Wait until you guys read about what was waiting for me when I got home.
My desk is an area that is completely off limits to my children. They aren't allowed to touch anything whatsoever that is sitting there. Well, I have a collection of lighters, one of which happened to still be on my desk upstairs. Unbeknownst to me, my youngest daughter had been secretly playing with that lighter lately. She'd go into the room, get the lighter, play with it, and then put it back so I wouldn't know someone had taken it. Today it all caught up with her.
She was in her room playing with the lighter and set a piece of paper on fire. When she couldn't blow the fire out and the paper got too hot, she dropped the paper on the floor. The corner of her blanket on fire, which in turn caught some cots under the bed on fire, which in turn caught the mattress on fire, all on one corner of the bed. My son was able to put the fire out and, other than the aforementioned items, nothing else was burned. No one was hurt, thankfully.
Given the fact that I have had this sort of thing on my mind this week, I believe God is showing me I am on the right track with my thinking. A situation that perfectly fits what I have been wondering about has happened in my life. One of my children has been disobeying me and I believe God exposed her disobedience.
I have all the confirmation I need. What are the chances that a hypothetical situation that I started a thread on this very week would come to life right before my eyes, especially with me knowing the other part of what I have had on my mind that y'all don't know about yet? Slim to none.
I have been asking God if this is one of His ways that doesn't make sense to us as humans and I believe He has given me His answer.
You see, I have had pastors on my mind quite a bit lately. Contrary to what some have accused me of being, namely a preacher hater, I have never hated preachers. The people I have shared some of my closest guarded secrets with have been the pastors in my life. When I began to see the ways in which pastors go beyond what the Bible teaches I started questioning how much authority God gives them in our lives. Exactly how much authority they have isn't really spelled out in the Bible, with the exception of things God has said to those who have gone to the extreme of actually hurting the people they are supposed to be serving.
It is something I have struggled with over the years. What I have struggled with isn't so much the idea that pastors have authority in their congregants lives. It is with how much authority God gives them and whether or not he honors some of the decisions they make that go outside of what is spelled out in black and white in His Word.
I've gone from one extreme to the other in my thinking. I started out thinking I was obligated to obey everything they say, regardless of what it was. If the preacher said, "You can't go see your mother this weekend" I would not go. If the preacher said to put our children in the church school I went along with it. If the preacher said not to buy this car, or not to move to this house, etc. etc., I obeyed, thinking they had the authority to make those kinds of decisions for me.
I have walked in the other extreme that says, "If it isn't spelled out word for word in the Bible then he has no right to tell me what I should or shouldn't be doing." Any little thing the preacher said that was even a little bit out of the Word I felt no obligation to obey and was not afraid of making it known. This is where I have been most recently in my thinking.
Then, the other day the Lord and I had some alone time. I was on my way to my new job, thinking about church, the Lord, His Word, etc. This scenario I gave you in the opening thread is the scenario I presented to God. I basically asked God, "Do you honor some of the things pastors say that maybe aren't spelled out completely in your Word? God, do you honor the authority you have placed in their lives to the extent of honoring some things they want from people, even if it isn't really something you necessarily expect from us?"
This is when the story about the son disobeying his dad came to mind. When it happened I felt that God was answering my question by asking me if I believed He ever reveals a child's disobedience to his parents.
When it happened it seemed to make sense to me. "Yes," I thought, "I believe it's possible that You reveal disobedience to a child's parent." Maybe not all the time, but, yes, I believe it happens. "Why wouldn't it be the same way with you and your pastor?" is what I felt like God was saying to me.
See, pastors are a sort of father in our lives. The role they play in the life of a saint shares some characteristics with the role my natural father plays in my life. They are there to provide guidance, advice, direction, nurturing, an example of what it means to be Christlike, and yes, even some boundries. They are not there to
be our father, although I know the Bible talks about us not having many spiritual fathers, but some of the things they do for us spiritually run parallel with the types of things our natural fathers do in our lives.
It may not be a big deal to God that the son in my story was going into the city. But because it was important to the father that his son not go into the city, and because God honors the authority He has placed in the life of that son, God exposed the disobedience. I can now see how this same principle would apply in the relationship between pastor and saint.
I think I am going to make a change in how I see pastors. I think from now on I am going to make an effort to do some obeying even if what the pastor is asking from me isn't spelled out word for word in the Bible. Am I going to go back to "whatever the preacher says goes" kind of thinking? No. But I am not going to stay in the "it has to be explicitly spelled out before I believe it's for me" category either.
I am going to start giving the pastor the benefit of my doubts from today forward. I am going to be more willing to go along with some things, regardless of how I feel about them personally. Before you ask, no, I am not planning on shaving my beard!
(I had to head that one off at the pass!)
By the way, I know how some of you around here like to take the ball and run with it. While I am saying that God is changing the way I see some things, I am not saying I now believe in every dress standard, rule, mandate, edict, (whatever you want to call it,) that will come forth from the pulpit of whichever pastor I end up submitting to. "Submitting" There's a word I haven't used in a long time.
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