The Seven Pillars (Part 23) - Pillar 6-Raising Up Spiritual Leaders.The Great Commission - Rod Mills

​This is a series on the 7 Pillars of the AeroNova spiritual family, the DNA markers of who God has called us to be as a people.
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In this introduction to pillar six, the call to be and to raise up spiritual leaders, we discuss the importance of spiritual influence, the influence of God flowing through us as His vessels. Spiritual leaders are both disciples and disciple makers.

Full transcript generated by ai (please excuse errors):





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​Picking up on pillar number six, some people are wondering, are we ever going to get through the seven pillars, I never expected to spend this much time. But guys, I get into one of them. And I'm so excited. And there's so much revelation. And in all of this. So let's do a quick review. Before we go to pillar six, what are first of all, these are the seven pillars, sort of what we recognize, as a spiritual DNA, if you will, of our own spiritual family, but also spiritual families that we're connecting to at various countries throughout the earth. And we are noticing this commonality of something that's emerging in the earth that God is doing that the Holy Spirit's doing, not us, we. And so we talk about or I talked about, and sembler, several of you talk about the Friends of Jesus, also, I call it Friends of Jesus movement. This is not something I started, but it's something we see the Holy Spirit doing in different spiritual families in the earth, friends of Jesus, and I, I have tried to capture, if you will, some of the key qualities of what we're seeing in this movement and what God is doing, and what I believe has major ramifications for the coming generations. So I would, I would first of all say this, some of you have heard me say this, we're gonna have a little bit of repetition today. Please stick with me if you've heard this before, because I think the lower show you more, but really three key values that we see intimacy, simplicity, and legacy. If you were to take the seven pillars and go, What values do those represent, I would say intimacy, simplicity, and legacy. And so we live our lives around those spiritual values, if you will. The first three pillars are intimacy pillars. Remember, the first one we describe was apostolic prayer. And we talked about what does that look like in our lives? The second one was the spiritual disciplines. What do those practices look like? They're the spiritual disciplines are really art form their spiritual practices. And so we talked about those that pillar two, and then pillar three, the third intimacy pillar was New Testament community, living as spiritual family, going beyond living as organizations we call local churches, but rather, living in spiritual families, this is grassroots. What we see happening among us, is happening in many places in the earth. But it's this grassroots spiritual family, this closeness, that is not this idea that you don't know who you're sitting next to, or you know them because you shake their hand every Sunday, but there's a deep spiritual family community there. The second value is simplicity. There's one pillar that really represents that we talked about that fourth pillar, and it's obedience and listening. Now, you know, when we hear obedience and listening, you don't get really excited about it. But I promise you go listen to the teachings on it, you will get excited about it. It's really cool. And I never thought I would get so excited about the obedience, you know, it's like obedience, man, it and that's not really exciting work, you know that you don't hear a lot of marketing campaigns in churches about obedience series, you know, just like you don't hear many on holiness series, you know. And then the third, the third value is legacy. And the legacy value has three pillars to it. And those pillars are the mantle of Elijah. And we talked about in the mantle of Elijah there toward the end, what it means to be sons of is a car. This is really cool. We talked about transitioning from the success paradigm, to the legacy paradigm and how to live that way. I love it. I could literally we could rotate and have you come up and teach on it. I will be I would love to do all day long. That's how much I love this mantle of Elijah, and spiritual fathers and mothers and generational transfer. All these things, very important things that the church is struggling with right now. And so this is part of who we are. Okay, here we are at pillar six, a call to raise up spiritual leaders. This is part of that legacy, that legacy value. And then the third one that we'll talk about the seventh pillar, you is a call to the nations. So intimacy, simplicity, and legacy. Those are the values that we live in. If you notice, most of what we do is not real complicated. We're not trying to do big, huge events. And when we did a larger event, we shut it down, said, let's make it smaller, because we felt led by the Holy Spirit to do that. And so really, God has called us to operate more in the grassroots element of the kingdom of God. And there is where great power has been manifested. And we've been able to participate in that. So here we are, a call to raise up spiritual leaders, a lot of people who don't read our website or come to our meetings, or what have you, but their friends I have in ministry, who have relationships with us, when people ask them what we do. They often