Where Is God In All Of This?
We all have prayers! But there are times as a pastor's wife after going through betrayal and being stabbed in the back with lie laced stories, I think a prayer for her is much different!
You see I am a natural born fighter! I will not be a door mat to anyone or sit back and be run over. So, when we had a church split, caused by a few in a large family and the others allowed themselves to be manipulated, happened to us a few years ago, I wanted to DEFEND! I was so sick of my wonderful husband being attacked. He did nothing but love this group of people and wanted the best for them. He invested time, a lot of personal money and emotion into this church. He really did believe that they had learned their past mistakes and was ready to move onto a Whole 'Nother Level. But being controlled by a few in that group who were master manipulators, they followed the cult around to new pastures. Not long after that we had to fire the Children's pastor who got into their family affair and with her past patterns, we learned very quickly she also was a betrayer who would go around painting herself as a victim, pulling people aside and sewing seeds of discord. She would manipulate situations till they were all blown out of proportion. What followed, after all these people left with all their friends and anyone who would listen to their poison, was proven to us who they really were. They would visit businesses in town and run down the church trying to scare off anyone who would listen. We had razors in our tires. Word got back to us saying If you mess with our family, we will run you out of town! People would just yell at us in the store's for no reason at all. People we never even met. But they would always let us know who sent them. We would get ugly letters, phone calls, faces and list just goes on. All stemmed to only a handful. It was weird how they would continue to keep stirring each other up with stupid stories. I didn't understand this and was a little miffed at God. I got up one morning and ask my husband how could God allow these same people to abuse pastor after pastor, destroy new born Christians and cause trouble in church after church and get by with it? I said Where is God in all of This? Later that day I went to Springfield, MO to pick up a car and got in and turned on the radio and the man on the radio said exactly this..."So, you want to know where God is in all of this? Paul was ship wrecked and robbed(continued to talk about all that Paul went through in the ministry, then he said) God never promised that ministry would EVER BE EASY! But When he gets through, IT WILL BE WORTH IT! I just had a HOLY MOMENT!
In my natural born way I wanted to fight! I wanted to defend! I wanted everyone to be aware to and know about how they were so mean, using religious garble for their own cause . That maybe after us being the fourth pastor and again they had a house full of trouble, we were not the problem!
I remember the same thing happened to a pastor friend of ours years ago and is now pastoring a very successful church. He said Do Not Fight! What? He continued to say that a man of God will not strife. So my husband told me, give it to God. He will be our defense! It was soooooo hard not to defend our character. I stopped! I read every scripture on strife I could find. My prayer was bless them Lord. I have to admit, it took a long time to get to my heart. I have moved on and have forgiven. Now I see for every time they come against us God turns it into the biggest blessings. Every door they try to shut for us God opens an even bigger door. We are still here and we are blessed!
Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. Romans 12:19
