Paths to Dwell In

 I have had at least three significant spiritual fathers in my life.

Sam Gilpin was the first who led me to the Lord and took me through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. This taught me deep things about transparency, surrender and restitution. This started me on a path to healing.

Pastor Steve McCoy was the second. Space does not permit me to share the many ways he has stood with me for 23 years. Certainly the foundation in God’s word that has kept me in the race all these years would be at the top of this list. The message of grace he preaches that has brought much healing was huge. Certainly counsel through all the years was also significant.

The late Jack Frost was the third who took my healing from such a broken childhood much deeper. Jack taught me the messages of Sonship that I have been sharing. He taught me church etiquette for traveling ministries. Jack taught me how to impart a message of grace to churches with other paradigms for ministry in such a way that it is received. Jack was amazing to me because he had a vision of where the church needed to go to fulfill God’s plan, yet because of his sonship he could bring his message in a way that it would be received rather than being yet another “martyr” who has “revelation that no one else sees” and ends up judging the church for being so lukewarm and deserving of wrath.

These men of God were there for me even though I was not always so sure of that. Not only did I have to work through my abandonment issues, I had to learn how to relate to the spiritual fathers God had placed in my life. I had no example to draw from. I feared my earthly father and there was not anything functional about our relationship. There were times of not asking for help and counsel because, “They don’t have time for me”. There were times of longing for them to meet my needs instead of taking my own proper personal responsibility. Both of these attitudes represent a slave/master mentality. If a slave asks a wrong question he may be hit and yet he does not eat unless this abuser feeds him. We often carry these same dysfunctional patterns over to how we relate to God. When things go our way we are so happy. When things are going wrong we can take it as rejection, thinking, “God doesn’t care for me”.

Hebrews 13:17—Obey those who rule over you, and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls, as those who must give account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.

When we can learn to walk in healthy submission, to be a blessing rather than place demands, to get under and support the vision of the fathers God has placed in our lives it is very profitable for us, we mature into all that God has for us. It seems weekly we hear of another Christian couple getting divorced or leaving the church offended only to repeat the cycle at the next church. I believe it almost always comes down to the issues I have shared in this message. What if I would have gotten offended and left one of the spiritual fathers I mentioned in this article? Look at the heritage, the growth I would have missed! It is so worth it to work through our “children in the wilderness” mentalities, (as a slave relating to a master) and learn how to receive and relate to the spiritual fathers God places on our lives!

 Everyone Longs for a Father

The heart can grow cold. For a long time I had convinced myself that I never had a father available for me and that I certainly did not need one now. I grew up in a home where my dad was often gone drinking and when he was home he was abusive. In my mid twenties he went to prison where he remains to this day. I thought I had learned to live just fine without a father in my life, but did I really?

I recently saw the movie August Rush. It starts with children in an orphanage dreaming of the day their parents or some family would come and take them. I was tearing up right away, they just wanted a family! Think of the dreams they must have had, a dad to play ball with, mom waiting with homemade cookies as they came home from school, someone to tuck them in at night.

It so happened that right after that I saw the Indian movie Salaam Bombay. It was about the street children in India. A village boy’s father died. His older brother dominated him and was mean, making him do lots of work around the house. One day, in retaliation, the boy broke his older brother’s bicycle. The mother sided with the older brother and made the boy leave until he had the money to buy another bicycle. Can you imagine a mother so numb, so existence-only oriented, that she would kick out her son to the streets so as not to annoy the older brother who was the only bread winner for this poor village family? He ended up on the streets of Mumbai. These kids are the outcasts of society, everyone harasses them and nobody cares for them. (In Brazil street children are actually often murdered by the police.) At one point he had just escaped from the police, his one friend died from drug withdrawals, he could not go home and he had no one. He just broke down and cried.  

Even when we did have a relationship with our parents;

• if they were not safe, if we had to put up walls of protection to fight off being controlled or shamed,
• if we could not freely share our problems without being blasted with advice or made to feel condemned,
• if love was not expressed,

we can still end up feeling abandoned at some level.

We know about Jesus as our Savior and Propitiator. We have learned much about the Holy Spirit and His gifts. Have we, however, learned to relate to our Heavenly Father?

Hebrews 12:7-9 If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live?

If we can receive and endure discipline then God is dealing with us as sons. This is how God wants to relate to us so we can grow and mature and fulfill the destiny that He has for each of us.

However, it then says, that if we do not receive discipline we become as illegitimate sons (no counsel, no inheritance and blessing from a father).

Finally, if we are in subjection, we live! Life flows through us, what we put our hand to prospers, and God’s favor goes before us!

“Why do I always have to be the mature one for the ‘fathers’ in my life?” This is something I said many times years ago. I felt like God had never really given me any spiritual fathers. I felt like I was left to work out my problems on my own and that there was no one there to help mature me and promote me. The man who led me to the Lord, Sam, had a wonderful ministry to alcoholics and drug addicts. He was gifted to reach out to people who wanted absolutely nothing to do with God. He would start working with them to get free from addiction and within a short time they would get saved. One time I went with him to a Bible study for reaching unbelievers. The people there spoke of everything from atheism to eastern mysticism. I became very dogmatic insisting that only the Bible and God must be followed; don’t even talk about anything else! People started putting walls up as I seemed to attack them during the discussion. On the way home Sam tried to talk to me about my comments but I could not see where he was coming from. I took this to mean that he was “not for me”, so that meant he was against me, rejecting me. I feared rejection and so I rejected him before he could reject me; I left. In reality Sam never rejected me and was always there for me. At the time, I wanted him to father me the way I wanted him to father me and any break from what I perceived as fathering, I interpreted as a weakness on his part, hence my saying, “I always have to be the mature one toward those who should be there for me”.

