So I made the decision I would respect the Pastor's wisdom and counsel, and then I was left in a very, very terrible tight spot. I decided I would trust God, that if I listened to counsel and submitted to that counsel, then He would work it out. I won't give you all the details of it, that's for another time, but what happened was, I ended up with a promotion, and life started to go extremely well, in a new level of blessing in my work. It was because I just respected godly counsel, and respected the person, and their insight into my life, and to what was right for me. That's happened on more than one occasion, and I tell you, it took quite a humbling to do that. It was just a matter of saying: I respect what this person has to say, I place value and weight on it, and I place value and weight on him. Therefore I will receive it, and I will respond to it - and it saved me. Now just the end of it, without going too far, two years later that ministry that we would have gone and followed went totally off the rails, went into major deception. His marriage broke up, and the whole ministry, it was a disaster - whereas two years later I was set in position to start and pioneer a Christian school, and eventually within a year of that, become Pastor of the church.
Now it's a key principle. I can tell you this over and over and over again, so there it is. Very simply, Jesus was disrespected and dishonoured, because of familiarity and offence, so they recognised what He did other places, but they didn't realise He was God's answer to them. Now without me going into lots of examples of this, let me just give you just a couple of things to think about here. It is very easy to just dishonour and disrespect people that God brings around your life that could help you, because we just don't see them as God's answer, and it takes faith to see that every person God brings around you has something to give to your life. If you just think well, actually I don't really need people, and they're a bit of a nuisance, you miss that people are actually part of God's way of enriching our lives. I've found there's always something I can learn off any person. Here I have, been a Pastor for all these years, but I can learn something off the youngest Christian. I can learn something about God that I didn't know, just if I will respect that person, and honour them, and treat them as someone of value, and maybe God has got something in their life that I could draw from and learn. It's all in the attitude, so think about that - they didn't see He was God's answer.
Now here's a thing, men particularly need respect. Of all the needs, God's wired a man so men need respect; women need love. Women need to be pursued and loved, men need respect; so when men are disrespected, the gifts in their life shut down. So in marriage and family where there's disrespect, then what happens is, the gifting shuts down and men withdraw, shut down. Many marriages are in trouble, really simply for one reason, because of criticism and disrespect; whereas respect would have opened up and allowed the gift to be unlocked like a passage, honour unlocks the giftings that are in people's lives - a very simple principle this, not very hard. Let me give you a few examples in the Bible.
Here's one. One example is Miriam. Miriam was Moses' oldest sister. One day Miriam looked at Moses and thought well, he might be a mighty man of God, and think he's something else; but he's marrying that black woman, and I don't like the idea about that. That's not a very good idea at all - so she rose up, and she became critical of him. When she became critical of him, and dishonoured him and disrespected him, immediately God intervened, and she got hit with leprosy. Disrespect shut her down from receiving what God had, through her brother's ministry. He was the brother, and he was the younger brother at that. Think about David. David was God's answer to Israel. David was the youngest boy in the family, but when the prophet came to see who in the family was worthy of being anointed, and who was God's one to choose, the father and the brothers did not even think to include David. It never entered their minds that David could be great. Why? Because they looked down on him, and despised him, and disrespected him; but not one of them was the one that God chose. God's choice was the one they all despised. Think about it.