When fathers discern your purpose, they will see something you cannot see.They speak of the ultimate as if it is real. They learn this from God. God speaks to Abraham as a father of nations. God deals with Abraham as a father of nations. God deals with Sodom and Gomorrah after speaking with Abraham as a father of nations.
God does so when Abraham is decades away from holding Isaac in his arms.
Abraham operates in trust. He submits to the process of preparation. He has moments of glaring indecision and complex pathologies of insecurity. He always returns to a bedrock of faith.
Maturing children make big messes. Fathering leaders help them clean them up. The messes do not disqualify children from achieving purpose.
A breakdown of trust leads to a diminished submission. That diminished submission empties children of obedience. They prodigal and waste inheritance.
Abraham always returns to a deeper level of trust after God helps him clean up his messes. God continues to deal with Abraham as a father of nations when he has no heir.
Tension at the Point of Purpose
A father speaks of your ultimate when it is future, and you must accept that reality. You can either submit to the process of preparation, or you can attempt to gain control of the process. You can submit and become the person who can inherit the promises, or you can rebel and become a prodigal.
God creates you with a purpose you cannot fulfill without submission to His process.
The point of tension with all leadership will be submission to the process. If you begin to trust yourself more than your leaders, yuou will attempt to prepare yourself. You will blame God for it, as you will take charge. You will think that the revelation of your purpose is all yuou need – “God is obligated to make it happen!”
He is not. He is faithful to the faithful. He is consistently at work to symphonically orchestra All to produce purpose. That work of God only applies to those who have passion.
The simplistic “I love God so He make it all work out” theme song of rebels is as silly as Mr Bean doing “Who’s on First.”
It is trust that enables shared passion. When we speak of ultimate purpose, we must speak of infinite passion. You cannot even say “Agape” without saying, “Passion for purpose.”
Romans 8:28 becomes something expansive when you read the words “passion” and “purpose” into the symphonic orchestration of All. The verse comes in Paul’s conclusion of intercession. Intercession is pregnancy with and birthing of God’s purpose.
In other words, Divine revelation does not mean Divine obligation. Promise demands process. Learned obedience was the process for Jesus, God’s Son. Submitting to a process of pathos, He reached ultimate. He knew what ultimate was. He embraced the process of suffering. He learned obedience. (See Hebrews 5:8)
Quitters Short-circuit the Process
Ultimate cannot drop into your lap. Ultimate requires a process. When you step out of the Provdiential pathway of preparation, you short-circuit the process.
You are a quitter. You say you are mature enough to handle it. You think you see the ultimate. You convinced yourself that God has put you in charge. You find your fathering leaders boring limiters of your amazingness.
1. You will lie to others about the womb that births your ultimate.
Abraham lied about Sarah because she was so beautiful. He thought lying about his relationship with birthing purpose would protect the process. He had diminished trust that God would preserve Sarah.
Here’s how that looks for quitters. They think they are protecting the source of the ultimate. They take control of the process to protect the source of birthing their highest. They lie to others about the relationship they have with purpose.
Why? Why would a person eating at the table of a king distrust his source? If God promises Sarah is the source, how is it that Abraham cannot trust God to protect the source?
The principle is that the tension produces a sense of insecurity. The child comes to believe that the father wishes to own the “Sarah” source of that ultimate. So, the child protects the Sarah from the source.
Look at it this way: every quitter has a sentiment of soul that says, “I need to have my own thing. If I don’t protect Sarah, someone else will steal what she births. What she births is for my purpose only, not any else’s. This is my purpose, and I’ll not allow anyone else the benefit of the womb that births my ultimate.”
If the purpose is God’s, it is not the spiritual father’s. If the purpose is God’s, it is not your purpose either.
The child will short-circuit the process of preparation to protct the source. Trust fails. Shared passion dies. Submission ceases. Obedience looks like disobedience.
At some point, the child says, “I would be disobeying God to continue the process.” The child does so because the child thinks he or she is now in charge of the process. Not God who included the fathering leader in the process.
2. You will allow a substitute for the “failing source.”
You will perceive the source is failing when time goes by and the ultimate remains out of sight. You will panic about “my biological clock is ticking” and give birth to wind. Or worse, you will impregnate the wrong source. You will birth Ishmael.
In spiritual children, the “failing source” is usually the fathering leader or ministry. That is, God promises the ultimate thorugh the fathering source. As time goes by, that promise seems to require human assistance. It is not a failing source at all. It appears to be a failing source. It becomes the justification for usurpation of the process.
The source is Sarah. She isn’t producing the ultimate. She is becoming an impossible source. Impossibility increases. She is no longer even capable of producing the promised heir. She is a walking testimony of impossibility. She is a failing source.
At that point, Abraham can learn the most important lesson of trust. He will but only after failing miserably. Enduring the process will require Abraham to receive his ultimate by miraculous intervention of God.
God continues raising the level of impossible for Abraham. The level of trust deepens when Abraham submits. The level of panic at the impossible always produces an aberration.
The present conditions of modern kingdom of Heaven on Earth can be understood best as a conglomeration of aberrations.
Few reach the ultimates because quitters breach the process of preparation. The kingdom fills up with illegal immigrants. The purpose of God remains hidden from substitute inheritors.
In other words, moderns never reach the point of birthing Isaac. They continue to contend for kingdom demanding that God accept Lot, the nephew I should have left in Ur, Eliezer, my chief servant, and Ishmael, my moral mistake.
