This month has really challenged me to focus on being, rather than the usual and constant doing. A lot of this comes from the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10. Naturally, I’m wired to accomplish tasks and move from one to-do point to another, and after a while I’m caught up in constant doing and I neglect simply being. Choosing to be, rather than do, for me is simply spending time with the Lord, and reflecting and meditating on his Word, and more specifically, filling my thoughts with how He sees me. I’ve been reading a book called “Spiritual Slavery to Spiritual Sonship” by Jack Frost. This book talks about how many Christians still live their lives with an orphan spirit, instead of living on the firm foundation as sons and daughters of the one True King – Romans 8:17, 2 Corinthians 6:18.
One of my favorite quotes from the book reads: “Sonship is a heart that feels at rest and secure in God’s love; it believes it belongs, it is free from shame and self-condemnation, it walks in honor toward all people, and it is willing to humble itself before man and God. It is subject to God’s mission to experience His love and to give it away.” Something I’ve realized this month is that I’ve been operating in an orphan mentality, an orphan spirit, and have been for quite some time. All of this is an extension from the insecurities that God revealed to me back in Cambodia, February – I wrote a blog about it called “Insecurities”. Another quote from the book that convicted me was this: “Instead of drawing our energy and our source of life and peace from the love of God, we try to find them in these counterfeit affections of performance, the passions of the flesh, power and control issues, possessions, position, people, or places.”
Who and what we turn to for affirmation and validation can reveal a lot of where our heart is. For a long time now I’ve drawn affirmation and validation from other people and things, which has led to me living life with an orphan mentality – like I have to earn God’s love. I’m realizing just how much of a people-pleaser I am, which is a strange thing to admit because that’s not something I would have told you I struggle with before coming on the Race. However, through being in the Lord’s presence more regularly, being outside of my comfort zone, and learning to listen more to what the Holy Spirit is speaking to me, I’m beginning to see things about myself that I have never noticed before. It’s pretty bitter-sweet, to be honest; it’s painful, but oh so necessary. One of the symptoms of living with an orphan mentality is living in fear of how others view you – that is a fear I’ve lived with for longer than I can remember, and boy has it been debilitating and disabling in moving forward in my pursuit to become more Christlike, and to share this incredible Love to the world.
On top of all of this, one of the biggest realizations I’ve made about this orphan mentality is “however you think God feels about you is the way you will treat others in your everyday relationships” (Frost). This is intense stuff. The implications of living in true sonship or daughtership go well beyond your own state of being, but easily flow into the lives of the people you interact with regularly, and beyond. What I feel God is saying to me is that in my pursuit of sharing Jesus with the world, perhaps the most effective way of doing that is to simply live on the platform of being so secure in God’s love for me, and living firmly in the sonship that I have in Christ.
