Where Is Your Gethsemane?
Last week, we posted two interviews I did with Focus on the Family on my book Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God. We also included an audio link for the first chapter. This week, I want to follow up with a written version of the second chapter, "Where is Your Gethsemane?" In a time of great uncertainty and challenge, thinking about how you best connect with God, hear from God, and spend time with God is more crucial than ever. Spending time with God is the spiritual ballast that will keep you weighted in the stormy seas of life. Finding a way to spend time with God that fits you--a way that you'll miss if you miss it--is one of the great delights of walking this life with God.
Next week, we will send out the free post on Monday--in just three days--because I'm preaching a sermon this weekend at Cherry Hills on the upcoming election, and I'd like some of you to have access to it before the election happens. Spiritual preparation is half the battle. Whether the election results encourage you, scare you, or (like so many of us) make you feel relieved that the whole lying, gaslighting charade has finally ended, I pray that a few key biblical truths can help us put everything into perspective.
Imagine that Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln, Beethoven, Max Lucado, Chris Tomlin, and William Shakespeare were all rolled into one. What would you have?
King David!
Think about it. He was a military general, a political ruler, a composer, a religious leader, a musician, and a poet. He was a true Renaissance man thousands of years before European culture invented one!
David exemplified what many moderns would consider contradictory qualities. Contemporary scholars would put military and religious leaders—Genghis Khan and St. Francis of Assisi, for instance—on opposite ends of the scale; but David was able to fulfill both roles, and more.1
Likewise, mature Christians often display many, if not all, of the spiritual temperaments. As we describe each one in detail in later chapters, you’ll notice that I cite Jesus as an example of all of them. Regardless of our predominant spiritual temperament, all of us could learn a great deal from how others are nourished by God and how others meet and love God.
Once you’ve gone through this book, you’ll be able to express your own spiritual temperament or temperaments. Knowing this, you can begin a program of feeding yourself spiritually. The goal here is not self-actualization or spiritual self-absorption, but to feed our souls so we can know God in a new way, love him with every cell of our being, and then express that love by reaching out to others. That’s why I want to introduce you to what may sound like a new concept: where is your Gethsemane?
Your Gethsemane
The Garden of Gethsemane holds a sacred place in faith history; it’s the hallowed piece of ground on which Jesus prayed just before he was arrested. Churches don’t normally talk much about Gethsemane apart from passion week, but the reason Gethsemane had such a monumental role in that famous week is precisely because it had such a huge and formative role in Christ’s life prior to passion week. Consider John 18:1-2 “When he had finished praying, Jesus left with his disciples and crossed the Kidron Valley. On the other side there was an olive grove [the Garden of Gethsemane], and he and his disciples went into it. Now Judas, who betrayed him, knew the place, because Jesus had often met there with his disciples.”
Luke backs this up: Luke 22:39: “Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him.”
It wasn’t an accident that Judas found Jesus in the garden; the betrayer naturally thought, “Where is Jesus most likely to be found?” He felt certain that Jesus would seek solace in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he was right.
Jesus had used the Garden on numerous occasions to meet with his Father, to gain spiritual strength, and to receive his marching orders. Long before passion week, the Garden of Gethsemane was a sacred space of refuge, refreshment, healing, intimacy, and fellowship—that’s why Jesus went there when he knew what was about to take place.
One thing we know for certain: Judas’ betrayal didn’t catch Jesus by surprise. Jesus dismissed Judas, knowing exactly what the betrayer was about to do. This means Jesus was able to choose where he would spend that crucial time just before the betrayal. When he needed to pour out his heart to his heavenly father, to the point of sweating blood, when he needed to have his will aligned with that same father, Jesus chose a place with which he was deeply familiar: the Garden of Gethsemane.
In fact, Jesus went there every day of passion week: “Each day Jesus was teaching at the temple, and each evening he went out to spend the night on the hill called the Mount of Olives…” (Luke 21:37)
The experience of Gethsemane is unique to Christ alone. None of us will ever have a moment like that. But in using this sacred space, Jesus leaves us an example to follow: when you need to hear from God, when you need to be strengthened by God, when you need to receive your “marching orders” from God, where do you go?
For some of you, it might indeed be a garden, or a place in a local forest. Others of you may prefer a sanctuary. Still others might find prayer solace with a musical instrument in your hands. But do you have a place, or a moment, where you best meet with God when you most need him?
