As the calendar 12 months turns from 2023 to 2024 one among the constant sad realities in Christian News is the perpetual, continual, and repeated reality of pastors and well-known ministry leaders being exposed on a seemingly weekly basis for his or her chronic, ongoing hidden sin. It grieves all of us, however it will not be a latest phenomenon.
Thousands of years ago, the prophet Ezekiel handled the very same things we’re coping with today. The people of God had change into obstinate to the voice of God and the leaders chargeable for turning them back had grown numb to the voice of God and had given into their very own secret practices of sinfulness.
God spoke this to Ezekiel in his day – Ezekiel 8:12 “…Son of man, have you ever seen what the Elders (pastors, bishops, presbyteries) of Israel are doing within the darkness, each on the shrine of his own idol? They say, ‘The Lord doesn’t see us; the Lord has forsaken the land.'”
If it sounds familiar, it’s since it is. I’m currently in my 100th reading of the Bible as a pastor. My wife, Tosha, bought me a John Maxwell Leadership Bible to read through this time. John Maxwell says this about Ezekiel 8: “When leaders imagine they will do whatever they need in private even when it contradicts what they do in public, they violate their calling. Leaders who last commit themselves to non-public integrity, even when nobody is watching, because they know it is going to repay in public, when many could also be watching.”
I needed that reminder, possibly you do too.
I’m a great Southern Baptist pastor, so please bear that in mind as I share what I’m about to share. Twenty-three years ago, starting in February of 2001, God woke me up at 1:23am and showed me a repeated vision of Pastor Ted Haggard doing things he should not be doing. It freaked me out. Remember, I’m a Southern Baptist! I ignored it for a time, until I now not could. I finally told it to my wife and eventually to the Vanguard Church Elders, where I pastor in Colorado Springs. Five years later, it will definitely all became public, sadly. It didn’t should go the best way it did, but Ted’s refusal to take care of it privately led to massive rippling effects at a world level. Many years later, I wrote about it within the book, “The Mystery of 23: God Speaks.”
Fast forward to now. In July of 2017 while speaking at a Christian Missionary Alliance camp called Beulah Beach, I had a second encounter with the Holy Spirit. He showed me one other pastor who’s doing things he should not be doing and amid it said to me, “A network of pastors will fall.” The weight of this statement has nearly done me in over the past almost seven years. The variety of pastors and ministry leaders who’ve fallen publicly is very large and almost uncountable at this point and as we notice within the news, it continues.
Well sadly, there continues to be more to return!
I do know this disheartens us and definitely discourages us in our walks with the Lord. It does me. It makes me want to provide up and provides in to my very own temptations to sin. When we stare long enough at other’s sins, we ourselves change into vulnerable to the identical things, especially sin that seems to have gone undetected so far.
But in some unspecified time in the future, we must take our eyes off the sin of others, even the sin that has not been exposed yet, and switch our attention to the proven fact that we have to be chargeable for ourselves and in God’s time allow Him to do what He goes to do of their lives.
God is a long-suffering God but eventually He acts and exposes sin, especially hidden sin within the leader’s life.
Ezekiel captures the center of God in Ezekiel 18:30-32: “…I’ll judge each of you based on your personal ways, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent! Turn away from all of your offenses; then sin is not going to be your downfall. 31 Rid yourselves of all of the offenses you have got committed, and get a latest heart and a latest spirit. Why will you die…? For I take no pleasure within the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!”
During Ezekiel times and now during our time, God is looking His leaders to account, to repent, to show, to live! All of us sin. All of us wander. All of us once in a while leave the God we love. God tells Israel in Ezekiel to show their faces back to Him and never to show their backs on Him and His forgiveness of them. We must heed this same warning in our own lives today.
In my devotions I’m reminded that I higher hear God’s voice once I am in God’s Word. John Maxwell once more says it best, “There isn’t any leadership without self-discipline. Since the ‘princes’ of Ezekiel 19 lacked the discipline to steer their very own lives well, in addition they failed to steer anyone else well. Leaders must first lead themselves and earn the proper to draw followers. The best leader serves as a model for others.”
Sadly, there are more leaders who will fall in 2024 and beyond. As they fall, know that God sent His prophets to them privately long before and so they ignored it. Don’t you and I do the identical.
Where in my life is God talking to me about my sin? Where in your life is God talking to you about your sin?
As the author of Hebrews says in Hebrews 4:7, “Today, for those who hear his voice don’t harden your hearts.”
Remember this solemn reminder from the Lord in Ezekiel 15:7, “…once I set my face against them, you’ll know that I’m the Lord.”
