There are two statements that pastors hear more than any others, and they are hard not to take personally.

They’re also difficult to really know how to answer, but first, let me tell you what they are.

The first one? “I’m just not getting fed.”

The second? “I wish the teaching was deeper.”

The reason these are so challenging is that they feel so incredibly personal, even though they aren’t always meant that way. Actually, I’d say that they are rarely meant that way (unless church people are as mean as unchurched people make them out to be). But the innocent statements aren’t heard that way by the pastor.

What the pastor hears is, “You preach bad, and you’re shallow.”

Just imagine pushing away from the table after a family meal and telling your mom (or even worse, your grandma) that what she made was terrible.

Or insulting the grill-master at the next family BBQ. Yikes.

But once we take the emotion out of it, the statements are actually a gift because we want people to be fed, and we want people’s faith to grow deep.

I’ll write at a later time about that first statement because it comes up more than the second, and countless pastors get hurt by it. Since it can hit so close to the heart, I’ll tackle it when I have more time to devote to it.

But the second is a little easier to answer, although I’m not sure people will like my new answer. From this day forward, whenever someone tells me they want to go deeper, I’m simply going to ask them if I can agree with them in prayer about it.

Since they want to go deeper in their faith, they’ll have to say yes. Then, I’m going to take their hands, bow my head, and pray, “Father, take my friend into a dry season. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

Can you imagine the face I’ll be looking at when I open my eyes? It’s possible I’ll see anger, but more than likely there will just be confusion, and I completely understand it.

In our podcast and YouTube culture, we’ve come to see depth as the result of learning more, not as the result of needing more. But the roots of trees only go deeper because they aren’t finding water at the current level, and so they do a deep dive searching for what they need.

Now, it’s entirely possible for a pastor to stay so shallow that it feels as if we’re dying of thirst, but I’ve rarely found that to be the case. What I have found, though, is that when I seek to live out what I’m learning, more times than not, I am driven to a place of prayer, desperately asking God to give me what I need to live out what I’ve learned.

Want to go deeper? Stop trying to just learn more information, and get to know your neighbor. Step into a situation with a hurting person who will look at you and tell you that your God doesn’t work, and ask you questions that can’t be addressed with church slogans and bumper sticker theology.

That will send your roots on a deep dive, and in that place of drought, you’ll be amazed how much deeper the next sermon is that you hear.

Drought and desperation have a way of cutting us to our core, and that’s where the depth begins.

Information doesn’t lead to transformation, unless there is application in the middle. Said with smaller words, we learn, we do, and then, we grow.

If you’re an 80s kid like me, all you have to hear are the words “wax on,” and your mind will finish the next two.

It’s “wax off” for all you non-80’s people. It’s part of the infamous training regimen that sweet little Mr. Miyagi put skinny and bullied Daniel though in The Karate Kid.

He had Daniel wash his car, and then told him to wax on with his right hand before using his left hand to wax off. Of course, Daniel didn’t get it until later in the movie when he found his muscle memory kicking in to block the punches thrown by his opponent.

Repetition is so important, but not just repetition of the work. If we want to get stronger, faster, or healthier, then we’ve got to learn how to repeat rhythms.

Instead of wax on, wax off, we need to practice being on, and then being off. Work and rest, run and recovery, focus and relaxation.

When we repeat things, our muscles learn what it feels like to do them, and find it easier to do them consistently. I’ve found this to be true this year with my running. When I look back at my running logs, I can see that I’ve more than doubled the duration of my weekly long runs, not because I run every single day, but because I have recovery days built into the week.

We just weren’t created to always be on, which makes it all the more important that we give ourselves fully to what matters most: family, relationships, faith, spiritual and emotional health.

It also means that we need to learn how to be fully at rest when it’s time to rest. It’s the rubber band principle. If it’s always stretched, then it loses its flexibility, but if it’s never stretched, it gets dry and will crack when it’s pulled to bundle something.

If it’s time to be stretched, allow yourself to be pulled beyond your comfort level. But if it’s time to rest, give yourself the freedom to do nothing.

After all, you aren’t really doing nothing; you’re recovering so you’ll be ready when the next something comes along.

Did you know that almost half of the psalms are categorized by Bible scholars as psalms of lament? 65 out of 150 psalms fit the category, which is one of the reasons that the Book of Psalms is a got to portion of the Bible when people are hurting.

When we have questions, it makes us feel better when we’re around other people who have the same questions because pain and doubt are such isolators.

That’s why when we hear someone else voice what we’ve barely had the courage to allow us to think, we lean in like a famished man looking for crumbs on the table after a feast.

Why, Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? (‭‭Psalms‬ ‭10‬:‭1‬)

How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? (‭‭Psalms‬ ‭13‬:‭1‬-‭2‬)

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? (Psalms‬ ‭22‬:‭1‬)

These are the questions that so many think, feel, and yet are hesitant to ask because they aren’t sure how people will respond. Will they judge them for being weak? For turning their backs on the faith? For deconstructing?

The fact that Jesus quoted that last Psalm on the cross should dispel any doubts about whether we can have doubts, but allow me to share something else that I almost missed because of how obvious it is.

We only ask questions if we think there are answers, and we only ask the people who, we think, might have them.

Why do we call customer service when a product isn’t working, or ask to speak with the manager when the food came back cold…again? It’s because we’re doing more than just lodging a complaint; what we’re actually doing is lamenting the current circumstance by voicing our concerns to the people who can help.

It’s true that sometimes those people can’t help, and that’s frustrating, but the nature of lament is that things aren’t as they should be, and we groan until they are ultimately made right, even if that happens outside this life.

The very fact that we lament or question God betrays the fact that we know he is greater than our doubts and circumstances.

To paraphrase Mark Vroegop in his book, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, lament is the language spoken by those who trust in God’s sovereignty while living in a world filled with tragedy.

It’s the sigh in the land of the Now and Not Yet, and yet, it isn’t a resignation as much as a determination to continue to see God for who he is, even if what he does (or doesn’t do) confuses us.

As Job said, sometimes we speak of things that we don’t understand (that’s Job 42:3), but it’s in the speaking that we hear the absurdity of our mistaken conclusions.

It is an unexpected door to hope, in the same way that listening to sad songs can give us the vehicle to process our emotions so that we can return to joy.

Lamenting doesn’t twist God’s arm so that he’ll give us what we want (that’s called pitching a fit — 😂), but rather, it turns our hearts toward him so we can receive what we need: his presence more than his answers.

Job, who lamented his losses and pain, and who spoke of things beyond his ability to understand, finally understood that when he said, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.” (‭‭Job‬ ‭42‬:‭5)

Lamenting allows us to cry tears that clear ‬our vision, and it’s in those times that we see God’s face more vividly than ever before.