Spiritual Slavery to Spiritual Sonship (5 page)

7.
We start controlling our relationships
. With an orphan heart, our independence and isolation are nothing more than issues of control. They may manifest as agitation or apathy. We limit our relationships and conversation to “safe” topics like news, sports, weather, etc. The fear of trusting, fear of rejection, and fear of intimacy prevent us from tackling deeper subjects and from allowing anyone to become more personal with us.

8.
Our relationships become superficial
. With a closed heart, healthy relationships are very difficult. The three fears listed above unconsciously influence us to keep others at arm’s length emotionally. And we rarely realize that we are doing to them the very same thing we fear they will do to us: rejection.

9.
We develop an ungodly belief that says no one will be there to meet our need
. That is the danger of an independent, self-reliant heart. Not only are we afraid to depend on someone else, but we also feel that no one values us enough to care for us.

I closed my heart to receiving my mother’s and father’s love when I was 12 years old. As a result, I took on an independent, defiant, controlling, and rebellious attitude that hurt me as much
as it hurt them. There was no sense of sonship (honor, respect, and interdependence), which leads to number ten.

10.
We begin to live life like a spiritual orphan
. An orphan heart feels that it does not have a safe and secure place in a father’s heart where they feel loved, valued, and affirmed. We have no safe harbor, no refuge, no place of rest. Outside of our identity being in what we do, we really have nowhere to call home. We believe that we will have to argue, wrangle, and fight for anything we want to accomplish in life. With no place to call home, we start seeking love in all the wrong places.

11.
We begin chasing after counterfeit affections
. Having shut ourselves off from the genuine affections of family and friends, we start looking for counterfeit affections—substitutes for the affections we left behind at home or never had. We were created for love and family; consequently, without them, we will find something to bond to as a replacement, even if it is unhealthy or destructive.

I classify counterfeit affections under the “seven P’s”: passion, possession, position, performance, people, place, and power.
Passions
of the flesh often take the form of various addictions: food, alcohol, drugs, sex, pornography, escapism—whatever seems to comfort our lonely and insecure heart. Some people turn to
possessions
, thinking that they somehow will find their heart’s rest through worldly gain. Still others seek
position
—the praise of man, seeking acceptance by striving to be seen or by slaving away in an effort to win the approval of others, especially of those who can advance our lot in life.
Performance
feels that there is something more you must do or put in order before you can find rest and feel good about yourself.
People
is a belief that a person or spouse is the answer to all your needs instead of making God’s love your primary source.
Place
is an ungodly belief that, “If only I had a better job, I would be happy … if only I lived somewhere else … if only I could run away and escape.…” Finally, power-seekers desire to control their own life and destiny, with little desire to be open or
real and with little sense of need for anything from anybody. Control of emotions, people, or circumstance is their way of making sure they are never disappointed or hurt again. This, of course, is totally unrealistic. Counterfeit affections bring no true fulfillment and easily lead to the 12th and final step.

12.
We begin to daily battle a stronghold of oppression
. Having isolated ourselves from cultivating healthy relationships, we become trapped in a cycle of seeking fulfillment in things that can never satisfy. Unable to receive love, acceptance, and admonition either from God or from others, life for us becomes an oppressive mix of tension, agitation, anger, bitterness, restlessness, and frustration that can eventually lead to depression.

A life of oppression, spawned by an orphan heart, is the common experience of almost every person. Even among Christians, who know the truth of forgiveness of sins and eternal life through faith in Christ, only a small percentage have truly experienced the full embrace of Father’s love. Their troubled marriages, families, and relationships are evidence of this fact. Too many Christians are still caught up in the entanglements of the orphan heart. Consequently, few have learned to displace their orphan heart with a heart of sonship.

That number is growing, however. An orphan heart is common in a fallen, sin-ridden, competitive world, but it was never God’s desire or plan for us. And He is actively at work to change the situation. In our own generation, we are witnessing the beginnings of the restoration of Father’s heart to the hearts of His children, just as foretold in Scripture. The Book of Malachi, the final Book of the Old Testament, closes with a wonderful and powerful promise:

The promise of God is that
“the prophet Elijah”
will come
“before that great and dreadful day”
when Christ comes. We know from Jesus’ own words in the Gospels that this promise was fulfilled once in the person of John the Baptist, who came to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord. However, this prophecy also contains a deeper dimension of meaning that relates to the end of the age. Before Christ returns, Elijah will come, this time in the form of an anointing or movement rather than embodied in one person. Why “Elijah”? It was Elijah who was instrumental in overthrowing abusive and controlling authority when he defeated Jezebel’s prophets. Later, when Elijah was taken up to Heaven in a chariot of fire, Elisha, his spiritual son who witnessed his ascension, called out, “My
father, my father …”
(2 Kings 2:12). Then in Malachi, “Elijah” represents a fathering anointing that will be released on the earth in the endtimes. Malachi 4:6 bears this out in its description of the effect the release of this anointing will have on the world—to
“turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers.”
Thus, the curse of the orphan heart will be displaced.