their statement, not mine, they often will say, Oh, they're a spiritual leadership, training, ministry. That's the way they see us. And I think that's interesting. That's just how they see us. Now, that's not complete. And that's not everything we say. But they see that a lot of what we do is cultivate and raise up spiritual leaders. We're going to talk about that today. When people become close friends of Jesus, they will become spiritual leaders. So now right away, you know, I'm not talking about being a pastor, even though that can be included. When people are valued. When they're precious, when they're carried in love, when they're trained and discipled by spiritual fathers, not church executives, and program managers, they will become spiritual leaders. Now, I'm not against church executives, or program managers, but I'm talking about being spiritual fathers and mothers. It is those are different things. It's very important that we live and walk as spiritual fathers and mothers. And we've talked much about that. And all of this kind of overlaps with each other. This does not necessarily mean spiritual leaders are organizational leaders, but they might be, we're not saying they wouldn't be. But at its essence, we say the definition of leadership is what you guys know one word, some of you know this. influence, influence. leadership is influence. It's not a position. It can happen in a position. But it's not a position spiritual leadership, is spiritual influence, that is the influence of God through us as His vessels where we are called and committed to raising up spiritual leaders who are vessels of God. Now, this is transformational. Guys, listen, this idea of spiritual leadership is whenever I tap into the resources of the influence of God in my life, and his influence, influences the people that I relate to your Are you tracking with this, this is critical, because in this way, his influence is more important than my influence. So if he can influence people through relationship with me, then in fact, he brings all of the resources of heaven into transform, transforming people's lives. If there's one thing we know about Jesus, when you come into contact with him, I don't mean in his Omni presence, I mean, into relational contact with Jesus that's different than him. He's in this room right now. But that doesn't mean you're in relational contact, right? You can, like we say, you can be standing in the in the checkout at Walmart. But that doesn't mean you have any relationship with the person standing in front of you or behind you. So just because you touch them, does not mean there's any influence there. That relationship is what we're talking about. When you come into relational contact with Jesus, and our hearts are open. transformation starts to happen. Things in our lives that are caterpillars start cocooning, and they start transforming into butterflies. And that's the nature of Jesus in His presence, spiritual leaders influence from that relationship with God. They don't use, they might use other influences, but ultimately, the most powerful influence in my life is not what my authority in the world is. You tracking with me? Whether I'm the boss or whether I'm the lowest person on the totem pole, it doesn't matter wherever I am. God can influence people out of those relationships that are there. So in other words, they allow and facilitate that influence of the Holy Spirit of God. Now, what's the difference? The Holy Spirit is the most powerful force on the earth. There is no force on the earth more powerful than the Holy Spirit. He is the one person of the Godhead who remains here in tangible form, not physical, necessarily, we're not saying that, but he is here in tangible form on the earth, influencing and moving, because the king of all things, the king of the monarchy of heaven, is Jesus. And He is the ruler of the Government of Heaven, that oversees all things seen and unseen, created an uncreated that which is and that which will be in that which was this is the nature of his kingship, the Holy Spirit is often called the executor or the one who executes the will of God, especially on the earth and the date and time which we live. So I believe the Scripture teaches that all I'm gonna say this all in my notes, I have this capitalize all of God's people are called to be spiritual leaders. This is not the common belief in the modern church today. In a little while, we're going to explore the scriptural definition, what we mean by spiritual leader in the mandate, but true spiritual leaders are some of the most influential people on the earth, but not in the standards of the world. And this is critical for us to see. Because if you think influence, whenever I say leadership is influence, if you're thinking man, I've kind of have influenced spiritual influence. If you're not careful, and you start thinking in the terms of the world's influence, then you'll get this wrong, and you'll be striving. So this is often not recognized because spiritual leaders, especially deal with seeds and saplings. Track with me so many times what God calls us to influence our, our, our people that seem like seeds, and small places that don't have a lot. In other words, most of you, most of us in this room, and I'm gonna say probably all of us are, are not, and maybe not everyone listening are not called to be some big high position, where we're going to be like Elon Musk on Twitter, and there's going to be 80 million followers, and what we say they're hanging on. I mean, I was reading an article here a while back in some of these influencers. Do you know what their income is? For every tweet? I mean, I was reading one. And this is like, oh my gosh, like, if they would put out a, I don't know, if it was a tweet or a tick tock. It was like 80, some $1,000. Every time they post, they make like 80, some $1,000. Because it generates so much followership and then they get money from the advertising. So in those terms, we think, Oh, wow, they have a lot of influence. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about influence that transforms the heart, right, that transforms who people are and how they live and how they relate to God. Now, that might happen over social media. But most of the time, it happens by relationship. It's kind of like the little cartoon, some of you have seen it. And there's this, there's the wedding, and the weddings getting ready to start, and there's four people there. And the caption, the guy goes, I don't understand, I invited all my friends on Facebook. And there's four people at his wedding, because they're not real friends. Now, maybe some of them are. But you know what I mean? That most of the, of the influence we have as spiritual influencers, they happen through relationships. God does not live by the calculus of the world. The world says, Okay, if you generate influence and 80 million people, your reward is $80,000, or whatever it is, you know, God doesn't do that way. So in other In other words, he calls you in me to a sphere. And that sphere, most of the time is not a huge sphere. It's a very reasonable sphere. And his reward in our lives, is based upon his calling to us. It's not based upon how many spheres you can influence or how many people you can this and that and, you know, it's kind of like thinking everybody's called to be Billy Graham in the evangelistic sense of the word. You're not, we're not we're not called to that and most of us are not called to be Billy Graham. It's kind of like Jesus said, When the widow gave her her the widow's mite, she in the world standard, she gave less than everyone else who came and gave alms that day. And Jesus said, this woman has given more than them all. That gives you a sneak preview into God's reward system. him, because what that means is for you and I, to walk in the fullness of what God has for us in this life, and most of life is not this life, understand this is like a tiny fraction. This is like the first five minutes of kindergarten, anybody here go to kindergarten. This is like the first five minutes of kindergarten. And even if you live to 100, and you die and you transition into, you will transition into the fullness of what this life is all about, you will discover that you have only crossed the first few minutes of kindergarten. And so God give us an eternal mindset. You have a purpose in eternity, that's far beyond your purpose here. It really is the meaning of all things. And so what we want to do is be faithful with where God has called us. This is part of what we're talking about in this pillar today and in the in the coming week or two. So, the idea here is that there's not this big huge mountain you have to capture and ascertain and become this big influencer like the influencers in social media or a billionaire multibillionaire like they look at in business, but rather to be faithful in the sphere, God's called you. And then to multiply that out. And you know what I found, most of multiplication happens because of simple faithfulness. Simple I sent a note to the wife of, of the man who led my father to the Lord and my grandfather to the Lord, he led my grandfather to the Lord four days before he died, he led my father to the Lord, which brought my mother to the Lord. And some of you know my story. I had come to the Lord, a couple of years earlier, I didn't know anything about God, nothing. I knew nothing about God, I knew nothing about the Bible. And I prayed for my parents, that they would, you know, have an encounter with the Lord, we could start going to church and I could start walking with God. And this man led him to the Lord led my grandfather to the Lord, which then brought my family to the Lord one by one by one by one. And I just sent a thank you note for her. They're in their 80s. And they're still traveling the world ministry. And I said, I just want to thank you. Because my whole family, I mean, my children, my grandchildren, they know God. And what would have happened, if you weren't just faithful with that guy you met at the gas station, that was my dad. That guy who was pumping your gas? What if you had not been faithful, and now it's, it's worked its way into generations, in my siblings, family, and their children's family, and now coming into their children's children's family. It's a lot of people, because he was faithful where he was in that little place where he was serving to minister to the guy pumping his gas. You see where I'm going with this, most of spiritual influence and spiritual leadership happens in seeds and saplings. And my dad was a seed. And his dad barely made it into heaven. But he gave his life to the Lord four days before he died. And I believe that's why he died because he knew now I can die in peace, because he knew his heart was right with God. And as he led him to the Lord, He just cried and cried, his heart just melted before the Lord, guys. The Lord wants you to know this is not hard. It is really not hard to walk in the fullness of what God has for you. And that's my prayer for each of