Where is your Gethsemane?
My prayer is that by the time you finish this book, you’ll know.
Prayer and Ministry Go Hand in Hand
What I appreciate about using Gethsemane as a metaphor for meeting with God is that it portrays a vivid example of the balance between intimacy and mission, prayer and work. I can’t think of Gethsemane without being moved by the intimate communion between Son and Father. On the other hand, this garden is also the scene of intense spiritual preparation for the most important work ever done.
In a healthy Christian life, prayer and ministry go hand in hand. As we build intimacy with God in prayer, he communicates his love for us, but he also gives us our marching orders. In this way, prayer feeds our sense of mission and renews the urgency behind that mission. Likewise, Christian work—whether it’s evangelism, helps, administration, teaching, discipleship, or something else—reminds us of our need for God’s strength, and so drives us further into prayer.
When we get too caught up in ministry and cut corners in our devotional time, the results can be disastrous. We begin to minister with the wrong motivations, may lose our passion, and often will be tempted to make it all about us instead of all about him.
Dr. Wayne Grudem experienced a glimpse of this while working on the final translation for the New English Standard Version of the Bible. A dozen scholars from around the world met in Cambridge to do the final polish of the translation. They worked nine-hour days discussing the remaining tricky passages, voting on final word choices, and completing the project. Informal discussion often stretched into the evening as the scholars contemplated the next day’s work. Wayne said he started getting up a little later each day, cutting time from prayer.
Many people might not see the danger in this. After all, Wayne was spending the entire day studying and discussing the Bible. What was the big deal if, for a rather short season, Wayne allowed his prayer life to drift a little?
According to Wayne, it became a very big deal. After God convicted him for not giving prayer its due, Wayne wrote in his journal about the spiritual sickness that followed from not tending to his heart: “Pride, talking about myself a lot, inwardly hoping people would praise me, lack of love for friends, irritability, a general inward feeling of unease, self-reliance, no peace.”
These are classic signs of a heart that is drifting from God. Wayne was devoted to a very pleasing work—translating the Bible—but even translating the Bible can leave us spiritually empty if we ignore building intimacy with God through prayer.
The image of Gethsemane reminds me that I need to tend to my heart. When I give God the opportunity to speak into my heart, he motivates me to work, for the right reasons. Working diligently, I’m reminded of my need to receive my acceptance, favor, and strength from God. In this way, prayer and ministry together become a spiraling, upward staircase of devotion.
Small Minded Devotions
I didn’t always live with this acceptance that we all might have different “Gethsemanes.” Far from it! There was a time when I was as small minded about prayer as you can get—I knew exactly when you were supposed to pray, how you were supposed to pray, and even the best books on prayer. In short, I was the perfect candidate to be humbled by a holy God who has a sense of humor and a history of helping his children get over their arrogance and prejudice.
God’s work began when I fell in love with a young woman who I knew had a dynamic relationship with God, but who didn’t pray according to my established discipline. Since the Scriptures clearly portray Jesus waking up early to pray, I was convinced that the “best” time to pray was early in the morning. Lisa isn’t a morning person, however. In college, she liked to wake up just early enough to roll out of bed, run a comb through her hair, and get to her first class. When classes were over, she ate lunch, returned to the dorm, and then went up onto the roof to lay in the sun with her Bible.
I was so convinced that she was cheating that, in the flirty way college students do, I kidded her, “Come on, Lisa, who goes up onto the roof at lunch time, lies in the sun with their Bible beside them, and calls that a quiet time?”
Lisa didn’t have an answer for me until two weeks later. I can still hear the knock on my dorm room door. I opened it, Lisa marched in and opened my Bible to Acts 10:9: “About noon the following day…Peter went up on the roof to pray.”
At first it was funny, then convicting, and finally, liberating. For years, I had been imprisoned by the thought that prayer, to be earnest, needed to be the first thing in the day, with an intercessory prayer list beside me, and it had to last a certain amount of time to be faithful and obedient. But God used Lisa as a wedge to expand my understanding of what it means to pray. I still, to this day, can’t bear to start any day without prayer, but I’m more accepting of those whose most fervent prayers occur later in the day or even at night.
