A Pain in Trouble

Proverbs 25:19

Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a broken tooth, and a foot out of joint.

I have never had a broken tooth or anything out of joint, but I have heard it is very painful. I have ruptured a bicep and blown out my ankle, and in both instances, the pain was excruciating. God says that confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble will equate to that type of pain. When you put your confidence in someone, you expect them to be there all the time, especially in times of trouble.

One of the great problems in churches today is getting people to be faithful to their responsibilities. A pastor gives a person a Sunday school class and expects them to be in their class every Sunday. Yet, it seems that many Sunday school teachers have lost their love for their Sunday school class and have become unfaithful, causing problems for those responsible for keeping the Sunday school classes filled. One of the things I often tell my church is that they don't understand how, every Sunday, those in church leadership are constantly trying to fill the gaps left by people who are unfaithful to their positions. The problem with unfaithfulness is that you create a hole in one area to fill the hole of the unfaithful person. If people understood the importance of being faithful, they could truly help their pastor and leaders avoid the stress of unfaithfulness in troubled times. Let me share several thoughts on what the verse above teaches about the importance of placing your confidence in faithful people.

First, leaders must be very careful about who they place in positions. No one should ever be placed in a position to make them faithful. Giving someone a position to make them faithful will never make them faithful; it only exposes their unfaithfulness. Many pastors have tried to make someone faithful by giving them a position, only to create heartache for themselves because a position never makes an unfaithful person faithful.

Second, leaders must be careful who they place their confidence in so that they don't create personal heartache for themselves. Be slow in putting your total confidence in people. Giving someone a position and putting your confidence in them are two different things. You must put your confidence in people who have proven to be faithful. You would be wise to study every person's life patterns so that you will know whether you should put your confidence in them to be a leader of leaders. Everybody has patterns that they go through, but some patterns are more detrimental to the ministry than others. When you choose to promote someone to become a leader of leaders, you need to have the confidence that their patterns won't hurt those who they are supposed to lead.

Third, if someone has put their confidence in you, prove to them that their confidence was worthy of placing in you. I would hate for somebody to put their confidence in me and then find me to become a source of pain and stress because of my unfaithfulness. Faithfulness is a choice. Faithfulness is a priority. I choose to be faithful because I place certain things at higher priorities than others. When I become unfaithful to the Lord's work, I show that I have not placed the Lord's work as a priority. If you don't want to become a source of pain to those who lead you, then you need to place the position you have been given as a high priority in your life so that you will be faithful to that responsibility at all times.