Do not attack them, whether directly or indirectly, for they are poisonous in nature and will work underground to destroy you.Ĥ. Once you spot them do not try to reform them or appease them-that will only make things worse.ģ. First, recognize troublemakers by their overbearing presence, or by their complaining nature.Ģ. Act before it becomes impossible to disentangle one strand of misery from another, or to see how the whole thing started.ġ. Before you know what hit you the dissatisfaction spreads. Within any group, trouble can most often be traced to a single source, the unhappy, chronically dissatisfied one who will always stir up dissension and infect the group with his or her ill ease. Strike at the source of the trouble and the sheep will scatter. Neutralize their influence by isolating or banishing them. Do not wait for the troubles they cause to multiply, do not try to negotiate with them-they are irredeemable. If you allow such people room to operate, others will succumb to their influence. As you disciple the sheep, plant their faith in the Lord Jesus, and they will be less likely to scatter, if something should happen to you.Trouble can often be traced to a single strong individual-the stirrer, the arrogant underling, the poisoner of goodwill. You are always vulnerable - even you as the pastor. Build an army of prayer warriors for you.Ĥ. I'm glad to pray with you for protection from the evil one.ģ.
And even if you fail Him, His love for you will never change. As you stay tender and faithful toward the one who called you, you will have His support. Though you may be surrounded by an army that you can see, hear, and feel, surrounding them is the host of the LORD God. Jesus told Peter once, "Satan has desired to have you, but I have prayed for you." Jesus is making intercession for you now. Now that you are aware of this, what does that mean for you?ġ. Pastor, you can easily see why Satan would want to strike you.
Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will scatter. (Still want to be a pastor?) It's an age-old trick, and it works so well. As a youngster, I myself heard a man say out loud in the aisle at church that if the pastor who had recently been forced to resign showed up to read his letter and say goodbye, that he would personally shoot him. I've heard testimony of a pastor's wife who received a dead rat shipment, a pastor whose tires were slashed after prayer meeting by an enemy in the congregation. It was just an issue of fit that almost cost the man his life. In essence: "Resign, or we will slit your throat." Doctrine was not the issue, nor was moral failure. I've heard eyewitness testimony of a pastor threatened at knife point while standing in his pulpit. Somehow, some way, the sheep turn against the pastor. The shepherd gets struck, and the sheep scatter. He cannot talk with anyone about his loneliness, his discouragement, his outright depression. He can feel that his ability to put food on the table hinges on the success or failure of this weekend, or this effort, or this vision. He doesn't find time to rest, to exercise, to eat responsibly, to be intimate with his spouse, to invest in the lives of his kids. Pastors do not have to be looking to become a moral failure to fall. It is a very safe assumption to say that Satan targets pastors with temptations, because the fall of an influencer creates more ripples than the fall of random person #673 who is not an influencer.
Our minds all run to examples of moral failure. Probably all of us can think of at least one pastor-shepherd who was struck, and the sheep were scattered.
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