The Seven Pillars (Part 26)-Pillar 6-Walking In Humility And Overcoming Obstructions To Spiritual Authority - 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 final session on the sixth pillar, raising up spiritual leaders, we explore the final obstruction to spiritual authority, pride. True humility is key for us to live and carry this spiritual authority that God has given us.

Full transcript generated by ai (please excuse errors):





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​All right, well, this we the last session that I taught now, it seems like forever ago was three or four weeks ago, was part 25 of the seven pillars. Now I know some of you are thinking, Are we ever going to end this. And I mean, Doug, and Jennifer, we have to finish it before you guys go, or you're going to have to stay longer. No, I'm just kidding. We are going to finish it. I think we're going to finish it up. We're going to get into the final pillar today, here in a moment. And then we'll finish it up next week. But I want to finish up the sixth pillar. And how many of you remember the pillars? The sixth pillar is a call to raise up spiritual leader. So this is what we've been talking about. And I'm going to spend just probably, I don't know, 567 minutes, finishing up this pillar, we just didn't quite have enough time to finish up the sixth pillar, before we get today to the seventh pillar, and that is a call to the nations. So in the sixth pillar, a call to raise up spiritual leaders. One of the things that we really started to examine was a key factor in Matthew 28, in the Great Commission, is the Jesus saying that he has been given authority, this is critical, because this commission, and I use this example, for those who have been a commissioned officer in the military. Whenever you receive a commission, you don't receive a commission, to the military, from your high school coach, you love your high school coach, your teacher, your parent, whoever it is, you receive a commission, from who who's that commission from as a military officer in the United States, President of the United States, it's the highest executive authority in the United States commissions, and does that commissioning, because they have authority. So this call to raise up spiritual leaders, a key component for us to understand is the spiritual authority that Jesus holds to give it to us. And it's a delegated authority. And those of you who just came back from Central America, you have lived this, you have lived it in the last week. Because when you went out, you did not go out in your own authority. You went out in the authority that had been given to you by God, and delegated by Jesus through his church and his people, his leaders in his church. And so we looked at three different obstructions I want to, there are many obstructions that stop us from spiritual authority. And we looked at three of them, we're going to finish up with the fourth one, there are more than four, I know that. But I wanted to kind of identify what I've seen as what have been major obstructions, either in my own life or in people that I'm close to, that have held them back from receiving the fullness of the impartation of authority, so they can operate in that spiritual authority. Now, I'm gonna tell you have you guys ever been in a place where you tried to raise up spiritual leaders, and you didn't do it under authority? You know what I'm talking about? If you ever done that, I may not we were you try it on your own. And it doesn't usually go real well, but under the spiritual authority, Jesus delegates to us. It's amazing. Now we've served some time together, Tom and I have, and we can, I can tell you and some of you guys know this, some of y'all are in the military. When a lieutenant walks in the in the conference room, and everybody's sitting there, it's different than when the commanding general walks in. Right? When the commanding general walks in, it's a different atmosphere. It doesn't matter if they're identical twins, or whatever, it doesn't matter. It's a different level of authority. And when we walk in the spiritual authority that God has given us, it doesn't take the power of the flesh or cleverness, to get things to happen, right? Or the flesh. You know, there's a lot of people that try to make things happen through human persuasion, or through human abilities or whatever. This is one of the most important lessons that that I remember learning as a young man was you must have and walk in spiritual authority. And when you do, it's amazing when the armies of heaven are backing you up, what can happen And I'll tell you, the Holy Spirit will go into the kingdom of darkness. And he will disrupt things, he will turn things upside down. Remember, that's what they said of the church that there, they were turning the whole world upside down. That's called disruption. That's disruption that comes from the Holy Spirit. We will not raise up leaders, spiritual leaders, I'm talking about not talking about organizational leaders, talking about spiritual leaders, without authority, and when we do it with God's authority that he gives us. And we operate