This is where our whole ministry falls apart—when our life, our actions, don’t line up with our message. When we don’t practice what we preach. When we say one thing and live another.
Hello Readers, hope all’s well. Time for another End Times post.
Have you ever known someone who lived a double life? As in, they presented one image of themselves in public. But in truth, in their private life they acted much different. In private they were their true self, doing things they might condemn and preach against in their public life.
If you know someone like this, you’re not alone. This kind of person is a story as old as the Bible. Jesus Himself warned us about becoming people like this. As we’ll see in today’s post, there are always consequences from living two lives, one of them sinful. We will always be exposed, and be ruined.
And it turns out getting us stuck in this double life is one of the devil’s plans for us. When he succeeds in making a Christian fall to sin, it ruins that Christian’s ministry and has wide-ranging impacts. In the End Times, the devil is using this strategy against Christians like never before. We’ll look at two examples today and see what happens when we ignore Jesus’ warning.
So let’s get right into it.
Our True Self
If we want our ministry and evangelizing to be effective, we need to practice what we preach. In public and private.
This is important because if we have sin in our lives that we keep secret, it corrupts us from the inside. It’ll start to corrupt our message and our preaching too. Then one day, when these secret sins come to light and everyone knows of them, it will destroy our moral credibility. We’ll lose our moral authority for lovingly warning others of their sins if everyone learns we live a life of sin ourselves. And any sins we think we can keep secret will be revealed one day. Nothing stays secret forever.
Does this sound familiar? All this comes from Luke 12. I was reminded of it when reading through Luke recently. The passage is Luke 12:1-3.
(1) […] “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees—I mean, the mismatch between their hearts and lives. (2) Nothing is hidden that won’t be revealed, and nothing is secret that won’t be brought out into the open. (3) Therefore, whatever you have said in the darkness will be heard in the light, and whatever you have whispered in the rooms deep inside the house will be announced from the rooftops.
Luke 12:1-3 (CEB)
In the CEB Jesus warns against inauthenticity. A mismatch between our hearts and lives. He also warns that anything we try to keep hidden will one day be revealed. But I especially like the phrasing of this passage in The Message (MSG) version of the Bible. Here’s Luke 12:1-3, MSG.
(1-3) […] You can’t keep your true self hidden forever; before long you’ll be exposed. You can’t hide behind a religious mask forever; sooner or later the mask will slip and your true face will be known. You can’t whisper one thing in private and preach the opposite in public; the day’s coming when those whispers will be repeated all over town.
Luke 12:1-3 (MSG)
I like the MSG phrasing more, because Jesus talks about hiding our true self, and masks. Everyone tries to portray their best self in public, more or less. But what we do in private when no one’s watching is who we really are. This is because with the judgment of others out of the equation, whatever we do in private is what we think is OK to do. And even if we don’t think it’s OK, we’re at least OK with doing it (in private).
This is our true self, the private self. The private self’s values are our true values.
But no one can keep an act up forever. Sooner or later, like Jesus says in Luke 12, the truth will come out. Our true personality will start to show. Our secret sins will be revealed; starting with rumors, then news. We can’t be anybody but our true self. At some point, we’ll show everyone our true self without meaning to. We can’t help it.
All we can do to avoid this is turn to Jesus for help. To accept Him as our LORD and Savior. To walk with Him, follow Him, and seek a closer relationship with Him as He rebuilds us into a new creation. Over time, we become better and better. Our true self becomes our new self who has Jesus. We really do get born again.
And if we don’t turn to Jesus and REPENT!, if we don’t stop compromising with sin? What happens then?
Well, think about it. Let’s say we preach against sexual immorality (which is any sexual act outside of marriage). But then we get busted having affairs and cheating on our wife. How can anyone take our preaching against sexual immorality seriously now? We walk in sexual immorality ourselves, we have that sin in our lives. Our message is ruined, our credibility is shot, our authority is gone.
Sometimes it doesn’t even take a drastic sin like adultery to harm our ministry. Let’s say we preach about Temperance, Self-Discipline, and the battle against addiction. If we preach about that while having a legal addiction like cigarettes or chocolate, people will pick up on that. They’ll see we can’t control ourselves when it comes to cigarettes, sweets, or whatever. If it’s clear to everyone we can’t control ourselves, then why should they listen to what we have to say about self-control? The message we preach doesn’t line up with how we live.
This is where our whole ministry falls apart—when our life, our actions, don’t line up with our message. When we don’t practice what we preach. When we say one thing and live another.
I know it’s hard, but we need to be relentless and uncompromising in our battle against our sins. This has never been more true than right now, in these End Times. The devil is active like never before, trying to trap as many believers in sin as he can before the End. He does this because he knows it ruins our ministry. We can already see this happening.
Two Examples from 2020
One of the devil’s goals is to disrupt churches and disrupt our personal ministry, whatever it is. Satan wants to trip us up and trap us in sin. He knows that if he succeeds in this, it ruins our credibility and authority. It ruins our message.
The devil knows that if he can ruin our message, he can ruin our ministry. He can ruin our preaching. He can stop us from reaching people who we could have reached if we hadn’t sinned, which leaves them at risk for the devil’s snares. He can use our own sins to stop us from doing the good works we’re supposed to do for God.
