I want to read again from Malachi 4:5-6. See, I'll send you the prophet Elijah,  and we're going to talk about this, Elijah, part of this in just a moment, I see, I  send you the prophet Elijah, before the great and dreadful day the Lord comes.  So the Lord said, I'm going to send the spirit of Elijah before he comes back and something's going to happen, and he says he'll turn the hearts of the fathers to  the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers, or else I'll come and  strike the land with a curse. In our last session, we talked about how there's this  curse of fatherlessness and motherlessness, both naturally and spiritually and in the nations of the world. It's in the churches all over, and God says, I'm going to  change that. Before I come back, he says, I'm going to send you the prophet  Elijah. Before the Great and dreadful day of the Lord, he'll turn the hearts of the  fathers to the children and the children to the fathers. Now, what's the deal with  Elijah? Let me tell you about Elijah. Elijah is one of my favorite prophets. I mean, he's a powerful guy. He saw a fire come out of heaven. You remember that and  burned up the sacrifice. I mean, he ran, he ran faster than the king's chariot. He  was amazing. Jezebel didn't like him, and she's always trying to find him. And I  love the story of Elijah. But Elijah, later in life, became very depressed. In fact, in I Kings, you see how that he was just going through this deep, deep, deep  water, so to speak. I Kings 19 in the deep waters he went through, as he went  through depression, it appears like, and he's in a cave. He's in this cave in the  Lord speaks to him and says, Elijah, what are you doing? And of course, he was depressed because all the issues with Jezebel and all these things. And the  Lord said, What are you doing? And and he grumbled back to God, and so I'm  the only one left. And that wasn't true, because, you know, when you get  depressed, you don't think straight. He wasn't thinking straight. Then the Lord  spoke to him. And Lord spoke to him, it wasn't, you know, in thunder and  lightning, it was through this still, small voice in I Kings 19, you know, the Lord  said, the Lord said, walk out of this cave. I'm paraphrasing this, he said, and go  find Elisha. And he mentioned a few others also, but we want to focus on the  Elisha part of it, find Elisha, this younger prophet, and train him to take your  place. So he did that. He walked, literally, walked out, and he went and found  Elisha. And in fact, what he did is he took his mantle. I'll use my coat as an  example. He took his mantle, and he is going to throw it on Elijah, Elisha, the  young man. Elisha burned his bridges, so to speak. You know the sacrifice, you  know, he got rid of the oxen and killed the oxen and and the plow, and he  followed Elijah from that day on. Now you pick up this story in II Kings 2, and  you have Elijah and Elisha there are kind of walking along together one day, and Elijah looked at Elisha, the younger man. And he said, What do you want from  me? And Elisha said, I want a double portion of your spirit. In other words, I want twice as much of God as you have. And Elijah said, you ask a hard thing. But he said, If you see me when I go, you stay in step with me. You get the double  portion. So from that moment on, whenever you saw Elijah, you saw Elisha 

hanging on, because he wanted to double portion. He wanted, yeah, he saw the power of God flowing through Elijah. He said, I want that. I want to, I want a  double portion. Well, I think you know what happened. They came to the Jordan  River and and you know Elijah, you know he would Elijah where it was. He  came. Let me backtrack just for a minute. So they're walking along one day, and all once Elijah is gone, that chariot of fire comes, and the whirlwind Elijah's  going. And when he's gone, he drops his mantle. And so Elisha, the young man,  reaches down, pulls it the mantle. Has his mantle, his, you know, his, his  anointing his call, has, has the mantle of his spiritual father, and it's interesting  what he says. He didn't say, Oh My Prophet, my prophet. He didn't say, oh my  pastor, my pastor. He said, My father, my father. Because Elijah and become a  father in the Lord to Elisha, and you count the miracles he had. Elisha had twice  as many miracles as Elijah had. He got the double portion. Like the last miracle,  do count them, was after you pass away, there's still a power of God was in his  bones who dropped the man in his grave, if you remember any, he came up, he  came up with that scary thing, and this guy came back to life. But he said, This  the power of God in his life. You know, after he picked up the mantle, so he went to the Jordan River, and he threw it down in the name of the Lord God, the God  of Elijah. And the waters parted. They all want. All the prophets who were in a  school of Prophet said, Wow, the Spirit of God that was on Elijah is on Elisha.  Amazing, amazing story. Now here is the moral of the story. Here's what we got  to get. This God's desire is whatever he's given you. His grace is anointing, his  power, whatever that you can have spiritual sons and daughters who have a  double portion, they can go twice as far in God as you could ever go. I've been  blessed to experience that. Remember, I'm from Pennsylvania, Lancaster  County, Pennsylvania. I'm a former chicken farmer. That's who I am. But I've  been blessed to work with some spiritual sons in my life who's much more  anointed than I am. I'll give you just one example. There's many. There are other examples. I'll give you one. My friend Ibram Ramandi, that I talked about before, who came from Kenya, has seen church planting movements throughout East  Africa. You know, whenever in the evening news in the nation of Kenya, if they  need someone to speak for the church, he's so well known, he's a person that's  often on each person that many times has been on the evening news speaking  for the church about whatever's going on in government. I give you many  examples of this. This is how God used him in his life. But it's really interesting,  very, very interesting. Is this, I mean, he's known presidents. He's known those  in high places, in his government, in Kenya. Now here's the bottom line, the  presidents in my life, whether it's George W Bush, President Barack Obama,  President Donald Trump. They don't know me at all. They never heard of me.  But see someone who's been a close friend and spiritual son to me, has a  double portion, has a double anointing. So I want you to know this is so  powerful. That's it, the blessing of house church. Because what you're doing, 

