Philip Yancey (pictured above) is retiring after confessing in an email to Christianity Today that for eight years, he "willfully engaged in a sinful affair with a married woman."
"Having disqualified myself from Christian ministry, I am therefore retiring from writing, speaking, and social media," he wrote. “Instead, I need to spend my remaining years living up to the words I have already written.”
Yancey has sold more than 15 million copies of his various books and devotionals, some of which have been translated into 40 languages, but Dr. Richard Land of Southern Evangelical Seminary says all the accolades in the world seem insignificant compared to what Yancey calls his "great shame."
"A great spiritual victory today is no inoculation against great spiritual sin tomorrow," Land submits.
He says this is another tragic example of the enemy destroying a phenomenally successful life, but that is what he does.
"The devil is always like a wolf crouching at the door, waiting to pounce at our weakest moment," Land warns.
For every well-known Christian that fails, he says there are hundreds of lesser-known Christians whose lives are destroyed by sexual sin of one kind or another. The antidote is not "the credo of Hallmark movies" to "follow your heart."
Instead, believers should remember that according to Scripture, "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick."
"Don't follow your heart; follow the Holy Spirit," Land insists. "If you hide the Word of God in your heart, the Holy Spirit will call the right Scripture to your mind at the appropriate time."
Remembering that David's lapse with Bathsheba did not prevent him from fulfilling God's purpose for his life, Dr. Land does not think Yancey's fans should trash his books now.
"David wrote the Psalms," he notes. "We don't throw the Psalms out."