in that that authority is so powerful, there's an anointing of the Holy Spirit, there is a there is an accompaniment of the angels of heaven, of the armies of heaven, and in of the saints with us who move in that authority. And it causes the kingdom of darkness to shake and to quake. This is why when Jesus would show up demons would just start screaming out what have you come to torment us before? I mean, they're just there. They're scared, they're afraid, because the Kingdom of Darkness is being shaken by an authority that just walked into the room. Now, I don't know, I do know about you, I was gonna say, I don't know about you. But I do know about you. Whenever we go into the regions of the world that God calls us to. We don't want to go without Jesus. I'm like Moses, no, I'm all about having angels with me, Lord, but I'm going if you're going remember, Moses says, Lord, if you're not going, I'm not going, right. If we're going, we're going with Jesus. And I'll tell you, when you go with Jesus, there's a whole lot of authority in the room. And I want to go with people who go with Jesus, right? I want to go with people who walk in this and live in this spiritual authority. This is key to raising up spiritual leaders. And yet, we hear little talk about this as a key part of discipleship. Yet Jesus puts it right there sandwiched in with the Great Commission, and Matthew 28. So we looked at three obstructions, I'm gonna read them off quickly, I'm not going to reteach them. And then we'll look at four and you, the Lord may give you revelation sharing, it's not even these four, it might be something else. And I encourage you to write them down. Because there are many obstructions, some walk in a deficit of spiritual authority that we see in the great commandment, and the Great Commission, because they don't live under spiritual authority. You know, if the general decides to just go out on his own, and start doing his own thing and have his own army, he won't be the commanding general very long, right? Because he has a commission from someone, and he's under authority, some walk in a deficit of spiritual authority that we see in the great commandments and the Great Commission, because they do not do the great commandments and the Great Commission. All right, so let's say that you are commissioned, and you do have this authority, and then you just sit at home and you don't do the work that God's called, you won't be you won't be operating in it, right? Even if you have the authority, if you're not doing it, and it starts I always like to say it starts with the great commandments. That's something that we strongly believe that the key to the great commandments and doing the Great Commission and doing them is the great commandments. That's key. If we forget that we won't operate in the same level of power. So this obstruction to is some walk in this deficit, just simply because they don't go do it. They study about it, they read it in books, but they don't go do it the third obstruction, some walk in a deficit of spiritual authority, with that we see in the great commandments and the Great Commission, because they quit being followers. Now, we taught quite a bit of time on this because I gave some examples. There are many great leaders in the kingdom who are doing wonderful things, but then they lose the art of followership. On this trip that I was just on, I had the opportunity to spend some good time with two of my spiritual fathers and you guys know one of them. They have been my pastors and spiritual father for many years. And I believe this is critical for me to maintain that. And I maintain connections with them in meetings every month, connecting with them, because it's important for me, I can't say, Well, I'm a leader of this or that and this ministry or whatever, and then quit being a follower. The art of followership is something that we should be living all of our lives. I'll tell you what, it becomes key to impartation because one of the key parts of raising up spiritual leaders is teaching them to teach you, right, teaching them imparting to them so they can impart to you. And if you have grown children, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about. Because you trained and you taught your kids and you, you invested in them. But when they become teenagers, they start teaching you things. Like you didn't know how to use that iPhone or you didn't know how to use, I'm just there's many things, there are many areas and as they get older, they start teaching and mentoring us. This is key to being a spiritual leader and an spiritual father mother, is is part of impartation is giving them an opportunity to impart back. And so if we don't really keep that art of followership in our own lives, with our own spiritual fathers with our own spiritual authorities, then people start going off into left field or right field, and they don't realize what's happened is they've lost the art of followership. Jesus never suggested in the Great Commission, that you just get discipled once for a year, or two or three years, some people say when were you discipled, like it was over, I'm still being