In this Q&A, Pastor Bill Johnson shares how we can accomplish a lot more by living out of our identity as a child of God than we can when we try to earn it and how the Lord often uses our earthly fathers and mother to teach us to hear His voice.

could you tell us a little bit about

your own journey in becoming a son of

the father um

you know i think probably everybody goes

through

seasons or times where um where

where we were ambitious or were anxious

to become

something to accomplish something i

think those are fairly natural desires

but they can be really disruptive to to

discovering who god made us to be

and we accomplish a lot more when we

live out of our identity as a child of

god

than when we try to earn it and for me

that’s that’s it right there i mean i

i learned it as a young man but i’m

still learning it now quite a bit older

i think probably the biggest life change

for me was when i had my own kids

i started to see it different i started

to see him different

when i saw me moved by

my own kids you know you see you see

you feel the heart of a father and then

you see what jesus says he says if you

being evil

know how to give good gifts to your

children how much more your heavenly

father

so there’s that contrast that i am so

restricted and so limited and yet i am

moved to tears in love for my own kids

and and if i feel that way

and i am finite what does the infinite

one look like that changed everything

for me

yeah everything that’s beautiful some of

my favorite stories that you share

are those of your own father your

earthly father

and um i think it is significant to

address the fact that we do have real

needs

from earthly spiritual parents or

physical parents

how would you say we balance that with

um the need to get

actually our identity and and really

important needs met by

the heavenly father well

um let me use the example of a of a baby

sheep a lamb

a lamb doesn’t know the voice of the

shepherd a lamb knows

the voice of the you sheep the la the

the mother sheep

and it’s in following the mother it

learns

to recognize the voice of the shepherd

and so it’s that way with earthly

fathers and the spiritual fathers you

connect with the ones god’s put over you

you

you learn to relate to them you draw

from them you you come alive from what

they say about your life

and in that journey with them you learn

to recognize more and more

the voice of the father of course it’s

not either or

we are uh humanly connected in community

as we’re supposed to be

but we also have to have our own

relationship with god

and and so it’s it’s it comes down to

this there are times where

the lord will not satisfy you with what

you can get from the people around you

and you

you have to go to god to get it and

there are other times

he will seal up the answer in the mouth

of a friend or in this case

a spiritual father and you can pray

night and day fast do everything you

want but until you seek the counsel from

that father

and it’s uh you learn in the doing it’s

not a

it’s not a formula you know we can write

out you know two days of this three days

of that

it’s uh it’s a journey where we’re on

this quest to know god

and we will respond to whatever tool he

uses if it’s a

another man or a mother a woman in our

life speaking to us

great if it’s our prayer life great it’s

just that we are responding

to the cry to grow and to know him more

so it’s

it’s both it’s both yeah