I have noticed that society has tied children to the mother, and it uses every device of law there is to try to make the father responsible. When couples go to court to get a divorce, a father will very often argue because he doesn’t even want to support his children. The accident of birth seems to be one of the ties that a man can very easily circumvent. He can ignore it, and never become a father. At first, after the child is born, he feels the ego of it; but you see, a father has to grow with his child. After a while you don’t know who is the father and who is the son. The sons are born, and they begin to create the father that they need. But the father, if he is a humble man, will in turn almost take the position in which he will start to grow, and he will start to become. Whatever he was before, he was not a father. But now he becomes a father.
People used to say that your children keep you young; but the truth they were trying to express is that if you are real father material, your children keep you flexible. The children often say, “Oh, my father is in his mid-sixties, but he thinks young,” because in some say their wavelengths get locked in together. They become something special to each other.
There is a search for a father. Mothers seem to have to be mothers, because of the instinct of being women and having children. That is why the law often locks the children in as dependents with the mother. Then she has to use all kinds of legal measures to enforce the support from the father when the family breaks up. It is on record that at least eighty percent of fathers try to avoid the payment of alimony or even child support. The judges order them to do it by court judgment, but the men try to avoid it. They will skip state, or go and get married again. And in that maternal drive some woman will marry such a man, and say, “Oh, poor man, he was so abused,” not knowing that he was inflexible. He never could grow up to be something really special.
It is a tremendous blessing to be a father. It is something wonderful that you give yourself to. It’s another world. I think the greatest criminals in the world are not the hoodlums who do all the terrible things that they do; the greatest criminal is a woman who does not know how to let a father be a father. A woman should see that a child needs a mother up to a certain stage of development, and then she should deliver the child over to the father. This was an ancient custom. They used to do that in Rome. The Bar Mitzvah of the Jews is very similar. At a certain age, the son goes through certain rites or rituals because it is the time for him to begin to relate differently. In the Roman culture, that was when the father began to take his son to the Roman baths, or to whatever he was going to do in his business, and the son learned something about the whole world. He began to relate to the world, but he had to start by relating to his father. Then, of course, from that time on the child had to relate to his mother differently. But I think that is almost automatic.
I see so many things so clearly about this. This fathering relationship is very much needed in the Kingdom of God. The umbilical cord is severed at birth, but I think there are a number of cords like that which must be successively broken. The mother has to come to the place where she realizes that the support she gives to her children changes at each stage. She carries the child and produces it, but she has to change in her relationship to it. And if she is not willing to cut the cord, there is an old phrase which describes it: the child is “tied to mama’s apron strings.” If she is not willing, at each stage, to cut the cord, she begins to smother instead of foster the life she brought forth. At some place along the line—and the quicker it happens the better—there comes this tremendous time in which she sees the need of a father.
We have a lot of kids in the Kingdom whose fathers are their fathers by accident. And the thing that God is bringing is that we come to the place where we can, by the grace of God, pick our fathers. So we search for a father. The beginning of our lives could be by one father, but as we go along we sometimes need something that that individual refuses to become to us. After a father has been responsible for the birth of a child, he still may not be flexible enough or change enough so that he could be, as a father, what that child is going to need. And that’s what I am concerned about.
We have all of these people who, really, are searching for a father. And they cannot accept themselves, they cannot accept their place, they cannot even accept their potential, they have difficulty discovering who they are, until somehow they find a father. When they find that father, it gives them more confidence to go ahead than anything in the whole world.
We are learning something we have never seen before: a father may have started our existence, but we search for the father who will establish us in the Kingdom. We are established in the Kingdom of God by the means of beginning to find a father.
The whole thing comes back to the family, doesn’t it? I have said, “Forget about talking about the Kingdom; just begin to talk family.” And I am beginning to really appreciate what it means to be a father.
There are things that happen, that in the sight of the world give parents the right to have their children kidnapped and deprogrammed, and so forth. But how often have those parents only been on an ego trip? They never faced the fact that they weren’t to those children what they needed. The children went to someone who began to father them, and help them, and the natural parents rejected it. I think it takes more than an accident in sexual intercourse to really establish the validity of responsibility in relationships, and especially the validity of that possessiveness which happens. I know the whole world is geared to that. But think of yourself in that position. What if you had a father who would kidnap you and say, “Somebody has alienated you from me, your natural flesh-and-blood father. I have rights and I am looking after your interests.” Since when?
You see, there is a right at a certain age for a person to find that search for a father relationship gratified. When a person has been deprived of it for so long, it is hard for him to even accept or believe that it can be real. You see, on this low, natural plane, the fathers are on an ego trip; it’s a soulish thing. They want their child to be like them, and to like what they like, and to be interested in what they are interested in, and so forth. But really they don’t care about the child. That is not being a father.
“This is where it ends; this is where it changes.” We are changing an age, not just having one person change. A lot of people probably still have the fathering instinct, but we changing an age and returning the hearts of the fathers to the sons, and the sons to the fathers—in a true way, where there is true, honest fathering (Malachi 4:6). “This is where it is going to change.”
You see, we have gone through a lot of phases. One was the position—the pastor as a position, eldership as a position. None of it was effective. The only thing that has held this thing together has been the fact that there was a Living Word which progressively led people into God. But even then the big ingredient was missing. There was not shepherding and there was not a fathering. I think that is important. That is changing now.
The whole emphasis is family and shepherding. That is the whole thing; there isn’t anything else. And when you get into it, you realize, “O God, we may have been born into a new life in the Kingdom, but now we see our need as we have never seen it before. We have to be one with each other.”
When you get down to the very roots of how a family functions, you are not going to be a family unless you really establish some deep inroads to each other. And you can’t have a family unless you start with parental authority, love, initiative, and the reaching out to one another. That’s what I think a shepherd is—someone who just learns to be a father.
I was reading through I and II Timothy, and I realized that for over the years I have read those books to see certain doctrines that they established, that by the laying on of hands with prophecy the gifts and the ministries would come forth (I Timothy 4:14). But that is not what I and II Timothy are really about. A Jewish mother and a Greek father had brought forth a child; and his mother’s faith was very great, as well as his grandmother’s—that is the way the whole thing started (Acts 16:1; II Timothy 1:5). We read all the things that Paul was constantly stressing to Timothy: “Stir up the gifts. Don’t neglect the gift that is in you. Be a good soldier. God didn’t give you a spirit of fear” (I Timothy 4:14; II Timothy 1:6–7; 2:3). But really what Paul was talking about, all the way through, was this: “My son, Timothy. My son” (I Timothy 1:2, 18; II Timothy 1:2; 2:1).
The early Church was more concerned about the relationship than they were about the function of miracles and gifts. Paul wrote to Philemon about Onesimus, and said, “My son whom I have begotten in my bonds.” He was a slave who became a dear son to Paul (Philemon 10–16). You see, people were not only converted; they became family.
The Kingdom is relationships. We have seen that, but we have never known how deep the Lord was going to require it. And how simple it is, too.
And how wonderful it is when you see what that means. I am sure that we will see this principle throughout all the Scriptures. We are going to see the Scriptures in a whole new light once we look at what they are really referring to.
It is true that people need to be saved, or born again; they need to be baptized in the Holy Spirit and talk in tongues; we need to talk to them about gifts of the Spirit. Experience is one thing, and everybody has to have that; but when you get to the Kingdom it is not so much personal experiences as it is becoming something to each other in a relationship. This is becoming the Kingdom—not becoming something personal that is excluded from that relationship, or something that is apart from it, but you are one with one another. I don’t think that the average person knows enough about it to even know that he needs a family.
It has been missing for so many decades and generations, gradually dwindling down to remoteness from one another, until you don’t know what you’re missing when you don’t even know it could exist.
We are here to be family. But we also know that there is not an inner circle or a blood tie that is going to restrict how far the family can go. In other words, this whole principle of family is great. I have had a drive to have something which God promised. He said, “I am going to give you a new family.” In the midst of terrible chaos, He said, “I will give you a new family.” And we don’t limit it. One person will not be a son without somebody else becoming a son, and then another becoming a son. There may be one person who is the first one, but it is a drive to see that these others are going to be family too. And you begin to realize something: It is not the flesh-and-blood relationship that matters, but it is the great relationship of spirit.
If one person could attain, in the spirit, recognition of our being his father, and of him being the son in such a way that it is so real, then everyone can have that.
Get over the old idea of partiality, because that is such a carnal way of thinking. All that this third generation does is make the first and the second generation realize that we are all part of the same family. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Though you may get it in doctrine and teaching and revelation, when it really begins to come to you personally, it becomes the principal way by which God takes away your feeling of insecurity and isolation from one another.
I believe it is the thing that the Lord ordained at the beginning, that we have lost. And it is now being restored.
In a kingdom marriage of those in leadership, the wife becomes everybody’s mother; and everybody’s sister. And it isn’t a matter of sharing; that is not the idea. It’s not saying, “Well, we have to share and get rid of jealousy,” and so forth. That is still on too low a human plane. It is just that couple has a relationship which expands through thousands of people. Because of the mother, they know the Pastor more as a father. And because of the father, there is an open door and an expanding awareness that the wife is the mama. People begin to feel it. Young and old alike, they feel the mothering thing.
We have got to see this need of a father. It has to be in our hearts. Let the Lord establish it, because it takes a mutual dedication. It does not take any dedication to be born as a son to a father. There are a lot of sons who wish to God they had another father than the one they had, who by an act of procreation brought them into the world. They could say, “My father was never anything to me. I wish I had had a father.” But when we come to this level of the Kingdom, it is almost that the son has to give birth to becoming a son, with faith. It is a relationship that is established by a Word, by the Holy Spirit; there is something sovereign in it almost beyond what we understand. But there is also a willingness. It is beyond dedication or hunger, or survival, or an ambition; it is just a faith in the father and in the son, a faith that finally accepts that this is it. It exists. It is the relationship. Then if you never see each other again as long as you live, the relationship ministers.
Everybody is searching for that father. And some of us are not very good at it. Procreation creates a life, but a spiritual father strengthens the potential of creativity in a person’s life forever. There are so many who are stymied; they are not going to go anyplace at all because they are just going around in a little circle. But when they get a spiritual father, and they know that he loves them, and there is a faith for it, from that time on they in turn begin to create. A father produces creativity in his son. The sons become the creators of an age.
I think one of the things that is most important is that you can have brothers who help you, but they are more or less siblings of your own age level. The older ones tend to crash down on the younger ones, but always there are a few coming in at about the same level, and they can develop to a certain extent as brothers. But when we come into being sons, we not only have to have the Heavenly Father, but we have to have within the family the relationship of fathers and sons. You can have ten thousand brothers and struggle to relate to them, but you don’t have many fathers who open the door for creativity and release (I Corinthians 4:15). You see, the potential, the creativity is loosed by relationship. These people who are in right relationship to me are loosing me into the most creative flow of the Word I have ever had. I have never had anything more.
No wife, no mate, is ever going to be all that her husband needs, and he is not going to be all that she needs, because it seems that a structure of relationships is very necessary. You develop not just by what you are to each other, but by what you are to your children. Yet in the midst of all of it, there is a struggle of almost individual expression in your life which requires that you be cut off from parents, and so forth. That is a process that probably was pretty well done before most of you were married. But it still then surges back, that as you begin to go through the pattern of your relationships, you need a father. I think that sometimes the counsel of a spiritual father is one of the most stabilizing things that can happen to a marriage or a relationship, because it brings in something. Even if it doesn’t seem to solve any problems, it brings in the solidifying of the relationship, and the oneness of it. You begin to realize that the relationship itself is a means of ministering. It is not an end in itself, but it certainly is more the means to an end than anything we can think about.
We were talking about Paul and Timothy. You can read through I and II Timothy and read about all the miracles, and all the wonderful things that Paul told Timothy to do.
They are called “pastoral epistles,” because they tell how to pastor and shepherd. But even more so they establish one thing in your mind: Paul is always referring to Timothy as his son. It is that father and son relationship that made it. He could say, “Now don’t neglect the gift that God has given you,” or, “You do this; you do that,” or he spoke of his “oft infirmities” (I Timothy 5:23). He watched over Timothy, but he was not just giving him some cold-hearted advice; he was fathering him. It is also interesting that Paul made demands on Timothy which he did not make on anybody else. He said, “Make haste to come to me, and when you come do this and do that” (II Timothy 4:9–21). He was a father who was not embarrassed to make demands upon his sons. Paul was a father. He said, “You can have ten thousand instructors in Christ, but you don’t have many fathers” (I Corinthians 4:15). That was the big thing.
