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Be who you are.
Imposter syndrome can affect us all. Have you ever been handed something extraordinary and felt almost instantly, that you were the wrong person for it?
Elisha knew it the moment Elijah’s cloak fell on his shoulders whilst digging up a field with his bovine friends. The prophets who watched the Jordan split, who stood at the edge of that miracle and nothing better to do with their time, carried the memory of another man in their minds. Elijah had called down fire. Elijah had stood alone on Carmel. Elijah had outlasted a regime. That was the measuring rod, and Elisha would spend the rest of his ministry standing next to it. Elijah the Legend!
Here’s the thing. God never asked Elisha to be Elijah. He asked him to be Elisha.
That distinction nearly got lost before it started. When the boys of Bethel mocked him, it wasn’t random cruelty. It was theological dismissal. “Go up, you baldhead” was a taunt aimed at someone who didn’t have the stature, the presence, the gravity of his predecessor. Go up. Like Elijah did. You’re not him. You’ll never be him. The comparison was the weapon. And it was stinging.
What we do with young servants of God, with emerging prophetic voices, with the next generation of those called to carry something real, is not so different. We hand them the cloak of a previous era and then quietly resent them for wearing it differently. We invoke the revivals we never witnessed ourselves, the leaders we’ve mythologised in memory, the movements that felt purer than whatever this is now. And in doing so, we can suffocate the very thing God is actually doing.
Over in that muddy field there comes a personal and engaging moment. Despite how it reads, Elijah didn’t just throw his leather jacket in Elisha’s general direction and walk off. He found him. Specifically. In a field, that field, behind a plough, with twelve yoke of oxen (one medium tractor). Elisha didn’t know yet what was on him. He hadn’t named it. He was just working. And Elijah showed up in person.
That matters more than we want to admit because when we sense God’s hand on someone, the easiest thing in the world is to like their post, drop a voice note on WhatsApp, send a verse. Those things aren’t inconsequential or unwelcome, but they are not the same as sitting across a table from someone who doesn’t yet have the language for what they’re carrying and saying, quietly and clearly, “I see what God is doing in you. Let’s grab coffee and help you figure it out.” (Remember Eli and Samuel – one heard God’s voice and didn’t know how to respond, the other didn’t but knew what to do!)
That is a duty of care, not just a nice gesture. The Spirit-led recognition of calling in another person creates a responsibility. It always has. Elijah knew it. The early church knew it. Barnabas didn’t just endorse Paul from a distance. He walked him into rooms he couldn’t get into alone.
Paul was clear enough in 1 Corinthians 12. The Spirit distributes to each one individually as he wills. Not as the previous generation wills. Not as our nostalgia wills. The sovereign Spirit decides the shape and weight of each call.
Elisha went on to perform twice the miracles of Elijah. Not by copying him. By being entirely himself before a God who was entirely faithful. And because someone showed up, in person, and put a cloak on his shoulders before he understood what it meant.
The question worth sitting with is this: who is God asking you to find? Not follow online. Find. In the ordinary place they’re working, before they know what they’re carrying. That is where the next move of God often begins. In the field. Before the fire falls.
