Have You Forgiven? The Apple and the Familiar Spirit
Pastor Wesley Sing, 28 February 2025, 71 min
About this recording
The first men's meeting of 2025, on a Friday evening, and the opening one of a programme rather than a once off gathering. The stated aim is for men to discover who they are and then help other men do the same, across the mind, the gifts, the finances, the marriage and the vision.
The reason it is aimed at men is put plainly from 1 John 2:12-14 and from the pattern in Scripture: the enemy has always gone for the head of the home, because if the head falls everybody scatters.
Pastor Wesley then teaches it out of his own life, and does not make it tidy. He carried hate and resentment for years over what somebody did to him, and that person went on to become a pastor, which made letting go of it harder rather than easier. He describes watching God heal a child through his own hands while he was still full of that, and being able to see nothing in the moment except his own hypocrisy. His father used to say that if God could use him, God can use anybody, and he says from experience that it is true.
Then the teaching sharpens. We all have coping mechanisms, and he lists them without flinching, from a Friday night with the boys to cocaine to sleeping around, and the point is the same for all of them: we use the pain of the past to justify the present, and it only ever hurts us.
The image the meeting is built around is the apple and the tree. Attributes travel down a bloodline, and so do familiar spirits, the things that have plagued a family for generations. His argument is that it is a choice, that the grace of God covers that choice, and that deliverance means a man fights the battle in his generation so that his sons and daughters never have to know it.
In this message
Main text
- 1 John 2:12-14
- 1The enemy has always gone for the man, because if the head of the home falls, the household scatters
- 2These meetings are a programme with a purpose, not somewhere to be because there is nothing else on
- 3Do not let the people who hurt you dictate what you do. Coping mechanisms use the past to justify the present
- 4Every man has them, and they only take you further from where God is taking you
- 5Not every day is an event. Every day is preparation, so work today as though the day were tomorrow
- 6Hard decisions now are what put you in the right place with the right people in five years
- 7Familiar spirits travel down a bloodline the way facial features do
- 8Keep doing what you were doing and it gets worse, because the spirit brings seven more wicked than itself
- 9Being the apple that falls away from the tree is a choice, and grace covers that choice
- 10Deal with it in your generation and your children never have to fight that battle
- 11Young men, who you marry matters, and sowing wild oats is a lie that costs you the person meant for you
- 12Identity in Christ matters more than your surname, your qualification or who you know
- 13Forgiveness is the question. Have you forgiven, have you let go, have you drawn the line
Scriptures
- 1 John 2:12-14
- Matthew 12:45
