“Sir, 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.
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 (1 Corinthians 4:15). Instructors are different from fathers. Instructors are interested in information, fathers are interested in formation.
Instructors 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 moulded.”
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, Abraham gave gifts (Genesis 25:5-6). Abraham gave Isaac the intangibles that produced the tangible things in his life.
Fathering is not about emotion or sentiment. It is about revelation. Who is your father (2 Kings 2:12)? Who is that individual that you submit to for moulding and shaping (Esther 2:7, 4:13-14)? Who is that voice of accountability in your life that can call you to order where necessary (Exodus 18:17-19)? Who is that person through whom the deposits of Grace available for you in the Kingdom flow through? Who is your father?
‘Demola Awoyele
Lead Pastor,
Destiny Impact Church
Akure, Nigeria