Spiritual Slavery to Spiritual Sonship (11 page)

Captain Kline loved me like a son, and I loved him like a father. But that was not enough because I still had an orphan heart. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, my relationship with Captain Kline was built around what he was doing
for me
—he was fulfilling my dream to be a fishing boat captain.

For two years, he poured into me his 40 years of knowledge and experience with the sea and with captaining fishing boats. He promised me, “Jack, once you have your 730 days at sea, pass the Coast Guard exam, and get your Captain’s license, I’ll make you the captain of the boat. Then later, we’ll draw up a contract, and you’ll be owner of the fleet one day. I’ll live off the payments, and the fleet will be yours.”

Who wouldn’t be faithful and loyal with that type of deal? For two years I never failed to do anything Captain Kline told me to do. I obeyed every command and followed every instruction. I was like a son, and he was like a father to me. But you can’t measure sonship—you can’t measure true loyalty and faithfulness—simply
by outward obedience, because outward obedience can still mask an orphan heart.

In the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, the angry older brother never left home, never demanded his inheritance early, and never disobeyed his father; but as the story reveals, he was obedient for all the wrong reasons. He never connected with his father’s heart, and he felt like a slave and an orphan even in his father’s house.

Unconsciously, my relationship with Captain Kline was based upon what he could do for me and not for relationship. Outwardly, it looked as though I was subject to Captain Kline’s mission, but in reality I was subject to my own mission. Captain Kline wanted to raise up a son to whom he could leave a legacy. My orphan heart was more interested in fulfillment of my dream. We never really know what spirit is in us until our father, boss, or pastor makes a decision that does not benefit us—and then our true heart is revealed. We do not know what we are full of until we have been bumped—and then our true selves spill over.

One day, believing that the time was right for me to be captain, I approached Captain Kline. His response was not what I expected. “I’m sorry, Jack,” he said. “I know what I promised you, but I can’t do it yet. My wife has cancer, and her care and treatment are draining every dollar we have. I can’t afford it right now. Stay with me through this crisis, Jack, and all this will be yours, just as I promised.”

Those words were not exactly what I wanted to hear. I thought I was ready to captain a fishing boat. Captain Kline had promised it to me, and now I felt that he was breaking his promise. At that moment, I closed my spirit to him and went right down that 12-step progression from an orphan heart to a spirit of oppression that we discussed in Chapter Two. My orphan heart influenced me to make choices that were subject to the mission of the father of lies. I regarded Captain Kline’s response as personal rejection and
offense. He had promised to make me captain but had not followed through. While technically true, that reality was also colored by my orphan’s attitude of what was “right” and “fair” to me. There was no room in my heart for decisions or actions that were right and fair for Captain Kline.

As my heart closed to him, I bought into other lies: “He doesn’t care about you. All he wanted was your service. He’s just been stringing you along.” Captain Kline
did
want my service; that much was true. But he had always intended to reward my service with an inheritance. From the perspective of my closed heart, however, I could no longer see it that way. This man who had poured his life and his heart into me for two years; this man who had paid me twice as much as most other mates because he loved me and wanted to make sure I was taken care of; this man who put me on a year-round salary instead of seasonal pay; this man who was my best friend and the first man I had ever really let into my life—and the only thing I could think about was that he had deceived me. I felt he was cheating me out of what was rightfully mine.

Captain Kline tried reasoning with me numerous times, but my orphan heart was so closed to him that I couldn’t receive what he was trying to say. I still worked the boat every day, but I refused to go up in the wheelhouse. He assured me that the captaincy was still mine someday if I would just hang in there with him for a little while longer, but I wouldn’t hear it. You see, orphans rarely look to the future. Their vision extends no farther than what makes them feel right immediately and comforts their pain
now
. I felt like I had been denied what was mine, and that was that. And in my mind, my feelings of being “right” justified my negative attitude. Subsequently, my heart was prepared to be deceived by an “angel of light.”

