Ministry can feel overwhelming. 

You’re asked to meet seemingly endless spiritual, emotional, and relational needs in your congregation. You have sermons to prepare—with unreachable expectations of their effectiveness. 

Those demands can leave you drained. 

But the truth is, you were called to be a pastor, not a superhero. 

So when you try to be a superhero—to do more than is humanly possible—you’re always going to get discouraged. 

You need more realistic expectations of yourself: You can’t fix everybody’s problems. You can’t heal every marriage. You can’t reach every lost soul. 

You need to learn to relax in your limitations. Anytime you live beyond the limitations of your life, you’re going to get discouraged. It’s easier to fill your schedule than it is to fulfill your calling. When you try to do everything, you risk doing nothing well. 

Often the first signs of overextending show up in your body. The apostle Paul said, “We have this treasure from God, but we are like clay jars that hold the treasure. This shows that the great power is from God, not from us” (2 Corinthians 4:7 NCV). 

We’re like jars of clay—fragile, imperfect, and cracked. And that’s okay. Paul’s message isn’t a call to despair in our limitations but to rest in God’s sufficiency. 

God often puts his greatest gifts in the weakest people, and that gives us the opportunity to point back to him and say, “That’s got to be God. That could have only happened through God’s power.”

You may think it’s best to hide your weaknesses, but God wants to use them in your ministry. For him to do that, you’ve got to recognize and respect your limitations. Then, you trust in God’s power and not your own to accomplish his purpose for you.

That means every sermon you preach, every soul you shepherd, and every prayer you say is an opportunity for God to display his glory through your brokenness. 

Isn’t that exciting?