2 Kings 2:9 And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me.

These are the last words of Elisha to Elijah before Elisha took up Elijah’s mantle. I often think about these parting words of Elisha, in particular the thought comes to me, “Be careful what you ask for.”

You can be close and intimate with a man’s service to the Lord. You might even have the privilege to fill in for him on occasion. Being an apprentice is nothing like being the master. You have no idea of the level of responsibility until you have taken on that responsibility.

Elisha sought the one thing he knew he would need to pick up Elijah’s mantle, more spirit than he had. Was it possible to have more spirit? The thoughts in the times of these great prophets was of a rest upon spirit. It was not until Christ was resurrected that the Holy Spirit became an abiding Spirit. It is not possible to have a double portion of the Holy Spirit. Any portion of God is wholly God.

The mantle is what we take up, not the spirit. The Hebrew meaning, while specific to a prophets garment, literally means “a wide branching vine”. The inference is influence. Specific to that end, supplying to or giving sustenance to a large number of branches. That is where the idea of taking on responsibility comes from.

We will all retire to the Lord’s rest someday. We should see to our replacements and train up Godly men to take up our mantle with the attitude of Elisha. I need the Lord’s help to do this thing.

1 Peter 5:10 But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.

1 Timothy 6:3-5 If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself.

We make lite of OCD do we not? If you do not suffer from OCD it is hard to understand the issues of obsessive compulsive disorders. We look to the behavior of people who suffer from OCD with a detached interest. We as laymen do not have the training or skills to treat the disorder.

Where in my opening verses is the OCD?

Doting, in the Greek noseō, to be taken with such an interest in a thing as to amount to a disease, to have a morbid fondness for.

That sounds serious does it not? We glaze over words and phrases without understanding the serious implication of the behavior associated with the text. We in turn will often, like OCD, make lite of it, because we do not understand it. But what does it look like in our Christian walk?

Ever run across someone who keeps asking the same question over and over again? Perhaps it is a subject in question that they can never stop talking about. It is the verbal equivalent to constantly brushing all the tassels of a rug because one fiber was not flat and perfectly parallel with all the rest. That becomes tedious to watch and in speech tedious to listen to all the time.

How about a person that cannot let go of their opinion? You end up agreeing to disagree. With people who do this, unity cannot be establish.

Psalm 133:1 Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!