The Spirit of Elijah

Malachi prophesied of a time when God would “turn the hearts of the fathers to the sons and the hearts of the sons to the fathers” (Malachi 4:5-6).

We often want to look at what our kids owe us-- and that their hearts should turn our way. However, we're reminded in the Bible to "flip the script" and note what we can do for them.

Paul says that wise fathers should “build them up” and empower the sons (and daughters coming behind them. Specifically, Colossians 3:21 reminds us that overbearing leaders can drain the life out of their subjects (NIV):

Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.

A grizzly authority who does not realize the leader’s job is to empower people by serving “beneath” them and “pushing them up” to the greatness residing within them will discourage and even embitter the person they are leading.

Ephesians 6:4 communicates the same message:

Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

To exasperate someone literally means to “suck the wind out of them.” Rather than knocking the wind out of them, we are called— and empowered— to “breathe life into them.” This happens in the same way that—

• God breathed life into Adam at creation, such that a new thing came into being (Genesis 2:7).
• Ezekiel prophesied for the Lord’s breath to enter the dry bones, such that the dead and decayed transformed to health and wholeness (Ezekiel 37:10).
• Jesus breathed life into His disciples in the Upper Room, such that men who recently fled for their lives grew courageous turned the world upside down (John 20:22).

Don’t miss the difference between knocking the wind out of someone’s sails and blowing good wind into them…