This session, we're going to talk a bit about spiritual parenting, and importance  of being a spiritual father being a spiritual mother, and we're going to talk much  more about this later on in this course. So I'm only going to highlight a few things here, like, if you have a Bible, turn with me to Exodus 18, and it's the story of  Moses leading 3 million plus people, and they came out of Egypt into the  Promised Land. And one day Moses had worked with for, as we understand the  scriptures, for a long time, for his father in law. His father in law was Jethro.  Now, Jethro, many years later, came to see him as Moses was very tired, very  worn out by all the responsibilities that he had. And the Scriptures tell us in  chapter 18 of Exodus, in verse 13, the next day, Moses took the seat to serve as judge for the people, and they stood around him from morning until evening. It  was a long, long day, and when his father in law verse 14, saw all that Moses  was doing for the people. His father in law said to him, here's an example,  someone who is a mentor, who is a spiritual father and is an advisor for Moses,  his father in law. Here's what he said. He said, What is it you're doing for the  people? Why do you sit alone to judge while these people stand around you  from morning until evening? And this is Old Testament, long before Jesus set a  model for us long before Paul set the model for us. But he said, you know, why  are you doing this? In verse 15, Moses said, because the people come to me to  seek God's will, and whenever I decide between the parties, he said, and inform  them of God's I inform them of God's decrees and laws. And Moses, father in  law, said in reply. He said, What you're doing isn't good. That's what spiritual  fathers will do. We will pray for spiritual children, we'll, guide them doing  something that it could be hurtful to them. Will tell them in love, that control  them, that dictate to them, but be there to help them be be fulfilled and in what  God's given them. So he said this, you and these people who come to you only  wear yourselves out. You'll wear yourself out Moses, and so will the people. This is an example of many churches today, many larger churches, yes, there's  multiple staff. But I find I meet with so many pastors, so many pastor friends,  who've been so weary and so tired, they're burned out because of all the heavy  responsibilities. And he said, he said, The work is too heavy for you. He said, for you to do this alone. Then he said, Now listen to me. I'll give you advice. This is  Moses mentor, his spiritual father, really his father in law and the natural talking  to him. He said, You must be God's representative before God and bring no  disputes to him. Yes, you are the final leader here. But he said he send the  decrees in laws show them how the way to live, the duties to perform. But select capable men from all the people, men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate  dishonest gain, appoint them as officials over 1000s, hundreds, 50s and 10s.  Isn't that interesting? And we know what happened. We know Moses did that,  and we know that Moses then found great blessing as he began to give away  responsibility. So wherever I'm talking to pastor of larger churches, they're  asking me for advice. My question for them is, do you have house fellowships of

any kind in your church? Release the ministry to those who have these small  groups and house fellowships. Release because they've been called by God to  do that, to be the minister. You might be called to proclaim the vision, but they're  the ones who called to do a lot of the ministry. As I mentioned in a former  session when I pastored for 15 years at church with over 2000 people. The  reality was 95% at least of all the ministry was done by the people. Well, what  happened? They actually did that. But see, here's an example of where he  listened Moses. Listened to his mentor. He listened to his father in law. Now we'll talk, as I said, much more about spiritual fathering, spiritual mothering. You  know, later on, I will say this. Jesus was a spiritual father to 12 men, yet the  three, Peter, James and John, and yet, really to John, and there are levels of  spiritual fathering and spiritual mothering. I John 2 tells us there are three kinds  of people in any church, whether it's a house church or a community church or  mega church, their spiritual children, spiritual young men and women, and  spiritual fathers or mothers. And how can you tell the difference with spiritual  children? Just know that they they're loved by their father. The Word of God, you know, is abiding in those who take the next step and they become young men or young women. They know the Word of God. But to be a spiritual father or  spiritual mother, to get that place, you need to have spiritual children. Now I'm  going to say this again and again because it is so important, and that is, there  some who claim to understand being a spiritual father, spiritual mother and but  they're really controlling people, rather than helping them and releasing them.  Here's how you can tell the difference between a functional father or a  dysfunctional father, whether that father or mother would be natural father or  mother, or whether. Their spiritual father. Mother, here's the difference. When we try to get our kids, or spiritual kids, to fulfill our vision, that's being dysfunctional  father. Mother, but when we find out what's inside them and help them fulfill what God's given them, that's being a functional father. Mother, we have four children. They're all very different. They have very different interests, and our job as  parents has been for many years, help each of them, and we're still in this  process with them, do all we can to not expect them to be who we are, do what  we do, or do with our brother or sister does, but help them fulfill what God has  given them, and that's what spiritual fathers and mothers do. So if you're called  to be a house church leader, you're called to be a spiritual Papa, called to be a  spiritual mama and help them fulfill the role that God's given. And that doesn't  mean people do not help you with the house church. I've often said my son is  now 32 when he was young, he mowed the lawn. It was my lawn, not his lawn. It was his responsibility. But I wasn't doing that just to get my lawn mowed. I do  that because he had to learn how to mow his own lawn in the future, preparing  him for the future. So that's why it is so important to understand the reality of  spiritual fathering and spiritual mothering and all that that would mean, mean to  us. So Moses, father in law, was really the one who helped him understand that 

