Ministry cannot be approached like selling real estate. We cannot display our lives as without fault or pretty little snapshots of perfectly staged rooms. Ministers are imperfect people just like the imperfect people they minister to. We’re not selling a utopia relationship with a God who can be managed or predicted.

The thing that I most dislike about ministry is that people want to hold me to some higher expectation before I’m allowed to be real about my own life or the relationship that I have with God.

All I want to do is teach what I have learned about my time listening to God in prayer and under His anointing. I’m not inviting microscopic inspection of my life. I’m trying to help, not sell with an earned commission. I get nothing but it seems to others that I’m supposed to give everything. I’m supposed to be vulnerable without needing help. I’m supposed to be presentable without too much expense or vanity. I’m supposed to be exposed without embarrassment.

They don’t know my full story, hardships, victories, and challenges. If “they” can point to anything that doesn’t measure up to their inspection or expectation, all credibility can be disregarded. Isn’t that exactly why they are looking so hard to discredit a minister’s personal life? They don’t want to buy what’s being sold … it costs more than they will afford. They don’t want the same inspection of their lives that they’ve put on the ministers. They don’t want to submit to God’s authority. They don’t want to sacrifice everything to teach others while being shit on by the “they”s.

I’m not going to get cosmetic surgery, dental veneers, or botox injections just so I can smile pretty while they gear up to defame me for preaching truth. There are just some who cannot handle truth and will reject it at all cost. Is that you?