Potential Pitfall in Ministry — Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Said to me just a few moments ago, thank you so much for the way that you speak the truth without flinching. And I looked at her and I said, well, I don't do it without flinching. I do it with fear and trembling, but encouraged by other believers who've walked ahead of me and have paved the way and have shown what it is to speak the Word of God with courage and with conviction.

What a privilege it is for me to be here as a learner, to sit at the feet of the Lord, and to be washed with the water of his Word, and to learn from some of these men who've walked with God and been faithful soldiers.

In fact, the material that's on my heart to share this morning, I really feel that there are many men in this room who are far more qualified and have a much more extensive life message than what I'm going to share.

I think about men like Dr. Bubeck and Dr. Dickinson and others who have shown us what it is to walk with the Lord faithfully, and the scripture says, whose faith imitate. So we walk in the train of men and women who have walked with the Lord, and my heart is to be faithful all the way to the finish line.

We've just come through an Olympic period, and that's always fun to see the competition and the training and the preparation and then the rewarding for those whose efforts have paid off by winning the race.

I was thinking this week back to the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Korea, where you may remember Ben Johnson, who was a Canadian sprinter, became a national Canadian hero and world hero overnight when he set a new world record and won the gold medal in the 100 meter race.

And the Canadian parliament was proclaiming him as the fastest man in the world and all the accolades and all the cheering, the honor for his country, but within 24 hours he'd had to hand that gold medal back to the Olympic committee because he tested positive for steroids.

The ironic thing was just shortly before those Olympics he had been used as a poster boy in Canada for a say no to drugs campaign. He ran, it appeared that he won, only to be stripped of the medal, to be disqualified.

Ministry as a Race That Must Be Finished Faithfully

I have to tell you that I love ministry. Since I was a very little girl I was saved at the age of four, and that's my first memory is trusting Christ, and by the time I was probably six or seven years old I knew in my heart that God had set me apart for the ministry of the gospel, for the kingdom of Christ.

I didn't know all of what that would mean. I still don't know all of what that will mean, but there was an unmistakable, clear call of God on my life from the time I was a little girl, a call to ministry, and I have been blessed over nearly 25 years now to have that call be in vocational Christian service.

I thank the Lord for the privilege of ministry, for taking, for how God speaks to you through his word, and then if we're open and willing makes us broken bread and poured out wine to be used to minister, to incarnate, and to minister the truth to other lives.

That incredible divine transaction from God to our hearts into the hearts of others is something that is awesome to me. It's a wonder, and I'll tell you this too, I love having the Lord as my master. What an incredible Lord he is.

I love serving him. I love ministry, but I've also been in ministry long enough to know that there are a lot who don't finish well. I don't want to speculate as to what percentage, whether it's most or not, but I've seen so many already in my relatively few years come and up like a rocket, down like a rock.

Some of them it's more a subtle, casual burnout or drifting away from the passion and the early fervency of heart they had for the Lord, but so few, as I've watched, really finish well. And that's why I love being around men like Mark Bubeck and others who are represented here, who have run well and are continuing to run well in the latter chapters of their lives.

But as I've pondered the day when I will stand before the Lord and the fire will be applied to my acts of service, I just have such a longing to know that I won't be disqualified and that the works will endure the test of his countenance, of his glory, of his word.

You know, it's one thing to have impressive and lauded ministry here. It's another thing to have the one who searches and knows our hearts say, well done, good and faithful servant. And I have found myself at points in ministry very aware of many, many points of my own weakness and proclivity to wander, the vulnerability of my own flesh.

You know, when you're doing conference ministry, writing books, and people are buying those books and being blessed by them. You're on the radio and people are coming and telling you how God's used the ministry in their lives.

Those people who don't know you don't know the battles of your own heart. They don't know the battles that you go through with your own flesh. And someone said to me this just a little bit ago, how do you deal with spiritual attack in your life?

If you just come to the place where you're so close to God that Satan leaves you alone? Boy, I'd love to be there. But you know that the more God's using you and the closer you're walking to the Lord and the more you're dealing with these powerful truths that set people free, the bigger a target to become.

And so I have over the years pondered a lot about how do you finish well and what are some of the potential pitfalls in running this race of ministry? Now, when I say ministry, I'm not just speaking of those of us who are blessed to be able to serve the Lord vocationally.

