WHEN THEY WANT YOU TO PERFORM - Christianity Today

Have you ever felt that people expected you to produce signs and wonders on demand?

Last year I had to confront a member of our church. This man had come to Christ out of a homosexual lifestyle. Although he had contracted AIDS, we had accepted him fully into the life of the church.

But then he resumed his deathstyle of cruising and trysts. When I confronted him, he cried profusely and said he would repent. I told him repentance included informing those he had exposed to the AIDS virus. At that, his sorrow turned to anger. He venomously accused me: “You’re no man of God! If you were Spirit-filled, you would have discerned this sin before it got out of hand. I’ve been doing this for months now. Why didn’t you get a word of knowledge when you prayed for me?”

I reminded him that several months previously I had inquired point blank how he was handling temptation.

“That was just a hunch,” he replied. “That was just pastoral concern, not a spiritual gift.”

True, my gumshoeing didn’t sound supernatural. And I didn’t feel spiritually powerful when he severed ties, walked out of the church, and spread the rumor that I booted him out because he had AIDS.

I am a believer in the supernatural, and I believe God has worked through me at times in supernatural ways. But people can turn the supernatural into a superburden. For some, certain spiritual manifestations mark a “real man of God.” Others, when I lay hands on them, expect a certain feeling or quasi-thunderbolt. Still others, if miracles don’t come on demand, suspect sin in my life or, at minimum, spiritual lethargy.

That, of course, gives me pangs personally, but worse, it hurts the church. Most of all it hurts those with excessive expectations because, like the man with AIDS, they shift responsibility for their problems from themselves to the pastor. Many want to duck the disciplines of Christian growth and overlook their weaknesses and sins.

For the sake of these people, for our church, and for my own sanity, I do five things to pull them into balance.

Keep stressing the basics

I was flipping a paintbrush with my brother, a contractor, when the owner of the house told me she was a Christian. I told her I was a pastor. Pleasantly surprised, she said, “It just so happens I’m in the process of looking for a church.” She went on to describe how she had moved to town a few years ago and still had not found a church to her satisfaction.

She knew precisely what she wanted: a church charismatic in worship and Pentecostal in power, where Satan is bound and angels are loosed, where everyone is healed, and no one suffers poverty.

“Do you practice spiritual warfare?” she asked.

I knew what she meant, but sensing her lopsidedness, I tried to steer our conversation toward the fundamentals. I talked about Christ’s finished work at Calvary, the importance of a sustained devotional life, and the need for regular fellowship. I spoke of the pitfalls of fixating on Satan.

My words were met with polite impatience. To someone who wants to bind the principalities over city councils, armies, political parties, and drug lords, spiritual staples taste like gruel. But I still keep teaching the subjects emphasized in the church for centuries: holiness, servanthood, the person and work of Christ, discipleship, commitment.

I don’t ridicule or quench the spectacular side of ministry; I’m a Pentecostal by tradition and practice. I just believe that while the miraculous is an important part of a balanced diet (not merely the glazed dessert), it isn’t everything. Some may prefer a more exciting diet, but I keep serving meat and potatoes.

Tastes are acquired. The more we eat a balanced diet, the better we like it. For finicky eaters, even small portions of the four food groups improve health, and good health in turn stimulates an appetite for balanced meals. If I stressed only the sensational, my people would never acquire an appetite for the other essential aspects of faith.

Teach the value of suffering

My daughter Faith Rebecca caught a severe case of chicken pox. One of her church friends did, too, but healed remarkably fast, shortening her agony by days. The church heard the family’s testimony that she was touched by the Lord.

But the pastor’s daughter wasn’t. Hundreds of angry sores afflicted her from foot to scalp. One night while my wife, an R.N., was at work, Faith kept me awake till 4:30 A.M.

I anointed her with calamine lotion and prayed with faith, yet I continued to hear and answer her cries every ten to thirty minutes. Eventually my prayers of faith devolved into “Lord, what’s going on? Little Megan gets a healing. Why not my Faith?”

Then I heard God’s still, small voice: “I have given you a greater miracle. You have been given the honor of showing your daughter the nature of a loving father. By your example you have the privilege of teaching her the nature of God. She is learning that she can call out in her agony to her father. Isn’t that worth losing a little sleep?”

What could I say? I decided a miraculous healing from chicken pox is a small thing compared to the grace that kept me loving, kind, and caring into the wee hours.

I tell such stories in my sermons so my people see that God works for good in our sufferings. I emphasize that even miracles are not an end in themselves but are given so we can further glorify God.

