01/03/2025
When Paul said “imitate me as I imitate Christ”, we can be certain he was referring to living a holy life, able to withstand inspection and scrutiny, among other qualities of course. One attempted imitation I have noticed (and even participated in), believers are remarkably efficient at defining their own Gethsemanes. Acknowledging of course there will be Gethsemanes you will face, but that is not what we’re talking about.
The church has allowed and promoted the prioritization of our emotions and feelings to the point that we don’t just dramatize our tests and battles, we define what our tests and battles are. I may not have 40 years of ministry experience under my belt but I have known church intimately my whole life. By my teens, I had heard countless believers sharing their seasons of battle and wilderness, weeping and carrying on as though they were the modern day Job. Even as a child it seemed pretty clear that often times God had less to do with it so much as they were simply realizing the results of their own decisions. God has little to do with your financial hardships after you invested your savings into multilevel marketing schemes that failed. You aren’t experiencing a testing of your resolve as a son or daughter when you refuse submission and accountability to your leaders, you’re experiencing the dysfunction of your rebellion.
It doesn’t take much imagination to understand how that information is received among believers. I stopped counting the number of times I’ve been accused of being cold and heartless, so much so that I received the lie, believed the lie, and lived the lie as I turned my back on the institution that turned its back on me, for years. The truth has far too small a place in places that advertise the teaching of it. Our emotions denominate. More recently I have been compared, in a similar vein, to sounding too much like my father (not in complementary fashion) when speaking with more regard for the truth than for feelings. His transition into Glory left a hole in many lives eager to fill it with something familiar, a baby blanket for the soul. I recall sitting awake one night, in a Gethsemane I created, explaining to God His mistake and asking for the cup of remaining bones once called a ministry to pass from me. I defeatedly whispered that I am not half the man my father was and in the loudest whisper, He said back, “I didn’t ask you to be. I asked you to be all of who I made you to be.” The new spirit of leadership that will emerge in this era of reformation will not discredit or dismiss the groundwork of the forerunners that came before. But if you are simply filling vacant shoes and continue rehearsing and regurgitating what we see worked for them in their season, you miss the transformation that Father intends for you and will make idols of ministry.
Get to end of yourself, it isn’t your kingdom you’re building. Get to the end of your fabricated Gethsemane, get past the cup and get to “Your will be done”.
Stay the course. Discern and deny the distractions. Repent, renounce, and break the lies that put you in shoes that aren’t yours. It will be painful and it will be worth it. You won’t just survive, you will overcome because you were born for this. The disenfranchised have not been disqualified.
Accept no peace that does not come from the defeat of hell.
Jared Lynch
