Problems with People

Problems with People addresses the problems a pastor will face, and finds the secret blessing in them for him, his ministry, and his people.

Contents

1 Problems with People

Problems with People
By David Cox

Any pastor that has been in the ministry for any length of time (a couple of years or so) will tell you that the ministry is fraught with problems. Many pastors take these problems personally, and the fight becomes a person to person confrontation. That is a quick recipe for pastor burnout and the stress-to-death syndrome.

Sin causes problems

One of the most fundamental understandings that will make or break any and every ministry is very simply, the preacher has to understand that sin causes problems. Fix the sin problem, and amazingly the people turn their character around and become “nice”.

Preach to the Problems

A second foundational understanding of any good ministry is that we (pastors) are here to fix what is wrong. I get this concept from the imagery that God gave us that His people are sheep, and the key ministers to his people (the ministers that God uses to bless and take care of his people) are called “Pastors”. The understanding in this divine terminology is very simple, the pastor is there to fix (on God’s behalf) whatever is wrong. Part of this is not physically forcing people to do what the pastor thinks best. He is to instruct the people in what is the will of God. Only through the communication of the truth of God’s Holy Word will anybody “be fixed”.

That places everything into a setting of “what does the Bible say about….”

The preacher needs to understand the value of his problems. What? My problems have some “good value” for me? Exactly. God gives you these problems so that you can preach to them and straighten them out. Our rewards in heaven is not for having a daycare where everybody can play and have fun. It is more like a hospital. How many people did you cure, how many people when under while under your care? That is what God is looking at. Also how many people came to know Christ through your ministry (both locally and abroad worldwide)?

So our attitude towards problems is very simple, problems are useful for me to get sermons and teachings to help these people. Part of being a wise pastor is to discern the problems ahead of time and make preventative teaching hit the problem before it becomes a problem. Also, the other half of the pastor’s ministry is diagnostic problem-solving. Figuring out what is the real problem, and fixing it with “spiritual prescriptions”. This includes teaching and orders for doing things differently.

Finding solutions to Problems

You need to understand something about these spiritual problems. Only by saturating yourself in the Word of God will you ever find any solution to anybody’s problem (including to your own problems). This “saturation” is much more than memorizing (although that is necessary and good). Saturation means you personally seek to apply God’s word to your own life. No counselor is considered “good” if he fails to use his own counsel to straighten out his own life.

As a pastor, I have to have my own life in order (called having a good testimony) before I can even think about standing before others and teaching them the principles of God. This is like a man selling classes on quitting smoking, and all the time he is teaching he is puffing on a cigar. If your principles really work, how come we cannot see them working in YOUR OWN PERSONAL LIFE?

That is the problem, hypocrisy. And that is the great problem in Christendom, the key ministers given the task to change God’s people cannot grasp these necessary principles sufficiently to fix their own life, so everybody is in big problems.

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Take a look at a few of our tracts:
salv76 suffering should seek his Savior - explains how we should react to problems and sufferings, we should seek the Savior.
pc15 How to fight against depression - we treat the problem of depression. Depression is not a physical disease, it is an emotional and spiritual disease that "bleeds over" and causes aggravation and physical consequences if not attended to at the spiritual-social-emotional level.
ch15 Congregating because we Love - a tract about why we attend church. Our relationship with our brethren in Christ is highly integrated with our salvation and our sanctification.
SSTeen1-01 Existence of God - Does God really exist? This is not a tract but a teen Sunday School Class that I wrote answering this important question.
fam48 Men are God's Agents - Men are God’s Agents to accomplish His Will, looks at man as God wants him to be. Manhood and the husband-wife relationship.
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Excerpts from the article...
I say "for a person to have a right walk before God" meaning that what you personally do is acceptable in a level of being fair and just both what you do to others, and in the context of what others do to you. You only have a claim of somebody doing something "wrong" in a moral context, and this moral context has to begin with God's existence and God's laws over us before you get to what happens in a court of law in a country, state, county, or city.

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This verse fully backs up this concept. To "please God" who is the Judge... The concept of "rewarder" is somebody that looks at actions and gives a reward or a punishment. This is ultimately God's task, and earthly judges must also answer to God, as those in their courts have to answer to that earthly judge. We posit God "must believe that he is" means they must accept the authority and controls (of blessing or curse, of reward or punishment) from the Judge. He exists. He has a forceful interaction with our lives.

The system that is built on this is a system where one person doesn't get anything different from another. Are there abuses? Yea, but life is full of injustices. But taking something from one person to give to another person is not the answer here especially when the person you are taking away things from really hasn't done anything wrong. Black people (Asians, etc.) need to enter shoulder to shoulder with every other person on an equal ground, and they need to compete. That is life. If they of their own merit and effort get ahead, so be it. But nobody owes them a living. Reparations are the opposite of this.
Read the article: Are we a country of Laws?

Tracts Group 2

pc85 Carl Jung and Psychology explains the origin of Psychology with spiritist Jung, which had contact with a spiritual guide.
We explain that Carl Jung was a spiritist, as were his parents (father was a pastor of a spiritist church). The spirit guide Philemon appeared to Jung at age 3, and over time, Philemon gave Jung all of his concepts which he later made into "psychology". Jung is known as the founder or creator of psychology. Psychology is not a science because its data is not testable, but rather opinions. There are no clean experiments that give unequivocal yes or no results. The results they claim in one set of experiments do not unilaterally give the same results when independent groups do the same experiments. Psychology is a doctrine of Demons, 1 Timothy 4:1, and Christians have to reject it, and denounce it.
Read/Download PDF: pc85 Carl Jung and Psychology.