Uh oh. Pray for Brother Travis.

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I thought he was taller than that.

Oh I know, I was disappointed when I saw that. I know everyone goes through stuff, especially there's a lot more pressure on famous people. But I guess I do expect better from someone who I thought was supposedly a solid Christian, but even Christians fall and its so so sad when they do.

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This is really a call for prayer pastor?

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Some people have enough dust on their Bibles to write "Damnation" on it.

Why not? When people fall, they need prayer to be restored.

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And this is how it's done? You post a picture of their mug shot? Yup, sure it is the best way. Funny though, if it was done in a paper, it's always to disgrace.

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Some people have enough dust on their Bibles to write "Damnation" on it.

...and there but for the grace of God go each of us.

It really does sadden me to see how people like him and Wynona Judd struggle like that. To come so close to freedom and then stumble back into a bondage. We don't know what happened. Maybe he has always been shallow, or maybe he has stood solid against storms beyond our imaginations. We do know that he has professed faith, and so a member of our body is injured. Can any of us name one country singer who has stood up for his faith as much as that man? They are all expected to sing about God, it's a requirement in the genre. Even Hank Williams Sr. wrote a hymn. But to actually act like you mean it is a different matter altogether.

So, what are we going to do? Are we going to stand in smug judgment or are we going to remember that he is part of us, and really take his struggles to our Father.

Yes.

And this goes for some of celebrity preachers, too. Randy, and some preachers who keep popping up in the news, need to spend some time learning how to follow before they are thrust into leadership positions. Randy became a Christian and no sooner is it announced than he is making Christian albums and his record company hires him an agent and he begins touring as the next Christian trophy. He needed to join a church find a pastor or mentor, pick up a mop and start cleaning the bathrooms. Young ambitious kids with a gift of gab need to come out of Bible colleges and do the same rather than begin finding ways to build a mailing list and promoting themselves. Maybe that’s why the Apostle in 1 Tim. 3.6 made one of the rules for leadership in the church to be: “He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil.” I am not blaming Randy or celebrity preachers who regularly fall into the snare of the devil, but those of us who tend to put them on pedestals before they are “rooted and grounded in the faith.” A pedestal can be just a much a prison as any other small place.



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Years ago (c.1985) a 50’s rock and roll idol with several gold records to his credit became a Christian, thanks in part to his wife’s prayers. At the time he was under contract to a Houston hotel/night club owner and was appearing in some of the man’s clubs as an attraction. Having heard the entertainer give his testimony on the now defunct PTL network, I contacted him and discovered that he was truly hungry for more of God. He was amazed that I was receptive to him because he had contacted several area pastors wanting to give his testimony in their churches and was rebuffed by them with, “Call me when you get out of the nightclubs and we’ll talk.” But only one—now two—pastors had actually reached out to him or spend any time with him.

So, I purposed to befriend him, visit him regularly (even at some of his nightclub gigs), invite him to perform in our church, answer his many questions as best I could, and nurture him in the faith. (I was hoping I was doing what Priscilla and Aquilla did with Apollos.) I was, of course, risking being criticized by my more “pious” brethren.

It was two years before the entertainer’s contract ended with the hotel/club owner and he moved from Houston and I lost tract of him … until Facebook. I have since discovered that he is still a believer, sometimes does the Fifties R&R circuit including some of those nostalgia PBS specials, performs in churches, and has grown in the Lord.

Maybe Randy Travis just needed to just find someone to befriend him and mentor him in the faith before he was thrust into the “Christian market.”

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