Everyone is in search for that father. You feel an embarrassment of taking initiative and authority and moving without someone in authority being responsible for you. I don’t know whether you feel that or not, but I feel that you can have a great deal of boldness—not because you think I am going to automatically rubber-stamp and approve everything you do, because you know that I look it over very carefully. But the fact that I do observe you carefully is the basis of your security. You can go with the initiative of faith, and there is someone responsible for you. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Then you can go ahead and let yourself go in the creativity of the Lord, because you know, “If I begin to get off, there will be a little Word; there will be some counsel. Somebody is going to get me back on the course.” And you will be free.
You are going to learn in the family things that have to be learned. Be considerate and kind. Be thoughtful of the other person always. With your liberty comes only one restraint: love and kindness. But your restraints, you see, are not born out of fear.
Nobody is going to suppress you. Nobody is going to put you down. They are going to say, “Go ahead.” We are in a big warfare, and we are going to win it. We are winning it, but we are winning it by our relationship. I don’t care how loud people pray at intercession; the thing that is making it work is the fact that we are relating to one another in a oneness. The biggest thing you have to lose is that feeling of insecurity. Come to trust the oneness and the relationship you have. Trust it. If you are always looking for evidence that it is there, then you will need to be convinced over and over again.
In the beginning of this walk with God, every time people came to a service, they had to be reassured that it was of the Lord. What a tragic thing that there wasn’t the faith in their hearts to accept it, totally. Every time they came they had to be given a sales pitch, they had to be convinced; and they would leave saying, “Boy, this is really a walk with God.” But by the time they came back, they had to be reassured all over again. That was because the great confirmation and witness of relationship had not yet come. A marriage can be like that. You can get married and need a lot of reassurance from each other. So you just keep talking about it, and keep talking about it, because you are getting acquainted. But after a while you see, “Yes, we have this.” It dawns on you, and then you have real faith in it; you believe in it. You know, “It is going to be good, and it will be even better; it will be whatever we want, whatever we believe together for,” because you lose that insecurity. I wonder how much time is wasted in arguments, in confusion, in trying to bridge gulfs between each other that don’t really have to exist, all because you don’t have faith in the relationship. That is the way this thing with the fathers, and the sons, and the family works; the whole Kingdom of God is based on that.
I am convinced that the first generation needs some time to be swung back into things; they could be a blessing now, if they will. And the second generation is in the position where they still tend to crash down out of a harshness. But the third generation has that quality about them that they could move in authority with love, and relate. That’s why I am thinking that we should start looking for the next step—which will be to get pastors, or shepherds, bishops, overseers, from among the younger ones who really know what the score is on this relating. Then they are not going to be suppressed, because they will have enough authority, and enough love, and enough faith that they will be able to swing people back into it. The difficulty is always for Paul to make Onesimus the overseer of the church that meets in Philemon’s home—Philemon who had owned Onesimus as a slave. It is always difficult to see that thing reversed. Philemon could have said, “Well, I have the money, I have the resources, I have the finances, and I was the boss; I owned this man as a slave. He was my slave.” But we are in the same thing right now. It is going to be a difficult transition, but it will have to be made. The younger third generation is going to have to take over the shepherding. It is time for it. If they do it, they will be truer to the principles which were laid out for thirty years than those who were in the presentation of them for thirty years. They will be truer to it. Look at all of the teaching which was given to that first generation, and how few of them have really become that truth in the earth.
They are not activated. They are still in the congregation nonfunctioning, unfortunately.
That is why I am seeing that principle coming up. I am ready to take the people who have been nobodys—who have been in the back row, doing all the work, loving the Lord, relating to each other—and let them be the ones who take the mantle of authority and begin to bring forth this new Kingdom order.
There is a certain order that is coming. It is not forms and not rituals, but there are very definite things in it which could be termed that—such as Communion, impartation, laying on of hands, sharing things, and the way that the third generation has the meetings to touch and flow. All of that is just pure, basic Kingdom. They see that, and they can begin to walk in it.
For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers:for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. I Corinthians 4:15, KJV.
There are a lot of instructors. Everybody feels that they know the answers. But you see, it is not that you solve people’s problems, but that they need a father. Most of the problems you have had come from the fact that you felt isolated, you felt separated, you felt that you couldn’t relate, that you didn’t know what was happening. And so you just hung on as an individual. And the Lord is not bringing this so that we lose our individuality, but as individuals we become related to one another. There is a certain confidence that we need. We were talking about one of the brothers who never had a father. There were difficult times and a lot of reasons and excuses, but he never had a father who would relate to him as a father. There weren’t any nice talks, any nice relating.
