Dedicating Our Children To God (Part 2) - Rod Mills

​In this second part to the teaching on dedicating our children to God we dive into the concepts of surrender and consecration. Although this is an integral part of child dedication, it is also applicable to the Christian life as a whole.

Full transcript generated by ai (please excuse errors):





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​We, in our last session on baby dedication, like I said, I had a little over half of it, but we didn't get through the whole thing. And so I want to finish some things that some thoughts that I think are helpful to all of us no matter and in this room, we have people who are not don't yet have children, people have little children, people have big children, people who have grown children, people have grandchildren. So this really is fitting for a lot of different ages, a lot of different applications. But we talked about when Hannah cried out to God because she wanted a child. And then she said, Lord, if you give me a child, I will dedicate him to you. And literally, she said, and if it's true, it's translated from the original, that she would loan him to the Lord, basically, for his entire life. Now, there's eternal perspective, because she was aware that if I loan him to you, God, for his entire temporal life, I'll get him back in eternity. Now, what does she mean? When she says, loan him to the Lord, she means she understands that eternal perspective that she will have close relationship with Him in eternity even though there is separation involved before they get to that place? Because anytime, have you ever noticed that when you have to give something up or surrender something, that you're not around it or them anymore, or around them as much, you when you give something up? You surrender, it costs you right? So do you guys remember this series? I'm not sure it was very popular that we did a couple of years ago on surrender. I mean, it wasn't it's not really a popular subject. But so there's obedience, but then there's a higher level of obedience. And what do we call that? We call it surrender. Surrender is when I surrender my will to God's, and I yield to him. Now, here's the miraculous thing about surrender. When I surrender to God, I learned to take on his desires, divine desires, not pretend. That's the way we used to think of it when I was younger, we used to think we talked about similar that man, I'm just going to say, this is just not going to be fun. You know, surrender is not going to be fun. It's just not going to be good. It's not going to be fulfilling. And God has taught us that just quite the opposite. If I surrender to God, what he calls me to surrender, I literally begin to take on those desires of his heart. What is David called that he calls it, delighting ourselves in God. In other words, he says, there are higher pleasures than what you know, than what I know. And he's trying to get us to give up that flesh that surrender, so that I can enter into those pleasures. And he says, delight yourself in the Lord. And He will give you the desires of your heart. But so many times we're like this, I'll use this as a prop. We're holding on to it. God, this is mine. God, I'm gonna, we're afraid that God wants to take stuff away from us. And what we don't realize is God's a giver. He's not a taker, right. And if he wants to take something from me, I have learned, let him have it. Because God has something better in mind, he always has something better in mind. And when it comes to surrender, one of the quickest things that will reveal the heart condition is what we do with the things we love most. Or let me say, the people we love most. Are you with me? So if we are in a place where our hearts are surrendered, then it's a lot easy to surrender those things we love most of those people we love most. But if our hearts are struggling with surrender, where does it usually start? It usually starts with what we love most. So what does this have to do with children? How hard do you think it was for Anna? When Hannah when she Hannah made this promise of this vow to God? And she said, Lord, if you give me a child, I will give him to you. I'll loan him to you. That was hard. Because there was one thing in life she wanted so bad, she wanted a son. And so she prayed, and God gave her a son. And God did not take him away. God let her surrender him to the Lord. I'm going to read First Samuel 110. And she was in bitterness of soul. And she prayed to the Lord and wept in anguish. And she made a vow and said, Oh Lord of hosts, if you will, indeed look on the affliction of your maid servant and remember me, and not forget me, but will give me a male child than I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life. And then she makes a Nazirite vow, I think most people think she says, no razor shall come upon his head, which was one of the vows of the Nazirite. Then you go down to verse 27. And you find that she had the baby. And this is what she prayed. For this child, I prayed. And the Lord has granted me my petition which I asked of him. Therefore, I also have lent him to the Lord, as long as he lives, he shall be lent to the Lord. So they worshipped the Lord there. Okay. Now many of us think of worship as what we just finished doing, singing, praising God using song, but worship is a whole lot more than just song. Worship is also this surrender, this is God, take it, it is yours take, or my family, I surrender my family to you. Or how many of you have had to do this my career, I've had to surrender to God, God's called me to do things that wasn't my first second or third choice. Now I'm telling you that I, I have done things and committed years and years of my life, not because it was my second or third choice or first choice, but because that's what God called me to do. And some of those things were hard. But what I found was that in the will of God was tremendous riches. I'll tell you, God, you can trust him. If there's anything that keeps coming to pass over and over and my life is you can trust him and what he says. So here we are, we studied, we looked in our first session on consecration to the Lord, we looked at a lot of concepts, I'm not going to rehash all those, because you can go back and listen to that on the teaching library. But we did talk about something that I want to springboard and piggyback off of when we talk about consecration to God. So when we consecrate to the Lord, whether we consecrate someone or something, there are there are color couple of elements at play at play, or at work that I want to just mention again, and that is the concept of control, and complacency. Stick with me here. So these are two polar opposites. Control is whenever I need to control it. And have you ever worked for a controlling boss, over controlling boss, and they need to micromanage everything that gets hard, it gets really hard. Well guess what that is a temptation, even with many of the things or people we love, is to be over controlling or to be to not live in a level of surrender, that gives God space to move. And we talked a little bit about how to do that in the lives of our families and in the lives of our children. But the other opposite of that is complacency. And I'll tell you, if we if we walk with God, and we are relationally interacting with him, you cannot help but be proactive. In other words, God will light a fire under you. Like he'll say, Hey, did you see that snake? Get in your house? Okay, what do you do when a snake gets to anybody here had a snake get in their house before? Nobody here? I mean, yeah, I was gonna say, I mean, I grew up in the South. You know? This my last my two visits ago to my mom's just snake got in her house two days before I got there. That's another story. Beth wasn't enthused about staying there that night. But what do you do when a snake gets in your house? Well, you don't go well, we'll get it out here in the next week or two. What do you do when the devil attacks your family? You don't go well, you shouldn't go well, you know, we'll kind of pray about it over the next few days, weeks, months and years. You know, maybe we'll deal with this down the road, you know, or something. No, right? You, you're like, No, you there is a proactiveness in you that goes get that snake out of your house. You know, deal with it. Or if you start seeing something that's poison to your family. It could be physical. What do you do if your kids get a hold of something? And it's your little kids And it's poison. You don't go well, kids, y'all just go ahead and put that up here in a little bit. And I'll come back and check in a couple hours and see if you did. Right. Same thing with Cent the poison of sin, and the power of the evil one and all these things. There is a proactiveness. And so we have these two polar opposites. One is complacency, one is control. And neither one of them are the way of the consecrated lifestyle. When we consecrate and give our children, our families, everything because we consecrate things to the Lord, we even consecrate our houses like when we move into a house, we commit and dedicate that house to the Lord, we do the same thing with our vehicles. Now that's different than children. Because children are human beings, they're going to live forever, they're eternal. And when we consecrate these children to the Lord, and we give them to God, there's a chemistry change in the heart. Are you with me? What's the best way to change your heart, do it God's way. Because when I do it God's way, and I consecrate this child to the Lord, then God doesn't just only declare that real estate of the heart of that child his, he also starts declaring the real estate of my heart His and He changes the chemistry of my heart. Are y'all with me? You see the difference? Because whenever God changes the chemistry of our heart, we can't be complacent. I have found that even when I consecrate my family, the people I love to God, My children, what ends up happening is there is a proactive, a strong, David like anointing. And we'll use this example, when David went down there to take his sandwiches, I'm just paraphrasing, because it went, we don't know what kind of food it was to his brothers. On the battlefield. David did not go down there intending to get into a brawl with a giant. He was not that was not premeditated. He got down there. And before he knew it, like every other teenager, the words just got blurted out of his mouth. And the reason why was because he had been with God enough that he could not stand the fact that there was a giant defying the armies of God, that he was like, whoa. And before he even knew what he said, he said it. Because there was a deep passion and closeness to God that just came up out of him before he could calculate the words that he was going to say. I don't think that happened with Hannah. But I do think this, when Hannah dedicated Samuel to the Lord, it did not just dedicate the real estate of his heart, it dedicated the real estate of his heart. Now you and I, we know you can be a Christian and still take possession of the real estate of your heart as possible. And what ends up happening is that real estate that you take possession of it becomes barren it pretty soon, there's weeds growing up on it, and it's not producing fruit. And pretty soon we lose the feeling like we were talking about earlier, the promises of God and those other things. They're kind of operating at the mind level, but our heart loses its ability to absorb it. And so then the passion starts to fade. And we start to experience that bareness. And I just tell you, you don't have to live that way. We do not have to live that way. When we consecrate children, families, people, things we love to God, God will do a work in our hearts and the chemistry of our hearts. That is profound. And so this is this concept I just wanted to springboard off of that we mentioned between complacency and control and how consecration protects us and rejects those from the end from having power upon our hearts. I do a whole teaching on this not being a passive father. And the key with not being passive fathers. I have found mothers are pretty proactive. I mean, part of it is just the way God made mothers the nature but fathers I have found that being proactive and being passive has a very correlation and connection to what their relationship with God is many times, the more they walk with God, the more passionate and motivated and engaged and present they tend to be. And the more that I veer away from that the less engaged I become. Yeah, I'm personalizing it so each one of us will because it's easy to become disengaged. Ah, so we have to be intentional. But this comes from the chemistry of the heart. Guys, listen, listen to what I'm saying. This is not a discipline issue. Don't look in the mirror. If you're struggling with this from time to time I'm talking, especially the men don't look in the mirror and go, Well, I'm just not a discipline father. It's not a discipline issue. It's a heart issue. And whenever we dedicate and consecrate and surrender to the Lord, it has a profound impact on the chemistry of our hearts. But it's counterintuitive. You don't it does. You're like, how does this work? Like I consecrate this to the Lord, I give this to God, let me take for example, you take a job, because jobs are important to a lot of the guys your job is important to you. Well, whenever you give your job to God, and you say, God, this is yours. If you tell me to leave, I'll leave it. If you tell me to walk away, I'll walk away. If you tell me to take something else, I'll take it, whatever it is, I'm just using something that's important to men. But anything you do you and I do when we dedicate and consecrate something to the Lord. Now, listen, if you consecrate it to him, beware. Because a lot of times, he'll say, Oh, thank you very much. And he'll, he'll take it. Not because God's a taker, but because God's a giver. And he knows that when he gets the real estate of your heart, you are going to guys, you're going to be one happy dude. And you are going to be one blessed, dude, if you will, God can then take that heart. And he can bless you with more than you could contain before, because your heart disposition is changing, and your ability to contain and receive blessing is growing. Now, we don't often think about consecration of children having something to do with our hearts as much as we're thinking about those kids because we love them, right. But God is also doing something in the parents to rearrange to transform, the consecration of the parents heart, and the end the surrender of the parents heart. You know what I found? Maybe you have to, when you can consecrate and surrender the most precious people and things to you. You can consecrate and surrender anything. Whenever you can surrender what's most precious to you? And Jesus has a way of going straight to that thing. Did you notice that not every man in the Bible? Did Jesus say to him, go sell all that you have give to the poor and follow me. But he did say it to somebody. And they said it to that man, because he saw the prison that his heart was in. It wasn't that Jesus wanted his money. Right? He was it was not a fundraising campaign. Jesus was seeking to rescue his heart. And so he told him that when we dedicate our children to the Lord, most of you guys and me included, we do not think that it's like Hannah. Okay, so, today, you guys are going to dedicate this young man to the Lord. When you consecrate him to the Lord. You're not coming, thinking that you're losing him. Right. But Hannah did, not losing him permanently. But loaning him there was a loss involved. Now, how is there a loss involved in consecrating your children to God? What do you think? What do you guys get any? Anybody have an idea? What's the loss? involved? If you're consecrating your children and surrendering to them to God? What is the loss? Control? What kind of control? I'll repeat it in the microphone deciding who they're going to be, what they're going to do, in the context of conflict, pretty much done a very good job. At that point. That's right. And, you know, we brought this out, I'm like, dude, he did not just surrender his son to the priest. The dude was a bad father. He was a terrible father. He's one of the worst fathers in the Bible. That was a Levite. And I'm like, uh, what do you do when you surrender? And God says, Okay, this is how I want you to school. This child. Oh, now meddling. He goes, this is how I want you to school this child. And you're like, Lord, that's hard. Or costly, or both. And you're like, oh, no, God, I'm just sending them over here to public school. If the Lord is like I thought you gave him to me, right? Or whenever God says, invest this or spin that, or have him do this, we talked a lot about surrender. In this concept of as children grow and get older, we have to start surrendering our control to say, Okay, what how is God growing them? We used to say, what kind of plant? Are they like a gardener, you're going, Okay, this kid has a tomato plant, this kid has a cucumber plant this kid. You see, the analogy is, you want to know how to feed that plant to make it grow? Well, that's not too hard as a as a parent. But when God says, I want you to do this, and it's going to be costly. It's going to cost your pocketbook, it's going to cost your wallet, it's going to cost your time. Or there are some people in this room and I'm one of them. i And guys, listen, I'm not, I am very happy to do it. But there were many dreams I had that I wanted to do when I was a young man. And I didn't do them. Because God says no, you this, the raising these kids is more important than you going off doing this. And I can I won't say I'm on the microphone, but I can tell you afterwards, I wanted to do this, I wanted to do that. The all these things I, I wanted to do. And God says no. If you go do that, your children will not receive the full investment of the father they need. And then he called me to do things. I'm like, Well, God, you call me over here to do this. And, and that means being away from home. How does that work? You know, and the Lord is like, if you do what I call you to do, I'll take care of your children. Right? But the point is that when you consecrate your children to God, listen, I'm gonna be honest with you, it's going to cost you it'll cost you some things. And it might cost you some career decisions. It might cost you money decisions, it might cost you lots of time decisions, right? We just got back from a homeschool gathering. And some of them were called to talk to one guy who has a brilliant career. And God's told him says, Okay, it's time to shift gears now homeschool your children. And he's literally on the fast track to the fast track to the fast track and what he's doing. But God called him to do this. And I mean, he's very open about it. Okay, he'll do it. That is the sign of a heart that has surrendered to God. Now remember, this, God's not a taker, he's a giver. So if God's asking you to give something up or someone up, be faithful and do it, because he's with you all the way, you can do it. Amen. Wow. Well, I was hoping to get a few more amens out of that, but I understand the actions that follow the dedication ceremony, are them a manifestation of our level of commitment and consecration? Right you guys track that Hannah was all in, she remained committed to the call. So you didn't take Samuel down there. And then she gets down there. And after a few visits goes, Oh, no. Eli's a terrible father. Look at his sons, they got the big trouble. You know, all this stuff. She didn't go I changed my mind. Well, I'll raise him and he's still the Lord's, you know, we rationalize, right. That's the way we do as humans. God calls us to raise these children in relationship and depth with him. And consecration requires our sensitivity to God's guidance and instruction in the lives of our children. Now, you guys know this, but I'm just it's worth saying, not what we want them to do. But what God wants them to do. Now, here's one of the challenges teaching children to also live that surrender. Because the kids, they're growing up, and they want to do that, and you're like, Ah, now that's probably not a good thing there, you know, and so you got to kind of redirect them. And that's not easy. So we're gonna talk just for a few minutes about the power of consecration for two things that you guys know I love to talk about generational transfer, and legacy. So Aaron was consecrated to the Lord in Exodus, 28. And Moses, God consecrated them for their whole family to be Levites. And the enduring nature of Aaron's consecration was such that it continued, upon all his offspring. I want you to see this. The call of God upon Aaron was upon his whole family as upon his whole offspring, there are callings that are your calling and it's unique to you and so forth. But there are bigger callings upon you guys and me, all of us. That is upon Your whole family, your children, their children, their children. This is important to identify what those callings are as we walk it out with God, this is very important. This is way more important than what your career is or my career is. This is this is literally redemptive calling upon families that travels through generations of that family. And so I want to key in on this for a moment because the way for those family callings to make their bridge to the next generation to the next generation to the next generation is by what? generational transfer and how does it happen? We've been talking about it. Consecration, consecration is the bridge. If I surrender, then generational transfer can happen. If I do not live in surrendering consecration, I risk not having generational transfer guys, please get this. If you don't get anything else we say today I pray you go home and pray and think about this. This is the key to generational treasure, at least one of the main factors is living a life of surrender and consecration. And I'm talking about surrender consecration of children. Here's the problem that we're challenged with in America. Many Christians make decisions just like unbelievers. Are you with me? In other words, instead of saying, God, what do you want us to do? Instead of doing what you guys did fast and pray for two months, or however long it was? They go, Okay, well, where's the nicest place that that job is? And where's the most money? And where's the prettiest people? Not really. But that's kind of the way they think. Right? You know what I'm saying? They think through all this, where's the where's the nice, you know, Paradise? And where are they paying a lot? You know, right now, I guarantee you that anybody in this room would be tempted to move to Hawaii if they were offered a million dollars a year as a job, right? And here's the way we do we go, okay, we this this way the world does it right. The only difference is is we make the decision like the world does. I'm not saying we all everybody here in this room, but I'm just trying to get us to personalize this a little bit. We make the decision. And then we go, Oh, yeah. And Lord, we pray that you'll bless this and bless that. And so we've made the decision like the world does. And then at the end we pray God bless it. That's not surrender, right? surrenders kind of way you guys demonstrated when you're praying over your life and job and all of that. You go into a period of fasting and prayer. And you say, God, and you come to the Lord with your hands open like this. And I'll tell you many times, I've taken a different path and people that love me go, what are you doing? And I'm like, This is what God told us to do. Right? Never, ever, ever, ever. Did I regret it? Never. Did I regret it? And there's some pretty radical one or two, especially situations where this pathway was like, what everybody says to do. And this pathway was like, why would you do that when you have this path you could take right? Hey, man, we got a lot of joy in the room here today. I love it. She's always full of joy even when she's having a hard time. Well, so godly consecration bares physical evidence to spiritual realities. What was the physical evidence in the surrender of Samuel? Can you remember any? And I know, we didn't read the whole scripture. But what was one of the physical things she said? She said, if you do this God, no razor shall come? No, no, there's a physical evidence of that consecration to the Lord, to be an azurite. And so Samuel had pretty long hair by the time he was large and in charge later in life in Israel, right. What was something else she did? Well, by the way, we did talk about this last time. She made a huge her and her husband made a huge sacrifice. In today's dollars, it was worth about $10,000 in today's dollars. Wow. So what what would you think, man, if we said, you know, when you dedicate your child to the Lord, we just we're going to take an offering just go ahead and give about $10,000. So in the offering, right, but the point is, that consecration involves physical manifestations of that sacrifice of that surrender. And it was his hair. When she said his dough razor should come upon his head, he'll be a Nazirite. And she said that we're literally making this sacrifice to the Lord. And that sacrifice was not required. It was voluntary, that $10,000 worth of cow meat now oxen and whatever else they said. All right, so another example of that would be like Jacob stones. Whenever he covered them with oil at Bethel, and he set that up, there was a remembrance there of that consecration to the Lord. Some of you know this. In our own family we have, we have this kind of thing. It's our Family Covenant. So we have a family covenant that we have made with God. So this covenant that we have made with God is generational. So is all of our kids that covenant transfers on down, you will see it on their wolves at home. Now, a covenant on a wall doesn't do any good if you don't live by it, but they do. But my point is, if you go to their house, you'll see that covenant, it's a physical sign of that consecration of the family. And I'm not telling you, that's what you should do, but you do whatever God says. But there's a physical manifestation of that surrender, and that consecration to God, and you can follow the Lord in that now, Tyler did some great teaching here while back on the family business in the family business being the kingdom of God. And I'm gonna say God works through families. And we talk about this a lot. But I believe this is part of who he is, and how he likes to work. So consecration involves commitment to Tyler the family business, not to Tyler but well, it does for it does for Marina. But consecration involves a commitment to the family business. I'm talking about the kingdom as a family, right. So the family business being the kingdom of God, consecration of children, is to bring them into the family business. It has to bring them into the Kingdom work and activity of God. So literally, we're saying, Hey, we dedicate your life to the Lord, and to bring you in as you grow as you get older. We're not going to wait until you're 22 and say, Hey, we want to help us do such as that. No, it starts when they're little. And as they grow up, and you start pulling them in. And some of my kids will tell you, man, we, I was like, hey, when we started the church down in Houston, on the first Sunday, Beth says, Well, what are we going to do? We don't even know anybody yet. When we started that church, we just moved down there cold turkey, didn't even know who was going to help us unload with a moving truck. And then God provided. But when we got down there, I said, Well, we're starting a church. Andrew, you're preaching the first sermon, Andrew was seven. Y'all heard him lead today, he was seven years old. And he taught the first teaching in that church, a seven years old, getting them into the family business. So when we consecrate them to the Lord, we're doing the beginnings of this, of this. But consecration doesn't stop at the ceremonial time. Then we continue remember how we looked at Hannah, and she would go, she would make him ephod and take them down and give them to him? You know, I could just see him he's a little bit a little bit a priest, you know, areas, five years old. And he's wearing an ephod, like the grown men are, because, and I don't know, I have a feeling he was the only kid that did that and that day, but he did it because his mom was already bringing him into the fullness of that calling, and what God had for him. I love it. What do you do to make e foods for your kids? Now, I don't expect you to show up next week and all the kids be wearing ephod although that'd be a good activity. The point? The point is, what are you doing to craft an ephod for your children? Once you consecrate them to the Lord, what are you in I doing to help bring them into the family business? And you know, you can if you're doing ministry, take them with you get them involved, you know that they have something to contribute even when they're young. I'll give a couple of examples that here in a minute. But let me say something very important. And I pray that you'll most of you have an idea of this, but I pray that you'll you'll catch it full force. This idea of bringing them into the family business, the kingdom, we have to be committed to it. Andrew and I were sitting out on the back porch yesterday. And we were talking about all the kingdom opportunities we have right now. Listen, guys, if you're waiting until you have a kingdom opportunity that they invite you to be the speaker for a conference with 10,000 people in Hawaii, the hem conference I'm talking about. If you're waiting to make your contribution to the kingdom when they invite you to the hem conference in Hawaii to speak you're on the wrong track, right? Like look right now around you. Jesus says lift up your Arise, the fields are widened to harvest. In other words, the harvest is ready. But if you look for it in all the catchy, the flashy places that the world and some some in the church exalt, you'll miss God's opportunities for you right now. Right now we have many opportunities to be teaching, to be traveling to be ministering to people to be at home ministering to people all you know, on Zoom ministering to people and to bring our kids into this. But listen, you won't bring your kids into it if you aren't into it right. Now, listen, I know I'm preaching to the choir, but I have to say what God's telling me to say. So maybe it'll help somebody. The point is that right now, I want to tell you God's saying, the fields are ripe around you right now. Right now, if you come to me, and you say, hey, Ron, I just want to do more ministry. We got we got it, man, we got all kinds of opportunity. And I'm not talking about parking lot attendants and ushers. I'm talking about ministering and teaching and laying hands on people and praying for them and encouraging people and going other places and doing this because what the, you know, the seventh pillar we're getting ready to teach on we're called to the nation's right. That's our calling as a spiritual family is to the nation's not just the neighborhood. So our calling to the nation's we've got opportunities for you. Even if your mom's at home, I'm looking at you. Even if your mom's home and you have children, you got a zoom app, don't you? Right. And I found that even with these moms, I can get them away once in a while I've got right now we've got them asking for several of the moms to come and teach. And I'm like, we could take a whole bunch of you if you want to see it, you see what I'm getting at. But what does this have to consecration? If we are not invested in the kingdom? If we're saying, oh, Lord, I can't do it here, I've got to wait till I get this opportunity, or that opportunity or whatever. Then we're gonna sit and go around that mountain and around that mountain around that mountain. Until we finally go, Wait a minute, I got to get in the family business. I got to do this now. And I'm using Tyler's terminology there for his teaching on the kingdom. Now, the other thing I wanted to mention is Have you noticed how much God works through families? What do you and I were talking about this here just recently. But I should have pulled my notes out so I can because I actually had some good points here. But I didn't think about it at the time. God describes himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now who are those guys? Grant great grandfather, father and son, right? God says, I am the God of this family. Right? In this cool, he doesn't just say I'm the God of Abraham. He doesn't. He just doesn't just say to you, I'm the God of Tay. He says, I'm the God of Tay, and Matthias And Elise and Nicole and RAM. And he gets in, he says, the names of your family because he is the God of your family. And he calls you as a family. Have you ever noticed that God has into nepotism? The kingdom of God does not have an anti nepotism policy. In fact, God works through families, this is the way he operates. Now, I'm not saying everybody has to be in the same natural family. You guys know that. But when Moses instituted the priesthood in Israel, he did it to one family, one family, when God established get this one, when God says, here in about 1500 years, or whatever the number of years are, Jesus says, I'm going to go to the earth. And I'm going to start my kingship on the earth. So I need to go ahead and get an early start and have them start my monarchy before I get there. Y'all know what I'm talking about? Right? Who was it? David? They were God raises up David, and starts the Davidic. monarchy, a family to prepare for the reign of the Messiah in the coming eternity in the both the millennial and the eternal realms and who he is now ruling already. My point is this. When he wants to make a way for his kingship over all things. He does it through a family. When he says to Abraham, I'm going to bless all the nations of the earth. He does it through a family what started as a physical family. And now Paul says, both a physical and a spiritual family, but God works through families. When God called a foreigner to prepare the way for the Messiah, He raised up his cousin, Jesus cousin, John the Baptist, to be His forerunner to prepare the way and to carry the mantle of Elijah. Y'all get in the picture. Here's a couple more for you. As to get the get the field when Jesus called the apostles and his disciples, some of them were brothers, you remember, he called James and John, they were brothers. Several of Jesus disciples were his own brothers and sisters. I won't read the Scripture right now. But you can go look in Matthew 13. In verses 55 and 56, you'll see James Josias, which is called Joseph, Simon, Judas, not Judas Iscariot, different Judas and his sisters. So it says right there. Interesting, isn't it? Paul clarifies that the other James, not John's brother, but the James, who was over the church in Jerusalem, was Jesus brother. Did you guys know that? So Paul says in Galatians, one, verse 18, he says, then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter. And he goes, I remained there with him for 15 days. But I did not see any of the other apostles except James, the Lord's brother. Y'all see what I'm saying here, Simon, Peter and Andrew were brothers. So this teaching that that Tyler gave us the kingdom is a family business. And this is important for us to see and to embrace it as a family. So it's not just us as individuals, it's a family business. We know that the primary family of God, of course, is spiritual family, not natural family, right. But but God desires natural families to operate as spiritual family. Now, I know many of us will say, you know, I'm closer to these people in the kingdom than I am my own natural family. Unfortunately, there's a lot of cases where that happens. But God's desire is that in our natural families, we would be spiritual family and be close to one another, and have that same intimacy with our spiritual family. Does this track with you guys? Yeah, so I think we'll stop there. There's more on this. I do want to mention one thing before we transition to the dedication. I want to give an exam I want to just I'm going to teach on this later on a little bit more. But I want to talk about having our spiritual radars up to identify God's activity and children. Because this is very important. And it starts when they're little like this little girl over here. It starts when they're young, you have to be really keyed in. And I noticed this, when after I dedicated each of my children to the Lord, guys, listen, I was like a radio that got a better tuner. Like, yeah, you ever see the old fashioned radios that you just tuned by turning it and you turn it and you're trying to tune it in and trying to find the channel and trying to find the right, the right frequency. I noticed in my own life, just personal testimony, that after the consecration and the dedication of each child, my antennas were like this, I was listening better than I was before. And I truly believe part of that is because I think it changes the heart and causes us to tune in. But Deborah Andrew told me an interesting story this week. And I want to share this story because it's an excellent example of what I'm talking about. It's we're up at the we're up at the retreat center in the mountains for for eight days. And one of the things they do before each meal, is someone stands up for the whole retreat center, everybody who's there for all the different retreats that are going on, and someone stands up with a microphone like this, and they make a few announcements. And then they lead us in a prayer over each meal. Well, Elijah, you guys, his oldest, he kept asking to pray. Now, how old is he 333 and a half years old. And I'm thinking, you guys know what happens when three year olds asked to get in front of people, right? Most of the time, what happens when they get up there? Usually they freeze up just like you and I do when we get in front of people until we get used to it right? And so he keeps asking and asking. And Andrew said, I don't know how many times he just asked and asked and asked all week long, asked to get up there and pray. And so finally, I think it was the last night. And so Andrew went up and talked to the guy in charge and he goes, Hey, my son wants to my son wants to say the prayer over the meal, you know, and he's like, okay, and then he looks and sees that. Elijah is three years old. And so Andrew takes him up there. And man he started praying. And I mean, I didn't even know we were having ice cream and he was thanking God for the ice cream and thanking God for the call. Coffee thanking God for the I don't know what I don't know how he knew we were having ice cream. Maybe we had ice cream because he prayed, I don't know. But my point is this our antennas when we consecrate children to the Lord, and I still think we have to be intentional. We will be tuning in even when they're young, when they're older when they're teenagers, when they're adults, when they're when their parents have their own children. I believe that our spirits are tuned in more to the call of God in their lives. And I think we still want to be intentional about it. But I just pray, Lord, help us to tune in to what you're doing in our children, our grandchildren, our families. And Lord, we pray teach us to consecrate our children to you teach us to consecrate our families to you, teach us to consecrate and surrender everything in our lives and in our families and all that's precious to surrender to you because we can trust you with them. In Jesus name. Amen. 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 evernote.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. 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