No talking during the test

The past few months have been a very trying time for me personally. I had something unexpected happen to me from somebody that I trusted within the church. Now when something like this happens we are faced with 2 options. The first option is to defend ourselves and talk to everyone we can and get our story out. Option 1 will make you feel a lot better in that moment it will rally people to your side. This option however hurts people. I had a conversation a number of years back with a colleague of mine who felt like he was hurt by the church and wanted everyone to know how much he was wronged. I told him that you have to care about people more then your own personal pain. You see whether we agree with leadership or not people look to the leadership of the church to help them in there own personal walks with God. When we engage in the mudslinging it only blurs people’s vision of who God is. I had to put my own words to the test the past few months. Let me tell you it is easier to say the words then to walk them out.

I remember right after everything happened I was so mad and so hurt that I couldn’t even sleep. I remember going down stairs at about 2:00am and just telling God how unfair I thought all of this was, and how could He allow this to happen to me. His response to me rocked me to my core. “No talking during the test”, what are you serious God that’s all you have to say? No comforting word, no Psalm 91 moment, that’s it “no talking during the test”? I spent the remainder of that night trying to rap my head around those 5 words. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks, when you are in school and you are taking a test, who are the only people who want to talk to you? The ones who don’t know the answers, the students that know the answers are busy writing them down. You see when you are taking the test you have to relay on what has already been deposited. You have to relay on what you have studied. The same is true in life. When something unexpected happens what is deposited in you already will guide your response. The depth of the deposit determines the depth of the response. The great thing about God is he always makes a contingency plan. Tests in life are always open book. So instead of talking to everybody and trying to get everyone on my side I must talk to the teacher and read the text book.

That is option 2, be silent and let God protect. That’s a hard thing to do but I can tell you from experience He is a lot better at protecting then I am. You see because what I really want is not to protect myself but to hurt. I want the person or persons to know what I am feeling. That response is never from God.

The reason for me writing this blog is because I have had a number of my friends recently go through the same thing that I did. The response of my generation has typically been 3 fold. One to quite ministry altogether; two to be bitter youth pastors who never trust again; three to plant our own church because we are so fed up with leadership and after all we can do better. The great thing about my friends is that they have not chosen any of these 3 options they are putting it in God’s hands. But I know that if so many in my circle are going through this there must be more. Remember we are only responsible for our response, and our job is always to protect the people that we have had the privilege to serve.