you're training leaders who can go twice as far as you can ever go. And then  even get more excited is this, and as I mentioned in one of the other classes  that a few weeks ago, I was in a place called Kadawa village, where it's a whole  Village Transformed 10,000 a village, a village was supposed to people. All first  have died by this point. But today, you know, you see God doing all these  amazing things, and few people, a few 1000 people now, are part of this, this  work as they start house fellowships all over the area, starting other kinds of  community, churches. It's amazing. But see, Hazben Adindo is a spiritual son  to my friend, even more money, he's like a grandson. It's interesting when I  when I go to Africa and I speak, they call me a Babu. That's Swahili. First time  that I heard that, I thought they said baboon, baboon. We're not gonna give you  bananas, not that it means reverend grandfather. You see, we're talking about  building family and the blessing of understanding the show you scripture after  scripture after scripture after scripture that bears this out. The blessing of all this  is that we are called by God to be spiritual fathers and mothers to another  generation, and let's believe God that they'll have a double portion. So whatever God's given you, believe God for a double portion, a double anointing on the  next generation. Now let's look again at a scripture we read just briefly a few  sessions ago, but I want to really dig into this with you, and that is I Corinthians  4:14, 15, 16, and 17. Now again, God is a father. He has a family. Jesus is his  son. God uses family language, and this family language all over the Bible. So  house church is a family. We're talking family life. We gotta reorient our minds.  We're so used to building programs and building systems, it's about family. It's  about the people of God being family, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters. Now  look at this, and I even encourage you in your Bibles, maybe circle the words  that are family words. As I read this I Corinthians 4:14, I'm not writing this to  shame you, but to warn you, as my dear children, I have circled there were  children. Even though you have 10,000 guardians, instructors, teachers. In  Christ, you do not have many fathers. I've circled the word fathers for Christ,  Jesus, I became your father. There it is again. Became your father through the  gospel. So Paul says, you needed fathers. Didn't have them. You have 10,000  instructors but he said. He said, You need fathers. I became a father to you in  the Lord obviously, they said, Therefore, I urge you to imitate me. Do what I do.  Become a father. Become a mother. He says, For this reason. What reason?  Because he became a father for this reason, I'm sending you Timothy, my son,  whom I love. He said, I love Timothy. He's my boy. I want you to know that the  people God placed in your life and in your house, church them. Give you this  amazing love for them. See me. I love these guys. They are my family. You  know, just this week with them, house church leaders and tell how much they  love the people in the church, and even though they're going through issues of  problems that may we love these people, and that's what this is all about. Then  he said, I'm gonna send you Timothy, my son now, Paul, as far as we know 

