There is the story of David and Bathsheba (II Samuel chapter 11), which came after David’s struggle to become king had succeeded and life had gotten easy for him. His “ministry” was damaged permanently and his usefulness to God greatly diminished.
Timothy was a young pastor, and therefore needed to be forewarned about this kind of temptation. His mentor, the Apostle Paul, spoke of the time when men in the church—not the world!—would be “treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power” (II Timothy 3:4-5). He was to “avoid such men as these.”
These are the kind of men, Paul says, “who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses … ” (3:6).
Sometimes women are the victims, sometimes they are the victimizers.
Many a pastor has paid the ultimate price for sexual sins.
If temptation would tell the truth, no minister would ever succumb to its enticements. If the allurement to commit adultery would adhere to a “truth in advertising” code, the “full disclosure” would read something like this:
“Subject needs to understand that by crossing this line and entering into a sexual relationship with this person, the minister will be despising His Lord, delighting the enemy, violating his marriage vows, disappointing everyone who ever believed in him from his youth until now, destroying his family, and ending his ministry…”
No one would ever commit adultery if he was required to sign that!
The devil, however, has no intention of ever revealing a list of side effects. Listen to him and you would think to disobey God is the way to fulfillment and happiness.
The sinning minister fools himself into believing all kinds of lies, most of them originating with the one Jesus called “the father of lies” (John 8:44). He convinces himself that “I deserve this, no one will ever know, I can have all the wonderful things in my life and this forbidden fruit also,” and then, there is the clincher—”This feels so good, it can’t be wrong.”
Too late does he find out the truth of the old adage, that sin will take you farther than you wanted to go, keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost far more than you ever intended to pay.
Here are seven women, young pastor, to watch out for in your ministry.
1. The woman who wants to be your wife.
She is unhappily married. Her husband has disappointed her in a hundred ways. Sitting in church week after week, it occurs to her that you are everything she has ever wanted in a husband. You are kind and gracious, thoughtful and spiritual. You love the Lord and are devoted to your family. You earn a good living and you do not drink or smoke or hang out in bars. So, she fixates on you.
Now, if she were rational, she would know that by seducing you—or winning you, however she would put it—all of those wonderful qualities she admires would suddenly go away: your ministry, your family, your income, the respect with which you are held in the town, your joy in life even.
In most cases, she thinks clearly enough not to actually try to break up your marriage (although that has happened often enough). She merely feels a strong attraction to you and puts herself in a position for you to pick up on it. Consciously or unconsciously, she becomes a trap for the unsuspecting minister.
