“For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.”
“For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’”
The orphan spirit causes a child to be independent and unattached with feelings of the need to be self-made, self-reliant. Mistakes are their own and any successes are because they have performed correctly. This is such a painful process.
Children of the Father never have to perform for Him. Never.
There is inter-dependence and partnership when being led by the Spirit of God. God is not working alone and neither is the child who is led. There is such a rewarding and confident feeling when we work with God in lieu of working for God. Faith then works as a synergism of love between the believer and the Father of lights!
“Heavenly Father, I know that Your love is abounding toward me and I want to work, love, live and believe with You. I never want to be performing for You so that I believe You accept me according to what I have done instead of Your powerful love for me. I feel that You watch me with loving eyes and not supervisory eyes. I am confident that You are all and in all and I am Your child. All that I have and all that I am belongs to You. Let’s go forth and build Your kingdom together! Thank You Papa for the confidence that You give to me by being with me in all that I do and inviting me to be part of all that You do. Amen.”
“I always find creativity when I get to serve. I need creativity in order to be excited about life and living. Serving is just one of the ways that my creativity can begin to flow.”
What is the motive of my heart when I serve others? That question is asked by way too few people. The orphan has a pressing need for personal achievement. It’s close to seeking to impress God (and others), or, simply no motivation to serve at all.
Yet there is another way of life for our hearts to be at rest and our joy to be made full through service! What if our serving was motivated by a deep gratitude for being unconditionally loved and accepted by God? Period.
The Servant-Heart is the heart of a child of God and not the bondage of the orphan spirit. The orphan is a slave and works like a slave.
The orphan will think like a slave and either have the need to to be at the top of the heap or have no initiative to serve at all. Serving is work and strictly un-enjoyable. If there is any joy in serving others to the orphan it is in the recognition or reward that is expected.
I really don’t want to be the leader all the time. I just can’t be. There is an inward need for me to serve others, and I cannot go for very long without doing so. Jesus showed the importance of this need when He put on his servant’s attire and washed the feet of His disciples.
There is the “inward need” that needs to be talked about. If you have never been a servant, or if you have never lost your servant’s heart, then you may not know of the emptiness that this syndrome causes. Then again, there are some who may not know what that “missing” feeling in their life is all about and are ready for the revelation.
The lack of a servant-heart can stunt your growth and even make life very boring and unproductive. I always find creativity when I get to serve. I need creativity in order to be excited about life and living. Serving is just one of the ways that my creativity can begin to flow.
In many ways, Hollywood has been a great detriment to our servant-heart. We have watched too many movies about heroes and way too many dramas that cast insults at every form of servanthood. To be served is the “American way!” It’s no longer just with “Americans.” The nations have now bitten into this. Thus, leaders are destroying the world around us because they are self-motivated; self gratified and do only that which will bring attention to self. People are de-valued. If a leader begins to serve those whom he leads, there is a whole new perspective to life.
God is looking for great followers and not great leaders.
“For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more;” 1 Corinthians 9:19 NKJV
Consider Jesus, Who, in His last hours, put on His servant’s attire and washed His disciples’ feet. Now, consider earnestly your servant heart. Having a servant’s heart is not a “behavior,” it is in fact a matter of the heart. You make the decision in your heart every day to have a servant’s heart or take on a slave’s mentality. There is an inward difference between having the freedom of a servant’s heart and just doing the labor according to your wants and desires. You get power and liberty from a servant’s heart. From the works of a servant heart will come the works of Jesus. Jesus demonstrated the ministry of the towel, which was the ministry of the servant, by picking up the towel and washing his disciples’ feet. There is therefore no more identity crisis in the servant hearted. The servant hearted is identified by Christ Himself.
Something to think about:
If Jesus came into the room right now, would He be wearing the robe of a King or the towel of a servant? He probably would not enter a room with His kingship on His mind because He already knows that He is the King. Therefore, He would enter the room with purposed power and it would be received through His serve.
A true child of God the Father has a servant’s heart that is not based on the behavior or thought patterns of the orphan’s “slavery.” The child of God’s heart will work with a heart desire to serve others with joy.
The child’s servant heart wants to be a blessing and his/her heart is based and founded in the prosperity of the First Born Son.
There must be a change of heart and attitude. (Also, remember that attitude affects the atmosphere)
Slavery is often just being told what to do. So, an orphan slave will wait to be told. An orphan slave may labor diligently and do all that is told him/her. Performance becomes the issue and poverty of soul will then set in. Complaining about how they have been passed over for the acknowledgements and promotions are sure to come forth.
