A man came to me with tears in his eyes and a broken heart. His daughter has taken up with a drug addict criminal and has turned her back on her entire family and in fact won’t even speak to them. She is living with this guy; she’s begun using drugs herself, and is involved with aiding him in his criminal activity. He and his family are very concerned about her safety and he tearfully pleaded with me to help her somehow.
So I thought about it.
Hmmm . . . Okay she won’t speak to anyone in the entire family and in fact they have no idea where she even lives at the moment. She’s not a minor so it wouldn’t be possible to involve the police . . . How can I help her when no one even knows where she is, or how to get in touch with her?
What to do?
Another person came to me and told me that her nine year old daughter has gone from having a wonderful loving relationship with her to one of complete withdrawal. She was making all A’s and B’s and now has all D’s and F’s. It’s reached a point where her teacher has called her mother in for counseling to try and determine what’s going on in this little girl’s life to make her enter such a dramatic downward spiral.
She told me that her ex-husband is trying to proselytize their daughter to a cult religion with which he’s involved during his visitation privilege. The mother is a Christian and teaches the child the Bible, prays with her, and reads her Bible stories at night, and this situation has created mass confusion for the little girl and her reaction to the struggle has not been good. There doesn’t seem to be any legal remedy and the father will not even discuss the problem with his ex-wife due to their bitter divorce, so she came to me to ask advice . . .
So I thought about it.
Hmmm . . . The child won’t speak to her mother. The father won’t speak to the mother. She cannot get a restraining order against the father and/or custody of the child because he hasn’t broken any laws of which she is aware. She’s scared to death as to the impact all of this is having on her daughter.
What to do?
I could literally go on for hours relating story after story of various folks who’ve come to see me, called, or written about their serious problems. Many of them are heart breaking and seemingly unsolvable. I hear from folks who are suicidal, addicted to just about everything known to mankind, incarcerated, alone, financially devastated, facing terminal illness, experiencing mind numbing grief for the tragic loss of a loved one, engaged in bitter disputes, and so on.
Friday I wrote about some hate mail that has been sent my way and I received hundreds of letters containing varying advice. Most encouraged me to ignore the ignoramuses and keep up the good fight. A few encouraged me to stop writing Words for the Day altogether and go out and live the good life for my remaining days.
I was thinking of pastors throughout the country who have devoted their lives to the Lord. They hear these heart breaking stories from sunup until sundown and try to counsel folks to deal with seemingly impossible situations as best they know how; they work far into the night to prepare sermons that they pray will be effective and lead some lost soul to know the peace, joy, and love of Christ. They visit the sick, baptize, marry and bury the folks in their congregations. They study the Bible, attend meetings, listen to the church elders tell them how terrible the financial position of the church is in. They deal with detractors all day long every day. And they try to hold their own lives together and retain a semblance of sanity.
If I posted this job I wonder how many applicants I’d receive.
So why do folks enter the ministry? I cannot speak for others, but as for me, I love the Lord. He died for my sins and took my punishment for my black sins and I’m appreciative. Though I could never repay His sacrifice, nonetheless I’m determined to try.
My motives are pure but my approach may be suspect in the eyes of many. Not all folks in the ministry represent God as they should. I know I fall short many times and so do others. Yesterday at Honey Lake Church my friend C.F. Hazlewood recounted a ministry that he began that generated some criticism of him for his approach to the ministry from a church with some serious problems of its own.
He was asked by the leadership in his church to begin a bus program designed to get more youth to come to church. He went all over creation picking up kids “across the tracks” and wherever he could find them to go to church, and before long the program became hugely successful. Some 150 kids who’d never attended church began attending due to his bus program. When the kids went home and talked about the great time they were having at church, many of their parents began to attend as well.
One would think that the powers that be in this church would’ve been ecstatic with the success of bringing all of these lost people into church. I suppose that is all in how one defines “success”. Turns out that many of these “trailer trash”, poor ruffian kids that needed haircuts and discipline, did not meet the “smell” test of the congregation. According to the senior pastor all they did for the church was fill the parking lot with candy wrappers and their running around all over the place acting like kids was disruptive and not at all what had he had in mind when they conceived of the bus program. Additionally when their lowly (poor) parents attended, they filled the aisles, but didn’t fill the offering plates and didn’t tithe or give any money. That made them useless as far as the “church” was concerned.
They cancelled the bus program and took it completely out of the budget; (the same program that brought 150 kids and many of their parents knowledge of Jesus Christ for the first time). Many of the regular attenders turned up their noses at C.F. and criticized him to no end for creating this nightmare.
I think the verse below applies to all of us who claim Jesus Christ as our Savior. Before you begin your day, stop and rest and think about it this morning, (Selah!).
2 Cor. 5:20
So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!”
October 14, 2013 – Click here to listen