You have wearied the LORD with your words. “How have we wearied him?” you ask. By saying, “All who do evil are good in the eyes of the LORD, and he is pleased with them” or “Where is the God of justice?” “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the LORD Almighty. But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years. “So I will come near to you for judgment. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice, but do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty. “I the LORD do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.”(NIV) Malachi 2:17 – 3:6
Courage is a much-needed quality in pastors today.
A couple of reasons why courage doesn’t seem to be very common among pastors today:
We live in an age where political correctness calls for such tolerance and pluralism and breadth of acceptance that taking a stand for anything controversial or divisive will not be labeled as courageous, but as mean-spirited. Once upon a time, such a stand would have been lauded as courageous, but that is not the adjective people are going to use today. A pastor who draws a line in the sand and says we will go this far and no further as a family, as a church, as a denomination, will be described in ugly language. And most pastors aren’t willing to be slandered like that. They might be willing to die if they look as though they’re dying courageously for truth. But when you take a courageous stand for truth, that is not how you will be perceived and portrayed. You will be described as divisive, insensitive, intolerant, unkind, as majoring on minors-anything to paint the picture as something other than admirable. Courage always sounds admirable, but nobody will use an admirable adjective about you if they don’t like what you’re doing.
