“The words of a priest’s lips should preserve knowledge of God, and people should go to him for instruction, for the priest is the messenger of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. But you priests have left God’s paths. Your instructions have caused many to stumble into sin. (Malachi 2:7-8)Being a pastor is one of the hardest jobs you can imagine. With most jobs, you deal with the subject matter and maybe interacting with people, doing things that may be important on one level.
But as a pastor, you deal with people on a different level. You deal with the hearts and minds and souls of people. You help them to determine their ultimate destination. You teach and you guide and much of what you do and how you act will result in their either accepting the gospel message of Jesus or rejecting it, of accepting God or rejecting him.
The old joke of a pastor only working one day a week really kind of grates on most pastors. A pastor, a teacher, dos things no one ever knows. And one thing for sure, if he does not study and prepare for his “one day a week,” it will show.
Preserving knowledge and transmitting that knowledge to others is one of the biggest jobs a pastor has. He has to be one that his people know will tell them what they need to hear. And they will know that if he does not know, he will tell them that too. There are some things you cannot know, and he will not pretend to knowledge he does not have or cannot get.
He will keep the paths to God open in his own life so he can share those paths with others. That is not to say he will be perfect, because no one is. But he has to do his best to be godly and above board in all he does.
The writer James said: Dear brothers and sisters, not many of you should become teachers in the church, for we who teach will be judged more strictly (3:1). I will admit that I enjoy the teaching, the preaching parts that come from being a pastor. And it is that which attracts so many young men. But James said remember the responsibility that comes with it. God is going to look at his pastors differently than he does those they guide.
In 1 Timothy 1:7, the apostle Paul wrote: They want to be known as teachers of the law of Moses, but they don’t know what they are talking about, even though they speak so confidently.
There is nothing worse than a pastor or teacher who only does what he does out of greed, either for attention or for profit.
Hard stuff for a pastor to read.
No comments:
Post a Comment
To comment, post your comment and click the anonymous button. It would be nice if you signed it so I could know who you are.
You are welcome to say anything you want as long as it is nice. If I don't like it, or it is ugly, I will take it off, place it into the garbage disposal, grind it up, and allow it to be flushed into the Gulf of Mexico where it will be eaten by a fish and then excreted where it will lie on the bottom of the ocean until it is covered up by other comments.