Welcome to “The Potter’s Touch”. I’m so excited to have the opportunity to share the Word of the Lord with you. I believe that God is going to speak a Word to you today that is absolutely life-changing. The message, I love this message, “Get Out of Gethsemane”. It is powerful, it’s refreshing, and it’s important. Get your Bibles and go to Mark 14:32 through 42 and there you will find the Word of God. Take a look.
We’re going from the wilderness. We’re going into the garden. The garden is a place where you have passed the temptation from the enemy, but now you are in your own way. No devils, no demons, no witches, no hexes, no curses, no satanic attack. It is in the garden where you fight you. And the garden is the place where Jesus now comes to fight himself. I love this text, I’d never seen it this way. “Father, if it be thy will, pass this bitter cup for me”.
Pass this bitter cup. I want the calling, but not the cup. I want it, but I don’t want to go through anything. I don’t want to suffer. I don’t want to endure anything. I don’t want to sacrifice. I don’t want to have to work over. I don’t want to have to roll up my sleeve. I don’t want to have to grunt and grind. I want it, I do want it, don’t get me wrong. I absolutely do want it, but I want it my way. God said, “This ain’t Burger King. This is not Burger King. You don’t get to have my promise your way. And your stubbornness has delayed your life. If you would’ve done what I told you to do when I told you to do it, you would’ve already been there. But you spent years out of your life trying to find another way around doing what you got to do”.
In the text that I read before you, there are supporters. There are three different supporters. At one point in the text, if you look at the text, it says that he left the crowd of them behind and took Peter, James, and John and went a little further. I want to give you three different types of supporters. One of them is the distant supporters, the people you left behind, who are with you but not with you. They are distant supporters. In order to be successful, you will need distant supporters. It doesn’t mean that they’re bad because they’re distant, it just meant that they were not meant to go all the way in with you.
Everybody should have distant supporters. They don’t go all the way into the apex of your destiny, they do not epitomize what is going to happen in your life. They do not validate who you are by their presence, but they are in the shadows rooting for you. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have distant supporters, people who help me but they didn’t go to my church. People who were praying for me, but they weren’t in the room. Distant supporters are important. And if you’re going to be a great man or woman of God, be sure that you maintain distant supporters. Understand that you cannot be petty enough to think that if I’m not up close, I am not there. I am a distant supporter. You must have them without staying with them.
Come on with me. I’m headed somewhere. Give me ten minutes, I’ll get right there. You have to understand that they don’t have what it takes to go all the way. If you stay with them, you will make the mistake that Adam made with Eve. When Eve was the partaker of the forbidden fruit, Adam should have went, “Bye honey, I love you. I’m praying for you. God help you”. But he chose to stay with the dysfunctional. You’d be surprised what people will do for company. The distant supporters are the people who are with you, but you had to go on a little further, which I don’t know what this means, but church people do it all the time, put your finger up and your head down and say, “I got to go further”. That means I’m moving into the next dimension because I cannot stay in Gethsemane.
Stop letting people slip up on you. In order to get that close, you have to be designated. You don’t come into the presence of the king till the scepter is extended. Some of you have lost all control of your life because you have left your doors open, and anybody can come in and out at will, and now you got distant people in designated places. The designated followers, you can let them in on the real prayer need. “This is what I really need prayer for. This is what I’m really going through. This is what’s really happening to me. This is what’s really going on in my life right now. I need you to pray with me”.
And then the final thing that he teaches us is that you go from the distant to the designated. But ultimately, you have to go to the divine. In the presence of the divine, he finds healing that he could not find even in the designated or the distant people who followed him. He went into the divine presence of God. Some of you don’t know how to go into the divine presence of God.
I notice when we were in the worship service, you looked so uncomfortable because you are uncomfortable with your God. Isn’t it funny how we can be comfortable with our sin and uncomfortable with our God? Whatever you like to do, when you do it, you’re not uncomfortable when you do it. But when you get in the presence of your God, you don’t even know how to talk to him. You don’t even know how to open up to him.
Jesus shows me something. Watch this, this is good because Jesus goes into the presence of the Father, and then he comes back to the designated. He goes from divine to the designated, and say, “Won’t you watch with me one hour”? And then he goes back to the divine. And he prays again and he goes back to the designated, “Are you asleep again”? See, that’s what happens when you’re in Gethsemane. You keep trying to go from the divine to the designated, trying to solve the conflict in your own head. But finally, he gets so lost in the divine. You know you’re lost when his will becomes your will. You know you’re lost when you stop trying to have it your way. You know you’re lost in his presence when you’ve lost sight of your personal opinion, and all of a sudden you’re saying to yourself, “Not my will”.
If you’re going with me, you got to come on ’cause I’m leaving Gethsemane. I’m leaving the place of excuses. I’m leaving the place of procrastination. I’m leaving the place of frustration. I’m going on. Gethsemane, as many of you know, literally means a place of pressing. It is a place where the oil is excreted from the olive. It is a place where the olive comes in one way and goes out another. When I went in, I needed all of y’all. But when he got through pressing me, I came forth pure oil. Oil is energy. Oil is light. Oil is fruit. Oil is heat.
Olive oil is that part of the olive that survived the crush. God said, “I’m going to do it with what’s left of you. I crushed what you were impressed with. Just ’cause you were impressed with it doesn’t mean I was impressed with it. I’m going to take what’s left of you and get the glory out of your life”. Who am I preaching to? The Lord sent me to say to you, “Get out of Gethsemane”. It means I’m going to ebonize it. Get out of your own head. Stop rethinking the same stuff over. Stop wrestling with could’ve, would’ve, and should’ve.
Get out of Gethsemane means you need to understand it costs what it costs, and it’s not going on sale. You got to do what you got to do. And there is no escaping it, and there is no out clause, and there are no coupons, and there’s no discount Fridays. It costs what it costs for what I’m going to do in your life. You might as well buckle up your seatbelts and get yourself ready ’cause it costs what it costs. I don’t know who that’s for. I don’t even know what God is talking to you about. But whoever that’s for, God just sent you a direct message. He doesn’t want to argue about it anymore, he doesn’t want to hear you crying about it anymore, he doesn’t want you bringing up alternative ways anymore. Get out of Gethsemane. Go ahead.
Who am I preaching to? If you can receive this Word today, you will break the pattern, the circle that has had you going around and around for a long time. You’re like the children of Israel, you’re wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, and it should’ve taken a few days. Stand on your feet, I got something to tell you, this is really important. What you have been wrestling with for months and years should’ve been over a long time ago. It is not Satan holding you captive. It is your relentless commitment to your own opinion. And when the Lord said, “Get out of Gethsemane,” he’s talking to you. I don’t know what your Gethsemane is, but he’s talking to you.
You’ve been like Dorothy. You’ve been running all over Oz, talking to the Tin Man and the Straw Man and the Lion, looking for courage and smartness, looking for all the things you thought you didn’t have. You’re trying to get back to yourself, so you went to see the Wizard. And Dorothy, you could’ve been home a long time ago. You have the power within yourself. You can get back home whenever you want to. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.
You want change? You got up this morning ’cause you want change. You brought yourself out to church ’cause you want change. This is not a golf club, this is not the country club, and you are not on your job. You did not have to be here. You came here because you want change. You could’ve been home. Oh God, help me. Help me to pierce the darkness. You could’ve been there. Get out of your head, going around and around and around and back and forth to the Tin Man and the Straw Man and the Lion and the Tin Man and the Straw Man, stop!
There is no other way. There’s no way around it, there’s no other place to go, there’s nothing else to do. There is no way out. There is no way out. There is no way out. There is no way out. You could’ve been straight, you could’ve been whole, you could’ve been healed, you could’ve been loosed right now. You could’ve been there. You could’ve been there. What you’ve been looking for in all them people, it was already in you. Today, I break that yoke over your life and set you free in the name of Jesus. Lift your hands and open your mouth. Worship is in this place.
I’m sorry, I’m out of time, I’ve got to close here, but it’s been a joy to share that Word with you. I pray God would bless you and strengthen you and overshadow you with the power of the Holy Spirit, and most of all that you would get out of Gethsemane.