I love preachers. Although, through out my fifty-plus years of preaching, I have been hurt by a lot of preachers, I still love preachers! Even when I see a preacher mess up, I will take up for him and try to help him get on track, because God gave me a love for the ministry. Too many wounded soldiers have been kicked aside because others didn’t think they would ever rise again, or else they didn’t think they were worth the time and effort to carry out of the battle zone and be revived. You can ask my wife about the times we have been sitting at a restaurant table and when someone would start talking negatively about a preacher, my anger would rise, and to the chagrin of those who wanted to hear more, I would shut down the discussion in a heartbeat. Even my wife has done so a number of times. In fact, I have a message called, “For The Love Of A Preacher” which I have been called upon to preach on numerous occasions in support of preachers. Why is that? Because, whether right or wrong, the ministry deserves honor and respect. There have been a few times, I am saddened to say, that even we have been caught up in the same spate of being critical of a preacher. However, after having done so, the Spirit of God has chastised us and explicitly ordered us to “Never do it again!” In most cases, these men (and women) have sold themselves out to the ministry and elected to live by faith and by doing so most of them do not live normal lives with normal jobs and normal paychecks, but they are servants to the people. Almost everyone makes mistakes (I have made my share), but that’s all a part of the learning and growing process which applies to every believer, “until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13 NAS).
When talking about how men deal with emotional pain, I often liken it to a man who is hammering a nail into a piece of wood. All of us, at one time or more in our lives, have missed the nail and hit our thumb. The pain is excruciating, but the first thing we do is cover the wounded thumb with our other hand. That does not numb or even alleviate the pain, but it covers it.
It has been a very trying time for all of us. I am a man of prayer, and I say that without reservation, but lately there have been mornings that I have sat in my “prayer chair” and the words just wouldn’t come out. I didn’t know what to say. At times like that, I always pray in the Spirit (in tongues), but sometimes I couldn’t even do that. All I could do was groan in my spirit. Of course, the devil would taunt me and say, “You sound like a fool,” but I recalled the scripture that says, “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words…” (Rom. 8:26 NAS).
I hope you will allow me, please, to briefly indulge you with a little transparency. In 1997, our son, Donnie, Sr., had an experience with God at the Brownsville Revival in Pensacola, Florida. He was so gloriously changed that words fail me to give it adequate description. We were pastoring a church in Red Oak, Texas at the time, and he would go up to the church alone at night, turn on the sound system and for hours he would walk back and forth across the platform singing the Brownsville worship songs that he loved, all the time worshiping God with all of his heart and soul. What a change! In the services, he would dance before the Lord without inhibition; his arms outstretched to God in full and complete surrender. Then, some of the very people who I pastored, made comments about his style of worship and he got wind of it. I tried to “nip it in the bud” and get him to ignore it, but the damage had already started. Some of the people in the church would not associate with him because of his “baggage,” and so slowly but surely the enemy used that to divert his course. In the months that followed, I remember, through blinding tears, appealing to him to hold fast to what God had given him and not allow the ignorance of these modern day Pharisees and religious “wanna-be’s” to interrupt what God had started. But, he had seen it just too many times. As a child, he had heard the lies told about us. He had often heard me brutally attacked by deacons and elders and to this day it is still too much for him to process.
I realize that at the end of the day, the decision to live for God is ultimately his, and I cannot spend the rest of my life blaming others for where he is at today. However, at the same time, I do believe that his blood will be on their hands, come Judgment Day. His mother and I love him and will not give up hope for his total restoration, deliverance, salvation and infilling of the Holy Ghost!
To add insult to injury, the number of open doors for us to minister has not been sufficient to meet the needs. I know we are in tough times economically and I also realize that most pastors are very busy just keeping everything functioning in their respective locales. However, we make our living by ministering. It has been a constant battle just to stay afloat. We literally pray every day, “Give us this day our daily bread.” In fact, things became so desperate for us, that a few months ago, to keep from losing everything, my wife and I did the unthinkable; we pawned our wedding rings just to try to pay the bills. We have both shed tears over that because those rings represent our covenant (of 41 years thus far) with each other. We are currently facing an astronomical financial need and are now grappling with that! I began preaching when I was but a child, so I have literally preached all of my life! At this time in our lives and ministry, instead of preparing for retirement, we are continuing to try to busy ourselves, not for our future, but for survival.
Perhaps you can now understand my introversion just. I love being with preachers. I love what I do. I would sooner preach than eat, but in my case, I have to preach to eat (smile). Revelation knowledge is being poured into my spirit like liquid gold and I long to give it out. That having been said, if you see me and I do not exude the usual rhetoric or comedic style that I usually exhibit, do not take it personally. The Bible exhorts us to judge no man according to “the flesh.” Just pray for that person that the sufficiency of God’s amazing grace will carry them through the thing they are dealing with. Will Rogers once said, “The best way out of difficulty is through it.”
I hope you will not just read this post and then lay it aside as the blather of yet another “begging preacher.” All I ask is that you pray with us for God’s continued grace as we walk through this storm.
