Hibernating Ministers III

We are still handling these bleeding and wounded ministers who have been immobilized almost to the point of emasculation by their injuries, many times injuries nobody even suspects they have.

Surprisingly, very rarely will someone who has never experienced such betrayal, abuse and slander ever notice, let alone offer a viable solution for those injuries.

‘Just forgive’ is one epithet many will throw almost unfailingly to someone with such injuries. They assume that forgiving betrayal is the same as forgiving someone who kept your debt for an extra week. They think that forgiving someone who has falsely accused you of something so gross that you could never even have imagined thinking about it is the same as forgiving someone who promised to give you a gift but forgot.

Those are in a completely different league and the level of forgiveness required can never be understood by someone who thinks forgiveness is as easy as forgiving a child who has soiled their clothes.

The forgiveness I am talking about requires healing first. It is impossible to forgive someone when at the mention of their name your brain has a spin. It is impossible to forgive someone whose sight makes your heart miss a beat or two. And it is impossible to forgive someone when the evidence of the devastation he caused you can see with closed eyes.

What do I mean? Forgiveness is not cheap. Remember that even with God it cost His only begotten Son?

Forgiveness is painful, way too painful to treat with an epithet.

Telling the hurting that forgiveness will heal the hurt at times increases the pain, breaks open the wounds that were healing.

Your cheap prescription does not offer a solution. They already know that they must forgive. That may be the reason their pain is so much. That could  be the reason they have stopped ministering. Their pain has made them think that they are beyond God’s reach because they are unable to completely forgive those who crushed them using their trust.

Only someone who has positively healed from the injury can effectively reach out to them.

David could mould the rejects who ran to him because he understood betrayal from Saul’s treatment. Eli was unable to see pain in Hannah because it was a foreign concept.

I do not mean that you cannot be able to minister to them, only that it would require special grace to be able to touch those injuries with God’s healing touch. It is important that you realize that you really will never be able to understand the pain they feel if you have never gone through it.

The first point I want to make today is that we must acknowledge that they are hurting and that the hurting is very deep.

But we must agree that only God is able to heal that pain and that the only hope we have of dealing with this is connecting the hurting to God for the healing.

Hibernating Ministers II

I want us to look at the reasons the hurt on these ministers is so deep.

Have you ever been called a demeaning name by a crowd? Apart from the blushes and shame, what else happened? Did it not just slide off you before nightfall?

Suppose the same was said by your father? How did you feel? Have you ever forgotten it?

A person we trust, especially a person with authority over our lives controls our destiny in more ways than one.

Many of these hibernating ministers were hurt more from the person involved than the abuse undergone. A pastor who has discipled someone is listened to more than the best preacher in spiritual matters.

I have been involved in discipleship most of my ministry and will give you something that repeats itself all the time.

A young man I was discipling (who was my age mate) came with a music cassette he had bought from a friend of ours. That was the eighties, long before CDs.

After listening it I just commented in passing, ‘Now what kind of music is this’?

Can you imagine he crushed it immediately?

That is the kind of influence a spiritual mentor, discipler, pastor has over the people he leads. You are given the role of father whether you deserve it or not.

Spiritual abuse occurs when someone we trust in spiritual things abuses that trust. And it goes very deep. Many times it destroys someone’s whole life.

Psalm 55: 12 – 14 talks of such kind of abuse from a friend. Imagine when it is a father figure or someone with spiritual authority over you!

That is why I want us to pray about ministering to these bleeding souls as they have been spiritually broken by people they had trusted with their whole lives.

Can you imagine Jonathan betraying David to Saul? This is exactly what has happened to these wounded giants.

But I believe my brief now is to offer a solution since there is healing available at the cross. And I am saying this because I have also gone through such abuse, exploitation and injury, but God took me through the healing Himself. I had even attempted to run away from the place the injury happened. But God told me I have to stay there as then I will be able to know when the healing is complete.

I want us to pray for God’s strategy for the healing.

