A number of people have speculated on how senseless it is for vandalism, theft, and destruction of property to occur, given these structures have often been instrumental for the betterment and edification of society.
And they often hurl observations like
“Real smart of you to destroy your own community.”
“How stupid can you be to loot and pillage and destroy that which is meant to help you?”
And I ask the following question:
“What real recourse do these men and women have?”
We have militarized the police, made certain of them untrustworthy, so much so that we cannot breath.
And we have made it so they cannot petition the government for a redress of greivances, especially in light of terrorist attacks.
What other recourse do they have?
If you wound an animal, it is going to write and destroy the nearest vulnerable thing, regardless of the sense it makes.
If you treat someone or a group of someones as totally subject to your whims, you should not be surprised when they engage in behavior that does not make sense.
A slave does not believe it has property, rights, an inheritance, a birthright, or a home.
Jack Frost said that each of us would either live like we have a home, or we would live like we do not have a home.
Gang, these people who are responding in this way in an unhealthy way are acting as if they do not have a home.
Just because the wars are over does not mean we have been delivered from slavery and our chains internally.
We have to lean, not into a flesh-and-blood father for freedom, but into our Heavenly Father for freedom. And we need to be damn sure we are helping those who are bound in a mindset of slavery to a place of freedom in the Father’s affectionate embrace.
Carlene didn’t entitle this one, but I imagine something like the above might be somewhat apropos.
She writes:
Just read this: “God taught me that I needed to come to Him as a child. Then I needed to grow up.”
I began to ponder this and loved the conclusion I came to. These two stages are exactly how God loves to intersect with our lives.
Coming to Him as simply as a child allows you to come to Him as you are – (PRESENT).
Growing up in Him deals with where you’re going (FUTURE).
Don’t you see? God doesn’t deal with you based on your PAST. All that needed to be said about that aspect of your life – was said at a place called Calvary. All you need to know about your past is it’s covered by the blood.
From here on out all God is concentrating on and committed to intensely is: 1) where you’re at, and 2) where you’re going.
Glory to God in the Highest.
~11/8/13 Author: Carlene “CeCe” Prince
Wow….just, wow. On-point at so many levels. This might be one dynamic that is the issue in many places in the church. The use of immaturity or child’s mentality and simplicity as an reason to shy away from deeper responsiblities of the kingdom.
First we come to him, and then we mature, whatever that looks like.
His deep calls us deeper (Ephesians 3:18).
Dive, dive…
Matt. 13:12 For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
Matt. 21:43 ¶ Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.
Matt. 25:29 For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.
What I am going to say is doubtless going to cause some who view spiritual fathering as the great takeaway in this generation of the church to be greatly disappointed.
I have a spiritual father.
The sad thing, is that, I have always had him, and he was always available.
So, let me explain below.
A FATHERLESS GENERATION THAT NEEDS A FATHER
The fact remains: We have a generation of unfathered men and woman, and it has been this way for decades. I don’t need to cite stats because many of y’all already know them.
In an attempt to stave off this culture, many believers in our generation, Jew and non-Jew, have affirmed the following broken model.
THE BROKEN MODEL
“I don’t have a father. I will ask or beg this or that person to father me or mother me. That person agrees to it.”
And we blissfully proceed down a path to paradise, because, now after all, we have a spiritual father.
THE BAD EXPECTATIONS AND THE NEGATIVE OUTFLOW
What we didn’t explain or understand is that there are these sets of expectations that we bring to the table in a fathering relationship. The “father” has one set of expectations, and the “son” has another set of expectations.
The problem arises when we insert the broken model of fathering that we call “covering” into these relationships. This perverse teaching flows from the spirit of antichrist, and I will cover that in another post.
And what is missing from a lot of these fathering relationships, which I will cover in this post, is the foundation and impetus for fathering relationships: the presence and acknowledgement of the one thing that, as a believer, you and I already have: access to and a relationship with a perfect, loving heavenly Father. 11354
MY INITIATION INTO FATHERING
As a matter of fact, when I became a follower of Jesus, back in 1984, it was precisely in the context of a fathering/filial relationship.
Jesus showed up in my bedroom (whether it was a dream or an open vision that detail is fuzzy to me). He was wearing a plain linen robe and that was pretty much it. Very simple. There was no mistaking who this was. He then asked me, “what do you want?”
Hello, blank check.
Solomon, son of David.
And I can still remember the words falling out of my mouth, though I can tell you to this day, that those words did not come from a wound or any place of my soul; they were just the most logical words I ever spoke. And because of the simplicity and non-woundedness of them, I am believe they came from my spirit.
“I want a godfather.”
And His response, which I won’t easily forget was this:
“I will be your G-dfather.”
From that moment, I was clearly able to articulate that Jesus was the Son of G-d. I was able to say He was the Son, but I was not able to clearly articulate why. In short, this was when I was saved.
So for those of you that like to spit and say, “there is no way, because this or that is how you get saved and it works for everybody”, I can only respond as a Mercy would respond:
“That. So. Doesn’t. Work. For. Me.”
