Menu

A faithful presence of love in the absences of our city.

The Word Stands Forever

The Word Stands Forever

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”  (2 Timothy 3: 16-17)

“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”  (Isaiah 40:8)

When I was in college, I was part of Reformed University Fellowship (RUF), the PCA’s college ministry.  In the four years I participated in RUF, my campus had three different pastors who led the ministry, as well as one semester where we didn’t have a campus minister at all.  (For anyone who isn’t familiar with RUF, this is incredibly unusual – pastors are usually attached to the ministry at a particular campus for several years.)

The root of that problem was the fact that the campus minister my freshman year, and the first part of my sophomore year, had been having an extramarital affair that eventually came to light and caused him to be removed from his role.  There was partial repentance and reconciliation eventually, but in the shorter term the RUF students who had trusted this man experienced the magnitude of his selfishness, hypocrisy, and cruelty, to say nothing of the pain his unfaithfulness inflicted on his family.  

Each person struggled with the experience in different ways, but what is still hard for me is reconciling the messages he preached on Tuesday nights with the person that he showed himself to be.  How could the man who preached beautifully through the book of Ruth, expounding on God’s faithfulness and holding up this woman as an example of faithfulness, be the same man who was so false and unfaithful in his own life? 

I think where it leaves me is the same place that I’m left when I remember that some of the greatest figures used by God in the history of Israel and the Church have been equally sinful and inadequate.  Moses was a murderer and a stutter, Peter was an egotistical and unfaithful friend, and Paul persecuted the emerging Church bitterly prior to his conversion.  And God worked through them all and caused His word to go forth powerfully through all of them.

In the case of Moses, Peter and Paul, we have the advantage of being able to see their redemption, though we know that they continued to sin throughout the rest of their lives.  In my pastor’s case, the redemption is undoubtedly an ongoing process, one that I unfortunately haven’t been witness to personally.  Pastors bear a huge responsibility, and God commands pastors and elders to shepherd the Church – that’s not a command to be taken lightly, and it certainly means that my pastor failed on a huge scale.  But those who receive the Word from pastors are also called to weigh it rather than receiving it blindly, and I know that the scripture and teaching I received from my pastor was true, even if his heart was false in many ways.

God is faithful to His word, whether or not the people who deliver it are faithful, and He will cause it to go forth in power. 

~Alyson Noell