Transcription
You're listening to the Beyond Sundays podcast. Each week, we talk to people just like you who share stories of God's faithfulness, because the God who did, still does. And today, I have with me Zach Vassar, our Men's Ministry Pastor here at Beltway Park Church.
Hey, hey! How's it going?
Oh, it's going great. I'm so thankful to have you in the studio today to introduce a two-part episode that we are going to have here on the podcast with some incredible fathers in our body. As I want to share, I want you to share, what is the vision? Why this conversation? Why now?
Yeah, you know, so I read a book not too long ago called Uprising, and it, it just pinpoints the concept of a pandemic of fatherlessness that we have in our society today. It's like all roads lead to this. Um, it's not, not just about being the spiritual leader of your home, but just in all the places that you go. And I really feel like, not just myself, but our whole team of leaders and guys who have been and paved the way at Beltway Park in our Men's Ministry, is that there's really a culture shift that's happening right now. And that culture shift is simply this: it is men identifying themselves as sons and moving into that next stage of maturity as fathers, helping men begin to function that way, and not just in their homes, but in everywhere that they go. And, and in that, there's some organic mentorship that takes place, in, in a void that's being met, not to be God, but to just help men journey their life in a way that they're pointed closer to the Father, through example, through encouragement, through a whole lot of different ways. But, you know, these guys that you're going to listen to today, they are absolutely fathers in the house, but they're also a representation of a whole group of men who have been prayerfully positioning themselves for the sake of the kingdom in the body of Beltway Park to be available to other men and to help pull guys along and, and just, just be used for the kingdom. I mean, it really boils down to what I said at the beginning, it is all about a culture. There is an amazing foundation here, but God's just doing something new, and it's exciting to be a part of, and I can't wait for people to listen to this.
That's good. I'm so excited too. And as a female, was sitting in the room listening to you guys talk and just like, literally sitting here and soaking it all in. Y'all, this conversation is full of wisdom, Godly wisdom, that you will need to soak in for just a bit. So, oh my goodness, it's going to be so great. So buckle up, you guys. It's going to be a great conversation. Again, this is a two-parter. We just want to let you know we will be doing this in two episodes, but you don't want to miss either one. So let's get to it.
Well, I'm really happy to have some Papas in the studio, some fathers in the studio with me today. I have three incredible men who are involved in our Men's Ministry here at Beltway Park, among very, very a lot of other things as well. And so, I'm going to have them introduce themselves, and we're going to dive into a really fun conversation today. And I'm going to start with our Men's Pastor, Zach Vassar. Welcome to the studio today.
Yep, we're happy to be here. My name is Zach. I'm Men's Groups Pastor at Beltway Park, and I'm sitting here with two guys that I think very highly of, and I'm excited that we're going to be able to unpack this conversation and talk about spiritual following and maturing. I'm, I'm in the, I'm in the journey myself in this, uh, maturing. I think as you listen, you'll, you'll catch, uh, stages and things that we find ourselves at. And I've been here on staff now for closing in on a year and a half, and man, it's been a huge blessing. But one of the greatest benefits has been seeing men wake up to, um, the the realization of what we're going to talk about today, of where, where I'm really at in the journey, and shifting out of the mindset of myself and getting into the mindset of legacy and their family and what does that really look like? And really taking, uh, the concept of being a son in my identity is who I've discovered to be, and begin to seek after dads in our lives spiritually. They'll help grow us, encourage us, bring us up to the next level and stages in our lives. And so, really, my goal in today is to talk not hardly at all and let you guys listen to these guys. Um, and, and I think you'll be extremely blessed. So, yeah.
All right. These guys, you're up next. Race, why don't we start with you first?