But I wonder if there aren’t many who can relate to that. They may have had a father who provided for them, but how many really related to their father in the deep areas where they needed help?
The result is that you come to an area where you are reaching maturity, and you cannot reach it because you are still searching for a father. We need to understand that we search for a father. As I said earlier, the fact that you were born may have been because someone had an accident in a bedroom. You may be the result of an accident, before the days of birth control really being effective. But even so, you were loved, and there was a certain degree of family relationship. But you found out that there is some way that a father has to be born too. Just as the child goes through a birth, so there is a birth that is coming. I can see that in myself; I can see what God has done in me. He told me that He was going to give me another family. And I watch that family; it is going to be as vast as Abraham’s.
The revelation came that I was going to be like Abraham, the father of a great multitude (Genesis 17:2–5). And you know, that has never meant much to me until lately. Now I realize what God was saying. It wasn’t a thing of position, or eminence; it was just a relationship. The people were going to come forth. They would pray for me and bless me, and they would say, “We’re your children; we’re your sons.” Whether I did anything for them or not was not the issue, because the relationship itself would minister to them. They needed a father relationship. They needed to be able to say, “I have a spiritual father. I know he loves me. He believes for me; he is my covering.” And then the thing that locks people into their limitation is broken.
Once a son knows that he has a father, then the initiative of faith and the prophecies over him begin to spring forth. He could go out and conquer the world, because in some way the insecurity is taken out, and he knows, “If I do the wrong thing, he’ll tell me; he’s my father.” That’s wonderful, isn’t it?
There is a new revelation coming of what we are to be to each other, and the whole thing of relationship is the Kingdom. We could do ten percent as much as we have done in the past and be one hundred percent more effective once the relationship is there, because as long as you feel people are suspicious of you, or critical of you—and they may be—it shackles you. You are hobbled. You can’t run any races or win any races until that restriction and your limitation is taken off. And it is taken off by saying, “Here is my father.”
When you read I and II Timothy, you are always aware that Paul talked about the gifts that were given by the laying on of hands of the elders, and he said, “Don’t neglect this gift; stir it up. God didn’t give you a spirit of fear” (I Timothy 4:14; II Timothy 1:7). And he talked about “the gift you received at my hand” (II Timothy 1:6). You could build doctrines of impartation out of it without seeing that basic to it was this: “My son, Timothy. My dearly beloved son” (II Timothy 1:2). And if you don’t see the relationship of Paul as a father to Timothy, you don’t understand Paul’s authority. He was not being arrogant; he was not being the apostle who said, “Do this and do that,” though he gave him very definite directives. But there were always the dear entreaties, the consideration of faith—because Paul was his father. He started II Timothy by saying, “There is a faith that is in you. It was in your grandmother and in your mother, and it is in you also.” But then immediately he shifted it to himself and spoke about the gift that he had imparted to him (II Timothy 1:5–6). He never talked about Timothy’s Greek father. He said, “From a child you have been trained in the Holy Scriptures” (II Timothy 3:14–15); but then he told him, “Give yourself to these things. Come to me as quickly as you can” (II Timothy 4:1–9). There was never any question about it. Other people could forsake him. “All Asia has turned away from me,” he said (II Timothy 1:15). But with Timothy there was never any question; that father and son relationship had something beyond loyalty, beyond anything we can visualize today.
That’s what the Kingdom is. The Kingdom is family; the Kingdom is relationship. I once said that we could throw the word “Kingdom” out completely and just use the term “family.” You say, “Well, what about our earthly fathers?” You relate to them to whatever extent you can. You know that is true. But you still know that you need a father. What makes this thing so frightening is that a man has to become a spiritual father. And there are not many fathers. But I tell you, sons are like the arrows in the quiver of a mighty man (Psalm 127:4). It is a reserve of authority that comes in relationship.
You see, it ministers. We talk about how bold Paul was. But his boldness came from that relationship of having a son. It is something that a son does to a father. As you say it’s an arrow in his quiver. It’s a reserve; it’s a strength. The need that we have for a father is just as great as the need that the father has for us to be sons to him, because this is resurrection life. We’re not just praying for resurrection life anymore; we are looking to be who we are to each other and relate on that level. That’s the strength, the boldness. This is the Kingdom, because it is such a healing. You can do anything when you know that that relationship is there. And nothing else is important. You don’t have to try to move in gifts or anything.