I did this same thing with my pastor. One time I brought him some counseling books. I knew my life was a mess, and I asked him to counsel me with them. He said he had never read these books. He recommended I get a foundation in the word of God; that from his experience this is what matures a person. I once again interpreted that as a father “not being there for me”. I did, however, follow his advice and looking back many years later I can see the wisdom in it. I know many people who came out of a dysfunctional background like me who have not made it. Many have gone from church to church, running away each time God would get them to a point of dealing with their issues. Others are no longer in the faith at all. Some even went on to join cults. By God’s grace I am still at the same church 23 years later because a “father” in my life helped me get a foundation in the word of God.

Why was I not able to receive the spiritual fathers God had placed in my life? It all came down to judgments I had made toward my birth father growing up. He really was never there for me and worse, he was abusive and I feared him. I thought I had forgiven him but yet the fruit in my life clearly demonstrated otherwise like these two examples reveal. As I worked through these issues in prayer ministry, I began to see that God has always been faithful to put ‘fathers’ in my life. But now I can receive them as they are and it does not have to be on my terms.

On all of our trips we generally take 1 or 2 days and do 1 on 1 prayer ministry appointments to help people work through their issues and get unstuck in their spiritual lives. We are now offering this in Jacksonville, Florida as well. 

There was a time in my Christian experience where I felt I needed to work hard for God, to really “pay a price” if He was ever going to use me. I would try to fast almost every single day. Most days I would end up getting and eating a whole box of Cap’n Crunch cereal instead. Then I would feel so condemned, like I just did not meet the requirements to be a great in God’s army. At that time I sought out lots of preaching that said this very same thing. I thought that if I could hear hard enough preaching long enough, it would finally motivate me to live the disciplined Christian life that I knew I should.

All of us need comfort

A BIG misunderstanding I had about the Christian life was that it was about me growing in my ability to be disciplined. I would be able withstand any temptation if I could just mature enough in my faith. I would have discipline in my prayer life, diet, exercise and finances. I did not understand that God’s grace to stand comes to the humble, who know how to live in dependence, with no walls around their hearts. 1 Peter 5:5

What I have discovered is that we all need a SLAP, Security, Love, Affirmation and Purpose. I need to know I am cared for, safe and secure from being rejected and that I am unconditionally loved. I need to feel accepted and comforted in love. I need to feel affirmed and valued, that what I do counts and finally I need a sense of purpose and destiny for my life. These are God given needs. I can find these needs met in the loving arms of my heavenly Father and in my immediate and church families. This requires interdependence and humility. If I do not find these needs met legitimately my flesh will scream to get them met in illegitimate ways. This brings a whole new understanding to the verses below.

Eph 2:2, 3 In which at one time you walked [habitually]. You were following the course and fashion of this world [were under the sway of the tendency of this present age], following the prince of the power of the air. [You were obedient to and under the control of] the [demon] spirit that still constantly works in the sons of disobedience [the careless, the rebellious, and the unbelieving, who go against the purposes of God]. Among these we as well as you once lived and conducted ourselves in the passions of our flesh [our behavior governed by our corrupt and sensual nature], obeying the impulses of the flesh and the thoughts of the mind [our cravings dictated by our senses and our dark imaginings]. We were then by nature children of [God's] wrath and heirs of [His] indignation, like the rest of mankind. (Amplified Version)

There certainly are demonic influences that are in everyone’s life. (I do not believe influence is the same as possession). There is carnality. What is behind the carnally and demonically influenced behavior, however, is a God created need. These needs should draw us to God and family to live in community. If we are stubborn in our independence we will continually struggle. Many have preached a certain legalism that states God is angry at us for not straightening this stuff out. This adds to our feelings of insecurity, that we are only loved, accepted and valued if we meet certain conditions.

These messages basically say, “suck it up”, almost like a sports coach with his team. They put pressure on us to perform and they add condemnation and guilt when we fail to meet the standard. This is not an environment where we can feel secure and valued unconditionally and therefore we are not free to let down our walls of independence and trust that through God and family our needs will be met.

I believe God is restoring a foundation of love to His church in this hour. This base of love will restore fathers to children and children to fathers, Malachi 4:6. Fathers and mothers in Christ are arising that know how to show real and freeing love to the children God brings. This move will change God’s reputation on the earth. His body will no longer be viewed as a self-righteous group who point out others faults and who communicate a message of judgment to people like the backslidden or the homosexuals. God’s body will be a safe place, where pre-Christians; the hurting, the bound and hurt person can go and find a love so powerful and freeing that it casts out all their fears (1 John 4:18) and sets them free to trust and walk in humility and interdependence!