Ever-increasing Multiplication

After ministering at a church in Dallas, Texas, a young man holding a Bible ran up to me and said, “My folks are not Christians, but recently I opened this Bible I found lying on the coffee table. After reading in it, I realized I needed Jesus. I gave my life to Christ and then drove around looking for a church family. I found a church building near where I live and walked in.

The first person to greet me was a young lady. After telling her my story, she called her father over and said, “Tell my dad what you told me.”

The dad listened to my testimony and examined the Bible I held in my hands. “Fifteen years ago,” he said, “I witnessed to a man I served with in the military. He declined to receive the Lord but agreed to take the Bible you are holding. The man I witnessed to was your father!’”

The young Texan continued his story. He was now engaged to marry the young lady he had met at the church, and they were both excited about serving as small-group leaders.

When we obey the Lord and speak truth with love into the life of another, we may be amazed at how the Lord uses this step of obedience.

God has called all of us to become spiritual fathers and mothers in our generation. With this comes the expectation that our spiritual children will have their own spiritual children who will have even more spiritual children, thus providing ever-increasing multiplication.

No matter what you do—whether you are a housewife, a student, a worker in a factory, a pastor of a church, a missionary or the head of a large corporation—you have the divine blessing and responsibility to birth spiritual children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. You are called to impart to others the rich inheritance God has promised.

I like how Abraham responded when the Lord showed him the stars in the heaven and promised him descendants as numerous as the stars: “And [Abraham] believed in the Lord” (Genesis 15:6). Just as Abraham believed the Lord for His inheritance, we, too, need to “believe in the Lord” for many spiritual children. Although it may not happen overnight, we will birth spiritual children when we trust in God’s faithfulness and obey our calling to spiritual parenting.

(Much of this was taken from my new book, “The Cry for Spiritual Mothers and Fathers—The Next Generation Needs You to be a Spiritual Mentor,” scheduled to be released by Regal Books at the end of February).