us that will see Jesus said, My yoke is easy. And my burden is light. Different kinds of influence in the world, we talked about the world's ahead, influence in the biblical influence or spiritual leadership in Heavens economy, not the world's economy, heavens economy, the influencers that we see in the world who make all this money and talk people into doing things they shouldn't do, and yatta yatta yatta they have no gravitas. They have no serious substance, or weight of influence. When it comes to things of transformation into righteousness. They can't do it. Because this is a function of the Holy Spirit, not a function of human flesh. So the Holy Spirit's influence is the one who operates through us because we're willing vessels now I'm not saying they don't have influence some of them have very a lot of influence. It's just the wrong kind. Some of you've heard me talk about this. This concept of haft haf T Do any of you guys remember some of you guys that were on the mountain with a should remember, what is a haft? Can you remember that part of the story? It is what part of the sword is it? It's the handle. So the half the half Is the handle on the sword. And we use this imagery to talk about the four qualities that God uses in disciples. So we have four qualities that the disciples of Jesus possessed, that especially conditioned them to be excellent candidates to be raised up as spiritual leaders, we talk about these four qualities are essential, they are critical for us to be able to invest into the lives of other people. First of all, they're critical for us to have in our lives, so God can invest into us and other leaders can invest into us. And they're critical for other people, here they are half heart for God. There needs to be a heart for God. The second one, A is availability. F is faithfulness. And T is teachability. So these four heart for God, availability, faithfulness, and teachability. Some of you're probably here tired of hearing me say it, because I'd say it's so much the there are many wonderful believers who have two or three of these qualities, but lack all four. And as a result, they have plateaued in their growth trajectory. Listen, if you don't, if you don't have all four, you're destined to plateau. Until you get all four this is critical. Many times unknowingly, so we love and minister to anyone who's open, who comes who's, who's available, who will join, who will connect, who will relay, you know, any of these things we love administered to everyone. However, it is absolutely essential that we invest our concentrated energies into people who have all four qualities. I'll tell you, I've learned this lesson, the easy way. And I've learned it the hard way. I've tried it every which way to Friday. And it always it's always true. The four qualities is what pays off. It's the rich soil when you have three, but you don't have for God will plant the seed, but it takes a whole lot of time. And sometimes it comes to fruition, sometimes it doesn't, no matter how unlikely people may appear as leaders, this is critical. You might look at someone in the flesh and go, Well, I don't know, if I don't know this is really gonna make a difference. Listen, I'm gonna tell you, if they got all four of these, I don't care how unlikely they look, you pour your life into them, I promise you, there will be some kind of harvest from it, I guarantee you. So no matter how unlikely they appear, when we look through the lens of the natural criteria, these will be the people who grow into significant leaders in the kingdom of God. You see this in the 12 apostles, when Jesus called them, most of us look at him and go, Oh, man, what was he thinking? Like? What like, I mean, they just were not the kind of guys you would think you would pick to change the world. I mean, to start something that's going to be 1000s, or 1000s of years movement, that's going to turn the world upside down, change the nations, and ultimately bring the kingdom of God to fruition and the culmination of all things in the earth. You pick some fishermen, and some guys, you know, a tax collector, everybody hates and, you know, all these guys. It's like, Jesus saw what needed to happen that and heart for God, availability, faithfulness, and teachability. Were there. So the Great Commission is at the heart of this pillar, this teaching. So when we talk about raising up spiritual leaders at its core, we are talking about the Great Commission. So we talk a lot about we mentioned a lot, we teach a lot about the great commandment, or the great commandments, love God with all your heart, love your neighbors yourself. We mentioned with it the great commission many times, but we have not taught on it a lot recently. And yet, this one, this pillar, this pillar number six that we're describing, is the main pillar that holds the essence of the Great Commission and our own spiritual DNA and calling as a spiritual family and as many spiritual families in the earth. So there's an old saying that people used to say a lot. I haven't heard it recently. And it is that it's called the Great Commission. Not the great suggestion. Why do people say that? When they talk about the Great Commission, why do they say it's called the Great Commission? Not the Great suggestion, because many of us tended to kind of be Pew Center Christians, you know, kind of like, well, yeah, you know, I'm a Christian. So when we equate Christian with disciple, and they don't mean the same thing. They're close. If you're a Christian, you're supposed to be a disciple, but there are many Christians who really haven't made made an intentional decision to say, Man, I'm going to enter into the disciple lifestyle. We'll talk about what that means. I'm going to read the Great Commission to you. Some of you have memorized, Jesus came, this is Matthew 2818. Jesus came, and he spoke to them saying, All authority has been given to me, in heaven and on earth. That sounds pretty good. What does that have to do? We're going to talk about what that means. If we could get to it today, if we can't get to it next week. Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things I've commanded you. And know this or lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen. Now, there are two receiver roles or callings in Jesus command in this text. And we're called to both of them. And sometimes one of them is so obvious that we just skip over it or we don't think about it. Consider this. Jesus had already called them to be disciples, and they had been walking this way faithfully for over three and a half years. This is an important prerequisite. Not to be Christians, but to be disciples. Y'all track and track with me, the first receiver rolling calling is to be a disciple. The disciplined follower and disciplined learner. Now the word disciple almost has the word discipline in it, there's, it's for a reason, because to be a disciple is a very intentional way of living. This is more than church attending Christians. The second receiver role is this calling to be what? Disciple maker, which means follower maker, we're going to come back to that in a minute because that is important. It means in other words, spiritual leader, you see that see where we're going with that? spiritual leaders. I'm not saying all spiritual leaders do is make disciples. But we are saying that to be a spiritual leader, you have to be a disciple maker. This is critical because it's at the very core of what it means to influence that's the very essence of influence in the kingdom is to make disciples. Now you might say, Well, what does all this mean? Well, let's go through a few definitions. And we'll explore how does this translate into my life and into my everyday life? This, this Greek word for disciple means disciplined, follower, eager learner, apprentice. So disciple maker means follower maker, or disciplined follower maker. This is a spiritual leader. It's not all of the definition, but it's the core. We must be a follower, to reproduce followers. we reproduce after like kind you guys probably figured that out by now. You look at your kids, you know, the older they get, the more they look like you in most cases, some would say that's good. Some would say it's bad. I'll say it's good. It's much easier to make discipline followers. If we are discipline followers, it's easier to develop eager learners if we are eager learners. So Jesus ordained this art, I'm gonna call it an art of spiritual leadership, through spiritual followership in being a disciple and a disciple maker. So there's these two roles in the calling that we're talking about. Now, I want to make an observation to you in my own life. This is to me, I wish somebody would have told me this early on, but I didn't really know it was going to happen. They would teach these principles, but I really didn't know this was going to happen in every season of my life, that I maintained strong ties to spiritual fathers, mothers and mentors, receiving and digesting everything I could from them in those seasons, they were the richest seasons of investment. I ever had it to other people. You see what's happening? There, there is a I'll describe it as a chain and you'll see this in a moment. It is fascinating to see this chain reaction that would happen. And so I found that living this way with spiritual fathers and mentors, spiritual mothers, brought this constant nourishment into my life that was profound in its meaning. Now I'm gonna tell you guys listen, the world will give you all kinds of makeup and cosmetics to keep you on the surface and out of the depth. And your soul will be thirsty until you get past that. Now I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but you need to preach this to people, you need to speak this truth to him. There are a lot of people who are very soul thirsty in the earth. And they don't know why. All they know is is they just can't quite capture what is the essence of the meaning of life. And they just go from this to that, and this to that, and they can't quite get the essence of the meaning of life. And so they get a new this and a new that and a new friend and a new car and a new, but it never quite sinks down into the soul because it can't satisfy even many Christians live soul thirsty lives. And I'll tell you what, when I, the more I've pressed into this with spiritual fathers and mothers and mentors and learning and growing, this investment has nourished my soul and caused this deep seated satisfaction. That's profound. And the only thing that really made it better is when I turned around and I start doing the same thing in investing into other people's lives. Beginning with my own family, this, this always starts in your own family, by the way, because my own family is my primary influence, responsibility. That's where it all begins. You get it right there, and you'll start getting it right in other places. It really will work, it really will, no matter what the battles are, that are in your family we talked about earlier, no matter what the skirmishes are, no