While sharing testimonies about the impact of God through my ministry, he said; “someone walked into my room and heard me listening to a message and said, ‘this person sounds like Pastor ‘Demola Awoyele.’ I told him, ‘No, Pastor ‘Demola Awoyele sounds like this person.'” The person he’s talking about is my spiritual father. I have partaken of his grace. I am a product of correct fathering.

Friend, there are tremendous blessings in having a spiritual or destiny father. You have a feather to go further and farther in life. Your father is a pointer to your future. “For though you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have you not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel” (1 Corinthians 4:15).

Instructors are different from fathers. Instructors are interested in information, fathers are interested in formation. Instructions teach us about various subjects in life, fathers impart us with life. Instructors are many, fathers are few. Instructors often celebrate us, fathers correct us. Instructors fill our heads with knowledge, fathers transform our hearts with truths.

There are three deadly spirits you have got to deal with in order to fulfil destiny; the spirit of an orphan, the spirit of prodigality, and the spirit of flattery. While an orphan has no father (Lamentation 5:1-3), a prodigal son or daughter rejects fathering (Luke 15:11-19), and the spirit of flattery flatters people rather than fathering them (Daniel 11:32a). You are either being fathered or flattered. The spirit of flattery says, ‘go where you are celebrated.’ The spirit of fathering says, ‘go where you are corrected and molded’.

When you know your father, you have an identity. When your father knows you, you have an inheritance. Inheritances are for sons, not bastards or rebels. This is why, “…Abraham gave all that he had unto Isaac. But unto the sons of the concubines, which Abraham had, Abraham gave gifts…” (Genesis 25:5-6). Abraham gave Isaac the intangibles that produced the tangible things in his life.

As you go into today, I want to encourage you to review your fathering in the Kingdom. Who is that person in your life that you can call, ‘my father?’ (2 Kings 2:12) Who is that individual that you submit to for molding and shapening? Who is that voice of accountability in your life that can call you to order where necessary? Who is that person through whom the deposits of Grace available for you in the Kingdom flow through?

Fathering is not about emotion or sentiment. It is about revelation. It is not about status, neither is it a function of age. Elisha called Elijah, ‘my father’, even though he was older than Elijah and was already an established business man (1 Kings 19:19, 2 Kings 2:12). Peter and some of the disciples of Jesus were older than Jesus and they still followed him (Matthew 4:18-20). Esther had a Mordecai in her life (Esther 2:7, 4:13-14). Timothy had a Paul (1 Timothy 1:2). Moses had a Jethro (Exodus 3:1, 18:17-19). Who is your father?

© ‘Demola Awoyele
Lead Pastor,
Destiny Impact Church
Akure, Nigeria