I’m relating to Paul in this passage these days:

“Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.  Who is weak, and I do not feel weak?  Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?” (2 Cor 11:28-29)

People sometimes ask me what I feel is the hardest part of my life here.  I think they usually expect to hear something about mosquitos or the heat or slum dogs.  But most of the time it doesn’t have to do with physical circumstances at all.  It’s seeing people I love and whom God loves turn away from him and toward lesser gods.

It’s watching a young believer allowing money to be her master, gambling all day instead of taking care of her sick two-year-old.

It’s witnessing a leader deceive many by her charism, a smile and eloquent words erasing the memory of wrongs not yet made right.

Felt the heaviest these days, it’s seeing church leaders lie to themselves, their church members and the Lord about where the offering money is going.  It’s discovering money given to God by slum dwellers has ending up in the pockets of a volunteer church leader.

It’s realizing how many of us (myself included) have in small and large ways enabled and even invited this kind of sin.

This has been a season of both celebrating the new life God is bringing in our midst and mourning over the brokenness that has been revealed.  But I take hope that all of it is the Lord’s work.  I would rather the mourning and repentance over sin brought into the light, than a half-hearted smile to cover up a lie.  It is the Lord’s kindness that leads us to repentance, it is his mercy that refuses to allow us to deceive ourselves.  While it can feel like we are falling apart, really this is just the first step of letting God heal us.  None of this sin is new; this has been going on for years and God has known about every day of it.  But now in his timing he is doing the work of a good physician.  Unapologetic for the pain, he is removing our feeble attempts at a bandage and is applying his truly healing balm.

Pray that each of us, our leaders and church members would yield to his firm but loving touch.