I’m amazed at many of the pastors and people I meet that feel it is their calling to somehow “make” others do it God’s way!  Instead of saying, “Ok, I just shared with you what God’s plan can be for your life right out of the Word of God, now it’s your choice; where do you want to have lunch,” these pastors and people say the same thing with one addition and without the lunch: They (not literally) grab the back of the head of hair of people and force their heads down onto the table spread of spiritual food just prepared for them and try to force people to eat.  If they don’t, they become strangers.  Literally! 

I have to confess that in my early years of ministry, without intent, I didn’t know any better, and participated in what I just described.  God blessed in spite of me!  It was immaturity and lack of growth on my part.  Today is a completely different ballgame in my own life.  It’s refreshing, to say the least.

This crowd has believed the newspaper reports about themselves;  they are greater in their eyes than they really are.  Oftentimes, their entourage of constituents have also added to this belief.  It’s happened for decades and will continue.  Today, these people are no longer challenging the status quo of their own ministries, but they are, now, the status quo, and victims of their own system-pleasing creations.  I will say this; many of these people don’t want to stay in this predicament, but cannot get out of it, because, to do so would require them to backpeddle on some of what they thought and taught was “gospel” through the years that was really only opinion.

I like what Warren Buffett said, “I don’t worry too much about pointing fingers at the past,” he said. “I operate on the theory that every saint has a past, every sinner has a future.”  Yeah, boy!