Spiritual Slavery to Spiritual Sonship (6 page)

Derrick’s experience illustrates the truth that it is one thing to know God as Father, but another thing to
experience
Him as Father in a deeply personal way. Although Derrick Prince was born again, filled with the Holy Spirit, and powerfully anointed and effective in ministry for over 50 years, until he was 80 he still had an orphan heart and battled oppression every day.

John the apostle, in the first of his three letters, clearly separates knowing from believing:
“We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us …”
(1 John 4:16a NAS). It is easy to believe in our minds that God loves us, but like Derrick Prince we can live our entire lives never
knowing
that love in our hearts in a deeply personal experiential way.

Even as Christians we can live—and die—with an orphan heart. Many, unfortunately, do just that. It almost happened to Derrick Prince. Had it not been for his profound experience in Father’s love in 1996 when he was 80 years old, he might well have finished his days on earth without ever truly feeling like a son in his Father’s house.

You don’t have to wait ’til you “go home” to experience a homecoming; you can enter that place of rest, refuge, and safety right now. Jesus said,
“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly”
(John 10:10b NAS). Abundant life means a fulfilled, satisfying life here on earth as well as eternal life in Heaven, and a fulfilled life means displacing the orphan heart with a heart of sonship.

Jesus Christ came from the Father and after His resurrection, returned to the Father so that we too may abide in Father’s embrace. John, in fact, says that He “is
in the bosom of the Father”
(John 1:18b NAS). That phrase speaks of deep intimacy, unity, and oneness. And where Jesus is, He wants us to be also:

We all can experience this intimacy, oneness, and sense of sonship with the Father in this life because of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Jesus is saying, “There’s a place for you in Dad’s house. That’s where I am, and I’m getting your place ready. I will not leave you as an orphan but will come to you, and Father and I will make Our home in you” (see John 14:18-23).

God is love. And feeling secure as sons and daughters in His fatherly embrace is what everything in creation is all about. The Kingdom of Heaven is all about love, joy, and peace, and being free from fear, insecurity, and anxiety. Perfect love is what characterizes Heaven, and God’s perfect unconditional fatherly love is available to you each day—no fear, anxiety, anger, bitterness, hurt feelings, or resentment.

There’s a place for you in Father’s heart right now, where you can live your life hearing His voice saying to you every day, “You are the child I love and in whom I am well pleased.” The center of all creation is being at home in Father’s heart. His heart is a place of rest from our striving, but few have entered into that place of rest. Why?

It doesn’t necessarily depend on your home environment where you grow up—whether your home was a good home or a bad home, or how loving your parents were. You could have been raised in a very good, loving Christian home environment, yet have spent your entire life like Derrick Prince, battling oppression every day. Just because you were brought up in a good home does not automatically mean you will not struggle with an orphan heart—living your life as though you don’t have a home versus
living it as if you do. It’s not a matter of whether you came from a home filled with nurturing, tenderness, and gentleness, or a home in which no love was ever expressed.

More importantly, it’s a matter of displacing your orphan heart and embracing sonship; and until you do, you may find it difficult to abide in Father’s embrace. Before this can happen, however, one of the first things you must do is decide
whose mission you are on—God’s mission, your own mission, or somebody else’s mission
.

D
uring my years as a commercial snapper fishing boat captain, I generally fished with a four-man crew. Needless to say, those four men living in close quarters together at sea on a 44-foot boat for seven days often resulted in some very interesting relational dynamics. During one trip, I hired on as a deck hand one of the top captains in the fleet who was presently without a boat. I soon learned that two emotionally immature captains working the same fishing boat go together like oil and water.

Steve thought that he knew more than me—what rock pile to fish on next, when to move the boat, what bait to use, and so on. You could say he did not take kindly to me as captain nor to my fishing style. Like most captains (me included) he was submitted to no man and to no mission but his own. It was a week of agitation, arguments, competition, and one fistfight. In fact, so much energy was given to our rivalry that we battled fatigue all week, which diminished our harvest of fish. Lesson learned—you can have only one captain on a boat, and no matter how good you think are, if you are going to reap a successful harvest,
the crew had better be willing to be subject to the captain’s mission, or you will end up wasting time trying to work out each other’s differences.

Whether we are aware of it or not, each of us is on a mission that determines our future harvest in life and relationships. For some of us, our life mission is more clearly defined than it is for others. And the source of our life mission—its point of origin—will determine whether we live life feeling like a spiritual orphan or as if we are a spiritual son or daughter. So, the basic question each of us has to answer is:
Whose mission am I on?

We have one of two choices. We will be subject either to the Father of Creation’s mission or to the mission of the father of lies, the accuser of the brethren. These are the only possibilities. Even if we think we are subject to our
own
mission, we are really serving the mission of our enemy, because anything that diverts us from following Father’s mission weakens our life and relationships and advances satan’s purposes on earth.

Our problem is that too often we don’t see ourselves as Father’s favored sons and daughters; rather, we feel more like spiritual orphans. The writer of Hebrews states it like this:

God deals with us as
sons
, which in this context should be considered a generic word that includes
daughters
as well. The focus of
these verses is not gender, but
relationship
. God relates to us not on casual terms as servants or even as friends, but intimately as beloved children. All of creation is about Father God longing for a personal intimate relationship with us as His sons and daughters.

One inevitable part of this Father/child relationship is discipline. Father God’s discipline is, in fact, evidence that we are His sons and daughters. Absence of discipline means absence of relationship. This is why the writer says, “But
if you are without discipline … then you are illegitimate children and not sons.”

How are you about receiving discipline? What do you do when someone close to you—your spouse, your prayer partner, a leader of your small group, or your boss, for example—takes you aside and says, “You know, I’ve been watching the way you relate to others and have observed a pattern in your life that really concerns me. Can we talk about it?” Doesn’t it give you warm fuzzies to know that someone cares enough about you to risk confronting you? Doesn’t it make you want to say, “Oh, yes, tell me more!”? Or does it rub your fur the wrong way?

If someone is trying to bring truth or admonition to your life and you resist it, then you are like an illegitimate child and not a son or daughter, at least in heart attitude. Inability to receive discipline can be a sign of an orphan heart. Orphan hearts have an independent spirit and resist admonition and correction. Whereas, sons and daughters welcome these things, even when they seem unpleasant. They know these parts of discipline are a crucial part of the process of nurture and growth to maturity. More importantly, they embrace discipline as proof that they are favored children of a caring Father.

Recently, some of my closest friends and board members at Shiloh Place Ministries sat down with me and said, “Jack, there is a relational pattern in your life that really concerns us.”

Reluctantly, and a little apprehensively, I replied, “I probably need to hear more.” This was significant because for nearly 50 years I
didn’t
want to hear it. My orphan mind-set was not open to constructive criticism and correction. After I received the sonship revelation, however, I began welcoming corrective admonition because I knew it would help me learn to think and act like a son.

The “concern” my friends and colleagues shared with me was a heavy one, and my first thought was defensive,
Wait a minute! You do the same thing! And you’re teaming up two-to-one on me?
But then I remembered this Scripture from Hebrews that says if I cannot receive discipline—if I struggle against receiving admonition and correction in my life—then I am like an illegitimate child and not a son.

The Greek word for
illegitimate
literally means, “bastard.” When we refuse to receive discipline, admonition, or correction, we isolate a part of our heart from other people, including God. In effect, we become fatherless. We either live our life as if we have a home, or we live our life as if we don’t have a home. We live life valuing admonition, or we reject it and take on an orphan heart.

Kinder than the word
bastard
is the phrase “spiritual orphan.” A spiritual orphan is a person who feels that he or she does not have a home or a safe and secure place in a father’s heart where he or she feels loved, accepted, protected, affirmed, nurtured, and disciplined.

Hebrews 12:9 brings us to the issue of our mission:
“Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live?”
(NAS). When we are subject to the “Father of spirits,” life flows. The Greek word for
subject
literally means “dependent” and “underneath.” Furthermore, the words subject,
subjection
, and
submission
are all interchangeable in Greek. I like to paraphrase the last part of this verse to say, “Be subject to Father’s mission and live.” Be in submission to, get underneath, and be dependent upon
Father’s mission … and life begins to flow in our emotions and relationships.

But what is the opposite? Be subject to your own mission—self-protection, independence, self-reliance, not opening your heart to love or to the possibility of being hurt again—and death comes. Paul’s words in Romans bear this out:

To be subject to our own mission is to be led by our flesh, which leads to death, but to be subject to our Father’s mission leads to life and peace. Is your life and relationships at peace? Or is death slowly at work all around you? Your answer to those questions may determine what your life and your relationships—as well as those of your children and grandchildren—may be like in the future. Be subject to your own mission, and barrenness will work its way into your emotions and relationships. Be subject to the Father’s mission, and life and peace will begin to flow through you—spirit, soul, and body.

If pursuing our own mission leads to the lack of lasting fruitfulness, while the Father’s mission leads to life and peace, then it is important to know what Father’s mission is. Simply stated, Father’s mission is
for you to experience His expressed love and to give it away to the next person you meet
. Successful execution of Father’s mission is a matter of combining two elements in the proper order
and balance—the scriptural mandates many Christians know as the “Great Commandment” and the “Great Commission.”

Many believers consider the Great Commission the lifeblood of evangelical Christianity. This is, of course, Jesus’ well-known charge to His followers just before He ascended to Heaven 40 days after His resurrection:

Who could deny that winning souls is seen as a top priority in the Kingdom of God? After all, the Bible says that Jesus came to earth and died on the Cross so that all people could be reconciled to God and that those who are reconciled have been charged with the ministry of reconciling others (see 2 Cor. 5:18-19). When I was in Bible school, the Great Commission was the emphasis that rose above all others. It was stressed even to the point of implying that unless you were willing to forsake your family and everybody else in order to “go,” then the sincerity of your commitment was in question.

As important as the Great Commission is, it is frequently overemphasized to the point of neglecting, and sometimes forgetting, another mission that is even more important—the Great Commandment. One day a religious leader asked Jesus what was the greatest and most important commandment in the law.