A relationship should never be a struggle; and if it is, we don’t have the relationship. That’s why we are beginning to enter into a rest. Ephesians 2 talks about how Christ broke down the walls of enmity between people and made them one, thus bringing peace—or rest (Ephesians 2:14–18). There is a peace or rest that comes when God has made the relationship a thing of oneness. And that’s what we are seeing in this father and son relationship. There is a peace that comes. There is no competitiveness. That stops. There is no “Who’s going to be the big shot, the big wheel?”
There is no ambition. There is a peace and a rest that comes when you know that this is the success we look for—that we just be one.
Alot of the problems people have been based on insecurity.” A person can go out and repent of insecurity, but that never does anything. The only thing that answers the insecurity is coming into that relationship. And then once you have that, everything changes.
When the ship is rolling, it is hard not to get seasick. But when you throw down an anchor, it doesn’t make any difference what the climate is, or the weather. Being a father does not begin with an act of procreation; it begins when he knows: “Here is something that I become a father to.” You see, mothers have dozens of umbilical cords that successively have to be severed from the child. The child begins to breathe and live and function on its own at the moment of birth. But it is still dependent upon the nursing; it is dependent upon the feeding; it is dependent upon a lot of care. And so the mother gradually makes an individual person out of what has been born from her womb. But that individual can only become so much of a person until, even perhaps by his own volition, he has to separate himself from his mother’s apron strings. Then the struggle to be independent and to be an individual continues on. And it is almost like a warfare against the mother. Of course the mother grieves and everything, but she knows that she has to let that child go; yet it is a difficult thing.
We spoke earlier of the customs of ancient Rome, and also the history of the Jews with the Bar Mitzvah, that there is a time in which the person is declared to be an individual. With the Romans, from that time on the mother relinquished the child. And that child would go with the father to the business market, or go to the Roman baths, or whatever, because now he had to learn how to become a part of the whole world.
We have had many spiritual mothers, but now we need the spiritual father who will say, “Son, I’ll teach you to relate to the whole Kingdom. I’ll teach you how to relate.” And you don’t teach a person with precepts; you do it by doing it. You relate him to the whole world. That’s what the Kingdom of God is.
You have needed a father more than you need anything else in the whole world. And the battle is that you have constantly had to separate yourself from those almost neurotic bonds. They become neurotic. They start out healthy, but they become neurotic. A woman is not necessarily neurotic because she nurses a child, but later on when that time is passed, she has to learn how to wean. And mothers are very poor weaners; sometimes they are fed by a protracted dependence, or an extended control over the child. If a mother makes the child depend upon her too much, that child loses his initiative. If she extends her domination and does not allow that child to have a progressive unfolding of initiative in his life, she is hurting the child. But a true spiritual father does as much harm by ignoring the whole situation and submitting to some matriarchy that is not going to produce the boldness and strength of sons.
Now, I am talking about boys or girls, sons or daughters, when I talk about sonship. They all need a father. This is difficult to see many times, because the girls will keep reverting to their mothers. And the more they revert to their mothers without rebelling against that control their mothers have over them, the longer it is going to take for them to find themselves, and to learn how to relate to somebody else. There is a great deal to be said for the rebellion that is automatic and instinctive in the hearts of a lot of children. It is more healthy than people know. But the trouble is that it can continue until it becomes satanic. There must be a way in which a child can, without rebellion, sever himself from a wrong control that is suppressing his maturity, and still relate with love and kindness to the parent. I think we’ll find it. Learn how to relate to that dominating mother, or neurotic mother, or that father who has neglected you, or thinks entirely in a different way. You can do it once you become free yourself.
The best way to become free is to become related. Once the relationship of oneness is established, you move immediately into a pattern of growth and creativity.
You see, our sons are restrained. But once they get the father, then they are without restraint; then they can become creative and they can do a lot of things. You can’t take this too far—insisting on that oneness in God. You just can’t take it too far. There is no way oneness can become fanatical because it is overextended. Bonds can; everything else can. But is there any way that Jesus Christ becomes a fanatic because He says, “The Father and I are One”? (John 10:30.) Was He a fanatic? You can’t take it too far. And He prayed that we would all be one, even as They are one (John 17:20–22). It is a total, absolute release that brings forth authority and creativity.