Good Pastoring

And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.
(Jeremiah 3:15 – ESV)

Here is an example I read that I thought was a good look into some of the things a good pastor will have to do. I can testify to having to go through these types of things personally, although this is not my personal story.

The goal must always be to restore out of love, but sometimes love will inflict wounds, like a surgeon in order to bring the cure.

I once had a couple come in for pre marriage counseling. I found out that he was in the process of a divorce, and asked him why his first marriage failed, and found out that he had left his wife for the woman he was with. I said to him “In the Name of Jesus Christ I rebuke you for your adultery, and I call on you to repent and go back to your wife and beg her forgiveness” Then I looked at the woman and said “You are an adulterer, and you need to repent of that and leave this man alone, he is married to another and in the Name of Jesus I am telling you to leave him now” I told them both to repent and get right with God, and to not return to our fellowship until they do repent. They were outraged at me. I didn’t let them respond at all, I just cut off the conversations, and showed them the door.

8 years later I got a letter from him, thanking me. He said he was so mad at how abrupt and harsh I was that he kept arguing with me in his thoughts, and the longer he argued with me in his imagination the more he knew I was right and that he was really arguing with God not me, so after a few months he went back to his wife, she forgave him, and they had two more kids. He had lost our address and phone number, so it took him all those years to find me and tell me it worked. He said if I had not been so abrupt and harsh he never would have come to terms with the sin he was in.

So we must be gentle with some, and others we must be firm with. It takes the guidance of the Holy Spirit to know how to deal with each situation.

Doing the right thing is often hard. No one likes confrontation or to get involved in other people’s problems. It is always easier to do nothing, to leave it for someone else to be the one who cares... but who said obedience to Christ is supposed to be easy.

I once had a woman come in and ask for money, she was desperate with two little kids. It was clear enough to me that she was a junkie, and needed a fix really bad, and I knew if I gave her money it would go straight into her arm. So I took her to a hotel that our church had a deal with, that I could put anyone in anytime and they would bill the church later, I set her up in a room with a kitchen and bought enough food for her and her kids for a few days, and then I gave her enough cash to get high for a few days. I waited until I saw her return from scoring some drugs, and then let an hour pass so I would know she would be really wasted, and then I called the police and reported child abuse neglect. I just put her in a room and did all that stuff so I could be sure where she would be so I could get her kids taken away from her. It broke my heart. I didn’t sleep well for a few nights. I was outright crafty and misleading but I saved two little kids.

3 years later she showed up at our church, with both of her kids. She said she was really mad at me for a long time but can look back now, and she knows that I not only saved her children’s lives but that I saved her life. She had been clean for 2 years, and came to Christ and had got her kids back, and had a good job. With tears in her eyes she thanked me, and told me that she had been to three churches before coming to ours and they all just turned her away. While she knew I had set her up, she had come to see that I set her up out of love.

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©