There are those here who are in that category, but we're all ministers of Christ and servants of the Lord. And God has given to all of us in different ways opportunities to serve him. And the cry of our hearts is, Lord, we want to be faithful all the way to the finish line.

And I have tried to seek out just out of my own walk with the Lord and watching the lives of others, what are some of the pitfalls, some of the potential pitfalls that servants of the Lord fall into that end up at times disqualifying them?

And I want to share with you today 10 of those pitfalls. And there are many others that we could have listed. I've perhaps chosen these because these are the ones that I feel the most vulnerable to. Ten years from now, I'll perhaps have different ones on this list.

But as I look back over recent years of ministry in my own life, and a period of time now in the last couple of years of the Lord just exponentially expanding the opportunities for ministry that he's given to me, these are the traps that I feel most vulnerable to.

And I would ask that we could just take a moment now and pray, because as I say these things, I recognize that I become more accountable and perhaps even more vulnerable to the attacks of the evil one.

So I come and ask you to join me that we come under the covering and the protection of the name of Christ. And oh Father, how we do exalt your great name. And I do come in weakness and in fear and in trembling, knowing that these men and women cannot possibly see into my heart as you do.

And Lord, we come to you together as learners to sit at your feet and to say, would you spread the corner of your garment over us, because you are our nearest kinsman. Cover us, Lord. Your word says you have covered my head in the day of battle.

I think of the song or the hymn writer who said, cover my defenseless head with the shadow of your wing. And Lord, we are defenseless apart from you. But when we come under your covering, we are protected, we are safe.

And so we come and take our place under the great name of Jesus. And I pray now that the words of my mouth and even more importantly, the meditations of my heart, might they be acceptable in your sight.

Losing the Wonder of the Gospel and Ministry

Oh Lord, my strength and our great redeemer. For Jesus' sake, I pray it. Amen. Potential pitfalls of ministry. The first that comes to mind, and I think the one that I face virtually every day, is the danger of losing the wonder.

Losing the wonder. The wonder of what it means to be a child of God. The wonder of the great doctrines and truths of our faith. The great theological truths. I have known the Lord since I was a child and have never known anything but to be exposed to the word and the ways of God.

We grew up in a home with no television and lots of scripture. And I thank the Lord for that. But one of the dangers for those of us who have been around the things of God for a long time is that we so easily lose the wonder.

I find myself, to tell you the truth, some days in my quiet time and in the word or listening to the word being read or proclaimed and it scares me to see that sometimes I have these kind of glazed over eyes.

Or worse, a glazed over heart. That no longer is thrilled and awestruck with the wonder of what it is that we have in Christ, the living word, and in the written word of God. Losing the wonder of who we serve and of what we've been called to do and of the message that's been entrusted to us.

Losing the wonder of the fruit of the ministry. I get letters and emails and phone calls and got a sweet note, a card handed to me last night from a woman who's here who, what an encouragement, telling how God had been working in her life and in some other women.

I just was talking with another woman here who was sharing with me an exciting story of what God is doing in a group in her area through some of the truths that we've been sharing. But you know, you hear the fruit of the ministry.

You see people being delivered from the clutches of the evil one and transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. And the danger is that the extraordinary, the supernatural, would become commonplace.

One more person changed, one more marriage salvaged, you know, and that some of us are blessed to see the hand of God active and at work and changing lives. But it's easy to lose the wonder, the sense of the miraculous that it's God that is at work.

This isn't my program or my book or my teaching that did this. This is the power of the Spirit of God. And it's easy to lose the wonder. Heaven doesn't ever lose the wonder. Heaven rejoices every time a sinner is converted or a sinner repents.

But it's easy to start to have dry eyes rather than moist eyes. My dad was a man, now he's been with the Lord for over 22 years, but he never lost the wonder of what it meant that God would have saved him, first of all.

He was a wayward, rebellious young man in his mid-twenties. He came into the preaching of the gospel, he was converted, and he never got over the wonder of the fact that God would save him, much less use him.

And my dad was not a particularly emotional man, but when he would talk about his conversion story, you could expect that there would be big tears in his eyes. He kept the tears. He kept the sense of wonder.

