Text: 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17
Big Idea: Spiritual fathers and mothers can encourage younger believers by
following Paul’s example.
Introduction
Someone asked me what I dream about for our church. One dream: we are as
family where spiritual fathers and mothers encourage and empower the next
generation to love for God in an evil world. This is the primary way God
grows his church.
2 Timothy 2.2 – entrust what you have heard to faithful men who will teach
others also.
2 Thess 1.1 The letter is from Paul, Silvanus and Timothy to the church. Paul
is not ministering alone, he has taken two young men with him and is pouring
his life into them.
Eph 4:11-13 God gives the body leaders – apostles, prophets, evangelists,
pastors and teachers – to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry…to
invest, pour in, teach, train heal, empower for service.
The model of Jesus. Jesus calls twelve to be with him for three years – this was
his plan for changing the world.
Spiritual fathers and mothers don’t need to be 80 years old. Young Life has
taught us that the same principle applies when a college student pours he life
into a high school student. The same can be true with a high school junior
investing and encouraging in a high school freshmen. Leighton Ford – his
spiritual father was ninety when he was 70.
What does spiritual fathering look like? Tonight’s text provides an example.
The thessalonian church is full of young believers who are struggling. We
don’t know exactly what they are struggling with. But in 2:1-12 a difficult,
cryptic passage addresses their fear that the world is ending, that God has not
protected them from its terrors, that some how the world has gone off of its
axis and is careening out of control. He uses words like “rebellion, lawlessness,
destruction, deception, delusion” to describe the world they are living in, that
seems to scare them so much.
2:2 – the are “shaken and alarmed.” Another translator, “scared out of their
wits.” We seem to be living in a similar time, a time of fear and anxiety about
the world.
Yeats, The Second Coming
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Gal in car rocking out to angry song. Face twisted, hands clenched. We are
living in angry, anxious days.
Paul, knowing his flock is scared out of their wits, comforts them. We find four
practices of a spiritual father and mother in his example.
First, a spiritual mother thanks us for initial obedience.
“We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God
chose you as the first fruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the
truth. To this he called you through the gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord
Jesus Christ.”
The Thessalonians were among the first believers in Macedonia/ Greece. They
had responded to God’s call by believing in the truth. They had become a
beachhead for further gospel work. They were first fruits, first responders,
pioneers, in a hostile environment. (Acts 17). He thanks them, encourages
them for their brave response. Essentially, he is praising them for their first
steps of faith,.
One of the greatest gifts a spiritual father or mother can give to another person
is to say, “I am so thankful for you. You have begun well. Good job. I am so
proud of you.”
These words are especially important when you are figuring out your place in
the world, when you are unsure of what song you are to sing, when you are
wondering if you are ever going to do anything in your life. During these
times, it is so comforting for an older brother or sister to come along side of
you and say, “Thank you for the way you lead that bible study. Thank you for
what you said in small group. Thank you for having the courage to break off
that relationship. Thank you for stepping out and mentoring.”
Second, a spiritual father reminds us that we are part of a bigger story.
All they can see is their problems. They cannot rise about the mists of their
fears. Some weird teaching is going around about the second coming that has
got them spooked. Their neighbors are suspicious of them. The government
may be persecuting them. It seems as if things are falling apart and the center
cannot hold.
Paul steps back, way back, into the dawn of eternity, into the mind and plan of
a sovereign, loving God. “Look” he says. “You who are beloved by the lord.”
That is not a bad place to start. The bigger story begins with our belovedness
in God. “Remember who you are,” he is saying. “You are God’s beloved.”
I have been listening to a seminar on spirituality for the second half of life by
Richard Rohr and Ronald Roheiser. They suggest that in the first half of our
lives, we are trying to figure out who we are, we grasp and cling to others and
success. During the second half of life, we realize the folly of these lesser
pursuits, and embrace our belovedness in God. Then we are free to enter into
relationships free to give, free to love, free to be, without need. One of the
messages those in the first half of life need to hear from those in the second is
what it means to live out of the center of belovedness. Spiritual fathers and
mothers need to come along side and say, “Here is what I have learned. Joy
and peace comes not from having a perfect body or the best job, but from the
love of God in Christ. Here is how I learned that.”
Then Paul finds the origins of the bigger story in the dawn of eternity. God
chose us as first fruits…” another translation, “from the beginning.” God
chose you from the beginning of eternity…he called you….he will lead you
until you eventually taste the glory of pure fellowship with Christ.
Spiritual fathers and mothers remind us that we are part of a bigger story. They
remind us that the center will hold, because the center is Christ. They remind
us that we are loved by a God who chose us before we chose him.
Much of the OT is retelling the bigger story. Before the Hebrew bible was
written down, it was passed down orally. The family would sit around the fire
and the elders would tell the story again – of how God delivered his people
from the Egyptians and called them to himself. Later, this is what Sabbath and
Torah became all about…a day each week to rescript our lives, to live by a
different narrative, to tell time differently.
I still think we have this need, for an older man to tell a younger man that it is
going to be ok, that there is a bigger story we are a part of, that the Lord of the
story is to be trusted. (Laurens at the men’s bible study.)
Third, a spiritual father exhorts us with strong, hard words.
After Paul gives thanks for their initial steps of obedience and after he reminds
them they are part of a bigger story, he gives them some strong words of
exhortation: “So then brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught
by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.”