Until and unless Elijah comes, the land remains under a curse. And what is that curse?
A feeling of fatherlessness
. More than at any other time in human history, fatherlessness is the curse of our generation. Today more children than ever before are growing up in fatherless households, and many more are growing up without a father emotionally, even though their biological father is physically present in the home.

One of my own greatest personal challenges in life today is being a father. As I said before, how could I be a father if I had
never felt like a son? My mom and dad were always emotionally detached and distant, and many of you, I am sure, could share similar stories. It has been only within the last ten years, after I received the revelation of Father’s love and of sonship, that my parents and I have begun to make the emotional connection we had been missing for many years.

Millions of children today are growing up feeling as though they don’t have a home. When I say “home,” I’m speaking of a place of warmth, protection, comfort, security, and identity—a place where we receive a sense of purpose and destiny and a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Home is the place we can run to when things go wrong, the place where we can receive affirmation and encouragement, not so much for what we have done but for whose son or daughter we are. Home is the place where we belong and cease striving and enter into rest.

Unfortunately, for many of us, this is not the home life of our experience or memory. One study has revealed that, for most Christians, 80 percent of our thinking is negative and in agreement with the enemy, the accuser of the brethren, who tells us we have no value or are unlovable, and who feeds our orphan heart ungodly beliefs about God’s loving nature so that we live as if we don’t have a home even though we are children of the King.

An orphan spirit can reside over an individual person, over a church, over a city, over a region, or even over a nation. And wherever an orphan heart holds sway, whether individually or corporately, people get up every day feeling like they don’t belong. They do not feel accepted. They have little sense of being valued, honored, or loved. Their lives are defined by their perceived need to perform in order to be approved and affirmed.

Those who are secure in Father’s heart, on the other hand, know they are loved and accepted for who they are as God’s creation, not for what they do. They know they don’t have to perform; they don’t have to strive hard to meet up to all the rigid demands
of what a “good Christian” ought to be. They know that they are loved
just the way they are
.

In these endtimes, before a major spiritual reformation hits the earth, there will first be a deeper revelation of the heart of the Father that breaks the orphan spirit on the earth today. This is not an automatic product of salvation. Unless our orphan heart is displaced by the revelation of Father’s love, even as Christians we can end up battling oppression every day of our lives. Such was the experience of the late Derrick Prince.

Derrick Prince was arguably one of the greatest Christian leaders and evangelists of the 20th century. His evangelistic crusades routinely drew tens of thousands of people to each meeting. Across more than 50 years of ministry, he saw millions of people saved, filled with the Holy Spirit, healed of diseases, and delivered of demonic oppression. Few Christian leaders of the last century established ministries as credible and anointed of the Lord as his. Yet, by his own admission, Derrick Prince himself battled demonic oppression every day of his life until he was 80 years old. Millions were set free under his ministry, yet he himself could not find freedom from the oppression that dogged him on a daily basis. It took nothing less than a powerful personal experiential revelation of Father God’s love to set him free once and for all. Here is the story in his own words, as appeared in his February 1998 newsletter:

Can you identify with Derrick’s experience? How many times have you gotten up in the morning feeling like you don’t have a home, that there is so little expressed love, little comfort, conditional acceptance, and a diminishing hope for experiencing lasting peace and rest? You feel a sense of oppression, a sense of foreboding, a sense of impending disaster. Most mornings you face another day of pain, another day of fear, another day of people saying all the wrong things about you, another day of not measuring up in the eyes of the people who matter to you the most, another day of wondering whether or not you will survive.

How do you go on living like that? How do you go on, knowing that tomorrow you have to get up and do battle with all of it again? Is not the cross of Christ more powerful than the darkness we have to fight our way through every day? This has nothing to do with salvation but everything to do with experiencing and understanding Father God’s love.

Continuing his story, Derrick says: