ZA MAGAZINE // seek truth.

It happened again.

This time, it’s a pastor from a church called Planetshakers that’s located in Melbourne. Australia’s Herald Sun reports that one of their pastors faked having cancer to avoid owning up to a pornography addiction that spanned 16 years. And apparently it was a convincing charade - unexplained illnesses that started around the same time he got into porn caused him to vomit a lot and have his hair fall out. Everyone was fooled.

May God bless him for coming clean. I harbor no ill will towards the man. He’s no longer a hypocrite; he’s now living from the inside out. I know what it’s like to hide stuff from people, I know how it feels to not want to come clean, and I know how it feels when one finally does come clean.

But there will be fallout. Planetshakers is a big church, and people are going to be disappointed, upset, and/or angry. This was no administrative pastor in the background, either. People know who he is.

Because of this, it’s stories like this that make me look at myself. Maybe I’m not faking a terminal illness to cover a porn addiction, but am I telling people that I’m doing great when I’m not so that I don’t come off as spiritually vulnerable? Deception is deception, and covering up is covering up, no matter how deep it goes.

So I look at ZA, and this week I feel like posting my typical two articles would be deceptive. One was basically done, but the second article on the Lord’s Prayer wasn’t started as of Tuesday night. I might have been able to kill myself, rush it out, and get it up. I also could have pulled one article out from the reserves. But to do either would have meant either a rush job with less quality, or a regurgitation that would be poorly and hurriedly edited. Above that, though, to post a second would have given the impression that I’m the same as always, when I’m not.

I’ve been struggling! The problem with everything around you always changing is that, well, everything around you always changes, and you have to get adjusted to those changes. I’m back at school, with a ton of things due tomorrow and even more that I could do after that. I haven’t made the time for the Lord, and everything after that has thus been tainted. It’s like living the perfect day but neglecting to eat. No matter how fun the day was, you rarely forget that you’re hungry and when you do, it’s just a distraction.

I won’t divulge the finer details, but I think that’s open enough. I’m struggling to put God first and that means one less article this week. This shames me; three months in and we’re already cutting a post (if only for one week). But I post so that you know where I’m at. Also, I hope this motivates me to get on a good schedule and stick to it, so that I don’t have to make this post again.

God bless you guys! Pray for my strength if you get a chance.

Brendan