Remind people of their responsibilities

A woman in our church requested marriage counseling. Knowing that their marital difficulties exceeded my experience and training, I recommended a professional counselor.

“I want you to counsel us,” she insisted. Having a minor in counseling herself, what she and her husband needed, she felt, was “to hear from the Lord, to establish some strict scriptural parameters.”

I agreed to meet with her to at least hear her out.

At our first session I discovered what she meant by “scriptural.” She urged me to confront her husband and rebuke him if he refused to repent. Citing Matthew 18, she asked me to haul him before our church council, if necessary before the whole church, and shun him if he continued in his ways.

I declined. “Instead,” I suggested, “let’s focus on what you can control. How can you improve as a wife?”

That session ended with negligible progress.

Five weeks later her husband stormed over to my house. They had clashed again. In the heat of the battle she began to bash some of his expensive audio equipment. He forcibly restrained her. She called the police. He broke her china cabinet. He was arrested and had just now been freed from jail.

While he was at my house, she called. “This wouldn’t have happened if you had followed God’s Word,” she cried. “Don’t you listen to God? Why didn’t you bind up those spirits that drive him?”

I saw little benefit in answering her questions.

“What you and your husband need,” I suggested, “is the fruit of the Spirit much more than someone else’s gifts of the Spirit.”

I urged repentance and forgiveness, and again I recommended a marriage counselor. She would have none of that. She left the church, spreading the word, “Don’t look for God’s power there.”

This woman wanted to make me responsible for their immaturity. Just as people blame God for their self-incurred plights, so they will, at times, blame the pastor. I have learned to refuse the millstone. In a nondefensive way, I gently remind them that they have to put on their own spiritual armor; I cannot do it for them.

Publicize the non-spectacular

In one Sunday service, Bob and Mary, who are both in their seventies and have no grandchildren, stood to thank God for the pregnancy of their daughter-in-law. When they sat down, I led in prayer for the child.

Later their daughter-in-law reacted adversely to an amniocentesis. We rallied people in the church to pray. In a short time, however, she miscarried. Although Bob and Mary were shaken, they rose the next Sunday, told the story, and finished by saying, “We thank God that despite this loss, he is working for good. Our son has responded to this crisis by acknowledging his need for God.”

Once again we prayed for the entire family, steadfast in our belief that God hears the cries of his children.

Real life, like a leash and choke collar, has a way of jerking people into balance. Consequently, simply letting people report publicly how God is working in their lives, in ways both happy and painful (salted when appropriate with my theological commentary) helps people better understand God’s intervention or lack thereof.

Though I lean toward boosting faith with positive testimonies of answered prayer, I don’t discourage expressions of disappointment (unless, of course, the person has an ongoing foul attitude). Nor do I hastily cork the melancholy bottle so we can all smile again. We rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. We talk about the Christian life, and then we pray.

When the only personal reports allowable are victories, that can disillusion people who are still battling. Showcasing only the positive makes them wonder, What’s wrong with me?

Preach expositorily to cure craziness

If my people don’t get a balanced perspective on issues such as healing, it’s my own fault. The Bible offers balance if I will preach it. Expository preaching brings context, and context cures craziness. Expository preaching brings the whole truth of God’s Word to bear, gradually giving perspective to those who like to prooftext.

Scripture speaks about times when God’s people experienced the supernatural-and times they didn’t. If they went through times of disappointment, why shouldn’t I?

I preach James 5:15: “And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well.” But I also preach Galatians 4:13: “It was because of an illness that I first preached the gospel to you.”

Through expository preaching I teach people not to deal with contrasting Bible verses in one-or-the-other fashion but as a whole. We rejoice that God raised Dorcas from the dead, yet we remember that Paul left Trophimus sick in Miletus and that Epaphroditus, while he worked with the great apostle, became sick and almost died.

A few days after my daughter Faith recovered from her chicken pox, my other two daughters, Savannah Hope and Sarah Bethany, awoke in the night with similar cries of discomfort. Once again, I called on the supernatural power of God, not to escape but to endure in kindness and love.

Although l was unable to give my daughters an exhibition of miracles, I was able to show them an example of the father who would never leave them or forsake them. And for those difficult evenings, that seemed to do. All my daughters seemed to expect was that I be there.

And I’ve learned that, sometimes, being there is all a pastor can do. But at that moment, being there fulfills our calling.

-Louis Templeman

Living Hope Chapel (Foursquare Gospel)

Charlottesville, Virginia.