in the beginning. And we see many, many, many, many examples of that  throughout the New Testament. And I'm just going to share just a few of these  with you, just if you turn with me to I Corinthians here, Paul talks clearly about  the importance of being a spiritual father, again, how church leaders must have  this heart. This is the heart behind it all. Being a spiritual father or spiritual  mother is a heart behind how we can start and maintain and reproduce house  churches. See, the reason we need to reproduce house churches is, I don't  know what it's like in your culture, but most cultures that I'm aware of, when  children grow up and get married, eventually they go out and have their own  home, they become responsible. I don't want my children living with me their  whole lives, until they're you know, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70. Why? Because they need  to have the responsibility and have their own homes. There are people that will  be in your house church, and they shouldn't be told, we can just stay here. But  no, eventually God gives you grace, you can start your own house church in the  same way we've been a spiritual mother father of you, you then can become a  spiritual father, mother to the next generation, and that's really the heart behind  why house churches need to grow and multiply. That's why one house church  alone is okay for a bit, but eventually it needs to multiply become a network of  house churches. And there's many ways this can work. I have friends who are  pastors of community churches or mega churches, and if they do and someone  wants to plant a house church, back in the day, when I was a pastor, I had  pastor friends and someone wanted to plant a house church, they say, oh, don't  do that. That's terrible. You're taking people from the church. Now, many of my  friends are saying, Oh, that's great, because you're fulfilling something in you.  And I tell my pastor friends, you know, if they want to go plant a house church,  you say, what if they fail? If they do, they can come back. We're spiritual fathers, spiritual mothers. We're helping them. You know, I have a pastor friend many  years ago. He's now with the Lord. He said, You know, when my son was 17, he  wanted to do some things I didn't think he should do but I decided I'm going to  let him go and do it, but I'll keep the relationship, and that's what I encourage  you to do, as people feel called by God to do something new, release them and  let them go and see what God does in their lives. And you say, what if they fail,  then be there to help pick them up in that whole process. Now, I Corinthians 4,  Paul talks clearly about the importance of being a spiritual father or spiritual  mother. In verse 14, he says, I'm not writing this to shame you, but to warn you  as my dear children, as I read this, listen to the amount of times that family  terms are used. Family language, okay, I just read my dear children, that's a  Family Term. He's even though you have 10,000 guardians or instructors or  teachers. In Christ, He says, You do not have many fathers. That's a family term. You know many fathers? Of course, it could be fathers or could be mothers.  They says, for in Christ Jesus, Paul said, I became your father. And through the  gospel, through Christ, I became your Daddy. I'm your father, 10,000 who will 

