By Rodetta Cook

Rodetta Cook has been a pastor’s wife for over 40 years. She and her husband, Ron, have actively served the Lord together in ministry during the entire time and are co-founders of Care for Pastors. She understands the expectations, loneliness and how hard it is to find balance in ministry as a pastor’s wife. Rodetta also leads the pastor’s wives initiative at Care for Pastors called The Confidante and ministers to hundreds of wives each week. She strives to share blogs with other pastors’ wives that will help them in their ministry walk.

Posted by Rodetta Cook

Topics: For Pastors' Wives · Resources for Pastors' Wives

The Cure

Monday, June 13, 2016

I recently read a book that I want to recommend to you today: The Cure by John Lynch, Bruce McNicol and Bill Thrall. The subtitle is, “What if God isn’t who you think He is and neither are you?”

As we serve in ministry, we tend to put on masks to keep up that pastoral “image” instead of being real. Of course we have to protect ourselves on certain levels with church members, but I’m talking about taking off the masks and being really who God intended us to be.

In this book, The Cure you will learn that we either want “To Please God” or “Trust God.” And as you go through the book and really begin to take off the masks, I pray it will enlighten your spiritual life like none other. I am afraid that too many times we as pastors’ wives get so caught up in the “doing” that we forget about “being.” And God created us to “be.”

Here is a synopsis from the back of the book:

We thought we were cured. We thought so, but most of us unwittingly carried an old, dead outlook into our new life. We couldn’t measure up to a standard we created, so we convinced ourselves it was God’s. We read his words through our grid of shame and felt ourselves fall farther and farther behind. We took it out on each other; judging, comparing, faking, splintering. Some of us retreated from the whole charade, becoming cynical, mistrusting, jaded from hope. Our marriages, churches, families, friendships, our marketplaces, our culture…they all need the cure.

But God’s cures rarely come in the form we expect. What if, indeed, God is not who we think he is…and neither are we?

I would encourage you to purchase this book and allow God to do a work in your life. If you have already read this book, then I would suggest you re-read it and see if you have begun to put the masks back on or if you have gotten caught up in “Pleasing God” instead of “Trusting God.”