5 “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. 6 He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.” (Malachi 4:5-6)
Much has been written about the spirit of Elijah and the raising of a generation of prophetic warriors in the last days. We have been faithful to prophesy to the bones about their destiny, and they are beginning to rise throughout the land.
What the prophetic army needs now more than ever is the Godly wisdom of spiritual fathers. Zeal is a wonderful thing, but needs to be balanced with wisdom in order to attain the desired result. Youth is an advantage that should be pressed on the battlefield, but it must be done under the watchful guidance of the fathers of the faith.
There exists a wide canyon between the youth of this generation and the elders of the church. By comparison, there is such a cultural difference that our young people might as well be from a foreign culture. For all intents and purposes, the youth of our nation communicate differently, dress differently, and relate differently than their spiritual elders. They are a unique tribe just as surely as if they lived in Kenya and spoke Swahili.
It will most likely require extra work for the elders of the church to learn to relate to these young people, but it is a vital neccessity to the work of the kingdom. Our seasoned men and women of the faith must learn to communicate via text message, blog, and twitter. They must learn to speak the dialect of the youth of the nation. They must learn to speak knowledge and wisdom into a generation while allowing their cultural expression of praise to continue to develop.
Likewise, the youth of the Elijah generation must learn to seek counsel from their spiritual elders. Much has been learned, discerned, and revealed through the years of battle experience in the pews of the local church, and young people must learn to engage spiritual fathers and become spiritual sons.
Rebellion will not get us where we need to go. We must have spiritual fathers. Outcasting a weird and eccentric generation because they refuse to conform to your expression of worship will not have the desired effect either. We must have spiritual sons.
Good article.
Along with the new tools of social media, I think men need to learn safe boundaries. Just like a man shouldn’t counsel a women one on one, I don’t think a man should have other women in his social network without his wife’s covering and involvement in interactions.
My wife is on Twitter and Facebook. I re-direct friend requests to her and don’t follow-back females. Maybe I’m weak, but I’m safe.
Good point. It’s always worth mentioning. I was more discussing the topic of embracing technology as a form of cultural expression in order to father spiritual sons, but you make a good point.
We need some good sons to teach us how to use this stuff. Our heart is there, but many got left behind the curve. Some are so far behind that it is too overwhelming to think about catching up.
If technology was the rapture, they would be “left behind.”