You know, it's been said that familiarity breeds contempt. That may be true for some, but I think for me the greater danger is that familiarity would breed complacency, neglect, losing the wonder. And the danger here is that then ministry becomes a job.

It's work we do rather than a passion for a person, the person of Christ. We get to the place where we're just doing the mechanics, and the challenge for me is where I'm dealing with some of these same truths over and over and over again.

The message on brokenness that Dan referred to a few moments ago, the first time I ever gave that message, it was really fresh on my heart. God was birthing it in me. It's something he was doing in me, and the first time I ever gave that message, it was out of the overflow of a work of God's grace in my own life.

The Word had just been penetrating and piercing my heart on some of these issues. Well, now I've given that message many times, and the danger I face is that this precious, priceless truth of brokenness, and presenting that truth, or the steps to freedom in Christ, or the wonderful truths that we traffic in day after day, that we would start to just go on to autopilot.

Going through the motions, we're walking one more person through to freedom in Christ, and that we would lose the sense of passion for the person of Christ. You know, the Apostle Paul was another man who never lost the wonder.

He talks in 1 Timothy chapter 1 about the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust. Late in his ministry life, he's still calling it the glorious gospel of the blessed God. It's one of the things I love about Dr. Bubik.

There's a sense of fresh wonder in the heart of that man who's walked with the Lord over so many years. And then Paul says, I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has enabled me for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry.

He never lost the sense of the wonder of the gospel, of the wonder of who God is, and of the wonder of being set apart for the ministry of the gospel. Now on your notes there, I've listed several questions next to each of these points, and I would just encourage you, as I find myself needing to do on a regular basis, to let the Lord search my heart with these kinds of questions.

So ask yourself, do I have a genuine passion for Christ and for ministry? Or have I lost the wonder of my relationship with Christ and of a call to ministry? Am I just going through the motions? And I'm going to ask as we come to the close of this session, that we would take a few moments to just be honest with God about whatever it is that he's shown us, about the pitfalls that we may be in or perilously close to.

As I found myself realizing as I was walking through these notes last night, I found myself believing that God had this message more for me, perhaps, than for anyone else here. Because as a result of some of the ministry challenges I faced in recent months, I had to acknowledge as I was walking through these, there's some of these that I am right at the edge of this pitfall.

Thank God for grace. Thank God for the power of the Spirit that pulls us back and opens our eyes. We've got to be willing to ask ourselves the tough questions and let God, by his Spirit, search our hearts.

Neglecting Personal Devotion to the Lord

The second pitfall, and I guess I'd put it right up with the first, is neglecting our personal relationship with the Lord. Neglecting our personal relationship with the Lord. There's that passage in the first chapter of the Song of Solomon where the bride says to her bridegroom, I have tended the vineyards of others, but mine own vineyard have I not kept.

And I suppose that phrase, as much as almost any single phrase in scripture, describes where I so often find myself in ministering to the needs of others, tending the vineyard of others, but neglecting my own personal vineyard, my own personal relationship with the Lord.

And when my vineyard goes into a state of disrepair, sooner or later I will have nothing left with which to tend the vineyards of others. We're talking here about a failure to maintain and cultivate and prioritize our own personal walk with the Lord.

I want for ministry to be the overflow of a heart and a life and a passion and a walk with God that is genuine and real and fresh. And so often I find myself instead taking shortcuts. And I'll tell you, the temptation for me to do that has increased many fold over the last year as I'm now responsible.

I used to come up with three, maybe four new messages a year. I can't imagine how these pastors do new messages week after week. I just am not wired that way. And I'm so thankful for those who are. But now we're talking about doing 260 radio programs a year.

And that's a quantum leap, not only in volume of work, but harder than that in keeping my life up to date with what I'm communicating to women, with the truths that I'm proclaiming. So I've found myself so tempted and at times falling prey to the temptation to take shortcuts.

Take shortcuts in the preparation of my heart, the preparation of my life, in the prayer, in the, um, using yesterday, trusting yesterday's manna to be something that I can provide to feed others today, living on yesterday's experiences without God, yesterday's experiences with God.

And then the danger here is in relation to my own vineyard of, of serving the Lord apart from devotion to Christ. And isn't that what we see in Luke chapter 10 with Mary and Martha? There's Martha serving Christ, but having neglected devotion for Christ.

