This excerpt taken from F.B. Meyer's book, "Moses", pg. 61. It speaks to my heart because of much of what we went through when we left our last place of full time Christian service. I hope that it is an encouragement to those of you Ministers of the Gospel going through difficult times yourself.
When we see our hopes blasted, our plans miscarry, our efforts do more harm than good, while we are discredited and blamed, pursued with the taunts and hate of those for whom we were willing to lay down our lives, we may preserve an outward calm; but there will be heartbreak underneath, and the noblest part of us will whither; as wheat blasted by an east wind, unless we are able to pour out our whole complaint before God.
The agony of soul through which Moses passed must have been as death to him. He died to his self-esteem, to his castle-building, to pride in his miracles, to the enthusiasm of his people, to everything that a popular leader loves. As he lay there on the ground alone before God, wishing himself back in Midian, and thinking himself hardly used, he was falling as a grain of wheat into the ground to die, no longer to abide alone, but to bear much fruit.
Ah, but dying is not pleasant work! It is not easy nor pleasant to forgo one's own plans, to cease from one's own works, to renounce one's own reputation, to be despised and flouted by the very slaves you would save. What grain of wheat enjoys having its waterproof sheath torn from it, its elements disintegrated, its heart eaten into, as it lies helpless, exposed to the earth-forces, in the cold, damp, dark soil? And yet this is the necessary condition which must be fulfilled before it can put forth the slender stalk, like a hand holding to the sun thirty, sixty, or a hundred grains like itself.
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