matter what the trouble is, you listened, I got good news. God has a way to bring extraordinary breakthrough and victory. And to bring an end to the soul thirst that happens inside of us, when we lack the nutrients that God made us to desire and need. Wow, I love it. So we see that we must remain strong disciples to remain strong disciple makers. Leaders must remain followers to become strong leaders. This is a principle of the kingdom of God. Now, guys, this is counterintuitive to the world's logic, where leaders are expected to quit becoming good followers somewhere in the process. The world teaches us like, okay, you know, when you start really getting becoming successful, and you start reaching those upper heights of whatever your profession is, or whatever you're this or that is that somehow, you become an independent, self made leader. And people want to follow you and people want to be a part of what you're doing. And this idea that you're no longer a follower. This is a world concept. Worldly comes. It's not a Kingdom concept. The Kingdom concept is that the more we become leaders, the more we become followers, and the more we become followers and more become leaders, because Jesus called us to be servants. This was his this was what he emphasized to the disciples to be servant of all. So Paul reinforces this truth. I'm going to talk about two principles. One is the 111 principle, I'd really use this so you can remember it, the 111 principle, Paul talks about, he didn't call it that. That's what I call it in the two to two principle. And now it sounds really original. I know, but look with me, or listen, if you will, First Corinthians 11 One. So really, there's four ones there. First Corinthians 11. One has four ones, but we'll just call it 111. And in the modern English version, Paul said, and several versions say it this way, follow me as I follow Christ. Now, this is interesting. Paul didn't say, Everybody just follow Jesus personally, he was for that. But he was like, if you really want to do this, well, come with me. And follow me. Literally, that word follow means to imitate. Now, do you guys know what imitate means? Do you need a demonstration? Okay, I'm gonna give you one. I will. Have you guys that are fathers ever noticed something. When your kids get a little older and they start walking before long they start walking like either you as a father or you as the mother. You ever noticed that? And if you if you move your hands a certain way, they start moving their hands the same way. And if you whatever you do, if you raise your voice, guess what? They start raising their voice. If you say things you shouldn't say guess what? They start saying things they shouldn't say that's why we say kids don't do what you tell them to do. They do what you Do right? They imitate you. And I tell this funny story I was on the back porch years ago with with some friends. And one of the guys there he was eating shrimp. And his little two year old son was eating a hamburger. And the guy was eating a shrimp. And when he got down to the tail of the shrimp, he kind of bid it off. And then behind his, he just kind of threw it behind his back over the fence, and his hand flip just like this. His little two year old looked at him, grabbed his bun. And he flicked his hand the exact same way and through his bond right over the fence. That's imitation. Imitation is do what I do and do it like I do it. Remember, Jesus said, He did that with the Father. He said, whatever I see the Father doing, that's what I do. And then he didn't stop he goes, and in like manner. In other words, I copy him. Have you ever felt like you need somebody to copy? Let me tell you guys, when I was a teenager, and in my 20s, I needed mentors, I was looking for mentors, and they weren't very plentiful. They were hard to find you had to look for them. And then when you found them, oh, by the way, they're not perfect. Never found one perfect mentor. Never once. I found people who had flaws in their lives, but they were willing to invest into me. Now I'm very thankful for them. And once I found one and two, then I found three. And that grew over the years into some wonderful people with wonderful relationships. And the older I got, the less judgmental I got. Because I realized how hard life is. And I was a little gave them a break. It was a lot easier when I was like, well, maybe, maybe this is a little harder than I thought it was, you know, and give them a break. But a lot of people don't don't become followers, because they want everybody to be as good as Jesus. And that doesn't happen. So the 111 principle is a principle of followership, it's imitation. Paul says, Follow me as I follow Christ. In many circles, we've lost this in the church. We've lost this. We come in, we listen to some great messages. We have some great worship, we have great programs. But do we have followership? We need those relationships of followership, I think God for him. But I'm gonna tell you that God always places people near you, who will invest into your life, if you will look for them and ask them, they're there, trust me, they're always there. But if you're expecting them to have no Frankel's freckles, and no lamps, and no challenges or problems, then you will find no one, right? But they're they're around you. They live nearby, they're close somewhere. And then when you start putting a draw upon them, you will find that there's a wealth of investment that can be poured into your life. This is the first principle of