They are rattled, scared, anxious. Paul tells them to stand firm, to not give
ground, to hold on, to not retreat. They are to do this by holding on to the
traditions that they have received. At this point, they had no written scriptures,
just what they had heard from the apostles and what they had received from
the apostles by letter.
Today we might paraphrase Paul’s exhortation as “hold fast to your faith and
cling to the scriptures.”
We live in a church age where the unspoken agreement is that you never tell
another human being what to do. This is a legitimate reaction to a form of
Christianity that basically consists of people in authority telling others what to
do and them obeying. And so we put great value on listening, on
understanding, on empathy, on not judging. When I was in seminary taking
counseling courses, that was clearly taught – help the person find their own
way, never be directive, never tell them what to do, help them figure it out for
themselves. And there is much good about this. In the seventies there was a
very abusive movement called the shepherding movement where people in
authority basically told everyone else what to do, and it got very toxic. We
don’t need to go back to that.
There are times, and they are rare, when it is necessary for a spiritual father to
speak hard strong, directive words. When in battle the line is breaking and
troops are teetering under fire, it is not the time for the platoon leader to say,
“Tell me how you are feeling.” It’s time for instruction. “Hold the line” or
“retreat.”
There is a time when a spiritual mother needs to look a younger woman she is
in deep community with in the eye and say, “Look. This relationship is killing
you and harming your faith. Stand firm. Do what is right. Find strength in the
scriptures. Get out.”
There is a time when a spiritual father says to the young husband he walks with,
“You are working way to much. Your marriage and your family life are going to
pay for this down the road. Stand on your convictions. Gird yourself in
scripture and realign your life with your priorities.”
Two significant conversations…
Struggling with whether I should go on and complete the PhD or be full time
at all souls. He said, “It seems to me that at this point for you to go would be
only for your ego and not what is best for your church and your family. I think
you should stop.”
“Sometimes you seem controlling in the way you lead and make decisions.
You need to step back and free others to lead.”
This is what spiritual fathers do: speak hard, strong words when the need
arises.
Fourth, a spiritual mother prays over us and blesses us.
Paul ends with a wish that is essentially a prayer. “Now may our Lord Jesus
Christ himself, and God our father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort
and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every
good work and word.”
Paul prays that his anxious flock be comforted in their hearts and established or
strengthened for their work in the world. Paul is always praying for the people
he is discipling. And he likes to tell them what he is praying for. We might say
he prays out loud for them – they know what they are praying for. I suspect
that when he was with them he did pray out loud for them.
Spiritual mothers pray for those they are caring for on a regular basis. But I am
learning that it is also important, and very powerful, to pray out loud, to let the
person we are praying for know what we are praying for. This kind of prayer
can be very encouraging and even prophetic.
Paul’s words are also words of blessings. There is power in biblical blessings,
power to give life, power to release gifts. Words of blessing are words of
spiritual power. That is why Jacob wanted his father’s blessing, that is why the
last pages of Genesis are Jacob blessing his sons….
So one of the practices of spiritual fatherhood is praying words of blessing,
words of comfort and hope over spiritual sons. I am learning to stop right in
the middle of a lunch or conversation in the parking lot and say, can we pray
about this, and then paying attention to what the spirit leads me to pray.
Hunter in Bremen Germany –
Hardly any believers. Talking with him on Skype. Before he left, he went to
prayer room and was prayed over. One of the prayers had to do with him being
alone in the faith this year, and how to prepare for that. He said he hadn’t
thought much about it at the time, but now it made sense to him, and we
discussed what he might do.
Conclusion
I am very hopeful that if we begin to grow in the practice of spiritual fathering
and mothering we will become a very healthy church. This means moving
deeply into relationships, and then…
Thanking God for their initial steps of obedience.
Reminding them of God’s bigger story.
Exhorting them with strong words when necessary
Praying and blessing them.
Now let me again stress that a high school junior can apply these principles to a
high school freshmen, or an older brother in ninth to a younger brother in
seventh grade, or a college girl to a high school girl.
My concern is that people will not step up and be spiritual fathers and mothers
because we think we have to be some kind of saint to do so.
Story about 65 year old lady, always in Bible studies for fifty years, when I
asked her to disciple someone else, she said, “I don’t know enough.” She
needed to step out in faith, stop acting like a dependent child, and start pouring
into others.
Now you don’t need a program to do this. Look for the people God brings
you into relationship with, and start investing in them, walking with them..
Does it have to be people in our body? I respond two ways. Of course not.
Kingdom work is kingdom work. Yet here is what I see happen when
someone in our church begins pouring heavily into people outside of our
church – they eventually say “I don’t have community here, I need to find
another church.” The reality is that we have limited resources, limited time to
invest. If you really feel drawn to invest in another body, that is fine, you
probably ought to worship there. We have so many needs right here.
What if I don’t feel ready? Story of the old fool. Three kinds. The pathetic
fool. He becomes 60 and still tries to act and look 20. The bitter fool. He
becomes sixty and is mad that life has not treated him fairly. The holy old fool.
He has done the work of the first half. He has embraced his belovedness and
put down his false self. He is not entering into all of his relationsips with a
need to be the center. He is able to be a spiritual father.
Let’s be holy old fools. The way we get there is by being in deep community
with a handful of other people who won’t let us get stuck.