Not only that, but it hurts the reputation of Christians as a whole when one Christian turns out to be a hypocrite, living a life of sin. It weakens the whole message of Christianity today, as the people of the world roll their eyes at our message and call us all hypocrites. Satan knows this, and it’s another reason he’s so eager to trip us up.
It has deadly serious consequences when we don’t practice what we preach. When our lives don’t line up with our message. Let’s look at some examples.
Eric Zink
Eric Zink lost his father and a wife to suicide within a few years. He also struggled for many years with addiction. But one day he launched a social media business to help people, mainly young people, cope with mental health problems and addiction. He made content for all the social media platforms, like YouTube, TikTok, and what have you. He attracted a large audience, and many of these young people truly looked up to him. It seemed he was having a real, positive impact on people with these issues. But things were not as they seemed on the surface.
In his private life, his true life, Eric Zink was texting sexually with teens and cheating on his current wife with other young women. He had an OnlyFans page where he created pornography, showing videos of him having sex with fans and making money off this. When this was exposed in 2020, the perverted sexual messages he texted to teens were exposed too. The whole thing was damn ugly when it blew up.
This proves the words of the Savior: “Whatever you have said in the darkness will be heard in the light, and whatever you have whispered in the rooms deep inside the house will be announced from the rooftops.” We all know Eric Zink didn’t want his perversions exposed for all to see. But they were. And what’s the result of this?
A ministry, ruined. A mental health and addiction project with honorable goals, derailed. Disrupted. Eric Zink had to get off social media and sink back into the shadows. As of now, he doesn’t make any addiction or mental health content on social media. And the most important thing is, even if he did make that content now, who would take him seriously? Who would listen?
This is why our true life, our true self, must live up to what we preach. We can’t compromise with sin. We can’t tolerate it in our lives. We must battle it every day.
Now let’s go to our next example.
Jerry Falwell Jr.
Jerry Falwell Jr. is the son of the famous evangelist Jerry Falwell. Jerry Jr. is also a prominent evangelical Christian in the U.S., and the former president of Liberty University. That’s a Christian university in the United States.
Why is he the former president? Well, he was living a life of secret sins while presenting a different image in public. When it all came to light, he was forced to step down from his position.
In secret, in his true life, Falwell Jr. was trapped in the sin of adultery. He had a three-way relationship with his wife and another man. He would watch while this younger man had sex with his wife. This twisted and perverted act violates God’s design for marriage. It introduces the sin of adultery into the marriage, and ruins the marriage bed. I don’t know if Falwell was the main driving force behind this, or if it was his wife. But if his wife was only going along with what her husband wanted, then he made an adulterer out of her.
See the result of his compromise with sexual sin? His sins dragged two other people down into sin with him. And in the end, he had to step down from his position at the university. He was shamed and ridiculed, and today he’s still staying in the shadows, out of the public eye. This is a big change for someone who used to be a public figure.
And the devil laughs. He laughs because he ruined a Christian’s ministry. He ruined a Christian’s career. He ruined any good work Falwell was doing for the LORD. And he reinforced the stereotype in the U.S. that Christians are hypocrites who commit any sins they want, same as anybody else.
It’s the devil’s goal to trip us up and make us fall in a public and dramatic spectacle. Once he gets us to compromise with sin by tolerating sins in our private life—our real life—the process has already begun. Soon we’re living a secret life of sin while presenting a different image in public. But we can’t keep this up forever, and we’re guaranteed to be exposed. Then our good works for the LORD come to a sudden stop.
Nothing Stays Secret
Jesus warned us about this. But are we listening? As we see from the two examples, Christians keep falling into this trap.
It starts when we compromise with sin. When we tolerate temptation. Then we start sinning more. Soon we have a secret life and a public life. In our public life we preach against sins we very well might be doing in our secret life!
Our secret life is our true life. Our true values. But it won’t stay secret for long.
We can’t keep up the act. No one can. If we live a double life, our mask will one day fall. When it does, people will see who we really are. When they see how our true self is the opposite of our public image, we lose all credibility and authority. Our ministry and message are ruined.
If we don’t walk with Jesus, we’re going to fall into this trap. We need to turn to Him, and fervently seek a close relationship with Him so He can renew us on the inside. So He can change who our true self is, into someone better. We need to stick closer to Jesus than ever before, knowing that the devil is trying harder than ever to trap us in sin during these End Times.
What we can’t do is tolerate temptation, and compromise with sin.
I know the battle against our sins is hard. I’ve been failing myself, recently. Last year, 2020, was a bitter struggle for me and I had to battle many sins. Sometimes we fall, I understand. It’s bound to happen actually, because we’re human. But when we fall, we can’t tolerate the sin. We can’t keep doing it. When we fall, we must get back up quick. We must turn to Jesus, REPENT!, ask for forgiveness, and get back up quick.
If we don’t, we start living two lives: one of public Piety, one of secret sin. The whole time, we know we can’t keep it up forever. And we know what’s going to happen when the truth comes to light.
And now, I can’t think of any better way to end today’s topic than the words of our Savior Himself. He said it best.
(2) Nothing is hidden that won’t be revealed, and nothing is secret that won’t be brought out into the open. (3) Therefore, whatever you have said in the darkness will be heard in the light, and whatever you have whispered in the rooms deep inside the house will be announced from the rooftops.
Luke 12:2-3 (CEB)
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