The accuser of the brethren often comes to us as an angel of light in our moment of crisis. Usually, this angel of light is in the form of another person or opportunity that appears to promise blessing and fulfillment in our life. In my case, it was another boat owner whose captain wasn’t making him much money working his boat. He knew that Captain Kline had poured all his knowledge and experience into me, including knowledge of the locations of all his top fishing spots. Each captain possesses his own list of painstakingly acquired fishing spots that he keeps secret from everyone else because they provide him with a competitive edge. Any mate who has acquired (stolen) a fishing location from his captain can walk into any waterfront bar and sell it on the spot for as much as a thousand dollars. That’s how important they are.

This boat owner came up to me and said, “I see Captain Kline hasn’t made you captain yet. You know, it may be years before he does … if ever. I think he’s just taking advantage of you. I tell you what—if you come to work as captain for me, you’ll probably double your salary the first year.”

Even after considering these tempting words, I was still reluctant to leave Captain Kline after all he had done for me, so I tried to persuade him to follow through on his promise. I was tired of waiting. But he still had to say, “I’m sorry, Jack, but I can’t do it right now. Please bear with me. Hang on a little longer, and you’ll be captain soon.”

When I realized that Captain Kline was not going to budge, I said, “In that case, I give you my two weeks’ notice.”

To this day, I can still see his face, tears welling up in the eyes of this man who had stopped crying in battle while on the PT boats during the war 35 years earlier. I remember how he set his shoulders and went into the fighting stance that he had adopted in the
bars when he was getting ready to pick a fight. Struggling to hold back the tears, Captain Kline said, “No, Jack. Either stay with me or get off my boat right now.”

“What will you do without a first mate? You’ve got 60 people coming on board today. None of your other mates even know what they’re doing.”

“I’d rather have them than you. Get off my boat.” His heart was breaking.

So I walked off his boat and over to the other boat owner. “I accept your offer,” and he made me captain that very same day. I didn’t think about how much it hurt Captain Kline because I felt I was right and he was wrong. I had slaved for him for two years, and he had not fulfilled his promise. My loss was his problem because he didn’t do what he said. You see, orphans blame-shift and justify their actions, no matter how hurtful. Out of a selfish and distorted sense of being “right,” they rationalize away all the hurt and pain they bring to others by demeaning them and criticizing them and questioning their motives.

As a newly appointed captain I went right to sea, and that very first week, out of about a dozen commercial boats operating from that port, I came home “top hook,” meaning I had out-fished everyone else. This was a big deal because whoever was “top hook” in any given week was “the man.” It came with a price though—I had to buy all the pints in the pub, but it was worth it. Being “top hook” meant I was now one of the best there was. My dream to be a top fishing boat captain had come to pass.

Week after week I came in as top hook. No one as young and as inexperienced as I was had become so successful so quickly. Someone might say, “Well, Jack, it sounds like you got your inheritance.” Did I? But at what cost to my character and relationships? Where do you think I found all those fish? At the locations I had learned from Captain Kline. Like the prodigal son who valued his
father only for what his father could do for him, I valued Captain Kline for what he could do for me.

Now I could walk into any of the waterfront bars and bask in the adulation of being one of the best in the business. I had usurped Captain Kline in that position, and he now sat alone in a corner of the bar, his head bowed over his beer, while his “bastard” son rose to glory. Oh yes, I became known as one of the top commercial snapper/grouper fisherman on the southeast coast of the United States, but what a high price I paid.

My orphan heart wasn’t able to value relationships above inheritance. I wasn’t able to feel compassion or empathy. My life was completely self-centered, self-consuming, and self-referential. I burned out many of Captain Kline’s fishing spots, and while I was enjoying my rapid rise to success, he was in a decline because of a broken heart. My defection cost him dearly.

Now Captain Kline wouldn’t even speak to me in the bars or anywhere else. He would just look at me from over his pint, and etched into his face was the pain of my betrayal and of his broken heart. But in my orphan heart, I could not think of what I had done as betrayal. Captain Kline had served my needs, and I had moved on. Still I always felt grateful to him, and I remembered that I had once told him, “You’re the first man who ever believed in me. You’ve given me something that no one has ever been willing to give me, and if I ever have a son, Captain Kline, I’ll name him after you.”