teach you. And I believe in teaching. I'm teaching right now. I believe in writing  books. I write books. But the heart cry of the God the Father, is to impart his  fatherhood into us. We become the mothers and fathers He's called us to be.  And then he says this. He says, I became your father through the gospel. So he  said, You have 10,000 will teach you. You need fathers. I became that in your  life. Now listen to what he says. He says this in verse 16. Therefore I urge you  imitate me. Do what I do. What did he do? He just said, I became a father to you through the Gospel. And then he said, For this reason, what reason that he  became a father? I'm sending to Timothy, my son. Now, Paul didn't have a  natural son. It was a spiritual son. He's, I'm sending you Timothy, my son whom I love. I love Timmy. He's my boy. I love him. So he said, I'm sending you Timothy, my son whom I love, who's faithful in the Lord. He'll remind you. Paul said of my  way of life in Christ. He didn't say, he'll remind you of all my sermons. He didn't  say, he'll reminder you of all my teaching I gave. He said he'll remind you of my  way of life and grace, how I've learned to walk with Jesus, how I learned to pay  my bills, how I learned to tell the truth, how I learned to pray, how I learned to  walk in the Word of God, how I've learned to be a person of integrity, my way of  life in Christ. And then he said, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in  every church. Paul said, Look, I teach this everywhere in every church, this.  Teach what teach that Paul was a father, he calls us to be fathers and mothers.  He said, I teach this everywhere I go, in every church. So it's important we get  this. I'm just touching on it now because later we'll take session after session on  I'll talk to you practically about how to become a spiritual father, spiritual mother.  What does it look like? How do you have spiritual fathers? The whole deal. I'll  tell you the whole deal. But right now, I just want you to know as we embark on  learning, step by step, how we lead the house, church, meetings, all these kind  of things, the heart behind it all is we love Jesus and we love being spiritual  fathers and spiritual mothers. And just so we're clear, you can never take the  place of the Heavenly Father. We are like spiritual midwives, pushing people up  to the Father. He is the Father in heaven. Holy is his name. And yet we are  spiritual sons, and we become spiritual fathers and spiritual daughters and  spiritual mothers, because that's what God's called us to do. And whether you  want to use that terminology or not, is up to you, but I believe it's important that  we understand how important this really, really is now, this is for everyone. We're all called to be spiritual fathers. You know, we're all called to be spiritual mothers but see, this is the emphasis, many times in the church, our emphasis is, get  more people in the building, get a bigger building, pay more money. And I see  what I look forward to in the future, and I think our church buildings, even though buildings are the church, I look forward to the days when the body of Christ  works so well together in the city that one church building is used seven days a  week. It's used by different groups. It's used by the group of house churches,  and they all come together, and they got me to come together once a month, or 

once every the month, and they rent the building, and maybe on a Saturday  morning or Thursday night, and there's another group uses another night,  another uses another night. That makes sense to me. But see, when we see the church is people, it's not a building, but it's people, it'll make all the difference in  how we continue to see our focus of our work had done in the kingdom of our  God. So that is that the God whom we serve is a father. The God whom we  serve has a son. His name is Jesus, and the God whom we serve is a God who  is imparting his fatherhood and his motherhood into our lives. Let me say one  more thing. My friend Ralph Neighbour wrote a book many years ago. It's called  The Seven Last Words of the church, and he said he's concerned that the  church today has a dependence on buildings rather than dependence on God  and relationships. And I quote him, here's what he says in his book. He said  during the time when the book is written, He said, churches in the United States  of America own an excess of $102 billion in land and buildings. He said, It's  okay. I'm not picking on my own denominations. Denomination, but he said,  using it as an example, he said my denomination not making sure what that is  doesn't matter. He said, will spend more than $15 million in one year simply to  pay the interest on church mortgages. This profit by bankers from churches  represents an investment which is several million dollars more than the amount  to be invested by the same churches in missions. So there's more money spent  to bankers because of our buildings, then is given to missions. So again, I'm not  saying it's wrong to have maybe take out a loan to the bank for building. I am  saying this. So let's get before God and say, Lord, what's the best way to use  your finance? I find house churches give so much to missions because they  don't have the overhead of a building, and they don't have the overhead in the  financial obligations that we often have with many of our large church buildings.  Again, if a large church building is being used for many kinds of ministries,  wonderful, but if we need be very careful being very wise as how we use our  money in the house church, people say are houses leaders paid? They usually  have a business or another job, and that's what they do. But at the same time,  they can be that I'm part of a house church right now. I'm not the leader of the  House church. How church leader is paid a day a week? What he does, then he  has a business and other streams of income. Most house church leaders would  have many streams of income. And as they as they grow, we find that God  blesses, and He blesses in many different ways. We don't know. Bless  financially. He'll bless with vision. But remember the heart cry of it all is we  become spiritual fathers and mothers to the next generation. 



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