I couldn’t make my pledge this month and the pastor wants God to afflict me. What do I do?
Question:
I am a young lady of 26 years. I attend a church and during a fundraising, the pastor asked me to pay 2000 in our currency. I got 500 to pay him and promised to pay the rest later. He mentioned we should not cross the end of the month without paying our balance. I couldn't make the money before that time. From that time my pastor claims it was an act of disobedience and that God should bring an affliction on me so that I will know he's a man of God. He has stopped praying for me when we all congregate. I am so much in fear and depression. What do I do?
Answer:
Find a real church with a godly teacher. Both Paul and Peter warn of false teachers who use members of the church for profit:
"If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicions, useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. From such withdraw yourself" (I Timothy 6:3-5).
"By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words; for a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber" (II Peter 2:3).
Giving is an act of free will and not because you are being forced. "So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver" (II Corinthians 9:7). It has to be based on what a person has. "For if there is first a willing mind, it is accepted according to what one has, and not according to what he does not have" (II Corinthians 8:12).
You are in a church operated by a false teacher. It is past time for you to find a true church.