I will say something else that should excite you. The healing will raise such an army that the devil will be trampled underfoot in a very short time. Do not be surprised when the Gospel spreads throughout the world once this healing happens. No wonder he works so hard to keep them in hibernation!

A Biblical example is David’s army. Healing from their rejection and downtrodden nature produced an invincible army.

But look at another army in Judges. They were left handed. This means that these had lost the full use of their right hands through injury that they had to train their left hands to fight. Incidentally they are the only ones we hear being able to sling at a hair’s breadth without missing.

This is what I mean by asking us to pray for healing for these ministers. God can use them in an even mightier manner than initially. But only after God has accomplished their healing.

Will you join me?

I will later talk about wounded and bleeding parishioners.

(My computer is still dead and I have to borrow one to write. This is the reason I am not able to write more completely. Pray about it)

But please let us pray that God speaks clearly concerning how this healing will be managed. And be ready to flow with this move of God in our times.

Hibernating Ministers

I want you to join me in prayer, and this I speak with the authority of a few friends we have been agonizing over this issue over the years until we feel that the time has come for something to be done. I have also been carrying this burden for a long time.

Let us examine a few scenarios.

You were called to ministry. Even the local church and its leadership were clear on that. They even asked you to join a Bible school and could even have sponsored it. It was clear from the beginning that you were being trained to take a pastoral role.

You worked so hard and even excelled. It was only after graduation that you realized that ‘your’ position was offered to someone who was better connected, someone who was always last in class in almost everything. Sadly, you were never even informed of the new development.

Or you got involved in ministry and God really prospered you even as a volunteer.

Then the church realized the need for paid staff and you were the automatic choice. But they had someone they want to eat that salary as he is closer to the powers that be. They just can’t just shove you aside.

They therefore decide to cook a scandal so that your ‘sin’ automatically disqualifies you though they know it is a lie.

Maybe you learnt instruments early and dedicated that skill to God and His ministry.

You therefore gave the church not only the skill but even your instruments and equipment. The choir or singing group revolved around your offering for many years.

Then the church grows enough through that effort to require more instruments and equipment. They buy them and of course trash yours.

But it goes farther. They employ or hire a band and someone to operate the equipment without even caring to know whether you can offer any input. Yet you have faithfully offered free equipment, skill and instruments. Incidentally even the people they hire are those you trained.

Probably you were called as a pastor or pastoral assistant but your call went beyond the narrow confines of your boss. You therefore go to minister to a hospital and of course pray for miracles. ‘Sadly’, your prayers are answered.

But the owners of the hospitals are wealthy supporters of the church who do not take that lying down. You have to be sacked or they take their offerings to another church.

Maybe you got a little bored waiting for that rare funeral that was your job description and decided to reach out to a police station near the church and were able to lead many of them to Christ.

But in the church are enough ‘tax collectors and sinners’ who are pillars of the same. They can’t afford to raise their hands in worship with policemen because they might be able to notice the stanch of their spiritual armpits. The pastor is therefore ‘persuaded’ in no certain terms to let you go.

You may have reached out to street families and destitute who ‘defile’ the church and lower its status with their coming and you must take that folly elsewhere before the church becomes a dumping site of society.

You could have been a faithful member and ran away when the pastor wanted you to be his sex toy. Then he scandalized you to stop you from exposing him yet that was not anything you considered.

There are as many scenarios as there are hibernating ministers.

One common thing is that they are all nursing deep spiritual wounds. Some of those wounds have stayed for so long that the owners have forgotten that they have them.

The only common trait is the dread of the church, any local church or a fellowship that has more than five people. They have been bitten so badly that the sight of anything faintly resembling what bit them is treated with dread. And that is why they are hibernating.

But do they need to continue hibernating? I am convinced it does not need to be so. Why?

God never stops using anyone He has called and gifted. Romans 11: 29 is clear on that.

How then can we get them out of hibernation?

That is what I want you to support me in praying for. I believe they could be the answer to a question I asked in a post sometimes ago, ‘Are We Ready?’

Let us pray

Then say what we feel God is saying.