A Forgiving Son
How do we begin movement from living life as if we don’t have a home to living life as if we do? Forgiveness: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. .” John 3:16-21
Forgive Your Parents for Misrepresenting Father’s Love to You.
The process of moving from slavery to sonship begins with forgiveness. Extending forgiveness involves humility in laying aside our hurt and our perceived “right” to hold another person responsible for his or her offense against us. Specifically, it begins with forgiving your parents for the way they have misrepresented the Father’s love to you. Ask the Lord 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. Its doesn’t have to be something “big” to have a perceived rejection point. Some parents may not know how to be a mom or a dad or how to express love, affection, and affirmation. When did you cease being your father or mother’s son? 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) It means letting go of your identity of brokenness and dysfunction that you brought from your parent’s house-an identity that is uncomfortable with love and keeps people at arms length. In order to forgive your parents, it means letting go of any expectations for them to make things right with you. Give them a gift that they didn’t deserve- the gift of honor, understanding that they, like most parents, were probably spiritual orphans possessing most of the orphan characteristics. They could not give to you what had never been given to them. In order to displace that orphan thinking you must be reintroduced to a loving Father, God. It’s letting go of a residual pain from life in your earthly parent’s house so that you can reach up and receive God as your loving heavenly Father and trust Him to meet your deepest needs of your life. Forgiveness does not guarantee healing. Healing often calls for a more radical and more difficult step but equally important step, which takes us right into the next point.
Ask Your Parents to Forgive You for the Way You Hurt or Disappointed Them.
Forgiving your parents is the first step toward sonship. But sometimes forgiving them is not enough to set you free. Depending on your particular circumstance, it may be necessary for you to seek forgiveness from your mother and/or father. When you rejected your mother and father, you rejected a spirit of sonship, and God will only deal with you as a son. Seeking forgiveness involves humility, requiring us to lay aside our pride, acknowledge our sins and mistakes, and open our hearts to the one we have offended with no guarantee of being accepted. Humility makes us vulnerable and can sometimes be the difference between life and death. It is easy to 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 forgiveness calls for a ministry of restitution- offering restitution for your attitudes, behavior, and actions that hurt others. In the ministry of restitution your making right any wrongs to break destructive patterns in your relationships Although God forgives us for each specific wrong the first time we ask, we may continue to reap what we 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 seek to restore the fractured relationships. 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 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 and shame for the offense and have a need to ask 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. And when becoming subject to the Father God’s mission, you also became subject to your earthly father, no matter how much they’ve hurt their kids, every father longs for it to be made right. “Honor your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise), so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth” (Eph. 6:2-3 NAS).
ALL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO GOD WHOM GAVE A WORD OF FREEDOM TO A MAN NAMED: JACK FROST; HIS BOOK: SPIRITUAL SLAVERY TO SPIRITUAL SONSHIP