wasn't even married. Paul did not have children naturally but he did have  children spiritually. And so he says, Therefore, he says, I'm going to send you  Timothy, my son. And he said him, I love whom I love. I love Timmy. And so  again, this is love we have for the people that God's calls to serve. Then he said, and he's faithful in the Lord. So you have Paul, and one of his spiritual sons was Timothy. He's going to send him to Corinth, to the believers there, and they're  going to represent him. And then he said he will remind you of my way of life in  Christ. He didn't say he'll remind you of my Bible study. Mind you my book, my  you my epistles. He said he'll remind you of my way of life and grace. He'll  remind you of how I've learned to walk with Jesus, how I've learned to pray, he  knows me, how I've learned to treat people however, to be a man of integrity,  how learn to balance my checkbook, or whatever it is we're talking about real life here. Then He says he'll remind you my way of life in Christ, Jesus, which  agrees with what I teach everywhere, in every church. So Timothy was one of  his sons. Now he says, I teach this everywhere, in every church. This is no this  is just some side teaching. I teach this everywhere. Teach what? They were  called to be fathers. We call to be mothers. We call them spiritual sons and  daughters. Obviously, as we learn from Malachi, we can believe they'll have a  double portion. Many men will have a double portion. So he says, Imitate me, do what I do. So God's called us to make spiritual investments and people and  house church is just amazing. Upper. an amazing opportunity to do this,  because it's relational church in relational Christianity. So what is God's will for  you and for me? Well, first of all is to become a spiritual parent, become a  spiritual mom, become a spiritual dad. If these two relationships, love the Lord  your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, we love Jesus and love  your neighbor as yourself, is bringing those into our lives, that God's brought a  God has placed in our lives now. So number one is to become a spiritual parent, and then he wants to also give us spiritual parents, because spiritual parents will help us find our identity. In Christ and He Paul simply saying it wasn't working  like that properly in Corinth, he's talking them. He's explained to them that they  need to become a spiritual parents that themselves. Now, few years ago, I was  in Pilanesberg Park, game Park in South Africa, and Pilanesberg Park, they had  this big problem. It was probably about 15 years earlier, and the problem was  their animals are being killed, and they couldn't figure out why they were being  killed. And so they took these cameras, and they set these cameras up, and so  they can see what's going on. And they found there these young bull elephants.  They were just killing. I mean, listen, I saw some of these elephants when I was  there. They're now older than they were back when this happened. But they  were, they were literally killing everything. It is just killing, you know, other  animals, and it was crazy. I mean, these elephant they pulled trees out of the  ground. They were literally hurling their debris and stones at these animals. It  was just the craziest thing. And they say we've never heard of this before. How 

could this happen? So they checked back in their in their history books, and they realized that in the past, there were no elephants in this park. They there's a  larger Park in South Africa called Kruger National Park. So they had brought  some young bull elephants over to this park, and these elephants were released in the park without having the grandpa and the grandma and the father of other  elephants there to help guide them. And they were just going crazy. I guess their testosterone level got too high. They're just going crazy and doing crazy things.  So in the midst of that, is, what do we do? So they got this idea while they get a  few big old grandpa elephants, pop elephants, or mom elephants, and bring  them over to the park and see what happens. And it was amazing when they  brought those to the park and they had their TV cameras rolling, the video  cameras rolling. It was the most amazing thing. This is on TV all over the world.  Is on just major, you know, major networks had this on, and what happened was they noticed that whenever the young elephant started these stupid, crazy  things, the big old elephants would just walk up or next to them. And you know,  they somehow snap into attention. And you know, when they did the TV  interviewing that, and they're interviewing the park rangers, they said, You  mean, you mean they needed, they needed fathers? He said, Yes. He said,  these elephants needed parents. A father's mother. They needed role models.  And that's why our God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He's the God  of the generations. He's the God who wishes to recognize and honor each  generation. In fact, he's a God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. There's  four, four generations. And yes, did they do it? Right? No, they made mistakes.  But there's a sense of generational connection, and that's why, whether it's  chronological age or just understanding in the body of Christ, in our house  church or House Fellowship, so wherever that's cause to build that we're  realizing we're. To be spiritual father, spiritual mothers, and help a younger  generation, younger Lord, help them fulfill what God's given them, to be able to  guide them and help them keep them for doing really crazy things and doing  really stupid things in that whole process. Now, why is this important? Because  the Bible says God says in II Corinthians 6:18, I'll be a father to you, and you'll  be my sons and daughter, says the Lord Almighty. I mean family language is all  over the New Testament, and I'll give what I'll give one more example, and that  is, many in our generation have a warped understanding of what needs to be a  father mother by oldest daughter, Katrina, was in a Bible school in New Zealand, and every Friday night they went to Queen Street in Auckland, New Zealand,  and ministered to prostitutes. My daughter, Katrina, told me she's a dad. She  said I was ministering to this beautiful girl. She was a prostitute, and she was  nice girl, you know, as far as to be able to call the conversation with her and  she's I said to her, she said, you know, she said, I want you to know that Jesus  really loves you. And this girl had never heard that. Said, Really, that's amazing.  She said, Oh yes. She said, My daughter said, the God I serve is like a father. 

And she said, immediately, when she said, like a father, she said, the girl just  kind of backed off. Said, I want nothing to do with that God was because her  father had abused her and hurt her and see we are called to be a model for the  next generation, a model and maybe you've had a horrendous background and  you've been abused and you've been hurt, God wants to heal you and bring  wholeness into your life so you can be the father, the mother to the next  generation that helps them fulfill all the destiny that God has for them 



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