Poopy Pastors, Prophets, and Preachers. Yes, I wrote “Poopy.”

Way back in the Bible days, God wanted to tell His people, “Hey people, your sin is incredibly repulsive to me.”

So how does God do it? He grabs Ezekiel and says, “Hey Zeke, go make some bread, but heat it by lighting human poop on fire.” Understandably, Ezekiel objected and said, “Are you kidding? I’m Jewish and that’s not kosher!”

God relented and said, “Fine then. Don’t heat your bread with human feces. Use cow crap instead.”

No joke. Open up your bible and read it for yourself – Ezekiel 4:9-17. (Disturbingly, this is also the scripture the ingredients for modern “Ezekiel Bread” comes from – available at your local grocery store).

Okay so here’s my application . . .

Who are the prophets we want to hear from today? I think we tend to gravitate towards fashionable, hip, funny, and inspiring pastors, prophets, and preachers. Like – Francis Chan. He’s fashionable, hip, funny, and inspiring. I’m not knocking on that. Francis Chan is AWESOME! But he’s not awesome because he’s the only blue-jean wearing bald Asian that I know – he’s awesome because he speaks whatever God is telling him and hits the nail on the head. THAT’S what makes him awesome (although I doubt that’s what sells his books and fills up his venues, by no fault of his own).

Whatever. This isn’t about Francis Chan. This is about you. And me.

If I was God, I would ONLY pick hip and cool people like Francis Chan to be my prophet. I think people would listen to him better. But that’s not what God did – he picked a stinky man to cook over a feces fire to speak to his people.

If God did that today – would you listen? Seriously – how would you feel if a dirty, stinky man came to your house cooking a cheeseburger over a hot fire of crap? –And then told you that God wanted you to know something? Would you want to tell him to shut up? You’d probably call the police.

The crappy fire thing is pretty extreme (so is sin, that was the point). But what I’m trying to share is that sometimes we have to seek out God’s voice. It’s to God’s glory to HIDE from us. It’s our glory to SEEK him. And sometimes that means listening in unlikely places or sources – like poopy pastors, prophets, and preachers.

I wrote more about God HIDING from us 5 years ago here).