Video Transcript: The Cry For Spiritual Fathers and Mothers: Chapter 15 The Best Is Yet to Come
It's been a great joy for me to be with you for these, these 30, all these different teachings throughout you know this course, and I, you know these things are so dear to my heart. Being a spiritual father or mother, you see in the next generation, experience God, and experience the family of God and experience house church ministry and developing house churches and developing a vision that God has placed in your heart, just an amazing thing. And so I've just been blessed to be with you be part of this. And I am convinced we live the most exciting generation ever. I studied revivals for many years. And you know, like I mentioned before, my second favorite all time book is revival lectures by Charles Finney, big, big book on , revival common see God move in, even as I've traveled nation to nation seeing God move in nations of the world, just been an amazing blessing to see what he's doing today. But you know, the best is yet to come. He's going to pour out his Spirit in all flesh. Sons and daughters will prophesy. Young men with dream dreams. Old men will see visions. He can do that in the days we live in. And he's going to use you as a part of that. You got a key role in what God will do in his end time harvest. And I look forward to house churches all springing up all over the world, micro churches, organic churches, simple churches. Call them whatever you want, where people don't have to be bound to using a building. They can simply use their home, or they can use the marketplace. They can use making use, you know, just some kind of a an extra room in a business, or whatever. But, but these churches will spring up right alongside church buildings, where people, they're using buildings for the glory of God, and then even mega churches all working together, walking together, God, bringing through unity, blessing in cities of the world. You know, the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. You know, we read that in the book of Habakkuk. It will happen, and we're going to see that happen. But as we obey Him, become spiritual fathers and mothers and see these new churches released. I want to read your scripture and closing today from Mark 10:29-30, says, I tell you the truth. Jesus replied, see, because I'm convinced the best is yet to come. Listen this. I tell you the truth and and this has to do with making a sacrifice. There is a sacrifice to obey the Lord in these days and do what he's called us to do. He's I tell you the truth, no one has left home or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for me and the gospel, he says, but will, but will fail, to receive 100 times. In other words, as we obey Him, we make some sacrifices, he said, will receive 100 times as much in this present age, I can say I knew I have get I'd give up a lot of friends. I mean, I'm again now my mid 60s, and I look back on my life, give up a lot of things I could have done. I mean, I could have been involved in the business of my father. I was the only son of the family. I had to give that up because I was called to do. I was doing to see Kingdom expansion. But I am so grateful to God, so grateful God, to God, because today God has given back, and the Scripture says, gives it back this way 100 times in this present age, homes, brothers,
sisters, mothers, children, fields and with them, persecutions, there's been some hard times. There might still be hard times to come, he said, In the end, in the age to come eternal life, and many who are first will be last, and the last will be first. We live in very, very exciting times. I just want you to know there's a call of God in your life. I'm gonna encourage you to be open, to be vulnerable to as you train the next generation. And regardless of how young you are, how old you are, there's still a call of God in your life. You might be much older than I am. I would you know, there's still best days ahead for you to obey God. In fact, I have found that the 60s is the most productive years of your life. I just read recently, the 70s is the second most productive, the 50s is the third most productive, and so the best is yet to come for us, but I just want you to know that we do all make mistakes. I we've made lots of mistakes. In this book that we use for training our leaders called helping you build house churches, which really has to do with building house fellowships, we have listed 36 major mistakes that we made. Now I don't have time to give them all, but I always mention a few in closing, so you don't have to make the same mistakes. One of the mistakes we made is whenever we didn't give clear leadership, there's times when I began to doubt myself. Am I really called to give leadership? I backed off, and rather than taking the responsibility that God gave me and insecurity, I thought, Well, I think other people know better than I do, and every time I did that, I realized I made a mistake. Another mistake is when I stopped training. That's why I love this school. CLI, so I love the dove school, dove leadership ministry school. We're training leaders for another generation, and whenever we stop training, I found we no longer saw people with the fire of God reaching people for Christ. Helping people grow. That simply stopped happening. At least it subsided, because we need constant training. I found another another problem was compromising the God given vision. See, you're doing what you because God called you. You're not doing because somebody talked you into it. And I said it before, I'll say it again. If someone talks you into it, somebody else can talk to you out of it. You're doing because God's called you Galatians 1, 1:10, Paul says I'm doing what I'm doing. He's not doing it for a man. I'm doing because I'm called by Jesus Christ. And that's important that we understand that, and that's we can't compromise on the vision that God's given us. And there's times that I've exalted certain visions more than Jesus. It's all about Jesus. These are mistakes that we made. I made and we made over the years. You have to make. This is the same mistakes. There's times I get into controlling people more than releasing people. I remember as a pastor with somebody in House Fellowship, and, you know, some people fit in one house fellowship and then another one. People like pieces of puzzle, some fit, and some simply do not. And we, had a couple came to me with a good heart, and they said, we feel like we should be in another House Fellowship. I was a young leader in those days, learning how to be an apostolic leader. And I remember I talked to one of our other leaders, and our