followership, 111 principle. The next one is the tu tu tu principle. You probably guess how we're going to find it. Second Timothy, two, two. This is what Paul said, in the things that you have heard from me, among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. So here we see some fascinating, we see four generations of leaders in this one verse, we see Paul, and then he's talking to who, Timothy. And then he says, Timothy, invest into faithful men, and we say, faithful women to invest into faithful people. And then he says, he says faithful because they will be able to invest into others. There's the four right there. Paul, Timothy, faithful men and others, there's four generations of generational transfer. This is critical. So Paul keeps the generational chain going. You see how he's doing it, where each one is following and leading. So this is what I call the chain reaction or the sustained chain reaction. There is a chain reaction when we live like this. Now, I won't I want it I want to say this is almost magical. It's really powerful. And what I mean is there's spiritual power in it. There is a there is their inspiration flows in this kind of lifestyle. It's a that's why I call it a chain reaction. You guys, you've heard me say this many times as people ask me so have you lived life and victory? Well, first of all, I haven't been perfect. I've made a lot of mistakes. But this how do you live life and victory and this and that and that and then and then I'll go mom just like everybody else. And a lot of ways I came in with a whole lot of handicaps because we had a whole lot of junk in our extended family. went families and upbringing. Some of you'd be shocked. But I learned this. If you hang around with people more spiritual than you are, you will be more spiritual. If you hang around people who are humbler, more humble than you are, you will learn to be more humble. If you hang around people who are stronger than you are, you will become stronger. If you hang around people who know God more than you do, you will come to know God, if you hang around people who know how to live and when you will become a winner. That's the way life is. This is really simple stuff. But this is part of the chain reaction. So learning to hang around those people and say, Okay, I want to grow here, I want to learn, I want to, I want to extract, I want this, I want this chain reaction operating in my life. And it it becomes almost too easy. I won't say easy, because sometimes it's challenging. But many times I felt guilty, I'm like God, I must be doing something wrong, because this is getting easy. And really, the truth is that if you do it God's way, there is a tremendous divine energy that comes into it, and starts making it work. Beth and I when we were young marrieds. We were like, man, who are the best parents we can find. And we found a set of the best parents that we could find. And we talked to them and they had four boys. And we said, well, you know, you guys, we just noticed that your family y'all do extremely well as parents. And they're like, hey, we'll come along, we'll teach you how to be good parents. We're like, Okay, we'll sign up for that. Well, pretty soon after that, they start teaching a class on parenting. Now, I was like, I was like, Ah, I don't know about this, because they're like, Okay, yeah, we're gonna teach a class on parenting. And we're gonna use the movie hook. You guys ever seen that movie hook? That whole movies about parenting? You know that the whole movies about parenting? And all of a sudden, I'm like, man just doesn't seem very spiritual. I'm like, I don't know about this. But I liked the movie. So we did it. And, man, guys, it changed our lives as parents, I will tell you that today, my kids live an extraordinary blessed life. Because of some simple things we learned from them. That I'm afraid if here's a problem, if you have to learn everything on your own, or figure out everything on their own, on your own. The problem is, a lot of times by the time you figure it out, it's been 30 years, and your kids have reaped the consequences if you're talking about parenting, right? And there's an old saying, you know, is like, you know, God, Did God really know what he was doing. I mean, he made his parents when we don't know what we're doing. Like you think about it, God, many of us became parents, when we didn't know anything. We thought we knew something. But we literally didn't know anything. Why doesn't God make people parents when they're 60, when they know a whole lot more, God forbid. But there's a reason why God made his parents Young. Because then we have to reach out and learn from other people. We have to open our hearts, we have to humble ourselves, we have to do what you've heard me say, take the lid off the bucket, that's humility, and say, hey, I'll receive and be receptive. And then there are people who can give you 100 years worth of wisdom in 100 days, if we stick with them. Now, the first 90%, you can get pretty quick. The problem is the last 10% takes years to get in, a lot of people quit following, they get to the 90%. And they go, okay, I'm good. And they don't realize that last 10% pays off exponentially. Remember our teaching on Elijah and Elijah, it was that Elijah spirit that says, I won't leave you to the very end, I'm gonna stick with you to the very end, he got the exponential blessing. And then it brought a double portion into his life. So we're talking about living in this sustained chain reaction. Another example I'll give you, and then we'll close, we have a whole lot more for our next time we're together, we're going to talk about spiritual authority. While this is important, it's really important, because there's a lot of people who don't have spiritual authority. It's open to them, it's available to them, but they just don't know how to enter into it. And Jesus shows us in this passage, how to enter into it. And there are many areas of life you need spiritual authority to get breakthroughs in your lives. Beth and I were dating we were about to get married. And matter of fact, we were good friends with your mom and dad then Jordi. And we were we took a class they had a class in our church on finances. Well, I thought we were just getting a class on you know how to do a budget or something you know, and they did. Yeah, balance sheets. checkbook, you know how not to write bad checks, stuff like that, you know, like they did in the army, jazz. We had so many soldiers, right? They thought if they had checks, they had money. Well, we don't have that problem today, nobody uses checks anymore. But we took this class. And it was kind of the, the precursor to what's his name, the famous Dave Ramsey, it was the precursor before Dave Ramsey. And I think he had learned or taken a lot of stuff from them. So we took this class. And man, my eyes were opened, like, I was like, Oh, my gosh. And it was way beyond budgeting. And it was investment. And it was how to prepare for life and all these practical principles. I want to tell you guys, we are living in the generational fruits of that class, that one class, because there were mentors in our church, who were willing to teach us and coach us, because it became more than a class I developed a relationship with one of those guys, and I learned from him and some of the others around them. And we grew. And I'm going to tell you, that for years, there were there were financial mistakes we would have made that we didn't make, because we sought out and said we want to learn here, and we want to grow. Now there were many around us who didn't take that class or who didn't. Were they blessed in life. Yeah, they were blessed. But I'm going to tell you that the payoff is beyond. I mean, it's incredible. It's really phenomenal. Where we are today, because we took that class, and because we got those mentors, and because we learned from them. And there's so many areas of life like this. So we're not I don't want to over spiritualize this, there are many areas where God will call us to disciple people. And you might say, you know, my strength is not really teaching theology, but I can teach people God's principles in this area, or in that area. You don't have to become a theologian, to be a spiritual leader, you just need to be learn to walk with God and be a be a disciple, and then invest into others in the same way and get into this chain reaction. And this chain reaction just keeps going. It just keeps burning. It's self sustaining, it just keeps going. And that is I have spiritual fathers and mentors and mothers, and they're investing into me, and then I'm investing into others, and then they're investing into others. And man, the dominoes just start falling, and they just keep falling in this chain reaction. And it the power that's in it. Is is life changing. And it touches you in every area, not just in your knowledge of God, but it's in your knowledge of God and how to be faithful with your finances, your knowledge of God, and how to be a good parent, your knowledge of God, oh, marriage, listen, I don't have time to talk about marriage. But listen, I'm going to tell you that we learned some phenomenal things that saved us. We probably learned 100 years of wisdom from spiritual leaders and mentors and fathers and mothers in our lives. Don't reinvent the wheel, go learn from people and learn from their mistakes. It's a whole lot cheaper. Amen. Next time we'll talk about spiritual authority, we're going to go deeper into this pillar. Lord, I thank you for my friends here and those that listen around the world. And Father, I we just pray teach us your ways help us to enter into Matthew 20. And become disciples not just church attenders, not just Christians that are cultural Christians, but deep pressing into you. And And Lord, open our eyes to see those around us that we can draw from and learn from and enter into this divine chain reaction so that we can become importers, spiritual leaders, and influencers that transform the influencers that have live on a transformation level in life. And, Lord, we just want to say thank you. We're so thankful for what you're doing in our lives. In Jesus name, amen. Thank you for joining us today. Aaron ova is raising up spiritual leaders in many nations through our spiritual enrichment events, syndicated NetCast international prayer Council network, and numerous international seminary scholarships. Together, we are lighting the fires of revival, fueling prayer movements and raising up friends of Jesus in the nations. We invite you to partner with us in this extraordinary movement. You can sign up as a prayer and financial partner today by going to Aaron nola.org and clicking give. Please include your email address so that we can send you updates. That's era nova.org. Click give and become a monthly partner today. Invest in some of the most fertile spear jewel soils on the planet and give the gift of faith and love today to those with a deep need and hunger to know God. 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