discipled. And when I was meeting, some of you know, I'm our last stop on this trip was meeting with Dick and Mary Duncan. And, and so I'm sharing things that it's going on in my life things that, you know, I was recently at a teaching I'd heard and I was struggling with, and I'm sharing with that, and I'm telling you what I see going good and what I see his challenges, and he's imparting to me he's imparting, and he's sharing. And then before I left, he gave me an assignment. He goes here, you know, you need to get this book and read it. And it didn't have anything. I don't know that it had anything to do with what we were talking about other than he was moved by the Holy Spirit to tell me to read it. And I started read, I was like, Man, I wish I had this book 30 years ago. And for a lot of reasons, but But my point is that the art of followership is to is to keep walking in that and receiving and living this way. And the followership is something you do in families more than you do in organizations. I'm not saying you don't do it in organizations, but families, it happens very organically. And it should keep happening, it should not stop happening. It should it should always keep happening. Okay, the fourth obstruction that we're going to talk about today is some walk in a deficit of spiritual authority that we see in the great commandments of the Great Commission specific especially the Great Commission, because they become proud and they lose the humility that's been given to them. Now this is a no brainer. I know that you guys know this. You know, it's one thing to know it in the left side of my brain it's another thing to walk into live it and everybody here you guys everybody listening even knows this. Some walk in this deficit of spiritual authority that we see because they they quit. They don't see it when they don't live in the spiritual father spiritual mother spiritual followership if if we revert to commercialism in our faith, do you guys know what I mean by commercialism? In other words, it's all about the organization. I was recently at a at a teaching a very well known teacher, and he was teaching about discipleship, but 90% of it was just commercial Christianity, how to make your church big how to make your ministry big how to make, and it's the mechanics, that stuff's not necessarily bad, but don't miss identify it. Right? There's a difference between organizational development, and spiritual leadership development, those are very, very different. And so this, this idea that it's easy to quit walking in these character traits and nature. Now I know I'm preaching to the choir, you guys live this all the time. But we have a responsibility to walk this out, and to impart this to other people. And so I really feel it's important for us to be thinking about it, so that we can impart it to others. And I will tell you, for me personally, I like to do personal inventories of my life. So a really good time to do this is in our regular prayer time. So in my regular prayer time, I like to ask the Lord, Lord, what what is there something here that I need to see? Am I missing something? Is my heart in the right place? All of those questions, we should be asking the Lord and God will help us to see them. And I'll tell you, the more that I've walked in this, the more blessed that I've been. Now I'm going to skip over here because I was just listing them out. I've got the meat of this on page, those of you that have the notes on page 83. By the way, these notes for this series are 90 pages long. They won't be much longer, but if you want them, I can send you the PDF and provide that just let me know The more we let me say this, this loss of, of walking in humility, it is a natural result. When we lose spiritual authorities, fathers and mothers have any of you ever lost a spiritual authority in your life, I've lost some precious spiritual authorities in my life. And some of you've heard me tell my the story, when, when I lost a very important spiritual authority in my life. And his granddaughter called me the morning he had died. And she said, she said, You're, you're at the top of my list to call and tell you that my grandfather died. I'd never talked to her before in my life. But I was on her list, because he was a spiritual father to me. And I guess I could have just said, Lord, you know, my dad was already passed away, my dad passed away. 14 years ago, it's hard to believe. And I could have just said, Well, there's another one gone, I don't have, you know, any more spiritual fathers other than one that's alive. But I said that morning, I said, I said, Lord, who, who's going to be my spiritual father. And two hours later, Dick Duncan called me and had not talked to me for a long time. We had not talked in years. And he called me, and I just broke down crying. I was like, What are the chances of this? And sometimes it just takes us saying, Lord, ask the question. And when we lose spiritual authorities in our lives, and there are, I've had good friends who've lost spiritual authorities and fathers and mothers in their lives. And then they just try to do it on their own. Because they're like, Well, I'm a grown man. I'm a dad, I'm a granddad, whatever. And I just need to do this on Guess what? God doesn't ever want you to have to do it on your own. By yourself. You're never alone. And the world teaches us Oh, you need to just pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Do this on your own. I'm not saying be codependent. That's not what I'm saying. And you guys know that. But God is teaching us that we don't have to do this alone. And he always has people to bless us invest in our lives, spiritual authorities, fathers, mothers, and people that we can walk with. These are a tremendous blessing. The world doesn't see this. They don't understand it. The flesh revolts against the ways of God. And so it looks like oh, well, you're needy, we're not talking about neediness, we're talking about knowing what our deficits are without the people of God, without the mothers and the fathers of the faith. Without men and women who've walked those valleys that we've not walked, some of us have walked some dark valleys in this room in this place. Some of us have walked on some great mountain tops. But you guys know, there are still mountain tops, we have not scaled, and there are still valleys we have not walked through. But there are people who have, and God has them there for us. And we're never alone. And this is our commitment to one another, to be faithful to one another to live this way. And those of you in the know any any role of spiritual authority is the role of what it's the role of a servant. You think about raising those kids, if you've been if you're a parent, and you've raised children, you worked your tail end off, at least, you know, most parents I know they work and work and you work. You work every day and night and you're constantly working when you're raising kids. Being a father, a mother being a spiritual father, spiritual mother, it is a servants role. It is the role of someone who serves and and we recognize that we say it's an honor, it's but it's also a humbling thing to do. The more we humble ourselves, as followers of Jesus, and the spiritual fathers he places in our lives, the more he lifts us up into divine authority, and the more we're able to impart into future generations, so they can carry more authority and fruitfulness than we did. I will tell you that you guys know, whenever we receive, I'll tell you this. Let me say it this way. One time I decided. I'm gonna just look and see how many people have invested into my life like serious investment, not like Yeah, I heard them teach. But yeah, I heard them teach. They ministered to me. Over a long period of time, they became a person that I can't that I receive from regularly in some way through teaching through relationship through both through investments of different kinds. And I counted more than 25 key people in my life. I came to realize, man, I'm literally just the composite of 30. Some people who've really dedicated their lives to me at some point or many years, I'm like, if I, if you listen to me, literally, it's like, you know, I'm not saying I never learned anything originally from the Holy Spirit, but much of that came from things they taught me, you ever heard that saying 50% of creativity is imitation? It is. So in other words, you start imitating your kids, they start acting like you when they were little, didn't they? They started walking like you talking like you. And you said, hey, where do you hear that and you're like, your spouse goes from you, you know, and they imitate you. But after a while, they start coming up with their own stuff, right? But they started by imitation. And much, that's what Paul says, Follow me, as I follow Christ, literally a Greek word means imitate, it literally means imitate. He says, Just come over here and copy me. Now he's not saying become an exact copy clone of me, he's not saying that. He's saying, you come along with me, and you just copy what I do. And what's gonna happen as you copy me, then after a while, that 50%, you're gonna start getting closer to that 50%. And you're gonna find that all kinds of creativity just starts flowing. And so most of the teachings that I do most of the counsel I give most of the things you hear me say, you can audit, audit it back to some root thing, that one of my spiritual fathers or mothers or mentors taught me, almost everything. Like, it's really fascinating, because it goes back to some core thing I learned from the Lord through Psalm one. And this is powerful, because this is the way God wants us to be He. It's kind of like these plants, that that you that grow. I don't know what those house plants are called. But they're their plants that grow. By the way, those plants that grow with vines that are like houseplants. Does anybody know the name of them? What is a path of a pathos? Well, the cool thing about them is they just flourish, and flourish. Look at the one in the library. It's huge. It's like, that thing is like flourishing, and you got to cut them off, and then you stick them in water, and then they just flourish more. Well, the ones in Hawaii, have you guys seen the ones in Hawaii, the leaves are giant, like, I'm