One of the characteristics of an Apostleship is loving and honouring relationships.  When you view the early Christian church you saw a people who devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles, to communion, and to one another (Acts 2).  As people devoted themselves to relationships God saw to bless their community with needs answered and an increase in believers.

The Relationships of honour with God and with one another stand at the very core of a living and breathing Church.  We see at the heart of the trinity is holy and perfect relationship.  How do we replicate this loving relationship within our community?  How do we find the sort of love and union that we see within the trinity?

I think the language of the trinity points to an important indicator of the type of model that is required.  Father, Son, & Spirit.  A true Father-Son, Father-Daughter relationship will replicate and inspire a culture of relationship. I have begun to see that one of the core roles of an apostle is to restablish fathers within the community of believers.  We need spiritual fathers who will be a representation of the supernatural love and nature of THE Father.

I love the prayer for the Ephesians in Ephesians 3:14-21

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

  Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

What a spectacular prayer!  A deep longing to see people in a deep and full relationship with God the father.  Some key points in this passage to note:

- This is the prayer of Paul the Apostle.  An apostles heart is for the Church to connect with God and one another

- Acknowledgment of God as Father.

- The nature of families in Heaven and on earth and it's connection and dependance of God the Father.

- TOGETHER - We enter into this deep relationship together & unified

There is a massive need within our churches and within our culture to answer the "orphaned spirit" that can come over people.

1. People experience a need (Lack of love, hurt, heartache, abuse, lonliness, disconnection, lack of community, etc)

2. Their needs are expressed

3. There is no response to needs

4. Their needs are not satisfied

5. They receive no comfort

6. Their needs increase and so they develop an ophaned spirit.  They feel abandoned, alone, a sole survivor, they are afraid, and are not the beloved.  They fall to limitations, are powerless, orphaned, and sucumb to fear.  This is all BAD BAD BAD!!!

If we can introduce spiritual fathers

1. People experience need

2. Their needs are expressed

3. There IS a reponse to their need

4. Their needs are satisfied

5. They are comforted

6. The need is gone!!

Fathers supply identity, protection, provision, freedom, and love!  Dreams flow, people are given authority, they step into their inheritance, they make good choices, and they walk in courage!! This is all GREAT GREAT GREAT!!!

One of the key roles of an apostle is to release the spirit of adoption back into our society.  This is the model of heaven!  When we come to faith, we come into a privileged royal family.  We become sons & daughters of the King.  Co-heirs with Christ!  An apostle should continue to bring about this spirit of sonship and daughtership.

An apostleship creates the environment for the heavenly blueprint to unfold here on earth.  The sign of an apostle is not church planting or leading a network.  It is not franchising.  The sign of an apostle is in transforming culture to represent heaven.  In signs and wonders and the model of heaven.  "Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN!"  This was the apostles/disciples prayer! 

The word apostleship doesn't come from a Jewish heritage.  When Jesus used this word he took it from the culture of his day.  When the Romans invaded a country with the army they went in and conquered the land claiming it for caesar.  Once they left and continued taking ground for the empire they found the people, in the absence of the soilders, went back to their usual way of practice.  So they sent it an apostle who changed their currency, towns, etc, and introduced the culture of Rome.  Jesus wanted his diciples to change the culture to represent His Kingdom of Heaven!  Not just start Churches, but to change hearts, language, and the whole way of life of those who come into the Kingdom.

A father-son relationship is central to the blueprint of heaven and so should be here on earth.