Jackson urges pastors to ‘guard your hearts’

Pastors — men serving in one of the most stressful jobs in the world — are more susceptible to heart attacks, strokes and high cholesterol than people in any other profession.
   
But according to Jimmy Jackson, pastor of Whitesburg Baptist Church, Huntsville, in Madison Baptist Association, despite that fact, the most devastating health problem for pastors is one that afflicts Christian leaders all too often — a backslidden heart.
   
“It is not an accidental process; it is an incidental thing that later becomes an intentional position,” Jackson said. 
   
“I’m not talking about someone who is publicly backslidden, such as the television evangelist caught in moral sin or the pastor who has run off with his secretary. This is the condition that takes place before that happens.”
   
He told the 275 present at the Pastors Conference Luncheon Nov. 14 at Whitesburg Baptist to “guard your hearts,” encouraging the pastors to get rid of the root of bitterness and other things that cause them to slip away from an intimate relationship with God.
   
“If we are not reverencing Him in our hearts when no one else is around, when we are not willing to apply our preaching to our own lives, then we can stay in a backslidden condition privately — but ultimately that condition will come out into the light,” Jackson said.
   
Harold Fanning, president of the 2005 Pastors Conference, said Jackson’s message was challenging to him and the other pastors present.
   
“It was a wonderful message and with many truths we could take away,” Fanning said.
   
No matter how pastors perform, they are still running empty if they have allowed bitterness toward someone else to draw them away from their walk with the Lord, Jackson said.
   
“At this point in your ministry, you have all had the opportunity to be subject to being hurt — sometimes unintentionally, sometimes intentionally — and you may not have dealt with it properly,” he said. “An unforgiving spirit is like poison in the system — there is no way for us to be right with God and have an unforgiving spirit.”
   
It only takes one unforgiven person to allow Satan to have a stronghold, Jackson explained. “We let that little area of our heart get taken over,” he said. “Guard your hearts — you are the only one who can.”