like, this can't be the same plant, it is the same plant. It's just been planted in a place where it can grow bigger. This is the way much of the kingdom is. And the Lord is always giving us new sprouts. You know, Doug, you may share something. And as you start to share it, the more you share, someone goes, You know what this is, this is breakthrough for me. They share that it's like you just gave them a clip off that plant, they put it in some water, and another whole plant starts to grow. I've talked about the kingdom in their lives, learning and growth that came from something that you invested into them. And so this is so powerful. I love this in the 1980s and the 1990s. Also Lester Summerall, who was one of my mentors started warning, the church that there was too much focus on three things. And he started warning in the 80s, about this. So you think about that power, platform, and prestige. He started morning about those three things, because he said, This is not the essence of ministry. Now it kind of became the essence of ministry ministry came somewhere years ago, ministry became a stage thing a lot more than it used to be. And I'm not sure how that transpired. But in other words, he's talking about pride, which is the opposite of humility. Now, we're not against stages, we stand on stages, many times in ministry, we're not against that. But this idea of power and platform and prestige, has definitely caused a deviation in the church and God's calling us to really recalibrate this in the church. Now, you in your life, and in my life, you may go, You know what, I feel like I'm on pretty good track. That's great. Stay on it. Because if you're on track, in this humility, what will happen is God will use you, your family, your spiritual family, to bring calibration to the rest of his house, and I'm not saying all of his house, but his house in his kingdom, in various places throughout the world. So, in this situation, when people get off into this, and why am I teaching on this, you're going to encounter people that need help with this specifically, and I believe we we do all the time. I just came from a conference where they were teaching, and some poor pastor was sitting on the same row with Beth and I. And they were teaching and I don't even remember what they were saying. But he had taken over a church of 12 people. Now, I didn't even know the guy. So I didn't even know this till he just starts talking out loud. In the back, we're sitting on the back row and, and he goes, Man, my church only started with I only had 12 people, you know, and that's the way it was hitting him, he felt bad, because of whatever it was that was being said. And so the guy starts talking, and I don't remember what was being taught. But it was this kind of emphasis on what we're talking about. And the guy felt so terrible, he goes, Well, we've only grown to 69. Imagine this is a pastor. And we're in a meeting, and the guys literally talking, like only the people right around him can hear him. But he felt terrible. And I was thinking, Man, that's pretty good multiplication to go from 12 to 69. But he felt bad because they were talking about the importance of having, and I won't go into the details, but it was organizational type stuff. And the guy felt bad. And, again, I'm not saying everything being said was wrong or anything like that. But it was the wrong focus, it was back to platform, and prestige and different things. And so that was really bothering him. Let me just review my notes here. So as a result, when people speak or teach, what will happen is, if we have this emphasis going, what ends up happening is if people are impacted a certain way, or there aren't a certain type of response, it becomes easy to be intimidated, and to feel like their ministry is defective, or the receivers not respecting the Word of God in them or something like that. So here's what I want you to see. I'm not, I'm not suggesting that we should not see any fruit, obviously, we want to see fruit in ministry. But where is our template, that we look at it? Is it a power platform prestige template? Or is it a template of the New Testament, and what we see Jesus and the apostles and the disciples doing? You know, there's Philip. And he's in a chariot, his ministry that day was in a chariot with someone from Africa. It wasn't a platform, if you will, in most of the ministry we see happen in Scripture doesn't even happen on the platform does it? In fact, most of the spiritual leaders in Scripture throughout the Old and New Testaments are not even priests or Levites, in the Old Testament, and many of them were not even. They weren't rabbis in the New Testament. They weren't, you know, what we would call clergy today. And yet people today still look down upon themselves when they look in the mirror, because, well, I'm not a pastor, well, I'm not a you fill in the blank, you see what I'm saying? So again, I'm just saying that it's important for us to walk in humility and to embrace humility, and to reject these templates that call us out and tell us, hey, you need to be recognized as being successful. And in order to do that, it needs