Jim Bakker Show - The Spiritual Role of Man - Neil Kennedy
Aired: 2017-02-17
Duration: 05:33


=== A Father's Absence (05:32) ===

[00:00:00]  We don't recognize what a man looks like today.
[00:00:03]  Therefore, we don't respect what man is today.
[00:00:07]  In the 80s, you realized what leadership was all about, and it was defined when you looked at leadership.
[00:00:13]  You knew that President Reagan was a leader because he spoke like a leader, and he carried himself like a leader.
[00:00:22]  In the household, you knew who your father was because their father spoke like a father.
[00:00:27]  He carried himself like a father.
[00:00:29]  But the moment a father became absent from the home, we lost who a father was.
[00:00:35]  Therefore, we don't recognize what a father looks like because a father has been gone for so long that therefore we don't even know what it sounds like, what it looks like, what he smells like.
[00:00:45]  Therefore, when we try to be fathers today, we can't even recognize what a father looks like because the father has been gone too long.
[00:00:54]  Now, let me flip the script for a minute.
[00:00:56]  Now, we don't know what a leader is because a leader has been absent for so long that we don't recognize how he looks like, what he sounds like, how he signs executive orders like.
[00:01:09]  So, therefore, we come against anything that looks like a man, smells like a man, walks like a man.
[00:01:15]  Oh, I can preach right now.
[00:01:19]  But as man, we've become absent from our home.
[00:01:23]  So, how can a man regain his position when he's been gone for so long?
[00:01:29]  How does a man, there you go, Neil, that's a question?
[00:01:31]  Well, when I was five years of age, my mother called my brother, my sister, myself into her bedroom.
[00:01:39]  And that was not unusual.
[00:01:41]  My father was an executive for General Electric, and he traveled a lot.
[00:01:46]  And so, it wasn't unusual to get on the phone, but this time it was weird.
[00:01:50]  It was different.
[00:01:51]  There was a look of pity and sadness on my mom that I really couldn't grasp at the time.
[00:01:57]  And my brother, who's older, took the phone and immediately burst into uncontrollable tears.
[00:02:04]  I couldn't describe it then.
[00:02:06]  I understand what happened now.
[00:02:08]  I saw my brother swallow a bitter root that he's yet to extract.
[00:02:16]  My sister was next.
[00:02:17]  Beautiful girl.
[00:02:18]  Oh, my gosh.
[00:02:19]  My sister, beautiful.
[00:02:21]  But when she took the phone, she didn't cry.
[00:02:24]  It was like a fog enveloped her that lasted for decades.
[00:02:30]  And she tried to sedate that pain her whole life.
[00:02:35]  I was next.
[00:02:36]  I'm five years of age.
[00:02:38]  I take the phone.
[00:02:39]  On the other end of the phone is my father's deep baritone voice, and he says, Gary, I'm not going to be living at home any longer.
[00:02:47]  Your mother and I are getting a divorce.
[00:02:49]  I love you, little buddy.
[00:02:51]  Click.
[00:02:53]  Now, I didn't know at five years of age, you don't know what the word divorce means.
[00:02:58]  You don't understand what that is all about.
[00:03:00]  And so when I heard that, I'm like, what just happened here?
[00:03:07]  And I couldn't understand what was happening.
[00:03:10]  I didn't understand when my mom married a former friend of my father.
[00:03:14]  You know, when you're five, you don't understand that.
[00:03:17]  And I didn't understand it when my mom called me in and said, we're not going to call you Gary any longer, which is my father's name.
[00:03:25]  We're going to call you Neil, your middle name, and you're going to assume my husband's name.
[00:03:31]  So that morning, I awakened Gary Kennedy.
[00:03:35]  That night I went to bed, Neil Robertson.
[00:03:38]  And somewhere in the daylight hours, someone stole my identity.
[00:03:42]  And the problem with that is if you don't know who you are, you'll never know why you are.
[00:03:48]  Inherit to identity is your purpose.
[00:03:52]  So my whole childhood, all my teenage years, I'm grasping.
[00:03:56]  I'm trying to play catch up.
[00:03:58]  It's like the world was on a time zone I wasn't on, and I'm just trying to figure this out.
[00:04:04]  No one there.
[00:04:05]  My father wasn't there to tell me about our heritage.
[00:04:09]  He wasn't there to prophesy my future.
[00:04:12]  My father's voice exited with him, and I wouldn't know him until I became an adult.
[00:04:18]  One night I was working in a coal mine, believe it or not, in Oklahoma.
[00:04:22]  I look like a coal miner, right?
[00:04:25]  I was working in a coal mine from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., seven nights a week by myself.
[00:04:33]  They hired me to pump water out of the mind all night long.
[00:04:37]  And so I learned very early that freedom costs a lot of money.
[00:04:42]  So I had moved out when I was 17, and I'm working and trying to just make, I didn't have anything else to do, so 84 hours a week at work, you know, helped me eat.
[00:04:53]  So one night in the coal mine, I heard the Spirit of God.
[00:04:58]  I remember looking up at the stars and saying, God, do you even know who I am?
[00:05:04]  Do you even care?
[00:05:07]  And Philip, you know the voice of God.
[00:05:09]  I heard the voice of God.
[00:05:11]  And the voice of God said to me, I know you.
[00:05:14]  And I've given you the Spirit of a Son.
[00:05:17]  And you can call me Abba.
[00:05:19]  You can call me Daddy.
[00:05:22]  And it was at that moment, intentional direction began to happen in my life.
[00:05:26]  An identity of who I am.
[00:05:30]  A self-assurance.
[00:05:31]  It's not personal confidence.