So, a year after I left Captain Kline, we named our firstborn son, Micah Kline Frost. With no children of his own, Captain Kline’s name would have ended with him, and I wanted to honor the man who had done so much for me.

A few days after I sent Captain Kline a copy of the birth announcement, the phone rang. It was Captain Kline, who had hardly spoken to me for a year. “Jack,” he said in a voice choking up with tears, “I just got the birth announcement. Would you go to breakfast with me tomorrow?”

“I’d love to, Captain Kline.”

The next morning we met at the usual gathering place where all the fishermen meet. “Jack,” Captain Kline said, his eyes glistening with tears, “thank you for keeping my family name going another generation.”

I replied, “I’m going to do everything I can to keep your name in the Frost family line because I don’t know who or where I would be without you.”

Then he said, “Jack, would you forgive me for the way I’ve treated you the last year and for not rejoicing with you over your success?”

“I forgive you,” I said. But it was 20 more years before I asked him to forgive me. It took me that long to understand how I had wronged him. Orphan hearts rarely feel the pain they cause others. They are unaware of the arrows they loose into other people’s hearts. All they know is how “right” they are, and if someone else is hurting, that’s their problem; they shouldn’t have acted the way they did.

I thought I had received my inheritance when I left Captain Kline and went to work for a man who had never invested a day of his life or an ounce of himself into me. What I didn’t realize was that a few years later, I would be radically born again, and a few years after that, I would leave the sea and go to Bible school. I went from making $50,000 a year fishing, to nothing.

After I stopped making a living at sea and went to Bible school, the boat owner I made tens of thousands of dollars a year for, never sent me a dollar in support. But Captain Kline has never stopped
supporting our family. Through our friendship, his wife came to the Lord before she died, as well as Captain Kline. Today he still lives in the Daytona Beach area and loves to go down to the docks and hang out with the fishermen. He’s a legend, and wherever he goes, he enjoys talking about a mate he once had.

“Have you ever heard of Jack Frost?” he’ll ask a group of fishermen.

“Yeah, isn’t he the guy who caught more snapper and grouper than anybody else? He was one of the best there ever was.”

Then, beaming with pride, Captain Kline will say, “I taught him everything he knows.”

“Didn’t he leave the sea and go to preaching?”

“Yes,” Captain Kline replies. “Let me tell you a story.” Then he tells them of the drug-addicted, pornography-addicted alcoholic (like so many of them) who one day decided to go to sea alone for three days. “While out there, he cried out, ‘Jesus, if You’re real, prove it.’ And from that time on, February 16, 1980, Jack was set free from drugs, porn, and alcohol. What Jesus did in Jack’s life, He can do for you.”

Without a heart of sonship, there is no legitimate inheritance. Captain Kline had an inheritance prepared for me, and he poured himself into me to make me ready for it. And I wanted it! But in the end, I didn’t receive it legally because I was an orphan at heart, not a son. And only sons receive an inheritance. For two years, Captain Kline lived to meet my needs, and as long as he gave me what I wanted, I was right there: “How can I help you, Captain Kline? What can I do for you?”

But the moment Captain Kline had a need, as soon as he no longer met my needs but had to meet his own needs, I failed the test of sonship. That’s when the true spirit that was in me was revealed. I closed my heart to him and abandoned him in the midst of his despair over his wife’s illness and the financial problems it
was creating. I valued what Captain Kline could do for me more than I valued relationship because I was not submitted to the father’s mission.

Still, someone might be tempted to say, “Well, Jack, you got your inheritance anyway. You took what Captain Kline taught you and immediately became top hook. You gained a reputation as being the best. It doesn’t sound like you lost.”

But I did lose. If I had stayed with Captain Kline and waited for my inheritance, the income I would have received as captain and eventual owner of the fleet would have paid for my Bible school education and sustained my family for years to come. Instead, five years later, I wasn’t making $50,000 a year anymore; I was in Bible school with no income for two years and a growing family. Because I was not subject to the father’s mission, I chose short-term increase over the glory that would have come if I had waited for my inheritance. We ended up enduring 15 years of poverty in Bible school and in ministry during which I could barely feed my family. I gave away a million-dollar inheritance for short-term—and fleeting—satisfaction.