to look like A, B, or C, and B, if they're looking through that template of that power, prestige and platform template, they very well may miss God. And this can become an obstruction to the spiritual authority God is calling you to, because many people just fold up shop and go home. Many people do many, many people do that. Good, godly people do it. And I'm going come on your ministry. You This is legit, like God is using you Come on, let's go. And they're like, Well, I'm only this or Well, I'm only that. So this is important for us. If we walk in a spirit of humility, and embrace people and help bring them forward, and we say, Hey, listen, this is not how it's different, the define, but come along with me, let's do ministry together just like we do as a spiritual family. People will come along if we can embrace that by living a life of humility. But if we have to live in this template, what we will do is set ourselves above them, and there'll be intimidated, they won't come into it. And this was the story. I love Francis Chan's story. This is, you know, he had a he had planted this mega church and it was big and it was powerful. And then one day he says, What am I doing? He's like, everybody comes here, the whole church to hear me use my spiritual gifts and yet, these are not operating in spiritual gifts. Yes, some of the gift of helps in different things, but not what he wanted to see like How many Francis Chan's are there in my congregation, but we won't see them because I've told them to park cars, right? Or whatever, you know what I'm saying. And so, and again, there are different wineskins we embrace anyone's can the Holy Spirit's moving. But for him, it was a wineskin change. And for us as a spiritual family, this is key to this pillar six, we believe a part of our DNA is to walk under spiritual authority. And what I mean is to carry spiritual authority. And part of that is us to walk as people have humility, to be people of humility, to minister in humility, a lot of the reasons why we see so much fruit in this ministry, the tremendous fruit that we see. And I'm going, Man, how does this happen? Like, it's not even that hard, you minister and this revival and people are saved to give their lives to the Lord. And this has happened. And that's happening. And I've got stories to tell you from this last trip when we have a chance sometime, but I'm still I'm like, How does this happen? And much of it happens, because we go to people that others won't go to. And a lot of it boils down to, they don't have enough money to make your ministry big, or to give your church a budget to hire staff, or you know all those things. But yet there they are in the fruit is ripe in the in the soil is rich. And I tell you, I've lived enough of my life in the hard soils and the rocky soils, that God willing by the grace of God, I'm living the rest of my life in the dark, rich soils of the kingdom of God. That's where I want to be. And I've told the Lord that Lord, wherever it is, God that's where we want to be in the dark, rich soils of the kingdom of God. Man, at least we got some amens in there. Amen. Do not see yourself and exalted leadership form. You know this, you guys all know this. But But I feel compelled to say it see yourself as a servant. What's the one thing we tell every group, when we show up? We try to start by saying, what is it? We are here as Your servants, we are here to serve you. We're not here to be served. We're not here for you to look up to us, even though people do I mean, in a healthy way. We're not here to stand on your stages or to be elevated. We come with you to you as Your servants with a towel, draped over our arm. We're here to wash your feet. We're here to minister to you. And I tell you, the Lord spoke to me eight years ago this week, or actually it was a little bit later than this week. And now that think about it when the vision started for Aaron Nova. And he says, I want you to treat my people first class. When you minister to them, I want them to feel like they are on first class on the airplane, they're going to get good food, they're going to have a nice place to sit, they're going to be ministered to. And when you give to them, you minister to them, minister to them under a quality under a powerful anointing. Don't give them the bread crumbs from last year. That doesn't mean you don't teach some from last year. But teach what the Holy Spirit is anointing. Give them fresh oil, fresh bread, fresh wine, the new wine, give them the best of the best. And that's our heart and our vision. And I believe that the more we will humble ourselves before the Lord, I believe the more we will give them fresh bread, and we will give them the best of the best of the best. Man Can I get an amen? That's a good one. We're favorite sons and daughters of the Father. And we're servants of the king of the monarchy of heaven. Wow. When you are when you're the son of the king, when you're the daughter of the king, when you are the bride of the bridegroom, of the king, you can use all these different roles God calls us to an eternity. But when we when we are that. You don't have to elevate yourself