God expanded my heart by giving us three delightful, but very distinct children, each of whom relates to me in a very different way. Our oldest daughter is a classic introvert who wouldn’t dream of competing and likes to talk about relationships, but who can comfortably drive in the car with me and not say much of anything. Our son loves to attend, watch, or play sports with me; we’ve now written a published article together, and can talk about intellectual concepts. My youngest daughter is the classic extrovert, often the life of the party. I do different things with each one of my kids and I like it that way. Few things would hurt me more than if I heard my extroverted daughter felt like she had to do the same things with me as my introverted daughters does, or vice versa. We have our own, unique relationships, and each one is a cause for joy.
What makes us think God is any different? In fact, for him, wouldn’t it be even more so, since he created these personality types, while I simply received my children as he designed them?
There is great freedom in how we can meet with and enjoy God. This is by his design, and according to his good pleasure.
Getting Out of a Rut
If you are in a spiritual malaise, it might be that you just need a change in your spiritual diet. If you just can’t seem to leave that one particular sin, you may find that the answer is very simple: You don’t know how to be nourished according to the way God made you so you’re seeking spiritual “junk food,” in the form of sin or addictions, somewhere else. Finding fulfillment in God is the most powerful antidote to any sin.
Some people who have read this book have found that they strongly identify with one particular type. Others have “charted” their faith: “I started out as an enthusiast, became a contemplative, and ended up a sensate.” Within all of us, however, there needs to be a common denominator, which is found in Mark 12:30.
According to Jesus, four elements are essential to every true expression of faith. It is essential that we love God with all our heart (adoration), soul (will), mind (belief), and strength (body). The intellectual is not excused from failing to adore. Neither is the contemplative excused from harboring wrong beliefs about God. Complete Christians—which all of us are called to be—should exhibit adoration, belief, divine guidance, and service.
It might be tempting to just read the chapters that talk about your own particular spiritual temperament, but I believe you may find that your life hasn’t expressed certain temperaments because you’ve never been exposed to them. That’s certainly what I discovered in my search. By reading all the chapters, you’ll gain a much more comprehensive view of how Christians have learned to express their love for God. You may even find that your initial evaluation of yourself proves to be not so accurate.
By understanding our spiritual temperaments, we can develop the tools we need to grow spiritually. These tools will differ, of course—a ten-year-old girl who loves to paint and sing and draw pictures for Jesus will have a different way of relating to God than a construction worker who is trying to figure out how being a Christian affects the way he builds houses ten to twelve hours a day.
We need to be careful, however, when we talk about “tools.” Language is frequently imprecise, and no less so than when we’re talking about spiritual matters. It would be easy to make a caricature out of what we’re saying, reducing a dynamic relationship with the Holy God—in which he is the initiator and the sustainer—into a bunch of formulas and trick tests. But that’s not what this study is all about.
The aim of this book is to help people understand the spiritual temperament that God gave them. Good spiritual counselors don’t heal anyone, they try to bring the troubled soul into God’s presence, remove the confusion and subterfuge of sin and self, and let God’s Spirit have his way. And that’s what this book is attempting to do.
Married to God
After many people in a certain congregation had read one of my books, I was invited to speak at their church retreat. Prior to my arrival, I received quite a few letters in which various members stated their high expectations. At the start of the first talk, I did my best to squash those expectations. “It would be very easy to manipulate a mountaintop experience over the course of this weekend,” I told them. “Working with the worship leader, setting the right schedule, having a carefully coordinated teaching progression, we could create a spiritual high if we wanted to.
“But after praying rather substantially about this weekend, I became convinced that I am not here to offer you a mind-blowing ‘date’ with God. I want us to talk about how to be married to him—about how, through the ups and downs and the routine of life, we can learn to spend time with God, enjoy him, and be conformed to his will. Anybody can ‘date’ God. The truly mature seek to be his faithful, lifelong companions.”
That’s my attitude in writing this book. How do we learn to love God, day in and day out, through the seasons of life? How do we keep this love fresh? How do we grow in our adoration and understanding of God?
We do it by spending time with him. And once we understand the myriad ways that Christians have cultivated this relationship, we’ll have more ideas than we need to walk closer, and more constantly, by his side.
Let’s now turn our attention to these very simple but powerful spiritual temperaments.
