People You Can't Help - Pastor Stacey Shiflett
- Pastor Shiflett
- Jun 27
- 11 min read
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This is the transcript from this week's podcast, minus the introductory rambling about my travels and new book. This podcast has generated an unusual amount of encouraging feedback, so I decided to make it available for those that would prefer reading it to watching it. God bless!
People You Just Can't Help
The Stacey Shiflett Podcast
June 26, 2026
I want to talk today about a subject that I believe Christians in general will benefit from, especially those who are plugged into their local church, whether you're a bus worker, a Sunday school teacher, employed at a Christian school, a soul winner, or, obviously, if you're a pastor, a pastor's wife, or a pastor's child, one of those who have made the ministry their whole life, and everything they do is for the furtherance of the ministry and the work of God.
The subject I want to deal with today is people you just can't help. It seems to me there may be a few more of those these days than I remember. But there's always been a group of people you just could not help.
My mind goes back to the Lord Jesus and the places He would go. One place, the Bible says, He could not do many wonderful works there because of their unbelief. I just thought about that: the God of heaven came, put on a robe of flesh, walked into town, and had the power to do anything. He could heal the lepers, raise the dead, heal the blind, heal children who were possessed with foul, unclean spirits and devils. He had the capacity, the ability, the desire, and the burden to help every one of those people and to minister to their needs. And yet in some places He went, He was not able to do it.
I thought about Judas Iscariot, who sat right next to Jesus for three and a half years. He heard every word, heard the prayers, saw the miracles, heard the messages, heard the parables, and witnessed an unbelievable man living an unbelievable life, doing unbelievable things. And yet Judas Iscariot never got saved. He never bought into who Jesus was and why He came.
I thought about the Apostle Paul, having somebody like Demas alongside him to mentor, to train, and to prepare for ministry. And Demas just walked away. Paul wrote it plainly: “Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world.” The pull the world had on Demas overrode the influence of the great Apostle Paul.
And I've come to realize: if there were people Jesus couldn't help, and if there were people the Apostle Paul could not help, how much more will there be people you and I encounter in our ministry whom we simply will not be able to help? They won't believe what we say. They won't listen to what we preach. They won't look at our lives, our families, our marriages, our homes, and say, “You know what, I'm going to listen to this man.” They're not going to listen. They're not going to buy into the vision you have for your church. They're not going to believe the importance of the things you preach on, teach, and try to instill in their hearts through the weekly pulpit ministry. They're just not going to believe it. They're not going to buy it. They're not going to go along with it. At some point, they will just walk away.
Paul talked about this when he said men would have itching ears, that they would no longer endure sound doctrine, that they would heap to themselves teachers having itching ears, and would turn away their ears from the truth and be turned unto fables. That is part of the free will of man. A person can walk into a church where God's power is evident, where the singing is electric, where the preaching is anointed, where souls are being saved, where the church is filled with workers and servants who are ministry-minded and ministry-hearted, people who, every waking hour they're not involved in soul winning or outreach, are thinking about it, planning it, and preparing for it.
A person can walk into a church like that, a church that's not dead, not boring, not dry and dusty and steeped in tradition, but a place where God is working, God is moving, men are surrendering to preach, people are excited about being saved, kids are on fire for God, and moms and dads are raising their children for the Lord. A person can walk into a church like that, even join that church, even sit there for months or years, and still, at some point, just walk away.
As a pastor, that is heartbreaking. It's a burden. But I'm going to be real and very blunt: it's frustrating. It's annoying. It's mystifying. What are you looking for? Why are you even here? Why did you ever come here, if this isn't what you want, if this isn't the kind of church you want to be a part of? I don't know that I have the answer to that question. When Jesus called Judas Iscariot, why did he go along with it for three and a half years and then one day just decide, forget it, I don't want anything to do with this, I'm going to see if I can cash in, capitalize on it, and move on with my life? It's a mystery. It's a mystery how Demas could choose the pleasures of sin in a temporary world over the opportunity to travel with and sit under the Apostle Paul, and Luke, and all the others who were with him. I don't understand it, and I don't think we ever will.
But it is so frustrating that there are pastors who will resign. They will get out of the ministry. They will say, “It ain't worth it.” They lose sight of the people they're helping. They lose sight of the people who are listening. They forget about all the people who are benefiting from their surrender to the call to preach and to ministry, and they get tunnel vision, fixated on the one or two people who don't get it, never have gotten it, and never will get it.
I've said it before, as a pastor: I could turn the water into wine and then walk on it, and some people would still walk away. There's nothing you can do for them. You can't help them. And that's a reality of ministry. Fortunately, the people you can help far outnumber the ones you can't. But it's the ones you can't help who keep you up at night. It's the ones you can't help who cause you to second-guess your call, to second-guess your ability to minister. It's those you can't help who make you question whether it's even worth it, whether you should go somewhere else, do something else, get a job that pays more, and not have to deal with all the headache and the stress and the pressure and the ulcers. But that's not what God called you to do. That's not what God called me to do.
Some of the people who come into your church, into your life, think that's what they want. They thought that's what they wanted. Remember the sower and the seed in Matthew 13: he's sowing the seed, and some of them, the Bible says, “Anon with joy received it.” “This is the best thing since sliced bread, this is great,” but by and by. That's the phrase: by and by. You don't know how long it's going to take. And you'll think, well, it was that one message I preached. No, it wasn't that message. It was all of it. It was everything. They didn't like any of it. They didn't want it.
There are people who sit in the pew, and my daddy used to say, “You couldn't move them with a D9 Caterpillar.” I remember him saying that when I was a kid and not understanding what he meant. I understand it now. With all due respect, God can't move them. The Holy Spirit can't move them. The inspired word of God can't move them. The preaching, the power, the demonstration of power, none of it is going to move them. There's just some people you can't help, and the sooner you realize that, the better off you'll be. When they walk away, instead of second-guessing everything God has ever told you and everything God has ever called you to do, just wipe the dust off your feet and go on.
I know that sounds coldhearted. It sounds insensitive. But it's not. It's a survival mechanism.
In 1 Samuel 15 when Saul refused to submit to the prophet Samuel's authority, and lied to him about killing Agag and sparing Agag, and kept all the sheep, the oxen, and the best of the spoil, you know the story. I don't have my Bible open in front of me. I'm just sitting here sharing my heart. I didn't prepare notes. I'm just talking on the podcast today. Saul went home weeping, and God told Samuel, “How long wilt thou mourn for Saul?” Back in 1 Samuel 8:7, God reminded Samuel that Israel had not rejected him, but they had rejected God. And it's easy sometimes to take it personally when somebody in your church walks away, when somebody who was a member of your church, even people who were involved in ministry, who sat there, waved their hand, took you out to eat, bought you things, loved on you, told you how great a pastor you were, and then one day they walk away, and they don't even look over their shoulder. There are no tears in their eyes when they walk away. Sometimes they can't get out fast enough.
And you're standing there with a mind full of questions. What in the world happened? What went wrong? What did I say? What did I do? What could I have done differently? Nothing. Nothing. They left. They didn't want it. They didn't want what you were preaching. They didn't want what God was doing. They didn't want what was available. They didn't want what the church had to offer their family. They didn't want what the Holy Spirit was trying to do in their heart. They didn't want what the Bible was capable of doing in their life. They didn't want it. So they left.
You can spend the rest of your life beating yourself up over it, or you can move on. Move on to the next person. Go soul winning. Find somebody else to pour into. Find somebody else to mentor. Find somebody else to preach to. Find somebody else to invest in.
You might say, “Well, what if they do that to me?” They might. Time will tell. By and by, they might get offended at the word, get disgruntled, and leave. They might walk away, or they might get right up under you and become a clone. You can duplicate yourself. You won't know until you do your job whether they're going to make it or not.
Think about how many men sign up to be a Navy SEAL. Think about how many people go to BUD/S out there in San Diego and start SEAL training and never finish. They're standing on the beach, and those drill instructors aggravate them, nag at them constantly: if you can't handle it, go ring the bell and go home to mama. And a lot of them do. A lot of them walk away from their dream of being a Navy SEAL and say, “Forget it.” They ring the bell, take a shower, pack their duffel bags, and go home. It just wasn't meant to be. They weren't cut out for it.
