HOLY SPIRIT REVEAL ME
The important part here is not to mark off completed points on a checklist but to position your heart to come into alignment with the Father’s heart and away from the father of lies. This will require humility and 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.” (Matt. 18:3-4 NAS).The Kingdom of Heaven is a kingdom of humility, innocence, and love; and the child-like – 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.
Simply ask the Holy Spirit to open up and reveal your heart. Make yourself transparent before the Lord. Freedom comes when we stop sugar coating the pain and address the heart issues we have been carrying on our own. Lets abandon ourselves and proceed as children letting our Father deal with our heart. Here is my heart. May the Father take hold of your heart just as sweetly as he did with mine!
THEOLOGY
Orphans live by the love of law. Like the pharisees of Jesus’ day, orphans try to relate to God on the basis of adherence to laws, principles, rules, and regulations. Orphans value obedience more than trusting in relationship.
Sons, however, live by the law of love. They value truth, knowing that the greatest truth of all is living to receive Father’s love and giving it away to the next person they meet. Sons understand the biblical truth that “love is the fulfillment of the law.” (Romans 13:10b)
SECURITY
Orphans are insecure but usually become quite adept at covering their insecurity. They often strive to act right and do enough to please God and earn His blessings. Therefore, they rarely experience an inward peace and rest. Life for an orphan is often filed with uncertainty and fears of trusting, abandonment, and intimacy.
Sons, in contrast, are at peace and rest in the Father’s embrace. They know that their security in God does not depend on their behavior but is based on the grace of God and on the saving work that Jesus did on the Cross.
NEED FOR APPROVAL
The need for approval is universal; we all desire acceptance. Orphans, however, are addicted to and strive for praise, approval, and acceptance of man. But these counterfeit affections will not satisfy and instead lead to the fear of failure and rejection, which pulls an orphan heart farther away from God.
Sons are not influenced by this turmoil and fear because they know that they are totally accepted in God’s love and justified by His grace. They don’t have to strive fro approval because in Christ they already have it.
MOTIVE BEHIND CHRISTIAN DISCIPLINES
Orphans sometimes observe christian discipline- prayer, bible reading, & studying- out of a sense of duty and hope for earning God’s favor. They often evaluate how spiritual they and others are by how much time they spend each day in prayer and Bible hours at a time, yet have never known personally the affectionate love and acceptance of God. Jesus chastised the Pharisees:”You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life” (John 5:39-40). Because their motivation is wrong, orphans who practice christian discipline easily miss the love and intimacy of God.
Sons find the christian disciplines a pleasure and a delight rather than a duty. Those who receive a deep revelation of the Father’s love often discover that many of the things they used to do “religiously” either lose their importance or take on a whole new meaning for them. A new motivation of love replace the old motivations of duty, obligation, and fear. For sons, all the things of the Spirit, including the Christian disciplines, become sources of joy and pleasure because love brings life where duty and the letter of law bring death.
SELF-IMAGE
Orphans generally possess a low self-image and an attitude of self-rejection, which results fro comparing themselves to others and feeling that they come out on the short end of the stick. Others seem more blessed. Others seem more loved. Others seem to get all the breaks.
Sons feel positive and affirmed because they know how valuable and precious they are to their Father. No matter what they do or how many times they mess up, they know that their Father loves them anyways. They can pick themselves up and keep on going because, they feel secure in the Father’s love, they know that they can do or be anything.
SOURCE OF COMFORT
Orphans shut a portion of their hearts off from expressed love. So many of us have hooked our lifeline (sense of security)into counterfeit affections that sooner or later will entangle us in unrealized hopes and unfulfilled dreams. Instead of drawing our energy an our source of life and peace from God, Orphans seeks counterfeit affections:performance, the passions of the flesh, power and control issues, possessions, positions, people, or places. Somehow we think that unless we have these sources of comfort in our lives, we simply can’t go on. Sometimes it is easier to hold onto the familiar, and make it our lifeline even if it does not satisfy, than to risk letting go in order to grab hold of something else that will.
Sons find true comfort in times of quietness and solitude as they rest in the Father’s presence and love. They have discovered that once having tasted of that place of rest, everything that the world or religiously has to offer pales in comparison. Nothing compares with the comfort and joy of a son basking in the unconditional love of His Father.
HANDLING OTHERS FAULTS
Conflicts are unavoidable and everyday part of life wherever people interact with one another. Therefore, effective conflict resolution is a vital part of healthy interpersonal relationships.
Orphans, being self-focused, generally resort to accusation and exposure of other people’s faults- while denying, trying to hide their own faults, or continually justifying their own faults. Its destroys relationships due to issues of control, lack of respect and honor.
Sons are relationship-oriented. In love, they cover (not hide0 others’ faults as they seek to restore those individuals in a spirit of love and gentleness. Covering a fault is different from covering up a fault. Covering protects a person from humiliating and destructive exposure until the conflict or fault can be resolved. Covering up a fault is an effort to deceive, which is a sign of orphan thinking.
VIEW OF AUTHORITY
Because of abuse and mistreatment they may have suffered at the hands of authority figures in their lives, Orphans will see authority as a source of pain and are therefore suspicious of any other authority, except their own. They are distrustful of the motives of those in authority, whether at home, at work, at church, or anywhere else. This is due at least in part of their lack of heart attitude of humility and submission. Orphans resent and fear suggestions that they should submit to anyone by getting underneath them and supporting them. They regard being subject to someone else’s mission as nothing more than allowing themselves to be used by that person.
Sons, However, look at authority differently. Sons are respectful and honoring of legitimate authority, seeing authority figures as ministers of God for good in their lives. Another way of illustrating this contrast is to say that sons are teachable, but orphans are not.
EXPRESSION OF LOVE
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 sown their own agendas in order to meet the needs of others. Love for an orphan is built on 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 know the other person is in need of it.
CONDITION
Orphans are in bondage. They are slaves to their fears, 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.
POSITION
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 the Father’s embrace.
VISION
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 to be sent as a representative of His love to family and others. Intimacy precedes fruitfulness.
ALL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO GOD WHOM GAVE A WORD OF FREEDOM TO A MAN NAMED: JACK FROST; HIS BOOK: SPIRITUAL SLAVERY TO SPIRITUAL SONSHIP
