Don’t Rent Me… Live!

A pastor friend of mine was deeply disturbed the other day. He had been counseling a guy for 6 months. Investing in him, trying to get him to move in a different direction…

and the guy (he had been counseling)…

decided to have none of it and walked away…

unchanged.

It broke my friend’s heart.

I understand why.

Then he said these words…

“Sometimes, I feel like a rent-a-pastor.”

A Rent-A-Pastor

I think there is a group of people who approach their relationship with God with the same attitude. They try or “rent” christianity out. They say they believe the Bible but discard it every time they need to make a change. Instead of owning it and allowing it to live inside of them, they quickly discredit or disregard it and move on to rent something else.

Here’s how it works…

They find a church and stay a while until it doesn’t meet their needs anymore. Then they change and go rent something else…. or another church.

They come to counseling, probably because something has happened in their lives that has caused a level of tension that must be resolved. Once they figure out the person doing the counseling expects them to make a change, or gets a little to close to the real issue. They stop coming and move on to rent something else that will make them feel safe. Something that will not remind them they need to change.

They are fine with God until something bad happens in their life and they abandon him because they feel like He has abandoned them…. and they go rent something else.

They find a church and attend when it does’t interfere with something else they want to do. They will rent it one week and rent something else the next.

Here’s the deal….

Jesus didn’t die on the cross so we could rent Him.

He died so that we could have life.

Life is not something that you rent and discard when you no longer like where it is taking you, when you no longer like what it is forcing you to deal with. Life changes things in you. (Death doesn’t change, it decays) And sometimes those changes are hard and painful. However once you have gone through those “growing pains” you arrive at a better quality of life… a quality you’ll never find or achieve…

through renting.