Spiritual Slavery to Spiritual Sonship (15 page)

Orphans are guarded and conditional in their expressions of love. Expressed love by an orphan is based on others’ performance and agreement. Because orphans have closed their hearts to love, they neither know how to give unconditional love nor how to receive it.

For sons, love is open, transparent, and affectionate. They lay down their own agendas in order to meet the needs of others. Love for an orphan is built on the question, “What can you do for me?” while love for a son is built around the question, “What can I do for you?” Love for an orphan is self-love; love for a son is
selfless
love. It means showing affection or affirmation even when he
doesn’t feel like showing it, simply because he knows the other person is in need of it.

For orphans, God’s presence, if they sense it at all, is conditional and distant.
If
everything goes all right,
if
they have a good day, if they feel they’ve appeased the Master, if they think they have dotted all their i’s and crossed all their t’s,
then
they may sense God’s presence. But even then, He often seems far away because their hearts are closed to intimacy.

Sons enjoy the close and intimate presence of God because they know that His presence and nearness do not depend on their behavior. They have discovered that He is with them all the time, no matter how much they get off center of His love. All they have to do is stop, return to the center of their heart where God’s love dwells, and He is always right there. Sons know from personal experience the truth of the Scripture that says,
“Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you”
(Heb. 13:5b). Orphans question whether God loves them; sons know that God is crazy about them.

Orphans are in bondage. They are slaves to their fear, their mistrust, their independence and self-reliance, their sense of self-righteousness and self-justification, and most of all, to their loneliness.

Sons, on the other hand, live in the condition of liberty. Love has set them free from fear, shame, humiliation, guilt, and the constant need to prove themselves. They are free not only to receive
love, but also to give it away in abundance without running out. Sons are free to become everything their Father created them to be.

Orphans live life as if they don’t have a home. They feel like servants or slaves. Their spirit is unsettled because they are away from safe harbor and don’t know how to get back. They are frozen in numb-numb-ville in the midst of the sea of fear. Nothing satisfies, nothing feels permanent, nowhere feels like home.

Sons are at rest and at peace in the safe harbor of their Father’s love. Outside the harbor the sea may churn and the wind may blow, but inside all is calm in Father’s embrace.

Orphans are fired by spiritual ambition. They earnestly desire some spiritual achievement or distinction and are willing to strive to achieve it. They desire to be seen and counted among the mature.

With sons there is no proving, no striving after position, power, or prestige. Instead, they are content simply to experience daily their Father’s unconditional love and acceptance and then be sent as a representative of His love to family and others. Intimacy precedes fruitfulness.

For orphans, the future, like many other things in life, is always uncertain. Their attitude is, “Fight for everything you can get!”

Because they have no inheritance, orphans must compete for what they want, depending solely on their own gifts and talents to control and manipulate circumstances in their favor. And because the future is uncertain, they are most interested in what benefits them
right now
.

Sons are willing to wait for their inheritance because they know that their future is as bright as it is certain. As sons of a loving Father with infinite resources, they know they cannot lose and are willing to suffer now for the glory that lies ahead. Sons know that sonship releases inheritance, and they can patiently rest in their position as sons!

H
ow do we begin to move toward God’s Perfect love so that we can displace the orphan heart? Remember that an orphan heart cannot be cast out; it must be displaced. It is a heart that does not feel like it has a home in a father or mother’s embrace. Therefore, it is insecure with love and struggles with fears of trusting, rejection, and intimacy. Although we were created by perfect Love so that we could receive His love and give it away, we became insecure with this unconditional love as a child. Insecurities and fears then filled the uncomforted areas of our heart. First John 4:18-19 infers that you cannot cast out these fears but you displace them by introducing the orphan to Perfect Love. Then the orphan must make a choice; he either risks opening up his heart and submits to love, or he continues to put up walls of self-protection and rejects love once more.
“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved
us” (1 John 4:18-19 NAS).

How do we begin movement from living life as if we don’t have a home to living life as if we do? In the final four chapters of this book, I will present eight defining truths from my own journey
that helped me begin displacing my orphan heart. These eight principles are the personal revelation that I needed in order to stop feeling like an orphan and start feeling secure and at rest as a favored son. Do not make the mistake of using these eight steps in a legalistic way or as a “formula.” Everybody is different, and each person’s approach to transformation will be unique to his or her particular situation.

The important thing here is not to mark off completed points on a checklist but to position your heart to come into alignment with Father’s heart and away from the father of lies. This will require humility and a willingness to approach the whole process with the simple faith of a child. As Jesus said,
“Unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven”
(Matt. 18:3-4 NAS). The Kingdom of Heaven is a kingdom of humility, innocence, and love; and only the childlike—those who are willing to humble themselves to become sons and daughters—will enter it. The depth of humility we embrace determines the depth of Kingdom life we will experience. These truths will take you on a path of humility—a willingness to be known for who you really are.

The process of moving from slavery to sonship begins with forgiveness. Specifically, it begins with forgiving your parents for the way they have misrepresented Father’s love to you. Without forgiveness, there can be no progress. None of us are perfect parents, and none of us have had perfect parents. However, maybe your parents were great, and maybe you are not aware of any unforgiveness issues with them. If that’s the case, that’s wonderful; you are
truly blessed. Let me encourage you, however, to examine your heart on this matter. Simply ask the Holy Spirit to reveal any pockets of anger, hurt, bitterness, disappointment, or disillusionment that may be hiding there over something your parents said or did to you—any place where you may have closed your heart to them. It doesn’t have to be something “big.” Sarah’s perceived rejection by me when she was 5 was all it took for her to close her heart to me for 12 years.