one bit, because you're already elevated. You can walk in humility, you can walk in kindness, you can walk in gentleness, because you are a son of the King. You are the bride of the bridegroom you are as special as you can be. Because you've been identified and called and lifted up by God Himself. And the scripture says Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, and He will lift you up and that's not a thing for the flesh. He will lift you up so the light will shine. So his light will shine. So people will say man, wait a minute. That's a son of the king, a daughter of the king I want I need to find out what's going on here. How come they're so blessed. How come they're so kind How come they're so wealthy in love it you see what I'm saying? And this is the humility of the kingdom. We can walk in this I did a teaching several years ago some of you may remember and we talked about the the being able to carry majesty. Majesty is a heavy load the majesty of God is heavy and There are few vehicles that can carry the majesty of the king. One of the things that can carry the majesty of the king is humility. All right, you don't buy a half ton truck and pull a fifth wheel rig that weighs 20,000 pounds, right? Some of you know that. You don't do that you got to buy a big truck, you got to buy like the one ton truck, the dually that has all the the rigging inside the truck to be able to carry that load. Well, that big rig that one ton dually is called humility. And God goes, Hey, I've got this giant fifth wheel camper called the majesty of God, the anointing of the Most High the favor of the Lord. And I want to put this on you. But you've got to have the humility to be able to carry it. You got to have the ability to carry it, which is humility, which is the rig right? Well, that was a teaching long ago, maybe we will redo that sometime. So God has set His glory, and His Majesty upon us. So that he can make it easy for us to walk in humility. To make it extremely desirable to us to walk in holiness, which is the culture of heaven, and to make walking in the love of God, like drinking fresh bring water. You know, the world struggles with humility, because nothing in the world gives it any glory or recognition. true humility, I'm not talking about fake humility. I mean, there are people on TV and they act fake and all that. But what's in the heart is what matters, right? We're talking about genuine humility, not false humility. But to walk in humility is key for us to live and carry this spiritual authority that God has given us. Some of you know this from your time in the military, the more rank you got, and some of us lived through this over the years, whenever we received more rank, you had to be more careful what you say. You had to be a whole lot more careful about what you say, and how you carry yourself. Because the authority that you carry has a huge impact on people. People will do things simply because you said something. And so the more authority we carry, the more humility we have to carry. This is a principle of the kingdom but it also translates into the natural world as well. holiness and love, I love these two words, Blossom and bloom, Blossom and bloom in the lifestyle under spiritual authority, obedience, followership, and humility. Those are the four we've been talking about. They love to thrive in this environment. This is a great environment. And so you can probably tell knowing me all these years, some of you that I love these things, I love them, because they're beautiful. They're, they're beautiful to the Lord, and they are beautiful to heaven. And so this is how the spiritual authority of Jesus in the Great Commission is delegated throughout the generations through these qualities and practices. And these four are living under spiritual authority, obedience, followership, and humility. So as humble leaders and followers, we don't force people to do things, right. I mean, you in the world you do, but in the kingdom, Jesus would say to someone follow me. Or he would say to the rich, young ruler, go sell all that you have and follow me. Or he would say to the rabbi, come and follow me. But he never made them do it, did he? So we give as spiritual leaders, we give counsel and we invest into people, but don't try to force them to do now why am I saying this? Many of you guys are going to disciple and lead and cultivate many leaders in the kingdom. And this is a common thing. I've seen people get really good at this for 10 or 20 years, and then boom, they get frustrated. And then they wake up one day, and they're like, why am I doing this? I know better. You have the in the kingdom of God. We walk in this humility we give when, especially if there's a draw. Now, I'll tell you this, I've noticed this. I've been around spiritual leaders and fathers, and they're ready to give me something. They're ready to offer counsel, if I ask, but many times, if I don't ask them for counsel, they won't give it. You guys know what I'm talking about. Because there needs to be a certain draw coming from me to receive from them. This is critical. And so here we're talking about application in a