Robert Murray McShane said, no amount of activity in the King's service will make up for neglect of the King himself. And I find it's increasingly necessary. The more demands are on me. And if, if God's using, if you're being effective at counseling, at ministering to others, the demand is going to increase because the need is so great out there.

When people find out that you know how to point people to the scripture, the phone's going to be ringing off the hook. The people will be lined up. The demand will increase. And the more the demand increases, the more I find I have got to find ways to pull away, to get rid of the clutter, to get rid of the noise, to be quiet so that I can tend my vineyard with God.

One of the most important and valuable decisions the Lord led me to several years ago, I had no idea where the Lord was taking my ministry, but the Lord knew and he protected me with this decision. And that is that I don't ever, virtually, ever watch television when I'm by myself.

Now maybe you can handle that. I can't. I found out that my spiritual passion for the Lord was being sapped. I was tired and I would find myself just even CNN sort of things, but being spiritually drained when I needed to be spiritually replenished.

And so making the decision that, and I could say with very few exceptions over these last several years, I just, when I can't tell you how many times I've come back to a hotel room after a conference like this and found that decision to leave the room quiet has been such a protection for my own heart and gives, provided a context, a climate in which I can really nurture my relationship with the Lord.

So ask yourself, do I have a vital, growing, intimate love relationship with the Lord Jesus? And am I nurturing, cultivating my vineyard through daily time in his presence, in the word and in prayer? And then pitfall number three, proclaiming truth we're not living.

Proclaiming Truth We Are Not Living

Proclaiming truth that we're not living. You've heard it said perhaps that lawyers are the last one to get a will and physicians are often the last ones to get a checkup or to go to the doctor. Could it be that those of us who are in the ministry of counseling others and pointing them to the truth of Christ and to see their spiritual need, that we may be the last ones to realize that we have a spiritual need.

A. W. Tozer said that one of the greatest curses of our day, he said it of his day, I think it's even more true of our day perhaps, is that we think that because we know something theologically, therefore we have that truth.

When in fact it's possible that nothing may be further from the truth. Walking further down the road, talking further down the road than we're actually walking. Preaching something we're not living. The sin of pretense.

And I have found, I want to be very honest with you here and just tell you that I have learned that I can perform. And whether I'm living it or not, I can speak it in a way that will bring some sort of visible results.

And God has given to many of you in this room natural gifts and abilities. And for those of us who have been given by God resources and background and training and abilities, there's such a constant danger that we would be saying things that we're not living.

I did two days of radio recording this week, did a 10-day, two-week series on Proverbs and the Tongue. And I have found myself since Tuesday, since doing that session, saying things that I know are not consistent with what I just proclaimed to others.

Now, the tragedy is not that so much as if I go on that way. And I fail to let the light search my heart and to stop and humble myself and repent, seek God's forgiveness and recognize my need. I want to walk in the truth of the light that I've seen and that I'm presenting to others.

The Apostle Paul talks in Romans chapter 2 about the power of a life message for better or for worse, the impact of who we are, not just what we say. And he talks in verse 21 of Romans 2 about the danger of justifying what we might consider small compromises.

And I'm convinced that the burnout and the failure in the Christian life and in ministry is not usually the major blowout. It's the incremental compromises that we justify. We're tired, we're busy, we're blessed, we're doing the Lord's work, and those incremental compromises.

And Paul talks about this. He says, you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery?

You who brag about the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written, God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. What an indictment. It's not just my message. The question is, does my life incarnate my message?

And if not, then I will cause the name of God to be blasphemed. So the great truths that we preach to others of holiness and prayer and repentance and forgiveness and humility, do I have a life message in those truths?

Paul said, follow me as I follow Christ. He didn't say follow my syllabus, listen to my tapes, read my books. He said, follow my life as I follow Christ. And I'm convinced it's not just the public life, it's the private life.

It's the times, the obscure moments and being single and living alone. I guess I'm even more conscious of this because when you're married, there's something of a mirror person in your life to show you how you're coming across and to provide accountability.

And I was so struck by what Dr. Anderson said a little while ago about the danger of becoming autonomous, independent. But it's so easy in our private moments to justify. I'm not talking about egregious sins.