Okay. Well, thanks, Sarah. I'm Randy Reese. And, uh, I have the wonderful opportunity of, along with my bride, being involved in kind of a new ministry that she and I are kind of a duo with. It's called Free in the Spirit Ministry, and we are, uh, with Timothy International, and we're going to get to speak into men and women and couples and people that are hurting and people who are hungry for the Lord, and all kinds of things, both locally and nationally and internationally. And I stepped down from the Men's Pastor spot a little over a year ago, and, uh, it's a love having Zach in this. He's, he's the right guy and he's doing great. And so now it allows me to focus on some things that are going to be, I can meet Bob in here, but also outside of here, predominantly. And what I realized more every day is that what any of us get to bring to the table when we're talking about bringing the kingdom to whoever is, we've got to see ourselves as sons and daughters on the road to becoming fathers and mothers spiritually to so many others in our families and we have influence over. And more and more of that formulates the framework that I look at now. And it's a, so important, and it's a good thing.
That's right. That's good. That's good. Rodney, welcome to the studio.
Hi, my name is Rodney Hogue. I'm a recovering pastor. There you go. It has been nine years, two months, and seven days since my last pastorate.
That's great.
I pastored 32 years on the West Coast, and, uh, we moved out here to Abilene. Really moved to Brownwood first, then to Abilene. Moved to walk our parents through their last season of life as they would graduate into heaven. We always made moves based upon ministry, not based upon family. This last one was based on family. I was already traveling 90 days a year as I was pastoring full time. And as we made the transition, I told my wife, Mary, I said, I think I could probably make a living at this. And I, I have. I just take what I did when I was pastored and I just take it on the road. So it's been a very busy, full life. I don't have any lack of opportunities. I don't have to promote myself and try to find a place to go. I've, I've got more invitations than I can fulfill.
So it is, you're running the race still.
I still am. It's good. My hardest part is trying to find the time that I stay with my family, spend time with my family. So it's just working those particular seasons. Yeah. So my life is busy traveling, teaching. I teach seminary. In fact, I'm teaching a seminary course this summer, about 25 students. It's pretty amazing who's all in my class.
That's awesome.
Well, we're diving into this conversation because we know it is so needed in our culture to understand the family of God, to understand our role within the family of God, to understand who our heavenly Father truly is, and who we are in Him. And so, I'm a daughter. I consider myself a daughter, being mothered by, by spiritual mothers, right? I'm still learning, I'm still growing, and I'm still being called up into the things that God has for me. But also have daughters, you know, that I'm looking back and wanting to raise into these things as well. And so, but it, but the conversation today isn't strictly about like our biological families, right? Because we consider our family who are in the Lord, our spiritual family, right? And so we see this in scripture where Paul referred to Timothy and Titus as spiritual sons, and he called them up into what their role and destiny in the kingdom of God was supposed to be. But I'm going to toss this to you guys. What does it look like, or what is the function of spiritual Fathers and Sons and Mothers and Daughters? What is that? What is that piece? Can you explain it to our listeners today?
