thin by decisions, discouraged by lackluster results, hungry for a peace beyond our grasp. And yet Scripture reveals that our emptiest seasons sit close beside God’s abundance and feast, that the table is set before us even as we walk through the valley. What a strange paradox – the famine and the feast, joy and sorrow – gifts offered to transform our leadership.

There is a longing to experience joy, satisfaction, and contentment in our ministry and leadership. That’s normal. If we are discontent or struggling, surely that is a symptom that something is wrong…we are misaligned with our role, or perhaps we are unqualified. Lately, I’ve been contemplating the joy we experience in our work and calling. Or rather, I’ve been contemplating the longing and expectation of joy. It seems it’s often become a demand I hold before God, rather than a desire that leads me to further reliance on Him. What’s continued to bubble up in my thoughts is the co-mingling of joy and sorrow. There seems to be an interplay in which joy and sorrow must coexist.

…looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith,
who, for the sake of the joy that was set before him
endured the cross, disregarding its shame,
and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrews 12:2

Joy evokes fullness and flourishing. Beyond gladness, there is a settled knowing that God is with us, and we are held by Him. So how is it that the display of Christ’s power required that He empty Himself? A perplexing position, and we are invited to imitate His example. In the surrender and sacrifice we can experience a deep refreshing of our soul. The woman at the well knew about thirst, yet she longed for more from Jesus than survival. She dared to ask for the water that fully satisfied her thirst. Living water. That longing was born in her deprivation. As leaders, there is a temptation to minimize our need in order to elevate others. In doing so, we become desensitized to the necessity of living water. We settle for substitutes, thinking our hunger is a source of shame. This leaves us, the teams we lead, and our organization famished.

Need stirs us to movement. We must move toward a destination that will change our circumstances. Often the destination feels out of reach, and the longing deepens. Can we stop avoiding this hunger, and instead let it transform our journey? As Christians, we hold to the belief that our destination is everlasting peace in the presence of God Almighty. Therefore, God is working here and now, in each step we take to cultivate our heart, mind, and soul towards His promised peace. Our hunger and dissatisfaction prepare us for His coming feast. Even now, we can bring our longing and hunger to His table with open hands, asking for Him, who is our bread and wine, to nourish us. And each time, our dependency on Him grows, and we are left wanting more of Him and from Him.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death –
even death on a cross.
Philippians 2:5 – 8

And what of sorrow… there is an axiom that the grief we experience speaks to the profound love we feel for someone. Our sense of loss and our depth of love are intertwined. Courage and wisdom are essential to navigate the shadow of sorrow, to not be stuck in despair, but to walk with purpose in the reality of today toward the hope of God’s everlasting feast. If we believe our job is to shield our ministry from the reality of pain and loss, then we rob our team of the power of transformation. Self-sacrifice is the ultimate display of God’s power, and the resurrection and renewal of all of creation is the result. That is the power He’s entrusted to us, so God’s path to power is toward the cross… sacrifice… death. This challenges us to be open to the unexpected and even the unwanted, because it is in those moments that we experience the fullness of God’s power.

In our leading there must be our yielding.

For our fullness there must be our emptying.

For our joy there must be sorrow.

This is the mystery of our faith. It is the maturity required of faithful leaders.

In the ministry where I serve, we’ve experienced a season where we questioned our impact. Phone calls dwindled. New appointments were on the decline. Surely, we were missing the mark. There was a key change we needed to embrace. We realized that God gifted us with a history, staff, and perspective uniquely equipped to provide grief support across an array of issues associated with reproductive loss for those who are believers in Christ and also for those who’ve yet to follow Him. It’s required us to lean into a ministry of being burden bearers. It required us to be acquainted with heartbreak.

What does this mean for how we lead tomorrow? It means we stop treating our own grief as evidence of failure; perhaps, it is instead a signal that something in us or our ministry is ready to be surrendered. I believe you will discover joy even in a desert – a settled knowing that God is with you. Before your next hard decision or hard day, pause and ask what you are being invited to release, not just what you are being asked to produce. Say the true thing to your team, even the unresolved thing. Leaders who hold their own sorrow honestly give permission for others to do the same, and that permission is often what carries a ministry through its hardest seasons.

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