A Fathering Movement

A Quick Church History

In the early 1500s, Martin Luther restored to the church understanding about Jesus Christ. This spawned years of revival based around concepts of salvation, redemption, and righteousness. In the 1800s there began Holiness and Pentecostal movements, that led to the healing revivals and the Charismatic movement and others that restored to the church understanding about the Holy Spirit.

In the early 1970s James Dobson began teaching that the family is important and how we parent makes a difference. He suffered persecution for this in the early days. In the latter 1970s John and Paula Sanford started teaching that, it not only matters how we parent but also how we were parented. They received much persecution for these concepts and yet today it is widely held that how we were fathered and mothered has a big impact on us and if there is resultant wounding it needs to be healed.

The Feasts

The Passover feast brings focus to Jesus. Pentecost points to the Holy Spirit. I believe the Feast of Tabernacles will emphasize the Father. Malachi 4:5-6: “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.”

Fathering

We have a fatherless generation on the earth today. Fathers give us our identity, security, and destiny. I believe in the final move of God there will be a huge emphasis here. Teaching will abound and older believers will know how to father newer believers into both wholeness and walking out their callings effectively. Broken, spectator Christianity will come to an end!

1 Corinthians 4:15 For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers…