Beth Moore… Fan Into Flame Pt. 2
Today I came down stairs and turned on the television. Beth Moore was on Life Today with James Robison. I don’t usually listen to preachers on TV, but something she was talking about totally caught my attention. She was speaking about the disconnect between generations. This is something I’ve been sensing and experiencing at our own church and I fear that the up and coming generation is on the verge of loosing a precious blessing from the previous generation because they are too cool to hang with the old folks. I want to encourage everyone to listen to this very timely message to all generations.
Here is the full transcript…
Begin video clip:
Beth: Now listen — listen, if we’ve got a natural heritage pouring into our lives and a spiritual heritage pouring into our lives, it may be that they’re completely different. Our natural heritage was perhaps just godless, maybe wicked and then we got the spiritual heritage thing going. But it may be that like Timothy, they’re a whole lot closer together.
I want to get you a little encouragement, that’s how I hope it is for my kids. I hope that their family of origin and their family of faith is intermingled between the two.
But here is where I want to give you some encouragement. If your family of origin and your family of faith is a wide gulf apart, anybody getting that with me? — then here’s the beauty of it. Remember, you’ve been put on the planet and left here after your salvation to minister to people. You and I are meant to do some good here. It’s the only reason why we’ve been left here. So if you’re got a real wide gulf fixed between the two, guess what? You’ve got all this distance, you can relate to people — all this distance.
I know what it is like to have family members in jail. I can relate to people that have loved ones behind bars. I know what it is like to stand in the line on holidays. I know about that. As difficult as my upbringing has been, I can relate there.
Listen, I can relate with an addict because I have so dealt with addiction in my own personal life. I’m not glad I’ve been in either one of those places but I’m just going to tell you, I’ve got a wide ability to relate. And that’s the gift — that’s the gift.
But I pray today, one of the things I want God to get through to you today and get through to me today is quit despising where we came from in our natural line. Because the only reason God allowed it is because there is something you’ve been called to minister directly out of it. I need to know somebody is stepping in that with me.
All the time that we’re spending in energy, we’re spending in our bitterness, and in our “what if it had been different?” I might have been so gifted if I had been raised in a situation like that. Anybody guilty of any of those thoughts? If it would have been just different for me? Oh, the opportunities I would have had.
Listen, every single bit of it, your spiritual line and your natural line, are divine setups for you to be extraordinarily gifted. We don’t get to use our natural line as an excuse for why we’re not doing what God has called us to do. You don’t just do it in spite of it, girlfriend! Because of it! Because of it!
Every day of my life I minister out of my background of abuse and the freedom that God has brought me. Even if I never bring it up, it is part of who I am. I don’t want to go back and live it again. And it breaks my heart when somebody says, “I’ve been exactly where you’ve been.” And I know what they’re talking about and they know as well.
But I can tell you this, if God permitted that in his will he did it as a setup for you to be profoundly gifted and effective in your generation and your sphere of influence. He has set you up not for defeat; the enemy set you up for defeat. But God overrules it with a setup for victory, a setup for giftedness, a setup of effectiveness.
Now let me say this to you, if your family of origin is very much the same as your family of faith, that is a beautiful thing — it is a wonderful thing. But I also want to suggest to you that even though Lois and Eunice were such powerful influences in Timothy’s life, he still had to have him a Paul. I tell you why. You want this for your children if you’re parents; you want this for yourself because let me tell you, there are some things that people outside your family can tell you that nobody on the earth can get through to you.
If you’re a mom or if you’re a dad, you notice that after you raised your kids in the faith, if you were able to do that, that they will tell you something profound that their youth minister said or that the camp pastor said and you’re going, “I’ve said that 50 times!” Anybody know? I always thought, isn’t that I coolest thing. I said it — I wrote it in your card when you left!
[Laughter]
Am I telling the truth?
Well, they didn’t even open the card. Why? Because our voice gets to where it is so common to them, they no longer hear it. So there has got to be a Paul. Not just a Eunice and a Lois, there needs to be a Paul — a fresh voice to say what you have said a thousand times! But they have ceased listening to or they don’t think their parent has the sense enough to get out of the rain. Spiritual heritage, natural heritage –.
Let me tell you something, I want you to glance at verses 11 and 12 for a moment. This is Paul testifying to Timothy, I want you to see how much of where you’ve come from and what you’re going through has to do with what you’ve been called to do and with your extraordinary giftedness. This is just like a revelation to me: this is one of those things that just pops off the page. It is blinking a light at us.
11 Command and teach these things. 12 Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.
Is anybody going with me there? He was suffering as he was because of what God had called him to do.
Now listen to me, I’ll try to be careful not to just make a blanket statement 100% across the board, but I can just tell you whether it is in the perfect will of God or in the permissive will of God, this I can tell you, everything we endure that is allowed in our path has been entrusted to us because of what God has called us to do. Everything!
It is just set us up for the most magnificent gifting and effectiveness we could possibly have in our brief little tenure on planet earth. Everything! Everything we’ve come from, all the difficulty and turmoil in Timothy’s home set him up to be able to minister to the people he ministered to.
And listen, when we talk calling, when we talk about doing what God has called us to do, I’m not talking vocational ministry here. I’m talking about when God calls a godly man or a godly woman into the field of law, into politics, into the secular classroom, into a hospital as a nurse, a nurse’s aid, a doctor. In every single walk of life you are in that place to flesh out how Jesus Christ would do your job and show his extraordinary power through everything you’ve been called to do, that’s my calling as well.
And everything we go through, nothing is wasted. Everything is toward our giftedness, not toward our harm. Everything was to build us up, to be profoundly effective in this little brief time that we’re in this garden here. So life will mean, as my grandmother used to say, “a hill of beans” when it is over.
I want you to notice something with me. This is — I recently studied this and so it is so fresh on my mind. It came as such a fresh word to me so I pray it is penetrating your heart as well. But notice something with me, he says, “The gifting that came with the laying on of my hands.” He said that in Second Timothy, chapter one, verse six. He said, “You’ve got to stir into a flame, fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.”
Now listen carefully because I read commentary after commentary and the implication is not that it was the laying on of hands that caused the gift to come. Remember, we are baptized, when we received the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal savior, we are baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Right at that moment, even if we’re eight years old, we receive our gifting. But it doesn’t come into full throttle effectiveness until we begin to mature in a walk with God and his word and now how to walk at the impulse of his spirit. So we know it wasn’t just because Paul laid his hands on him but it was the official blessing of the spiritual Father over the spiritual son.
Now here’s what just came as such a wild thought to me and what I believe is completely sound biblically from Genesis all the way to Revelation. Listen carefully, there is a power that comes when the generation before us lays hands on us, and I mean that whether figuratively or literally, blesses us to do what we have been called to do and blesses us in our giftedness. There is a power that comes, an anointing that comes, a blessing that comes.
Now listen carefully, if we forfeit that, if we are living on planet earth in a culture that is disconnecting from the generations around it, we’re going to forfeit a measure of power and blessing and anointing that you and I do not want to lose. It is critical that we stay involved in the generations and that the one generation as the Psalmist says over and over, teaches the next generation the ways of God, the ways of a fruit-bearing life, the ways of blessing, the ways of ministry.
When we disconnect from that, if we’re just doing our own thing and we have never had anybody from the generation before us, literally lay a hand on us and say, “Listen, I bless you; you are gifted in your God!” Then we lack something. We lack something that generation was supposed to have passed down to us: The blessing, that figurative or literal laying on of hands. Anybody getting what I’m saying?
I’ll tell you why it concerns me; it is absolutely critical to the process. I’m not saying we would not be able to be effective at all; I’m not saying our lives would not bear fruit at all. I’m saying there is — I am convinced of it — an anointing that comes with that blessing of that generation that is the most high-throttle power, fullness of God that we can enjoy in that gift.
And here’s going to be the problem. Let me tell you something, I am a huge believer in teaching our children how to relate to older generations. Let me say very quickly, I want to throw out a disclaimer here very quickly because I’m not just talking about the younger generations disconnecting from the older generations, the older generations do it too. We divide ourselves in our worship services of contemporary and traditional. We’re not even sitting in the same sanctuary anymore. We’ve ceased working with the youth at our churches. Anybody know what I’m talking about?
For crying out loud, go to youth camp. You might be the one person that gets to tell them something their mother said a thousand times and they’ve never heard!
[Laughter]
Anybody hear what I’m saying? It is not just them disconnecting from us, it is us disconnecting from them because it is loud. We don’t understand their ways. We’ve got to have it. Listen, they keep us young. We teach them the ways of God, the ways to walk it out. And our blessing on them is crucial.
And the fact that they touch our lives through the very touch of our hands on their shoulder, that’s just a rush of youth to us — our youth is renewed. I want you to hear it because listen, if we do not raise our children to have manners, nobody wants to bless a brat!
[Laughter]
Am I telling the truth to anybody?
Listen, that generation is critical to you. And the thing of it is, nobody wants to take a brat under her wing or his wing unless there’s just a special unction of love; sometimes you just love somebody that you don’t even like. You can’t even explain why you want to work with them, you just do. It is just a miracle of God.
But normally, it is going to be somebody that the other generation finds engaging, finds gracious, and respectful. It is just critical that we teach our children; they’re going to miss the blessing. And I don’t think it is just something that Lois and Eunice could give Timothy. He got it from Paul — he got it from Paul! Blessing — generations have to be connected.
Thirdly, I want you to hear this. This is going to be a long sentence. I kept thinking how can I get it shorter and shorter? Listen to it and write it down in your own abbreviated way if you’re taking notes.
Here is what we have so far. Let me go back through, number one was: God has entrusted each one of us, if you’re just tuning in, if you are in Christ:
We saw as well we’re finding out that:
That everything about your natural heritage, your family of origin was ordained for your giftedness as much as what has happened through your supernatural or spiritual heritage.
Now I want you to hear number three:
He gave us the gift but for whatever the reason, listen, God is always about engagement. God continually, the reason why he does so many things the way he does it, the reason why he calls us to walk in the spirit, the reason why he doesn’t just give us a set of laws; in other words, you just live the following way and then I’ll just check with you when you get to heaven.
No, he said, “You’re going to draw off of me every single day of your life as a person who is compelled by the spirit.”
Every single one of these are ways that he enforces engagement if you and I are going to live in victory. It has got to begin to be something that we live off of continually. So he did this, he said, “I’ve given you the gift but I’ve placed in your hands the responsibility to fan that flame into a forest fire.”
End video clip
