What is the difference between apostolic grace and fathering grace? We seem to have a lot of people overlapping of what is fathering grace and apostolic grace. Apostolic grace is a grace to an apostle to help ministry leaders be effective towards the Body of Christ, but fathering grace is more towards an individual. Apostolic grace comes to reorder, realign and redefine. Fathering grace comes to form and mature. So, the foundations of both are very different. Apostolic grace is a foundation based on doctrine. Fathering grace is a foundation based on love, acceptance and trust. Apostolic is visionary, for a larger picture for ministry, and the fathering grace is visionary for the individual.

Many times, we see that apostles are also fathers. But not all fathers are apostles. It’s two distinct different types of grace. Sometimes those two things overlap in an individual’s life. We need to understand which grace is actually working. Everybody needs both in their lives but for different reasons.  You’re drawing from a different Grace for different outcomes. Sometimes one is more dominate in your life and other times you need both to impart into your life.

Spiritual fathering has a divine connection that aligns you to a spiritual father. There’s a grace for connecting to that father. There’s a grace of how your hearts would be connected. The alignment you have with an apostle is around your assignment and mission in the earth. Your specific assignment needs that apostle’s insight. So, the difference is apostolic grace deals with ministry and its issues while fathering grace deals with living life out together and doing life together. One is equipping you to do ministry, and the other is equipping you to do life.

Apostles are very transparent about their life and ministry, where spiritual father is transparent about what is going on in their heart decisions. They both will impact a life giving flow, it is just coming from a different source with a differnet expectation of result. Both will champion your call, giftings and your abilities. But a spiritual father is going to champion your heart.

It is the role of the son our daughter to pursue the spiritual father and what that father has experienced.  The same with the Apostle, but the pursuit is drawn upon the grace and revelation of what the apostle is carrying. Spiritual Fathers create opportunities so spiritual sons and daughters can see what’s really setting inside of them. Apostles create assignments, to move the kingdom of God forward and pull those under them into that assignment.

Many times, these things may overlap because the assignment may also demand some changes in the heart, and the changes in the heart will also release you into assignment. So, everyone needs to determine who is your apostle, and who is your spiritual father. I’m an apostle too many right now probably 20 or 30 different ministries and people are looking at me as an apostle helping them and giving oversight into their ministries. But I also have about that many spiritual sons and daughters that I’m raising and causing to come into their fullness. It is a season for me of more sons and daughters coming towards me.  

I believe the early church looked at their sons and daughters and saw the grace gift of fivefold ministry upon them. And as they did, they decided this person has a calling or a grace gift into a certain function. Today, we have been training people basically backward. We’ve been training them in a school of ministry to teach them a grace gift, when a grace gift is actually something that’s occurring inside your heart. I believe the early church picked and chose fivefold ministry out of sons and daughters. This foundation of sonship meant discipline, obedience, loyalty, sacrifice, commitment, and long list of things was already in place that didn’t cause the problems we see today. It was a heart that had been formed not forming after coming into a five fold grace. From that point they further trained them to understand all of the fivefold graces. Notice I didn’t say trained them into a grace but to understanding those graces. They trusted the Holy Spirit to make them be who God wanted them to be.

Both the apostolic and fathering grace is present upon the earth. Both have certain outcomes. Both are needed. Let’s not get confused and make them the same thing. By doing so we step around the processes and demands both require. The process of Spiritual fathering produces the foundation of a prepared heart. The Process of an Apostle builds upon the heart and demands a response of action from the heart. The Fathering process is a time process while the Apostolic is an action process. The Spiritual father allows for growth to occur over time. Eternal values are formed. Decisions are not just spontaneous but well thought out and contemplated.

The apostolic now takes the authentic sure belief formed in a spiritual son or daughter and says time to activate you into the destiny your father saw in you. The apostle places things in the pathway of the person to find and encounter to finalize their value and worth in ministry. They bring people into destiny by discovery while the spiritual father raises them by assurance.

I will say this both graces are not a one, two, three, step type process, but more a spiritual artform of knowing each person individual life and who God says they are. Both are probably the greatest degree of empowering and working with the Holy Spirit in a process. Both have setbacks and pitfalls. But both are the highest degree of honor and value we can give to others, to believe in them how God does and to see them how God sees them in fullness.