Pastoring

I can honestly say that I don’t know how Pastors do it.  How do they interact with people all day who want to talk about their problems, but not accept the responsibility to do what must be done?  I used to get bewildered by the seemingly uncaring response of some Pastors to other people who I saw as needing a comforting hand and shoulder to cry on.  Experience has taught me, however, that what I didn’t see was probably someone the Pastor had met with four or more times and who refused to follow God or to take an action that reflected their professed Christianity.  After a while, you just have to move on from someone’s problems when they refuse to do what has to be done.  It’s not that you don’t care or love them, but there are other people who need love and care and they are willing to take action.

My own recent experience in this is that the person who will not take responsibility and respond to God with repentance and a new direction will instead get angry at you.  And I know Pastors who have also confirmed this tendency of people to get angry at them for referring them to what the Scripture says.  I find it confusing, although I am sure I do the exact same thing.  No one gets mad at a road sign for telling them to stop or to go a specific speed limit.  But people sure get mad when you refer them to the Bible text.  The Bible is not even my words or the words of any other man, but when you refer someone to them in reference to their problem, they sure get angry. 

I’ve decided that no one truly wants to see the reality of who they are.  No one really wants to know what they really look like in the mirror of the perfection of God.  It is simply too overwhelming to know just how filthy we are and how corrupt all of our thoughts are.  It is too paralyzing.  Yet the Bible says that all of it will be shown to us in the end.  We can choose to do our best to see it now, realize our need for a Deliverer, and put all our hope in Him, or we can wait it out and see what happens. 

True Pastors have to be called by God, led by God, informed by God, and have complete faith in God for everything.  Otherwise, how in the world can they possibly stand with the truth of life in this fallen world and attempt to guide others who will only refuse that instruction, get angry at them, and then tell them they are not Godly because they don’t try to help them the way they want to be helped, not how God leads them.  Pastors also have to have the guts to stand on the Scripture as the Word of God as it is written, not how society wishes it to be interpreted or rewritten.  The world is truly against them, but God has overcome it.  

In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart!  I have overcome the world.  – John 16:33