The Pastor's Wife (eBook)

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On Inheriting a Kingdom of Idols and Expectations

Expectations can sneak up on you and surprise you when you least expect them. We can laugh about this moment now, but at the time it was very confusing for all of us. One year just before the Christmas Eve service began, a group of ladies gathered around me with disapproving looks on their faces. Someone spoke for the group, “This is not right. You are the pastor’s wife! You are supposed to be the best-dressed woman here. This is your night! Where is your jewelry?” In an attempt to spare me from what she thought was a shame, she began to take her own necklace off to give me. My friends inherited this idea from their church’s subculture back in their home country. It’s just one of the things that everyone always knew—the pastor’s wife is supposed to be the glitziest gal at the Christmas Eve gala. Christmas Eve was “her night” to strut her stuff. In my heart I was tempted with this opportunity to garner attention and praise.

It may seem odd to take this example of an expectation seriously. But grant me this—perhaps our expectations that are not congruent with Scripture have more in common with this example than we care to admit. This leads us to some questions to consider: Why are we so prone to setting up false expectations for ourselves or for others? What is it about us that makes us eager to go after false expectations and try to satisfy them? To answer these questions, we need to look at the heart issue behind all our sinful impulses: idolatry.

From Icons to Idols

My friend Bev grew up in a family that practiced the worship of ancestors and idols. When she was twelve years old her father marched out their back door carrying an axe. Bev’s father laid into the statue of Buddha that was standing in their yard. The three-foot-tall, red, wooden statue was allegedly protecting them and giving their family good luck, but her father no longer believed that lie. He chopped the idol into smithereens while his daughter looked on in amazement. The Chaos had taught their daughters to revere the idol—don’t touch it, don’t play with it, treat it with respect. But when Bev’s dad became a Christian, he dismantled and destroyed their household god in obedience to the one true God. “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3). His slavery to superstition and ancestor worship had been broken. Instead of looking to a piece of wood for things that only God can provide, Mr. Chao began to lead his family in trusting Christ.

The inclination toward idolatry is the natural posture of the human heart. It’s the reason for every sin. You don’t need to have a statue in your yard to serve an idol. When Satan tempted Adam and Eve in the garden he told them, “You will be like God” (Gen. 3:5). Martyn Lloyd-Jones summarized the problem of idolatry like this:

After our first parents sinned, every human then imagined himself to be better off in slavery to self-worship. Mankind was meant to be an icon, a picture of what God is like as we display his image to the world. Instead, in our sin we became our own idols. We worship ourselves and expect others to do the same. Think about it—we are kind to the people who are kind to us. We boast in our strength and accomplishments. We envy those who have the strength and accomplishments we desire. We are rude to people who do not praise us. We insist on our own way. We are easily annoyed and resent those who don’t acknowledge our sovereignty. We are ecstatic when our rivals stumble. We put up with people so far as they benefit us. In our minds we are the only ones who are truly praiseworthy, and we’ll be damned if anyone should suggest otherwise. Ironically, we are duped into thinking that by these practices and heart postures we are liberated and independent, but really we are slaves. In chapter 1 we looked at Romans 1:21, “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” Paul goes on to say in verse 25, “because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” We don’t want to serve the creature anymore. We want to worship God! Is it too late to return the lie we bought in exchange for God’s truth?

In Acts 17:29–31 Paul tells us the answer we are looking for:

Hallelujah! We have a rescuer! This man is not like the first man, Adam, who forsook God to worship himself. No. This is the God-man Jesus Christ, the last Adam, the only man who worshiped God with all his heart, soul, and mind, and loved his neighbor as he loved himself (Matt. 22:36–40). Whereas all of us were made sinners by Adam’s disobedience, as many who call on Christ to save them will be made righteous by his obedience (Rom. 5:12–21). Our idolatry is forgiven, and our righteous standing before God is imputed to us by faith in the last Adam. The resurrection of Jesus Christ proves that God will keep his promise of canceled sin for all those whose trust is in his Son. When we trust that Jesus has secured our future of never-ending joy in him, we experience the power of the resurrected Christ who frees us from idolatry. Never again can we happily serve another god, because no god can satisfy us like the fullness we receive from Christ. So now we take up the axe of God’s Word and strike into the root of our idols.

The Shackles of Ministry?

When we first moved to the Arabian Peninsula to help start a church planting movement, we had no idea if that plan would ever come to fruition. Nobody had formally invited us, and there were no positions to be filled. That was a faith-stretching time. When the uncertainty of it all would hit me afresh, I would feel the stress coursing through my body. “If this doesn’t work, what would we do?” was a question I asked myself on a regular basis. “The Plan” for church planting was my functional idol, and I couldn’t fathom what life would be like if the plan failed.

Serving alongside your husband in ministry may present you with great temptation toward idolatry. Some temptations are greater than others, and aspects of ministry may also become temptations to sin. All of us are vulnerable to temptation. “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God” (Rom. 3:10–11).

Perhaps all this idol talk is new to you. Or maybe you’re well familiar with these ideas. No doubt, at some point in your life someone has pointed out an idol to you. “All you ever talk about is ___” and “The only thing you care about is ___” are tools for our discernment in the hands of a gracious God. An offended party may have aimed these accusations at your heart to hurt you, but God can use these flashlights to show you falsehood. And when we see the idols masquerading as God in our hearts, we are taught to “fear God” (Prov. 1:7) because we have nothing to fear. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love” (1 John 4:18). Our punishment for idolatry was borne in Christ’s body on the cross. And it bears repeating over and over again—Jesus’s perfect record of always worshiping the Father with his everything and never having other gods before the Father is ours through faith. Our job is to believe in him whom the Father sent (John 6:29) and rest in the finished work of Christ. We don’t take up the axe to chop down our idols so that our Father will love us. No, we reject our idols because we are our Father’s beloved daughters.

So how do you know if a ministry-related thing has usurped the place of God in your life? When has a ministry activity, accomplishment, or title become more important in your heart than God? What about ministry seems to give your life meaning or worth? What activity, if it were taken from you, would devastate you?5 You know that a ministry opportunity is greater to you than Jesus if, when it is taken, hindered, or altered, you feel rattled, wrecked, preoccupied, anxious, insecure, insignificant, ignored, angry, sad, betrayed, or distraught. You would see no reason to be disturbed over the loss of that privilege to serve Jesus unless...