I am currently attending a conference for ministers. We have been focusing on dealing with issues that are hidden. Issues of the soul that have a negative impact on our spirit. Ministers are so good at covering over. They do it because others are more important. They lay their life down for the Church and often that means they hide their own pain for the service of others. Last night I abandoned the message I had prepared to speak to them about and began to share things in my life as a leader I had hidden. Times of grief, disappointment and hurt which I buried and carried on and how it had impacted my life. It was a vulnerable place to be but earlier a friend had encouraged me to be authentic and let the minsters I serve see a window into my own soul.
I wake this morning to this verse.
“Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” (Matthew 26 v 36)
Isn’t the Bible such a source of encouragement?!
Our leader, the King of Kings, Jesus, knows what it is to go into a place of crushing, a place of grief and sorrow. He knows what it is to be hard pressed. He had his Gethsemane moment. It means oil press. And we get to look through the window and watch this.
We are like the disciples sitting and watching the scene. Perhaps even like Peter, James and John who Jesus will give a better viewing of the olive press moment we move closer, we understand deeper what it is to see the crushing of Jesus and how he got through it.
So let us all be authentic people who bring people into our lives not only to view our successes but to show them how to be human in the oil press.
What is the ultimate lesson?
Don’t keep your life hidden and secondly, learn to pray. Talk to God.
This is what Jesus’ Gethsemane moment teaches us.
Missions Paul 