Well, the government of Heaven happens to be family. When Jesus came, he actually called himself a son, and called God Father. His identity was a son, and God was Father, which is a brand new revelation in the Old Covenant. In the Old Testament, God was not referred to as Father. That word Father is used in the Old Testament 735 times, and only five times is God referred to as Father. In the New Testament, the word Father is used over 350 times, and over 250 of those, God is referred to as Father. So this was a brand new revelation. So, so Jesus identified himself as son. You got God who his Father. When he taught us to pray, we're to pray, "Our Father." He talks about having a spirit of adoption. So when we look at the government of Heaven happens to be the, be family, how does God train us in order to be sons and daughters? Well, He's going to, He's going to create this that here on this Earth where we all have actually spiritual fathers and mothers. In First Corinthians chapter four, you know, Paul is talking to the guys at Corinth, and he was giving him a pretty hard word, okay? He's getting some pretty corrective word. They, these guys need a lot of correction. But he said this in First Corinthians 4: "You know, you have many, uh, teachers, but you don't have many fathers. You have many tutors, but you don't have many fathers. He said, and I'm your father." And then he says, "I'm going to send my son, my child, Timothy, who's going to actually show you my ways, so you can actually continue to remind you of my ways." So Paul could have addressed them as their apostle. He could have said, he could have pulled out the Apostle card and said, you know, you need to submit to authority, you need to submit to the position, I am your Apostle, you should be doing what I say, you know, honor me in that submission. But he didn't do that. He chose to relate to them by relationship. "I'm your father." You said you have a whole lot of tutors or trainers that were there. Tutors, the Greek word is *paidagogos*, and it actually means boy leader. This was the person that was responsible for making sure that that the child in the house learned, that they were educated. So, in other words, he's saying, you have a lot of people who teach you, train you. He actually addressed that in the previous chapter where people were saying, "Well, I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos, I'm of Jesus." I mean, they're actually just, you know, pointing to teachers. And he says, "You have a lot of teachers, but you don't have many fathers." And so that, what the culture, that that apostolic culture that Paul had, or that he promoted, was a part of, is the one that actually chooses to relate to the people in the way of family, in the way of relationship. And that's really how the early church was birthed, is with fathers. We, we have what is called the, the Patristic Age. It's starts around 200 AD. You got Irenaeus, and we call these the early church fathers because that's the petition, you know, patriarch, the Patristic Age, and that lasted about 700 years. And we look at these people as the early church fathers. That's how, in historically, how we looked at leaders of the church. We looked at them as fathers. And even if you look at like, like even the Roman Catholic Church, these priests, what, what is, what's their titles? You see, "His," that that falls, that just comes out of history. That's right. It's that is the way the church was designed to function, in the way of family, spiritual mothers, spiritual fathers. But we've not learned the significance of how to become a son or a daughter in order to receive the fullness of our, of our spiritual inheritance.
Well, looking at culture today, that's a very different culture than the culture of history that you're talking about.
Oh, yeah. We have, I hate to use the word pandemic, but we have a very, a huge lack of fathers and mothers in general being present, having access to children, those kinds of things. And so, I, I love that you're using the word family, but I know that a lot of people are going to struggle with that word because of broken families and what sin has done within the family.
And I'm glad you went there, Sarah, because this is a touchy topic. You know, I just, I heard a stat the other day, and I joke about stats sometimes. I say, like, 85% of them are made up, or, you know, who really knows. But, uh, it was saying that for the first time in American history, a child that's born to a mother that's 30 and under, is coming into a situation where there is no doubt, over 50% of those cases. I just got through reading a book called Uprising by Chris Vahlton, and it addresses just the climate of our culture, our country, where that's at. And so, it is touchy, but I do think a lot of times to get breakthrough, we got to get into the places that are uncomfortable. You know, even in having discussions with these kind of things with guys, when I say the word father, you just kind of see a, you know, can we call this something different? Could we use a different word? And it's so funny because I, I feel that tension too. Like, I, I did not get saved and give my life to Jesus, receive the Gospel, until I was 32 years old. So we're not talking about salvation, we're talking about the pursuit of freedom, the coming up into your destiny of what God's called you into. And, and all those things. This, instead of this being tension in your thought process, this should be exciting. Like, this fires me up because we're starting to talk about not my monument and what's, you know, what people going to say about Zach Vassar someday. No, it's what they're going to say about my kids and my future son-in-laws. They're going to raise up kingdom kids. And, you know, it's things that really matter, that bring substance, you know. And so, as I, I sit here and listen, it makes me think of whenever I came on staff a year and a half ago, or you're somewhere, I don't remember the timeline. We had a meeting. We had a lot of guys in the chapel about a year before that. Rodney had given a message on the invitation at one of our boot camps, uh, which is coming up in September. You want to make sure you, we'll get to that. But, and, and it was the first time we'd infused the message like this. And I will say, it pierced every man there. This was, there was something different, something new, and it planted a seed. Fast forward to, um, this, I guess baton handing, or whatever we'd want to call it. We had probably a hundred guys in the chapel, and we were talking about the transition. I was sharing with some men, some things on my heart, Randy on his heart. And then, to honor Randy, we asked every guy, "Hey, here's an opportunity to just talk to Randy about anything you'd like to tell him." And, you know, Randy's fathered hundreds of men over the course of his time here, in his, in his journey. And we talked around this. That word never came up. We probably, this was probably about 45 minutes deal. And when it was completely over, Rodney got up and said, "What you guys are talking about is fathering." And even then, it was like, it's like someone had to hit us over the head with a two-by-four to say, "Well, wait, wait." And then, and then so the joke, I wouldn't call this the joke, the reality is, there's been, and I want Randy to talk into this a little bit, and Rodney too, for years, a thought funk. Men at here functioning as fathers unintentionally. And in shifting into, "Whoa, what would this look like if we intentionally began to function as fathers?" Praying into the idea that men would, sons like myself and others, would start to seek that out.
