Counsel for Recovery
All men may err
but error once committed,
he's no fool nor yet unfortunate,
who gives up his stiffness
and cures the trouble he has fallen in.
Stubbornness and stupidity are twins.
Sophocles
Few pastors fall into mistakes by themselves; fewer still recover from them solo. Of the resources for recovery, people are the most precious.
Gordon Weekley spiraled into deep trouble as he removed himself from the help of friends. When drugs clenched his mind and humiliation drained his spirit, Gordon began drifting from city to city.
People in his church still loved him. Some even sought him out on skid row in other communities and the seedy parts of Charlotte. They offered love, counsel, jobs, hope. But Gordon would have none of it. His big mistake with drugs seemed to push him inevitably toward a series of mistakes of lost opportunity.
"I took myself away from the reach of rescuers," Gordon recalls. "I wanted to hide. Though they prayed for me and even found me at times, I frustrated their efforts."
Yet Gordon's behavior cannot be classified as bizarre. How many of us flee from that which would help us! Some perverse human trait drives the lonely into solitude and the stumbling into self-sufficiency. In the midst of a mistake, a further mistake is not realizing we need help.
The Sooner, The Better
"One of the easiest things in the world for me is to convince myself I'm right," observes Dick Lincoln, pastor of Shandon Baptist Church in Columbia, South Carolina. "I easily become blind to real problems because they start small. I'm good at rationalizing my mistakes. That's why I try to see if I'm repeating a mistake. Then I target that problem and get some wise counsel."
When we reach out early, we are more apt to stop the problem before it ...
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