Over the past couple of years I have been confronted with legalism, spiritual pride, unforgiving hearts, and whole host of other problems. Personally dealing with some of these and learning to practice what I preach. In recent challenges, which are blessings from God, I have not always been gracious, patient, longsuffering, or thankful. For this set of bad attitudes I repent, I pray that God will grant me humility along with a pastors heart for His sheep.
One specific area I have stumbled in is scoffing at the error of peoples ways and preconceived notions. When a person pronounces a statement demonstrating a lack of biblical understanding about Jesus, the Church, election, etc., I haven't been longsuffering. I need to be patient in preaching the Word and in prayer, being a faithful minister of the gospel. Earning the right to be heard and heeded takes more than a few years, more than our microwave mentality provides. I must preach and teach the same things repeatedly and consistently praying that the Spirit of God will take the truth of the Word using it for the Glory of God.
Over the course of the past 12 weeks I have taken each Wednesday to teach about prayer. One prevalent misconception amongst the body concerns prayer. Many have communicated to me that, 'Prayer it Works!' At first I thought that it was a simple statement about the effectual prayer of a righteous man working much or whatever we pray if we ask it in Jesus name He will do. As I began to understand their use of this statement it became clear that 'Prayer it Works' was simply the genie in the bottle. If we rub the prayer genie we will get what we want, the desires of out heart! If we simply place this mantra, 'in Jesus name I pray' then we will be able to pronounce what we have done through prayer. Upon recognizing this problem I jumped on it with both feet appearing as if I didn't believe in the effectual nature of prayer. Really in an effort to correct and teach properly I simply made myself the bad guy.
After much time in prayer, meditating on how to correct the injustice I had committed, the errors of past teaching, along with general malcontent, the voice of Paul Martin rang in my ears; 'Preach the Word BJ!' Learning what that means has been vastly important for me. I have learned to Preach the Word, as Paul exhorted Timothy, it must be 'with complete patience.' Preaching the Word, feeding the sheep, and doing the work of an evangelist takes time, steadfastness, patience, love, endurance, and much prayer, because the prayer of a righteous man avails much!
Falling back, reassessing, and diligently fulfilling the duties of a pastor I have begun to see people being conformed to the Word. People are changing, false teaching from the past is being corrected slowly, but surely; God is working. So, I rejoice in prayer as given to us by God, I rejoice in His Word He has revealed to us, and I rejoice that prayer is effectual when done according to His precious will.