No, that is exactly right. I think the, the transition from unintentional to intentional is exactly where we are right now. Over the years, Ray Templeton invited me to help him start Men's Ministry in 2004. And from that moment on, pretty quickly, three things stood out in what we were speaking about and teaching about and having conversation with men about, and that is about freedom in Christ, your identity in Christ, which certainly included sonship, but it included new creation and lots of other things, and then then destiny from that, of course, and then also Holy Spirit. So, with freedom, cross, being a son, being led by Holy Spirit, has been the central focus of Men's Ministry. But it's so interesting that in the midst of all that, sonship was a part of it, but it wasn't where we see it becoming now. And then with the natural step from sonship into being a spiritual father. And as we've had the three of us and others have had so many conversations down the last year and a half about all this, it's, uh, the whole notion of being, being a spiritual son is, is overwhelming enough. But to think about becoming a spiritual father is like, I don't even know what to do with that. Because immediately, we men kind of think, "Well, I can't do that very well because I'm not qualified, or I'm not this, or that." The truth is, a lot of the reasons why we have a hard time thinking about ourselves as a spiritual father, possibly, is because we haven't learned how to be a spiritual son very well yet. And so, we will always be a spiritual son. And so a part of this process of becoming a spiritual father is going to be focused on really learning how to become a, a better son in, in the family of God, if you will, so that it becomes a more natural thing for us to begin to see ourselves as a spiritual father. And they will always go hand in hand. You will always be a son. It will always be the foundation for what kind of spiritual father you will be. And that whole way of thinking has just changed what I think about every day in terms of in our ministry that we're doing. I see all the possibilities and all the things that we are already involved in through the lens now of the family and the kingdom and sons and daughters and spiritual sons and spiritual fathers. And it's just like, oh my goodness, and everything falls under that very large umbrella.
