I've been very sensitive about my lack of height since I was old enough to understand that I was short. Being taller was a fairly common personal prayer burden during my junior high and high school days of shortness. I wasn't praying for a 6'9'' miracle mind you, but I was praying for a 5'10' or more kind of outpouring of mercy from God. The fact that I loved basketball complicated matters, as did my pervasive thinness of bodily frame. Add to this comments from self-appointed-body-critics: "you're ankles look like tooth pics" or "I bet my sister weighs more than you do," and the psychological damage was done. I must admit to you that after all these years I still feel the sting of a good short joke, and even tend to find a kind of pleasing pain in finding references to smallness in the weighty writings of our church fathers.
John Calvin reminds us of one reason why God has given the task of preaching and teaching to puny men. Ah, there it is. Even Calvin has can't resist talking about me...and then, after I get up off the inner black couch of my un-dealt with insecurities, I actually get what he's saying.
It's often a humbling exercise of grace and maturity to listen to a "puny man" preach the Word of God. I do not believe that Calvin's word choice here was in any way aimed at those shorter or skinnier pastors among us. I think he is referring to the reality of who ever pastor actually is. At our best, we are all just puny men risen from the dust by the mercy of God. If you're a pastor, well, welcome to the puny club.
‘when a puny man risen from the dust speaks in God’s name, at this point we best evidence our piety and obedience toward God if we show ourselves teachable towards his minister although he excels us in nothing’
The danger for people who sit in church and listen to a pastor preach or teach week after week is that they might see a little man with little prestige (or humor, or intellect) and simply right him off as an idiot. The other danger, which in my area seems to be a bigger problem is that they might see a big man who has some kind of shortcut to godliness. So, they simply right him off as being otherworldly or of the super- spiritual kind and in no way connected to "how real people live."
In both cases the preaching and teaching of God's Word is then lost in the discounting of the man. It should come as no surprise that this not-embracing-biblical-truth is quite pleasing to our very real enemy who would like nothing more that for us to right off all proclaimers of the Word of God.
The danger for a pastor (like myself) is that he might either forget that he is truly "a puny man risen from the dust to speak in God's name" or that he might think being puny in his spiritual maturity (that is his personal relationship with God) is just the way he is...
Let me encourage those of you who are not pastors then to pray for your pastors. R.A. Torrey comments on this matter based on Ephesians 6:17-20 in his helpful and convicting little book, Power Through Prayer:
"Here we see the power to bring blessing and boldness and efficiency to ministers of the Gospel. A minister may be made a man of power by prayer, and he may be unmade and bereft of power by people failing to pray for him" (pg 34-35).
That last little bits scares me.
So, I unashamedly sound an alarm on behalf of all pastors: don't stop praying for your pastors! Maybe this strikes you as selfish coming from a pastor, but I truly believe that pulpits filled week after week with praying, powerful, pure, biblically potent preachers would be like water in the dessert for churches all across the world!
So pray for us, and don't forget that we are just puny men risen from the dust to teach and preach God's Word to you. We need your prayers.