The kind of Christianity that some of us preachers preach from the pulpit, we have to understand: not everybody's cut out for it. Not everybody who's saved is cut out for it. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that everybody who walks away was never saved to begin with. I'd like to. It would make me feel better. But that's not my call.
We're going to get to heaven, and there's going to be a whole lot of people in heaven with no rewards, no crowns, no trophies, people who did nothing to further the kingdom of God. A lot of them. And there's going to be a lot of people who do have some rewards, but who also have a whole lot of wood and stubble too.
All I'm saying is, we get up in the pulpit, like I preached on Wednesday night and like I'll preach again this Sunday when I finish this message, where Paul said, “In all things approving ourselves.” I started a message Wednesday night on checking all the boxes, and there is a whole lot more to being a Christian than just having a Bible under your arm, walking into church, and flopping down on a pew. You know that, and I know that. But a lot of Christians, a lot of church members, don't know that. They didn't read the fine print. They didn't hear the part where Jesus says, “If you don't take up your cross and follow me, you can't be my disciple.” They have no idea what it means to be a real New Testament Christian. Their idea of being a Christian is going to church a time or two a month.
And we're up here preaching this long list of things God expects out of believers, and some people just can't handle it. They're going to ring the bell, pack up, and go home. You just have to be ready for that. But you can't change the message. You can't water it down. You can't dilute the brand of Christianity the Bible teaches in order to keep people.
I put something on Facebook last week: why would a preacher want to fill the church up with people who can't take preaching? It's counterproductive. It makes no sense for a preacher to change his message, water it down, or leave certain things out just so people will stay. You'll end up with a church full of people who can't take preaching, and what have you got? Nothing. A big fat goose egg.
I'd rather have a dozen people who are sincere than twelve hundred people playing games. That's just a difference between me and a lot of other preachers, because they're obsessed with the appearance of success. They're obsessed with the appearance of being a great pastor, a great leader, and they're completely consumed with numbers. They track their numbers, always talking about how many people they had, how many are coming. I'm happy for them. But not all of those people are real. Not all of them are going to stay. Not all of them are going to mature, grow, turn out for God, and make a difference. Not all of them are going to do it. You know it, and I know it.
My point is this: if you're a pastor, or if you're a layman, and you're discouraged because you're not seeing fruit remain, you're not seeing people remain that you've invested in, that you've sown into, that you've poured your time and effort and energy into, hear this: not everybody is going to stay. You can't help everybody. Thank God for the ones you can help. Thank God for the ones who start right and finish right. Thank God for the ones who jump in with both feet, burn their bridges, and stay all in until the Rapture. Praise God for them, and there are a bunch of them. But there are going to be some you can't help.
If Jesus Christ Himself were the pastor of your church, some of them wouldn't stay. In fact, if Jesus were the pastor of your church, they probably would have already left, because they can't handle it. They're weak. They're babies. They're on milk, on a bottle. They can't handle meat. They can't handle truth. They can't handle a lot of things you think they ought to be able to handle, because at home they're not feeding themselves spiritually. Some of them might be lost. Some of them are just saved and will never amount to much. They're thirtyfold Christians, if that, and they're perfectly fine with it.
I just wanted to take the podcast today to let you know: there are going to be some people you can't help. That's just how it is. I wish I could tell you otherwise, but that's not the truth. And you can't let the ones you can't help discourage you from doing what God has called you to do.
Just keep studying. Keep getting up messages. Keep preaching. Keep teaching. Keep discipling. Keep soul winning. Keep passing out tracts. Keep knocking doors. Keep praying. Keep loving people. Keep pouring yourself into people. Keep investing in people. Some will stick, and some won't. God will sort it all out at the Judgment Seat. Honestly, it's not really our problem. If they turn out or don't turn out, that's not up to us. It's up to us to do everything God has called us to do to help them. And just stay faithful.
