That moment when your leader calls, right after you have just came out of prayer and travailing before God for answers, and they speak a Word like they were just in your prayer closet hearing everything you just spoke to God, and instantly, after they have spoken, things begin to happen in your life.

I love those priceless moments when my leader tells me, “The LORD put you on my heart,” and it was at the exact time that you were seeking God and God spoke something to you and set a confirmation through your leader, especially when God spoke something that seemed to be a hard word of instruction and direction.

I love my spiritual leader, because he has taught me so many golden nuggets concerning the Kingdom of God, and how to deal with His people. Sometimes I grieve for the younger generation, because many don’t get the caliber of leadership that the older generation had.

Leaders who truly cared about those who God entrusted them with.

Leaders who took time with us, who had personal hands-on time with us to train and teach us not just about spiritual things, but how to be productive in society, how to be a man or woman, how to take care of our household, manage our money.

A lot of things that people are saying now as ‘divine revelation’ was automatically taught to us. Many younger people mocked the older generation because we value ourselves. Yes, we cover up our bodies, because we were taught not to be a stumbling block to others.

We were taught to not let our good be evil spoken of. We didn’t have men at our house after certain hours. We didn’t put ourselves in compromising situations that would cause people to question our character.

We respected our leaders and held them up in prayer. We protected them, because they walked in a high standard of integrity and honor and didn’t want to do anything to cause the people to fall. They truly did lead by example.

They taught us unity and walking in love toward everybody. We had monthly fellowships, weekly shut-ins, monthly and weekly fasts, that brought us together and we were able to get to know each other personally.

They used strategies from heaven to keep us together, to block out chaos and confusion, and when a person tried to destroy the unity, they band together to help them get delivered, instead of talking, gossiping and creating more trouble.

Those leaders taught us how to have a real relationship with God, constantly showing us how to draw closer how to be more intimate how to know God’s voice how to recognize our enemy and how to pray effectively.

I love my spiritual upbringing. It was so strict, but yet so enlightening. Being made accountable for your own spiritual growth was awesome. It pushed us to be at Sunday School, to be at bible study prayer meetings. We loved when we had shut-in at the church, because we knew we were going to see the hand and power of God.

Seeing miracles, signs, wonders, healing deliverance, was just natural, because we were taught about the character attributes and actions of God and His word.

We sought hard to receive the Holy Ghost because we understood that this was God’s Spirit living inside us, and to know we had God inside us was beyond our thinking but we wanted Him and we didn’t stop until we receive Him.

Yes, this younger generation hasn’t experience those kind of personal relationships with their leaders, literally being able to just go to your leader and sit at their feet and they would feed us with knowledge and wisdom.

I remember how I would go out to eat with my leader and we would sit at the table and he would pour out those pearls of wisdom that impacted our lives. I embraced this in my life.

I love to just go out and sit around and drink my coffee and just release words of wisdom to those around me.

Well, this morning, I’m just in a thankful mood because I realize that even though the younger ones call me ‘old fashion,’ they will seek me out to obtain the old fashion wisdom that God gives me for them when they get in trouble or a hard place.

So call me old fashion, hard, no nonsense, it’s those values those characters which has given me the strength to push to walk in integrity and honor, because I know the value of holiness righteousness and obedience in The LORD.

 

~ Apostle Barbara R. Thomas

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Apostle Barbara R. Thomas is founder of I Come to Heal Ministries, A Woman’s touch Ministry, The Next Dimension Global Outreach Ministries and Spoken Word School of Ministry and she is on a mission traveling the world proclaiming the Gospel for soul to be won to the Kingdom of God. She has a mandate on her life to help brings others to their divine purpose.

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