leaders said, no, they need to stay where they're at. And I thought, okay, then you say, I get back to you need to stay. They left our church, they left that house fellowship. They went to another church. Years later, I saw them, God convicted me that rather than helping them, I was controlling them. They had been better off planted at a place they could bloom. And I said, Will you please forgive me? And I've done a lot of asking forgiveness over the last 50 years. And they were so gracious and and they forgave me another area of control where somebody is involved in a House Fellowship over here, but they lived in another town or city. And I said, No, if you live in this town, you should go to this House Fellowship. That was a huge mistake, because the church is not built by geography. It's built by relationship. You know what happened with people? I think, why waste all your gas driving from this town to this town? The truth is, they really should have been in this other town, that's where they had relationship. And then when they start a House Fellowship, they can go back to their own town, and they can do it back in their own town, because God called them not because they felt coerced, or because they felt like someone's forcing them to do that. A couple other mistakes that we made was there's a time I thought everyone could be a primary leader. Everyone could start a House Fellowship. Everyone could start a house church. And realize that people are wired differently. God makes us all different. Some are introverts, some are extroverts. You know, some have certain giftings, and others of other giftings. And I realize that some people we just need to find out what's in the heart was God called them to do and just help them fulfill that. They might always be supportive leaders, and that can be a great blessing. But friends who were a couple that I thought, boy, they should be leaders, they said, No, we're called to be supportive leaders. And for years, they were. One day they said, We're called to start our own group. And they started their own group, but they did because God called them that, because we were somehow coercing them into doing that. Another thing I learned there was a mistake. There's times I would go to a conference, I'd read a book, I go to a seminar, visit the church, and I see somebody doing something, I try to mimic that and copy that. But I realized that they were that the reason I was doing as I saw the results. But the reality was I didn't see the values and real things that were happening behind the scenes. So you don't copy message from others unless you understand their values. You understand why do they do what they're doing? And you know, you've heard me say it many times, but I found that when we didn't have spiritual followers in our lives, and I did, I thought we're going to be fine, because God was blessing us. We were growing, and God seemed to be blessing, and he was, but I didn't have a spiritual father. I had no one to turn to when things got rough. There was no one to turn to. And I want you to know that God wants you knowing to be a spiritual mother father, but to be connected to those who give you accountability in spiritual fathers and mothers who can also help you in the same way. Now
probably the last thing that I want to share with you is I found there were times I made assumptions and I just assumed that everybody understood and I didn't communicate enough. Don't be afraid of over communicating. We communicate. Communicate. We communicate, whether it's with our wives and families, whether it's in the house church we're planting, whether it's with the Ministry we're involved with, but God's called us, by His grace to be communicators and learn how to communicate and recognize different people, appreciate different kinds of communication. I'm a writer, so I write book. That's one way I communicate. I'm a speaker, and I do it that way too. For some people, you know, their social media communicators, there. They have different kinds of communication, different ways that God speaks to them, and people speak to them in ways that they understand and be as they're learning how to communicate properly. So may God bless you with abundance, and I want to pray blessing over you and all that God has for you in the future. Because remember the. Best is yet to come in your life and my life and what God is doing around the world. We live in troubled times. In many nations, which every nation I go to, there's a sense that we're being it's a troubling time. Today, people say, what's going to happen? I'll tell you what's going to happen. There's a kingdom that cannot be shaken. And the Bible talks about in Hebrews 12, it's the kingdom of God that you and I are called to. So I want to pray a blessing over you that you would fulfill the purpose of God for your life, Father in Jesus name. I thank you for the men and women of God who've listened, Lord God to this training, this teaching. I pray that there's that the impartation we were deep into their spirits, and Lord, I pray to use them powerfully and mightily in ways that would just blow their minds, because you live strong in them. May there be a deep intimacy with the Father, intimacy with you and Lord, may they experience your power, your grace, your blessing, your wholeness, your healing and your reproduction and multiplication in the lives and through through their their lives as you work through them and when they stand before the Lord, may each of us stand with a spiritual sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters, as far as the eye can see, and Lord God, we are believing together for multiplied 1000s and millions of new wineskins, new churches in this generation that will take care of the harvest is coming as you pour out Your Spirit in these days we thank you in Jesus name amen and amen, God bless you.