That's probably not where it starts, but to justify small compromises, small failures. And I'm convinced that ultimately that is what is going to show up in the public life. It's those potholes, those sinkholes in the road that ultimately cave in.

And when the, what was underneath wasn't solid, then ultimately the results going to be seen on the surface. Oswald Chamber says, the message must be part of ourselves. Our lives must be the sacrament of our message before God's message can liberate other souls.

He said, the liberation must be real in you. In Romania, under communism in the prior to 1989, believers of all denominations were called repenters. It was a term of derision initially, as I understand it.

They're the repenters. Wouldn't it be incredible if believers were known as repenters in our day? But there were issues. There were issues within the life of the church under one of the most oppressive communist regimes under Ceausescu there in the seventies and eighties.

And one courageous pastor in Oradea went to his people at one point and he said, it's time for the repenters to repent. And he brought to the surface and exposed two particular issues that if I took time to tell you right now what they are, we in our Western way of thinking would say, those are so picky, big deal.

He said, it is a big deal and we need to repent. That was in the early seventies. The repenters did repent and God sent out of that church as a spark, what became a great fire of revival. And I believe ultimately was what led to the overthrow of the communist regime in that country when the repenters said, we want to have a life that's consistent with our message.

So I encourage you to ask yourself as I ask myself, is there any issue that God has revealed in his word that I'm not obeying? Am I living? Am I walking as a repenter? Not just did I repent in the past, but am I living and walking today as a repenter?

Is my private lifestyle consistent with that which I proclaim to others? And could I say to those who follow me, live your life just as I do and God will bless you. Here's a fourth potential pitfall. And that is relying on the natural, relying on the natural rather than the supernatural.

Depending on the Holy Spirit Rather Than Natural Ability

And in two particular areas, this is of concern to me. Number one is relying on my natural gifts and abilities, relying on natural gifts and abilities, coming to the place where we're no longer dependent on the power of the Holy Spirit, where we can counsel, we can teach, we can do, we can come up with messages, we can develop material, but we don't have a consciousness of our dependence on the power of the Holy Spirit.

We get to the place where we can do ministry without God. Some years ago, I found myself asking the Lord to never let me get to the place where ministry developing and presenting his truth would be easy for me.

You know, that's one has been very faithful to answer. And as much as I kick and scream and resist the pressure at times and the demands and the difficulties, I'm so thankful that God keeps me in a place where I just believe that I can't do it without him.

At the time we know we're close to this pitfall is when we become prayerless. Prayerlessness is an evidence that I'm thinking I can manage without God. And then minister becomes the sum total of my combined efforts and abilities.

The Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2, when I came to you, brethren, it was not with excellency of speech or of wisdom. I declared unto you the testimony of God for I determined to know nothing among you save Christ and him crucified.

I came to you with weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit of God and of power. So that your faith would not stand in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God.

Some of you are familiar with the name William Gurnall, who was a 17th century Puritan pastor. A lot of wisdom and insight that God gave to this man through his word. And William Gurnall said, if there is any human explanation for our Christian service, then however impressive our work may appear in the eyes of men, it will be burnt up in the day of testing as wood, hay, and straw.

The only work that will abide for eternity is that which is produced in humble dependence upon the power of God's Holy Spirit. And then the danger of relying on our natural tools and resources and programs.

I find myself, you know, sometimes in counseling situations now and just wanting to apply a book to someone's life. Buy this book, listen to this tape, watch this video, go to this conference. I'm not saying that those tools aren't valuable, but those tools in and of themselves have no power to change lives, apart from the spirit of God.

I think of that passage in 2 Kings chapter 4, where the woman's son had died and she went to Elisha and begged him to help her. And Elisha sent his servant Gehazi on ahead and said, take my staff, take my rod, and go into the child.

Now why Elisha did it this way, I don't know, but I can just imagine Gehazi as he's on his way running ahead of Elisha thinking, boy, I've got it now. I've got Elisha's rod. I've got his staff. And I don't know how it works, but every time he uses this thing, miracles happen.

Now I'm going to see the miracle happen. And he goes in and he lays that staff on that lifeless body. And what happens? Absolutely nothing. It's just a staff. There's no power in the staff. There's no power in that whatever tapes are made of and paper and pulp and ink.

There's no power in those. And then Elisha comes in and he prays, cries out to God, and then he lays himself on that lifeless body. I mean, head to head, body to body, arm to arm, leg to leg, and he breathes.

The power of God's spirit breathes through the servant of God and breathes life into that child. It's life to life is what ministry is about. Not dependence upon our tools, our resources, our programs, but pouring out our lives on behalf of others.

And so Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 2, we loved you so much that we shared with you not only the gospel, but our very lives as well. Laying down our lives. You've perhaps heard the story of the Chinese pastor who had suffered much for his faith.

He came to the United States and was asked by Larry Burkett what was the thing that most surprised him about Christianity in the West as he had seen it. And that Chinese pastor said, what amazes me most about Western Christianity is how much you're able to accomplish without God.

Well, maybe it appears that way, but when the true story is told in eternity, we're going to find that whatever was done without God was not truly powerful or effective. And so we ask ourselves, how does my life evidence a dependence on the power of the Holy Spirit?

And what is there about my life and ministry that can't be explained apart from God? Am I allowing God to stretch me, to push me out of the comfort zone of what I think I can handle, getting out of the realm of the natural?

Am I laying down my life for people or am I just applying principles and programs to their problems? Pitfall number five, leaving the pathway of humility, leaving the pathway of humility, pride, the danger of becoming self-absorbed, self-centered, enamored with ourselves, coming to the place where we're no longer little in our own eyes.

Leaving the Pathway of Humility

Start to read our own press reports and worse yet, we start to believe them or worse yet, we start to write them. I know how God has exposed some of this junk in my own heart in the last several years.

And I found myself at points having given this message on brokenness and humility, and then God took the message and exploded it into the hearts of people around the world. And when I gave that message, I knew how little I had to do with it.

But the point came when I found myself really relishing the popularity, seeing my name in print. And I had to take some, what for me were some pretty major steps to let God put the axe to the root of the pride that was choking out the life of Christ in my own spirit.

And it's not a once for all thing. It's a daily matter, the challenge of leaving the pathway of humility. We become proud of what we know, proud of what we've done, proud of our reputation as an individual or as a ministry, no longer surprised that God would use us and blind to our own needs, coming to the place where we don't any longer have a teachable spirit.

Again, I just want to reference back to what Dr. Anderson said. I was so touched by the fact that he was able to have a spirit that wasn't defensive when he was criticized. And as he was telling those stories, I could just feel my own blood pressure going up on his behalf.

And I thought, if I were the person in that situation, I don't think I could have responded the way that he was demonstrating for us. But I need to learn how to. And the humble in spirit can respond in a way that is not defensive when criticized.

There's that danger of professionalism. And the larger our ministry becomes, the better known we are, the more established we are, the greater the tendency to protect our image, our reputation. And it becomes more difficult for us to be transparent and honest.

We've got more to lose. It's tougher for us to share our needs with others. And that's why I really try hard, probably not hard enough, to keep asking people of God around me for input for my life. The founder of our ministry, before he went to be with the Lord, used to say, the last man to know he's got a rip in his jacket is the guy who's got it on.

So we just got to assume that we've got blind spots, things we can't see. And it's so important, it's more important for me now than ever to, on a regular basis, go to the people who know me best, who really know me, not the people who read my books and write nice notes, but the people who work with me, and to ask, what am I blind to?

What are you seeing that I'm not seeing? To keep a teachable spirit. Again, let me quote William Gernal here. He said, knowing your strength lies wholly in God and not in yourself, remain humble. Even when God is blessing and using you most, God's favor is neither the work of your own hands nor the price of your own worth.

How can you boast of what you did not buy? If you embezzle God's strength and credit it to your own account, he will soon call an audit and take back what was his all along. So we ask ourselves, am I walking in humility?

Do I have a teachable spirit? Have I kept a servant's heart? I have a pastor friend who says, every problem can be solved if people have a servant's heart. Keeping a servant's heart. Do I esteem all others as better than myself?

And am I amazed that God would use me? Pitfall number six, failing to resolve conflicts biblically. Failing to resolve conflicts biblically. I won't say much about this, except I think we all know, for those of us who are serving in the context of a corporate setting, a local church staff, a parachurch ministry, a counseling center, one of the greatest threats to the glory of God and that ministry continuing to please the Lord is when we fail to resolve conflicts biblically.