Honoring Your Pastor with Your Life

​Many churches this month are honoring their pastor and pastor’s wife by showering gifts, giving cards, and other ideas that are a wonderful blessing to each pastor and his family.  Honoring pastors, their wives, and their children is biblical and correct to display appreciation for those that serve within the kingdom of God.  The word honor is defined as having a good opinion about, revering, fixing a value upon, to esteem.  Although October is the month that churches dedicate this time each year, a much better gift that can be given throughout the year is hearing the Word of God being preached by the pastor and living out the Word.  Knowing that a pastor, including his family, is a gift from Jesus Christ (Ephesians 4:11) helps Christians to understand the blessing it is to have a pastor within their lives.  Even as a pastor, I have a pastor to perfect, mature, and equip me as a Christian for everything God has called me to do.  While some Christians will honor their pastor with only lip service this is not the honor God desires to be displayed toward the gifts Jesus has given to His people (Matthew 15:8, Mark 7:6).  God desires His people to hear the messages, see the lifestyles, and submit to the discipleship of the pastors He has established within each church that He has built.  One of the best methods of honoring a pastor is to walk with God by applying the teachings they teach (James 1:21), imitate their holy lifestyle (1 Corinthians 11:1), and allow them to disciple biblical principles within that person’s life (Matthew 28:19-20).  Having biblical pastors is an extreme rarity in these days.  There may be many pastors, none perfect by any means, but only some will stand on the Word of God and not bow to the people’s emotions, money, or desires.  Pastors are to mature the people of God (Ephesians 4:12) and not be their best friend.  That leads to the next point of pastors being holy and worthy of honor.  Pastors that look no different from the world or are controlled by the people are not maturing the body of Christ but giving in to the anti-Christ spirit of flesh being god as opposed to God being the One who is obeyed.  King Saul was stripped of his kingship due to disobeying God and obeying the people (1 Samuel 15).  If a pastor is holy, sanctified, and preaches the whole truth of God then he is worthy of honor because he is used by the Master (2 Timothy 2:21).  It is vital that pastors are messengers of the entirety of the Word of God because even the Bible discusses a famine of the Word (Amos 8:11).  This does not include a famine of preachers, churches, or the Bible, but a famine of ministers preaching the fullness of the Word of God creating a lack of equipping Christians as believers to be soldiers of the Living God.  If your pastor preaches the full truth, he is worthy of not only honor but double honor (1 Timothy 5:17).  May pastors throughout our region preach, teach, and live the entirety of the Word of God.  May Christians everywhere truly appreciate and honor the gifts of Jesus Christ found within their pastors.