Yeah. Malachi chapter four, five and six says this. It says, "Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. And he will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse." You can see the intention of the adversary is to destroy relationships between fathers and children. That's why he had the absentee fathers. This is why it becomes a little bit nauseating to a lot of people, is because the enemy has really ripped up the place of fathers in order to disable sons and daughters. There is an inheritance that happens whenever we understand how to live in the family of God, that that anointing, blessings, all of that. There is a generational blessing. I mean, I think about 30 times in the Old Testament, God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He's the God of generations. Anointings were passed from generation to generation. People didn't walk in a single generational anointing. Aaron was anointed with, in the high priestly robe, his sons were anointed, but he was anointed with as the high priest. And that oil flowed off of him and flowed into his, his robe. Well, it's his son, Eleazar, was then high priest after him, but he put on that same high priestly robe, and he was anointed, and that oil flowed down into that same robe. So now that robe contained the anointing of Aaron, the fragrance of Aaron's anointing, and Eleazar's anointing. His son, Phinehas, became the high priest here again after they anointed him. That robe contained the fragrance of Phinehas's anointing, his father's anointing, and his grandfather's. God never did intend for us to walk in a single generational anointing. We'll never win our world for the, for the kingdom of God walking in a single generational anointing. There is an inheritance. The people of Israel went into the land, and, and the only thing that qualified them was that they were sons of Abraham. And they go in, and what did they get? They get wells they didn't dig, they get crops, the vineyards they didn't plant, cities that they didn't build. All they got an inheritance that they didn't earn or work for. They just received because they were sons and daughters of Abraham. We've had a lot of our spiritual inheritance stolen from us because we've not understood the ways of the kingdom. There are ways of the kingdom to walk in the fullness of the kingdom, to walk in fullness of power and fullness of anointing. The enemy understands the ways. And so if he can just destroy, cut it off, cut it off with spiritual moms and spiritual dads, just ruin that for people, they can't receive from that other generation. And that's why we need fathers and mothers functioning as spiritual mothers and fathers. Because the way that the Father Heavenly trains us to seek Him as a heavenly Father, He trains us through the relationships we have with spiritual moms and dads on this Earth. And so He, the enemy is, is cutting that, not only in the natural with our natural moms and dads, but also spiritual moms and dads. He's just, and that's why this is like a new thing. I mean, we sat in that one meeting, and these guys were talking about how, you know, Randy mentored them, how he spoke into it a lot. Yeah, I mean, he would, they were telling all the things that Randy did as the leader of the Men's Ministry. And I'm sitting back there getting frustrated, like, none of you guys are just saying what exactly is going on here. I mean, and so I found, I just had enough. So I got up there at the end, I said, "You guys don't realize, you know, the culture of Heaven is family, and this man has been your father, and you need to recognize him and honor him as father. And if you will do that, everything that he carries is yours as an inheritance." Wow. He is, he is not your mentor, he is your father. All that he has been, if you will just receive him as a father in your life, you will get everything he carries because you get an inheritance. You don't have to re-earn what he carries because it'll be given to you because you are a son.
That's good.
Yeah. And I'm in this room thinking, I, and I've heard Randy, or I'm sorry, Rodney talk about this before also at a Freedom Conference, and I, I just, I am the kind of person that cannot hear that and not act on it. Yeah, I just, it's not in my fiber. And a lot of guys, because of this tension or the nausea, or whatever, you know, there's that, there's that, whatever. And so, real quick, uh, we went to, uh, lunch, maybe the next week, and it was the three of us sitting down, continuing this conversation. And it just hit me, um, I need to look at Randy Reese and say, "Hey, I receive you as a spiritual dad." And that saying that, now, y'all can't see this, I'm looking right into Randy's eyes that day. It was extremely uncomfortable. I felt like, I felt dumb. I felt, and all these are thoughts and lies from the pit of hell. This is the enemy who knows what's happening here and does not want this inheritance and this thing to continue to grow for the sake of the kingdom, just exactly what you're talking about now. You know, so these, these limitations that are self-imposed limitations, they are just lies. Like the enemy is just simply lying to you in your feelings and these kind of things. And so, it is, uh, there is no discomfort in me saying that now to Randy. But even on his side, it's a little uncomfortable to receive because I'm watching him as we're talking about this, is, "Oh my gosh, what do you mean I've been fathered?" There's tension in that too. But I mean, this, feel the pressure. Yeah. But this is exactly where we want men to go, to awaken to, for so many reasons, but ultimately, it's to advance this kingdom, the rule and reign of Jesus that is inside of your life, the kingdom that you carry, the sphere of influence that you have, being able to take that into places, wake other people up into their destiny, and so on and so forth. Anyway, so, yeah. You know, you have that other side of the fence, right?
Well, yeah, and this is your talking, and I'm, I'm thinking about so many thoughts I've had in the last year or two about all of this. And I realized that for me, and now talking to so many other men, that at the beginning of the thought process of being able to really, really grab a hold of this whole idea of spiritual son, the spiritual fathers, is what we have to grasp. And this, and it is its own journey to realize that when Paul talks about in Galatians and, and, uh, other places, but especially in Galatians, about that we have been adopted by God our Father as sons. We have been adopted. And this is the, the, this is the part that we all just kind of like, "I don't even know what to do with this." But we're also co-heirs with Jesus, with all God put into Him, and all that Jesus's inheritance is also ours. When I began to think about that, even today, much less a few hundred times over the last year or two, it's still overwhelming. And so the first step in all of this is being able to really dare to believe that that is true about you as a son. If you're a born-again believer, Jesus, that we have everything as a co-inheritor with Jesus of everything the Father has given Him. And when we begin to believe that, not because of our performance, because that's when we all get, "Oh man, I can't. Well, I'm not that yet. Maybe I'll get, but I'm not." No, it has nothing to do with our performance. It has to do with accepting what God has given us.
Yeah, it's a gift, really.
Yeah. Before you ever do a thing, you are beloved. Right. Exactly. And that's a journey all on its own. It's interesting, uh, something that Randy mentioned a moment ago about not, we being fathers unintentionally. Uh, I'd like to say that people are fathers accidentally rather than intentionally. I remember sitting down with some men in the church, you actually are spiritual fathers. They're functioning as fathers. And, uh, and I, and I was just, and it, it happened after Jack, Jack Taylor passed away. Papa Jack. And I was just talking about the way that he fathered so many, and that was really the culture that he raised up. Like, Ray Templeton is probably, you know, a spiritual son of him. And Jack was one of my spiritual poppers as well. And he was, you know, I mean, he, my family and his family were close to our, my whole life, you know, they were connected before I was even born. And so he was always a part of this. So he's a spiritual father. And so I was just talking about, you know, about legacy, and I was talking about the way that he, you know, functioned as a father. And I talked about this role of fathers and being about being a father. And I remember these men saying, "We never thought about that." And I'm looking at these guys, I'm thinking, "Don't you realize you are fathers?" And it's like, these, there are so many men that that are spiritual fathers that don't realize their spiritual fathers because they're actually fathers by accident, not by intention. And that's what you were saying, Zach, really. What would happen if we actually became intentional about being spiritual fathers?
Well, then, you know what you said, Randy, we have to learn how to be sons before we can be fathers. And you said that too, Zach. We have to learn how to live as sons and daughters. That's really how God trains us. When we look at Jesus, okay, how did, how did the Father train Jesus to be a son? Well, we look at that passage in Luke chapter two, how he, you know, it was after the temple thing where he was, went to the temples and he was young, and then he would, as, as they got him, he's coming home. He, it says that he lived in subjection to his parents, and there he actually grew in favor and honor before God and before man. So actually, he, you know, God trained him through his relationships. We also find in the book of Hebrews where it says that Jesus learned obedience through the things that he suffered. So he learned obedience through what he suffered. That word suffered actually is not just, I just, you know, just got pain. It's talking about things I endure, the things I tolerated. And so Jesus growing up in that Jewish environment, being a carpenter, being submitted to his dad as the master carpenter, and he was basically learning the trade. I actually learned how to serve his earthly father, the way that God trained Jesus to serve Him as his heavenly Father. And it took him 30 years for this. Took him 30 years to train the son to live as a son to his earthly father, to train him to to submit to God as his heavenly Father. Because Jesus was human in every way. He was fully God, but yet he divested himself of the God powers to become fully man. And so he had to learn obedience. It just wasn't an automatic thing. He learned obedience through a process of being a son. He lived like a son, was trained by the Father as a son. And the way that God wants to train us to to relate to Him as Father is by giving spiritual moms and dads to us who are actually not older brothers and sisters masquerading as moms and dads, but actual moms and dads who are actually showing us, equipping us, cutting things off that we, that we don't need, putting things into us that we do need to raise us up so that ultimately we can follow, you know, follow God as Father.
Yeah. Thinking about over the past year, I've sought after Rodney and had a lot of conversations about this, just one-on-one, and seeking as a son. You're talking about inheritance. And, you know, it took me a long time. It was funny, uh, the first time we sat down, it was so uncomfortable. And you asked me, "What do you want?" I didn't, I didn't know. It was like, a year, it's probably like six meetings before I, it finally hit me like a ton of bricks. I want the obscurity that you operate in. So many people in our body at Beltway don't really know Rodney. And I'm over here going, Rodney's over here at the Global Awakening conference with Bill Johnson, closing out a conference, leading people in freedom. I'm a freedom fighter. You know, he's, he, like he said earlier, he's very humble, but he's got invitations. You know, they're where I'm sewing his books. Like he said, he just sits a few rows over. What am I doing? Like, I cannot be the person that doesn't go seek after that. Like, I just, but, but there's just been a process of really figuring out, like, well, go back to that question, "What do you want?" And like, I think sometimes we don't, we just don't know what we want. But if we think through the lens of what we don't want, we can, we can start to discover. Because these guys, he's talking about, have, there's, I know him, I know he didn't say their names, but there's two of them in particular who I have seen as dads. Like, man, this man, one of them gave me a prophetic word years ago at an advanced camp, you were standing right there, about going across the world. And I'm thinking, "This is craziest," and end up doing that, and things start to come to pass. And, you know, I've always seen him that way. But he had not known that I had seen him that way. And so I think that this accidental thing we're talking about, there's a whole lot of that. And you don't know. So my question back to you, Rodney, would be, do you, it's not a pressure thing, but when you know someone sees you as a father, do you begin to function differently? Or, or is that, I mean, just the process? Because I think we have a lot of guys listening right now who are in the stage of a man, they know their son. They're in the stage of a man, meaning, man, I'm a warrior, I'm a protector, I'm a fighter, I'm a lion. But that next stage of maturity of functioning fully as a, as a father, it's not a performance hat. It's not, I have to do anything different. But what does the role look like when someone transitions to start functioning that way?
Wow, there is a lot to unpack here. So, sorry to end with a question that wasn't actually answered on this episode. But hey, hopefully, the cliffhanger will have you back here next week for part two of this conversation. Plus, it just kind of felt right to pause here to give you time and space to process the significance of what was shared today. Because becoming sons and daughters in the kingdom of God is a foundational aspect of our faith. You know, through adoption into God's family, we are no longer orphans. So we have to learn to not think like an orphan, right? We have to learn to think like and act like and serve like sons and daughters with an inheritance. An inheritance that the enemy does not want you or I to have. As co-heirs with Christ, we have full access to what Jesus has already given us. But in order to fully understand and embrace our identity as sons and daughters, we need to be trained and guided within the context of relationship with fathers and mothers in the faith. So maybe it's time to reflect on your own life. Think about someone who exemplifies what it means to live as a son or daughter in the family of God. Or maybe think about someone who you might see as a spiritual father and mother who's played a significant role in your spiritual growth. Their example can inspire and guide you as you seek to embrace your identity and receive the fullness of your inheritance, anointing, and blessing. And maybe do what Zach did and tell them face to face, "I see you as a spiritual father. I see you as a spiritual mother." Yeah. So take a time, take a moment to consider that. Who comes to mind in your life? Next week, Ronnie will dive straight into Zach's question about spiritual fathers and mothers. And y'all, there's so much more we get into in this part two episode. So it gets even better, which I know is hard to believe, but it gets really good. Plus, I've got some really fun and exciting news to share with all of you that Zach and I are really pumped about. It's a project that we've been working on and dreaming about for quite some time. So don't miss next week. You're going to really just be blessed by all of it. So thanks so much for listening to the Beyond Sundays podcast. We hope you all have an amazing day. And remember, God is always moving, and He's moving in your life too. Beyond Sundays.