SAFEGUARDING YOURSELF

JUST THINKING

Excerpts from Sex Crimes, Moral Failures and Guarding Yourself From Becoming a Statistic on www.churchleaders.com:

"After he was introduced he took the podium and asked the question, “How many of you pastors have some sort of boundaries when it comes to counselling members of the opposite sex? For instance, you won’t counsel a woman alone or with the door of your office shut or something like that?”

 I was shocked and rocked to hear the speaker say, “I’ve counselled hundreds of pastors all across America who have fallen into sexual sin and every single one of them had safeguards and boundaries in place.” It felt like the speaker had taken a stun gun and shot us all square in the chest.

He continued, “Here’s the problem, gentlemen. You can have all the safeguards you want. You can choose not to counsel a woman alone and refuse to be in a car by yourself with a member of the opposite sex. But LUST WILL PICK A LOCK. Lust will find a way to work around the safeguard and feed its ravenous hunger for satisfaction.” He continued, “The only real safeguard is a strong relationship with Jesus Christ and a strong relationship with your wife. Everything else is a distant third.”
I still won’t counsel a woman alone. Nor will I drive in a car alone with a member of the opposite sex. I definitely have safeguards. But I refuse to put my trust in these safeguards to keep me from giving into lust and crossing some moral line. Only Jesus is strong enough to do that!

As ministry leaders let’s stay close to Jesus and our spouses. Let’s be careful how we talk, what we do, who we are with and where we go. Let’s have honest accountability with friends (of the same sex) that we know and trust. Let’s refuse to become statistics to sexual sin. Let’s seek to “be holy as he is holy.”