spiritual leader. Whenever Whenever we walk in humility, we're inviting people to seek counsel. And many people I love in my own family and My own spiritual families that I've had over the years, they, they don't always seek counsel. And sometimes you can offer something. But listen, people will not always take it Don't, don't become disappointed. Don't become discouraged when this happens. Now, when your kids are little, you pretty much you know, you got to okay little man, you got to do this, you know, because this is the way the household works. But you guys know, as your kids get older, this becomes the mode, this becomes the modus operandi where we invest and we love and we give, but then we're operating more like the kingdom does with many of the people of God, this is very important. For us. This is why humility is so critical for us as spiritual leaders. Listen, you're going to invest into people, you're going to pour your heart and life into them. And some of them will receive your counsel and some will not. Don't become offended. Don't let that offend you. Because what'll happen is if if you become offended, what ends up happening is you start, you'll cut off the relationship. I've seen this happen, where we're and I've had some dear friends that I've watched them pour their lives into someone. And then when they didn't take their counsel, they became offended. And today, they're not in relationship, because that offense took them and separated them in that fraction. So don't let that happen. This is very important. Why am I teaching on this? Because we're talking about raising up spiritual leaders. And we must be able to do this in humility. It's critical for us to do this in humility. Amen, amen. Well, I think we're gonna close here, I was hoping to get into the seventh pillar. But we'll get into that next week. And we'll teach on the seventh pillar, Lord willing, next week, and we'll be doing your send offs, looking forward to commissioning and sending you guys for the ministry that you're going to be doing. And I'll tell you what, this this is such a powerful, powerful Scripture. I wanted to reread it and I didn't reread it because it was on my next page, Matthew 20. A, what what happens many times is if there's a scripture, you've heard 100 times, it's easy to just read it and go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and so I just encourage you go back and read the Great Commission, now that we've spent several sessions in the Great Commission, go back and read the Great Commission, and read it afresh. Now, when we talk about the seventh pillar, we're literally going to cover one phrase, of all the nations for words, because Jesus says make disciples of all the nations. And this is so important to us as a spiritual family and people that it's actually I believe, a pillar in our lives. And I believe in many other spiritual families that we're connect with. Not every spiritual family has a has a focus on the nations, they may be called to the nations. But that might just be an addendum to what they do in a ministry, in our spiritual family. This is a core pillar. This is a key part of our spiritual DNA. This is why we don't have a strategy for this neighborhood down here and this neighborhood over here in this neighborhood over here, and how many mission houses can we have in one city and all of that, because our focus is on the nation's. And we've said that all along for seven years, we've been saying that, because that's our calling. And, and I was on this latest trip, I was amazed, just different pastors who came up and says, hey, we'd like to cultivate a relationship we need. We need some spiritual father, input and investment in our lives and our spiritual families, can you connect with us, and this is part of that call to the nations that God is calling us to. So we want to be obedient to that we want to be faithful to them. Well, let's pray and then I'll, and we'll open it up for discussions and we'll turn the recording off. Lord, we're thankful to you that you lead in this humility that you call us to you lead Lord, practicing the so that we could learn from you and imitate you, and walk as you walked. And Lord, if it's good enough for the King of the universe, the king of all things, the king of all things to come, then it's good enough for us. And Lord, we want to say we love you. Oh God, we love you. We love your heart. We love your your demeanor, we love your countenance. We love that sweet counsel to sit down with you and and in your people and to share in that sweet counsel that we talked about before the teaching began. And what David and job talked about that sweet fellowship. And Lord Our desire is we yearn to live this way before you and to live this way with one another. And so we bless your name, we glorify you, we come to Gather today and say, Lord, we open our hearts to receive and to walk with you in all of these things. And we pray, as the song said that we just saying, Please don't pass us by. Oh, son of David. Don't pass us by. We pray 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. 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