RELUCTANT PARENT

One of the teachers at school came to me this past week. She has come off and on for the past four years that I have been working at the school, and is an extremely sensitive person. She is especially sensitive to the Holy Spirit, and has dreams and visions. From the beginning, I could tell from the dreams and visions she shared with me that the Lord was calling her to be a proactive evangelist. She has resisted this idea, preferring to just be an example and not speak about Jesus, not want to actively enter into someone else’s rebirth and spiritual growth.

She came to me in distress because a 16 year old was pestering her for answers and help. She had hung up on the girl, refusing to help, saying that she could and should hear God for herself . Since I have been down a similar path in accepting the role of spiritual father, I recognized the symptoms of a reluctant parent.

For those of you who are not aware, when I was asked to work for the school, I was specifically requested to be ‘spiritual father’ to faculty and staff. This was five years ago, and I was extremely uncomfortable with this idea. One of my friends pointed out that for the past 20 years the Lord has been bringing young people into my life and I have in fact been acting as spiritual parent to them. In nearly every Youth With A Mission school and multi-day seminar with young people, there are some who request to call me ‘Daddy.’ Current group is my Monday evening disciple group. They call themselves my disciples (the word in Indonesian is the same for student and disciple), they call me ‘uncle’ as do youth of several different generations here and in the Philippines. Some of their children call me ‘Lolo’ in PI or ‘Opa’ which is grandpa in the respective countries. At any rate, I was a very reluctant parent, though I have gotten used to it over the years.

I could see that the Lord was thrusting the young woman into the ministry which she refused to initiate. She was very uncomfortable with the girl hanging on to her. She was not willing to make the commitment and pay the cost that saving lives costs. After talking with her about these things and praying for her, she had a new perspective of this girl and also of her responsibilities, and even more, of her desires toward this young girl.

How about you? Do you know that there is a parallel between the physical and the spiritual worlds? Did you know that just as in the physical, babies born are expected to grow up, get married and have children, so spiritual babies are expected to grow up and nurture spiritual children. Are you a reluctant parent, or even worse, a child who refuses to grow up and take responsibilities of adulthood spiritually?

Did you know that it is Shepherds job to make shepherds, but sheep are supposed to make sheep? Most churches expect paid staff (shepherds) to do the evangelism (making sheep). Not their job. Think about that one for awhile.

GBU