Slavery is laziness, (at least lazy mindedness), and will lead to poverty. A slave will feel that they deserve something for what they’ve done; whereas the child of God’s servant’s heart simply wishes to be a true blessing to those he serves.
Examples of a servant:
The child of God sees a mess, and even though he isn’t responsible for it, he cleans it up. That is a manifestation of the true child of God’s servant’s heart.
Or take for example, two people doing the same job. When the job is complete, the servant will feel joyful, but the slave will feel discontent.
In all you do, do it with joy, have a joyful perspective. Labor with joy and a passion to get the job done well, and do it with the purpose of honoring God and others.
So, the child of God has a servant’s mentality, the servant’s heart will show through in everything that is done and said. We all need to grow into this mentality. The purpose is not to get favor but to increase our “servant’s heart.”
Don’t be discouraged when someone tries to lay a slave’s mentality upon you and make it a slave’s job. Leaders are orphans too. You have the ability to go the extra mile to break the power that people try to place upon you. This takes an offensive position instead of defensive. You might just consider Joseph’s life in prison and in the house of Potiphar, in Genesis chapter forty.
The child of God falls in love with the Father of lights and the result is a servant’s heart. That heart will learn to hate the things that God hates and learn to love what God the Father loves. The greatest thrill in love’s experience is to love through the eyes of our heavenly Father! When we begin to do that we just watch that love work it’s way out of our hearts and that is called service!
A child of God’s servant’s heart has the ability to serve the King whereas the slave heart gains nothing but spiritual famine and pain. There is never enough recognition for the orphan slave heart.
“Heavenly Father! I desperately need for You to burn, with Your refiner’s fire, that orphan-spirit-slave-heartedness out of me, completely. I want to love what You love, look upon others with a view from Your heart toward them and I want to let that love that I have for You and that You have for them work through me – letting love serve. Lord, rekindle that child of God’s servant-heart in me! Let the fire of Your love and passion burn within my heart unto the depths of my heart. Renew a right spirit in me. Renew that wonderful Spirit of adoption within me in order that I might cry out to You in loving excitement! Abba! You are my Father and in You my hope is built! I give thanks and praise You for renewing me so that Your love will have its way with me and that love will work wonders through and from me towards others! Amen.”
“The devil sends an “orphan spirit” to battle against us and our heritage in Christ Jesus. This orphan spirit causes our thoughts and views of God to be obscured and misplaced.”
The first chapter of John states that: “As many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become the children of God!” Thus, we have the POWER to become His children!
But the devil sends an “orphan spirit” to battle against us and our heritage in Christ Jesus. This orphan spirit causes our thoughts and views of God to be obscured and misplaced. Our image of God becomes one of a task master or even a behavior supervisor and a critical judge irrespective of the works of Jesus in our lives.
The one who is free from the bondage of the orphan spirit sees God as a loving Father. The Spirit of Adoption surrounds with the confidence, care and compassion of the Lord as our Abba or Papa. Through the humble and loving approach to Papa God, we know that He loves us, accepts us, forgives us and displays His unending love to us.
“Lord Jesus, help me to see my heavenly Father as the ever present love of my life. I know that you lead me but you do not chastise me into submission to your ways. Send your light and life and love to break the thoughts and images that come from that orphan spirit and free me from any grasp that it may have upon my life. I ask you for peace to come upon me. Peace not as the world gives but peace that can only come from the Father of lights by the wonderful Spirit of Adoption. I am your child and I have not been abandoned! Thank you Papa for your peace and joy! Amen”
“Never listen to the person who describes the “facts†of another persons behavior. Listen to the person who says nothing. Jesus said nothing to support Himself against His accusers. The real Spirit filled person will say nothing like their Master.”
The following is part of what I taught in Issaquah, Washington at Y.O.U.R. Church Without Walls concerning the breaking of the orphan spirit:
Recently, I was asked to tell the testimony of how I came to Christ. This is something that is rarely asked of me and I don’t think I’ve told the story in a few years. However, it reminded me of some important principles that we all need to live by.
Our son was dying of some strain of spinal meningitis and was not expected to live more than a few hours. While staying by his side through that grueling time, Irene and I were terribly tired so a nurse came to us and said that she would take our place at his side so that we could go get a cup of coffee together. I remember so well how we were walking down the hallway of the hospital hand in hand and talking. One of us said, “Well, if he dies, we will simply thank God for the wonderful and joyous time that we were given to have him. If he is incapacitated by the disease and is unable to care for himself then God probably just has so many children for some purpose like that and we should have him because we have the love and abilities to care for him.”
