Walking With Christ

(Part 3 of 17)

⚓ Floatie:  The Shepherd Who Sees the Scattered Flock

Ezekiel 34:1–4  (1)The word of the Lord came to me:  (2)“Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy, and say to them, even to the shepherds, Thus says the Lord God:  Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves!  Should not shepherds feed the sheep?  (3)You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep.  (4)The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them.(ESV)

Some wounds come from living in a broken world.  Some wounds come from being a broken person.  But some wounds — and these cut the deepest — come from the places that were supposed to heal us.

This is where the Durable Souls subseries must dive openly, carefully, and truthfully.  This message speaks to mental health, not in clinical terms but in the spiritual harm caused when the Church surrenders its responsibility for human wholeness.  It does not attack the Bride of Christ.  It exposes the failure of institutions that stopped functioning like His Bride and started functioning like vendors in the house of God.  This is not a condemnation.  It is a diagnosis.
Because you cannot heal what you refuse to name.

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✒️ Forge:  How the Church Lost the Work of Making People Whole

Scripture commands shepherds to strengthen the weak, heal the injured, seek the lost, and protect the flock.  Yet somewhere along the way, many churches traded that calling for something easier, cleaner, and more profitable:  outsourcing wholeness.

1. The early Church treated people — body, mind, and spirit — as a single, integrated being.

They:

• fed bodies,
• restored community,
• reconciled relationships,
• healed trauma through confession and belonging,
• rebuilt identity through teaching,
• supported the oppressed,
• bore burdens collectively.

Nobody was told:  “Just pray more.”, “Just have faith.”, or “Just get over it.”  They were healed as whole human beings.

2. Modern churches relinquished this work because wholeness is costly.

Somewhere in the last century, the Church outsourced:

• emotional wounds to therapists,
• grief to support groups,
• marital problems to counselors,
• trauma to psychology,
• the mind to secular systems,
• the body to medicine,
• truth to influencers,
• maturity to programs,
• accountability to HR structures.

The Church kept only the “spiritual part” of a person — the part easiest to preach about and hardest to verify.  But a soul cannot be healed if the mind remains fractured.  Faith cannot be strengthened if the emotions remain unaddressed.  Obedience cannot flourish if trauma remains untreated.  The Church did not lose authority.
It gave it away.

3. Outsourcing produces fragile believers and dependent institutions.

A believer who struggles with:

• anxiety,
• trauma,
• panic,
• shame,
• emotional instability,
• racing thoughts,
• despair…

…is told:

• “Read your Bible more.”
• “Trust God more.”
• “Stop overthinking.”
• “Pray harder.”
• “Come forward for prayer again.”
• “Worship your way out of it.”

These aren’t solutions.  These are spiritual sedatives.  They soothe symptoms without healing wounds.

And institutions benefited from this — not maliciously every time, but consistently:

• fragile believers need constant reassurance,
• constant events,
• constant teaching,
• constant leadership,
• constant crisis-driven spirituality.

This creates dependency, not maturity.

4. The Church didn’t stop caring — it stopped diagnosing.

Pastors were taught theology but not trauma.  They were trained to preach but not to discern emotional wounds.  They were taught doctrine but not human formation.  They became administrators of spiritual content instead of shepherds of vulnerable people.

So when someone broke, they were given:

• verses without context,
• encouragement without direction,
• correction without connection,
• prayer without insight.

Good intentions.  Wrong tools.  No surgeon wants to harm a patient.  But a surgeon without training harms people anyway.

5. When the Church neglects wholeness, Mammon gladly fills the vacuum.

If the Church will not:

• teach emotional regulation,
• help heal trauma,
• restore identity,
• develop discernment,
• build durable believers…

…there are systems waiting that will — not to heal, but to harvest.

Mammon profits from fragile minds:

• therapy cycles that never end,
• medications for life,
• consumer identities,
• addiction-driven industries,
• algorithmic anxiety,
• fear-based news,
• celebrity spirituality,
• churches that rely on spiritual dependency rather than spiritual maturity.

A fragmented person is profitable everywhere.

Except to Christ.

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⚒️ Anvil:  Where the Church’s Surrender Shows Up in Your Life

You may not have had the words for it, but you’ve felt the impact:

• You grew up in church but never learned how to process anger.
• You were taught to avoid fear, not understand it.
• You were told to forgive instantly without healing the wound.
• Your anxiety was treated like a moral failure.
• Your trauma was reduced to a “spiritual attack.”
• Your grief was rushed.
• Your questions were treated like rebellion.
• Your doubt was met with shame.
• Your emotions were treated as untrustworthy.
• Your identity was spoken of theologically but never healed practically.
• Your mind was left to secular systems.
• Your heart was left to cope alone.
• Your body was left to medication.
• Your soul was left confused.

This is the lived cost of the Church outsourcing wholeness.  Not because God abandoned you — but because people surrendered the work He gave them.  And here is the part that must be said with clarity:
Your fragility is not your fault.
You were underfed.  You were under-taught.  You were spiritually starved while being told you were full.

But you are not crazy.  You are not faithless.  You are not broken beyond repair.  You were failed.
And Christ saw it.

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🔥 Ember:  My Witness to the Neglect

I’ve lived the consequences of this surrender.  I’ve seen believers taught to fear their own emotions.  I’ve seen men collapse because they were never taught how to carry burdens.  I’ve seen women suffer alone because nobody equipped them to understand the storms inside them.  I’ve seen trauma dismissed as weakness, anxiety dismissed as immaturity, depression dismissed as unbelief.  I’ve watched sincere Christians pass through churches that fed them excitement but not endurance — identity statements but not identity healing — sermons but not formation — worship experiences but not wisdom — encouragement but not equipping.  And I’ve wept over the cost:  people who loved God but felt constantly defective, people who believed Scripture but couldn’t stop spiraling, people who prayed but never received tools, people who tithed but never received teaching that touched the mind and heart together.

It’s not that the Church is the enemy.  It’s that the Church became tired, distracted, modernized, and fragmented — and fragile believers paid the price.

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🌿 Covenant Triumph:  The True Shepherd Never Outsourced You

Ezekiel 34 ends not with condemnation but with a promise:  “I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out.”(Ezekiel 34:11)  When human shepherds fail, Christ takes the work back into His own hands.

He never outsourced your wholeness.
He never handed your mind over to secular systems.
He never left your emotional wounds unaddressed.
He never ignored your trauma.
He never dismissed your fear.
He never fed Himself at your expense.

He seeks.
He binds up.
He rebuilds.
He restores.

Durable Souls is not a critique of the Church.  It is the recovery of what the Church was always meant to do.  And in the next message, we turn toward the heart of that recovery — why so many believers pray, study, worship, and still feel unchanged — and how misdiagnosed wounds lead to misfired prayers.

Christ is still the Shepherd.  And He is coming for the parts of you the world and the Church both neglected.

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[⚓ Floatie] [✒️ Forge] [⚒️ Anvil] [🔥 Ember] [🌿 Covenant Triumph]
This post follows the Forge Baseline Rule—layered truth for the discerning remnant.