Once while I was teaching a leadership-training seminar in Honolulu, Hawaii, I met a young man who had been sent out by his church a year before to plant a new church in a neighboring city. This church plant had reached many young people with the gospel—70 young people had given their lives to Christ within the past few weeks! I wanted to experience this dynamic ministry for myself, so the young pastor agreed to take me to a youth meeting before he dropped me off at the airport.
We jumped into his car and headed for the local school where the meeting was held. Inside, the young people were singing wholeheartedly, worshiping the Lord with their arms outstretched. They meant business with God! After a time of worship, everyone sat down and the lights flicked on. The youth pastor grabbed the microphone. “Everyone needs to be in a power huddle,” he charged the group of new believers. “It’s a place where you can get to know other kids, and there are people to help you out when you have a problem or a question about your life with God.”
After the meeting, the pastor explained the truth they had discovered. “We have so far reached 225 young people, mostly from unsaved homes, and we’ve found that these kids need relationships. So we started power huddles—small groups for young people. The young people in power huddles are growing in God, while the young people who are not involved are having a hard time.”
With the heart of a spiritual parent, the pastor revealed his releasing strategy: “I’ve told our youth pastor that he must plant a new church with these young people when he believes the time is right. I had to tell the church about the strategy, or I might be tempted to keep him here in order to help me build this church.”
This pastor had learned the value of reaching the next generation and empowering them to reproduce themselves. There is among us a whole new generation of pastors, small-group leaders and church planters who are enthusiastic and often unconventional. Though we parents may not always understand our children, we must always encourage them to dream big and allow God to use us to help them fulfill those dreams.
Paul the apostle said it clearly, “For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers…” Let’s become the spiritual fathers and mothers the Lord has called us to be and prepare the next generation for kingdom advancement.
(Much of this was taken from my newly released book, “The Cry for Spiritual Mothers and Fathers—The Next Generation Needs You to be a Spiritual Mentor.”)
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Thanks for demonstrating the Father’s heart in so many different ways over the years. Miss you all at DF. Praying for you all often.
Thanks for your kind words, Paul. Blessed to be your friend.
Larry
Larry,
Looking forward to hearing from you on Saturday at ECC. Below was generated from discussion at our most recent men’s breakfast. A perspective that destroying the family as God designed is propagated by government/corporate design.
Blessings,
Barry Weaver
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Ralph,
Thanks for your leadership this morning in leading us in the word and discussion. More thoughts below .
This really supports the conversation I have had with elected officials and community leaders. I will ask “What is the enemy of the state?” after a speechless pause I will say “A father, mother and children in a self sustaining, self replicating, self inculcating unit of society.” Why do you say that they ask. My response “Look at any state budget look at the 3 top expenditures what are they Corrections, Health and Human Services and Education. Lets look at the first two line items. What does the growth of, the burgeoning of, the exponential expansion of, all the salaries, the college payments, the pension payments, the judges, prisons, the lawyers etc depend upon. The disintegration and dysfunction of the family unit. Then the question begs is it by accident or by design?”
Who is the modern day magician can you figure it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRc2FioRwHM ManWomanMyth – Family – Fatherlessness – part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQDaD_mLfT8 part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2VLDqO2q1Q part 3
cut and paste above if needed.
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.� � Edward Bernays, 1928, pg.1, Propaganda
Aldous Huxley, on the 30th anniversary of his own seminal 1931 allegorical novel Brave New World, made the following dreadful observations in the very opening segment of his talk on the Ultimate Revolution upon which mankind and modernity are perilously perched:
�You can do everything with bayonets except sit on them! If you are going to control any population for any length of time you must have some measure of consent. It�s exceedingly difficult to see how pure terrorism can function indefinitely. It can function for a fairly long time, but I think sooner or later you have to bring in an element of persuasion. An element of getting people to consent to what is happening to them. Well, it seems to me that the nature of the Ultimate Revolution with which we are now faced is precisely this: that we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy who have always existed and presumably always will exist, to get people actually to love their servitude! This is the, it seems to me the ultimate in malevolent revolution shall we say.� � Aldous Huxley, 1962 speech at UC Berkeley. minute 4:06
Theme for discussion: Recognizing and resisting the work of the enemy.
Acts 13
9 Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas and said,
10“You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord? 11 Now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind for a time, not even able to see the light of the sun.”
Immediately mist and darkness came over him, and he groped about, seeking someone to lead him by the hand. 12When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord
James 4
4You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God?
Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
5Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us#
4:5 Or that the spirit he caused to dwell in us envies intensely; or that the Spirit he caused to dwell in us longs jealously?
6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud
but shows favor to the humble.”
7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded
Genesis 20 And praise be to God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.”
. 1 Sam 24
19When a man finds his enemy, does he let him get away unharmed?
Psalm 8
2 Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger
1 Cor 15
25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death
The tool of the enemy is the lie. It is our duty as Christian men to spread the truth
James 5
19 My brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, 20 remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins.
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Thanks, Barry. I look forward to being with you at ECC this weekend.
Larry