Yes, I am not a Mercy, but I had a whole host of unusual experiences that happened to me that have some Mercy flavor.
See, some people cannot understand that not everybody who becomes a Christian does so through saying a sinner’s prayer at an altar with someone else.
Now, do I have an awareness of sin? Yeah. I grew into that awareness, pretty quickly, and the repentance that followed, I also grew into.
THE IMPETUS AND REVELATION OF WHAT I WAS GIVEN IN JESUS’ INVITATION
But what it took for me to really grasp the idea of the Fatherhood of G-d was a series of very painful, broken relationships that happened after I left the Methodist Church for college. I hooked up with a CP (Classical Pentecostal) Denomination while in college and as many people in the late 1990’s got sucked into a perversion of the fivefold ministry and the “covering” nonsense, and the garbage that came with that. And it came at a high price to the end that I spent 14 years trapped in a combination of a Philistine Curse, the Negative 5th Head of Leviathan (where people could not hear my heart rightly), the Mesmerizing Spirit, and a number of negative Spiritual Structures.
During those years, a set of spiritual structures was set in place by my spiritual mother at the time that caused other people to see me as “crazy” and “unstable”. Those came in the form of a straitjacket in the spiritual realm and sedatives that were pumped into me and labels.
And that nonsense was only broken after I rejected the “spiritual parents” that parented by control, rejected that Mesmerizing Spirit, understanding the one thing I needed was something I already had: namely, that I already have a Father (many joyous thanks to Sandy Landry for helping me there), and breaking up the spiritual structures that affected me deeply (thank you, Megan Caldecourt for the language to explain what those things were).
TO THOSE WHO HAVE…
Today, here is what I know through principle. We don’t need spiritual parents.
Yeah, I will let that bomb explode and then expand on it.
We do not need to go to anyone and beg them to father or mother us.
Now, let’s expand on this.
We started this walk with Jesus as a personal relationship. We love to emphasize, in Protestant Christianity, the notion of “personal relationship with Jesus.”
But, more often than not, we reject it in practice. We have this idea that Jesus saved us, but we are often not interested in cultivating the relationship into a relationship. Many times, we are not willing that He should influence the stuff of our Monday through Saturday reality. We don’t want Him in our job, or marriage, our parenting, our errands, our chores, our lawnmowing, our feeding the birds, our our Facebooking.
And on that last point, so Facebook turns to Faceb****. And so much of our life remains much the same as it did before we met Jesus, because we don’t let that relationship impact our lives.
The passages above say it clearly. If you have, more will be given, but if you don’t have, then what you do have will be taken from you.
Hey, gang of Christians, you have been given a personal Father already. He is spiritual. He lacks no resources to parent you, and yet you are running after this person or that person begging him or her to father you or mother you, when Father wants to be your first spiritual father and your first place of dumping and your first place of crying and your first counselor.
THE REST OF MY PERSONAL STORY
When I hunted for a spiritual father and mother, the relationship with the one Father I had stagnated. Everything was taken away and devoured in many areas.
But when I recognized that I had Him as a Father, then He added to that package some precious people as fathers and mothers, not to suck them dry, but to get some other perspective.
He added and grew the connection between me and Arthur Burk (who is the closest thing I have to a good male counselor/mentor/father type person in the flesh, and the expectations that are there are in the context of Matthew 6:33). Arthur talks honestly and openly about stuff, and there is more of a two way thing that happens there. It’s healthy, at least as how I see it. I act as a son of the Heavenly Father, and hunt for my own resources, and when I have a nut that I can’t crack on my own, I ping Arthur, who says “have you checked over here or here”. And back to tooling I go. Because I am first and foremost a son of G-d.
And the Father also grew the connection between me and Sandy Landry. There is a precious bond that has multiplied there, that is without words. She has…spoken with dignity to me and helped me to receive of the Father’s embrace such that I could become a father myself.
And I am growing into a place where I am able to father others.
THE PUNCHLINE
If we don’t act like we have, then what we do have will be devoured. But if we as believers stop and recognize that we have a Father already, and EMBRACE HIM HAS OUR FIRST AND PRIMARY FATHER, then He will begin to add other things to us.
But the key is that we stop acting like we are slaves and servants, and embrace our identity as His sons. “For we are His offspring” (Acts 17:28).
In Him, not in others, we live and move and are (Acts 17:28).
And we are His workmanship, not the workmanship of another human being (Ephesians 2:10).
Gang, you already have a Father, and He is available.
Until you can receive that Father, you need to stop chasing after this or that person to parent you. And recall that Malachi 4:6 says that in order for someone to father you, their heart has to first be turned toward you. It’s not your begging that makes someone a father or a mother. It’s their connecting with you first. Begging is a sign of the orphan spirit, that can only be displaced.
And that can only have it’s right perspective IF you first have the right Father in the first place. And what better Father can G-d give you than He Himself?
And if Father gives you no-one for a season or permanently, so that He can show you how He directly fathers you, then you might have to go without a human being for a season, so that Father can show you how to receive directly from him.
What does He lack with which to father you?
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