Perhaps the most dangerous place on the church campus is the pastor’s counseling office. When the minister is shut up in a tight space with a vulnerable female who confides in him the most personal things of her life, often the two people do something completely natural and end up bonding emotionally. The bonding process is simple: she opens up to him, he sympathizes with her, she reaches out to him, and there it goes. Many a ministry and a great many marriages have been destroyed in the counseling room. Can we talk about temptation?
Flirting WIth Temptation
Rick Warren says if any of his staff even flirt with temptation, he’s coming at them with a baseball bat. And he wants them to do the same for him.
Every pastor needs a baseball-bat wielding friend. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend…” (Proverbs 27:6)
Sometimes we need a buddy to beat some sense into our heads. To speak the uncomfortable truth to us. To risk the relationship in order to save a marriage, a reputation, a ministry.
Let’s talk about ministers and sexual temptation.
The rest of you may leave the room.
RELATED: How to Avoid Temptation
Take Ashley Madison, whose website facilitates and urges, “Life Is Short. Have An Affair .” What were otherwise normal, healthy people thinking when they enrolled in a program which offered confidential adultery? Is that ever an oxymoron!
Pastors fell for that come-on. That is the saddest thing I know.
Most illicit affairs, however, did not start on the internet, but with innocent, harmless connecting. Perhaps it was flirting, sharing a fun experience, playing on the same team. The two people worked on a project in close proximity or sat together in a small room discussing personal things. They (for want of a better word) “connected.” They bonded.
Flirt with temptation and although I’m neither a prophet nor the son of one, I can predict with a high degree of accuracy what’s going to happen.
Someone is going to get burned.
“Flee youthful lusts” says the Scripture in 2 Timothy 2:22. The recommended treatment for sexual temptation is simple and clear. Run! Get out of there as fast as you can!
Do not argue with the temptation or the tempter. Do not analyze it, reason with it, explain it, justify it, or try to convert it. Just get out of there.
Flee! Run. Leave. Now.
First, an uncomfortable truth: There really are a number of people in this world whom you could easily fall in love with. Stated another way, there are numerous individuals–there’s no way to know how many–with whom you could connect deeply and probably have a wonderful marriage with.
So, get that notion out of your head, friend, that says: “I’ve found the love of my life in this new person.”
You are fooling yourself and playing with fire.
No. You. Have. Not.
You may have found one of the fifty or a hundred or five hundred individuals with whom you could bond and fall in love and have a successful marriage. Big deal.
Now, let’s go on.