If your childhood experiences with your parents were anything like mine, however, you may have several lingering issues. My mom and dad were pillars of the community and highly regarded in their fields. Dad was well loved and honored as a local club tennis professional, and Mom was one of the most highly respected teachers in the state of Florida, with a wall of plaques and other awards as testimony to her success in her profession. They were great people; they just did not know how to be a mom and a dad or how to express love, affection, and affirmation in their home life.

I endured verbal, emotional, and some physical abuse from my parents, brought on mostly by alcohol. I felt that nothing I did was ever good enough; all I did was disappoint them. As I mentioned before, by the age of 12, I had closed my heart to my parents. I became a rebellious and dishonoring teenager who also became addicted to drugs, alcohol, and pornography. When it came to forgiving my parents, I had a lot of issues.

The psalmist says:
“Forget your people and your father’s house; then the king will desire your beauty. Because He is your Lord, bow down to Him”
(Ps. 45:10b-11 NAS). Forgiveness does not mean forgetting what your parents did, neither does it mean divorcing them in your heart. It means letting go of your identity of brokenness and dysfunction that you brought from your parents’ house—an identity that is uncomfortable with love and keeps people at arm’s length. It means taking up a new identity, the identity of a son or
daughter in Father’s Kingdom of love. And this is a deliberate choice that you can make right now. You don’t have to wait.

The Kingdom of God is characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (see Gal. 5:22-23); this is our inheritance in Christ. We simply begin by focusing our life on what Jesus focused His life on—doing the will of His Father. Father God has commanded us to forgive, and forgiveness begins at home.

There was something inside me that wanted my parents to come to me and say, “Jack, forgive me for being a poor parent,” and for them to specifically take ownership of the individual ways they hurt me. But in order for me to forgive my parents, it meant letting go of any expectation for them to make things right with me. Otherwise, it was as though I was reaching up for Father’s love with one hand but keeping my other hand gripped tightly around my parents’ throats until they made things right with me. Then I was caught in the middle, frozen in numb-numb-ville, and unable to move in any direction. Instead, I decided to let go of the blame I held against my parents. I chose to let them off the hook and give them a gift they didn’t deserve—the gift of honor, understanding that they, like most parents, were probably also spiritual orphans possessing most of the orphan characteristics. They could not give to me what had never been given to them. (There is much more said about this in my book,
Experiencing Father’s Embrace
, found in the chapters on “Father Issues” and “Mother Issues.”)

Forgiving your earthly parents is critical to becoming a son or daughter; for when you rejected your natural parents, you also rejected the heart attitude of a son or daughter and became a spiritual orphan. Now, in order to displace that orphan thinking, you must be introduced (or reintroduced) to a loving Father. I’m not talking about re-bonding with your earthly mother and father necessarily; in many cases that may not be possible due to death or other circumstances. What I
am
talking about is letting go of the
residual pain from life in your earthly parents’ house so that you can reach up and receive God as your loving heavenly Father and trust Him to meet the deepest needs of your life.

Forgiveness does not guarantee healing. Forgiveness opens the door to healing, but forgiveness and healing are not the same thing. Why? Because forgiveness and trust are two different things. As an adult you may have prayed your heart out, gone through hundreds of hours of counseling, and done everything you know to do to forgive, even reaching a place of peace in knowing you have forgiven them; yet whenever anyone or anything reminds you of the offending parent, you get agitated or withdraw. You may have forgiven them, but you still don’t fully trust them yet because you have not been fully healed. The important thing here is to begin movement toward sonship by forgiving.

In 1986, I began practicing forgiveness toward my parents after completing a lot of prayer counseling. I had been saved for six years and had graduated from Bible school. And even though I forgave Mom and Dad for all those years of torment, I still had a lot of anger, trust, and intimacy issues. I was still wounded and in pain. Forgiveness does not guarantee healing. Healing often calls for a more radical and more difficult but equally important step. In 1989, I began taking that step.

Forgiving your parents is the first step toward sonship. But sometimes forgiving them is not enough to set you free. Depending on your particular circumstances, it may be necessary for you to seek forgiveness
from
your mother and/or father. It’s easy to remember and rehash all the bad things they did and the way they mistreated you, but it’s a lot harder to own up to all the ways you
may have hurt or disappointed them. Many times the process of forgiveness calls for the ministry of restitution—offering restitution for your attitudes, behavior, and actions that have hurt others.

The ministry of restitution states that if our actions or attitudes have brought hurt to another person, there may be a need to go to that person and make right any wrong to break the destructive patterns in our relationships. Although God forgives us for each specific wrong the first time we ask, we may continue to reap what we have sown; so, in order to break that cycle and begin restoring trust, it is often necessary to make every effort to bring healing to others and to seek to restore the fractured relationship. Even if we feel the other person is 98 percent wrong and we are only 2 percent wrong, we are 100 percent responsible to walk in forgiveness and repentance for our 2 percent (see Matt. 5:22-26).

It may not be enough for another person to forgive you. You may still carry unconscious guilt or shame for the offense and have a need to ask for forgiveness to be free. There can also be a block in the relationship until you acknowledge to them that you have wronged them. The other person may have forgiven you, but their trust in you has been violated. Until you acknowledge your offense, it is difficult for them to trust you again because forgiveness and trust are two different things.