At this point the weight of it all seemed to leave us both. We were not offended by our circumstances and we would meet with the future without any offense toward God. Please keep in mind that we were not even born again at this point. Yet, our feeling was that we had a future and a hope!
We would carry no offense! Our circumstances were not evidence that God was not doing His job and we were not questioning Him in any way.
That evening, as I lay on a couch outside our son’s room and Irene lay on a couch two floors above me, we both, without knowing what we were doing or without consulting the other, turned our lives over to Jesus Christ. Our son, just moments afterwards, awakened from a deep coma and a debilitating fever and was totally healed.
A few years ago, we were doing a conference in Seattle with Mahesh Chavda. Irene and I were driving to the hotel with Mahesh and he asked us how we came to Christ. We told the above story and he was particularly moved by it in that he then told us of a time when he and Bonnie had a son that was born premature. He had heard the voice of God telling him to go to Africa and yet was ready to cancel his trip due to the very grave condition of his newborn son, who’s life was hanging in the balance. They too, were not offended. Because they were not offended, God took them to new realms of the miraculous!
In our conversation with Mahesh, it was apparent that God was revealing the devastation that takes place when people are offended by their circumstances and do not allow for the full effects of life from God to lead us into our destinies! I believe that Mahesh, Irene and I were seeing something that was very important to us and our future in the wonderful works of Christ Jesus upon the earth.
It is my continual experience and observation, that people who are offended by their circumstances in life have the inner need to shift the blame off of their souls to someone else. It seems that their minds cannot stand the strain of dealing with the circumstances in faith so they must find someone who is wrong. Although this is an intricate problem of the heart it is all too common to mankind.
When this phenomenon comes into religion, it is ultimately God Who gets the blame. As Christians, people usually do not have the inner strength to realize that they are offended by God Who, in their mind, is supposed to control their circumstances and not allow anything bad to happen to them. They have somehow come to believe that God’s love toward them can be measured by the good things that happen, both to them and around them. Thus, when circumstances are increasingly bad, the easiest work is to shift the responsibility for those circumstances to the God who is supposed to make it all okay. He doesn’t, so now they are offended.
Of course it is impossible to openly admit, even to themselves, that they have a problem with God. So, they take a lower road in their minds and begin to blame God’s servants. You see God’s servants (pastors and Church leaders) represent Him and surely they are the ones at fault. It is like a new set of glasses that are now placed before the eyes of the offended. The eyes see inconsistencies where love used to cover those inconsistencies. Now, there is a remembered list of offenses. Now, there is trouble that brews and does not go away. There is no balm that will fix it.
Our relationships are of vital importance to lives but can often bring consternation and pain. Much of the pain is caused by misplaced agreement. We all have an inner need to have harmony and union but that agreement is not always a good thing. In fact it can be disastrous. Agreement is most dangerous to us when we must find accord with others in our hurts, pains and offenses. If we just want camaraderie and it doesn’t matter if we are right or wrong we can find a great bondage and deception awaiting us.
The old adage, “misery loves company” actually holds some truth here. Our supposed superior judgment of good and evil then assures us that we are always right. Oh we may humbly say different but we judge according to our assumption that we are right or at least more right than the other person. Now comes the spirit of deception. The accuser of the brethren touts the “facts” or the circumstances of the case. Love doesn’t take a stand so it gets run over by the “facts.” The offended thinks that love is weak. But then mercy and forgiveness are also weak to the offended.
Deception takes its place when we are offended and do not act positively in love. I have found that it does little good to quote the scripture since “it never applies,” so they say. When, “love does not take into account a wrong suffered,” is discussed you find a denial that there is anything but love for the person that is actually hated. The deception grows as the offended begins to practice deception and get agreement from others who at first are consolers and then confidants, but eventually co-laborers in the crusade to rid the world of the evil doers.
Gangs are an example of how we can degrade socially into a covenant agreement that warms our emotions and each gang member believes that they are right – the world is wrong! Yet, the gang is agreed upon hate and discontent and doing that which is evil instead of that which is good. They are orphans who are deceived.
Here is a great rule that you can live by victoriously: When you have a complaint about how you have been mistreated, do not talk to someone who will agree with you. That’s right, don’t share with someone that cannot reprove you. The last thing that you need when you have been wronged is agreement.
This is contrary to your desires. When you are offended by your circumstances, agreement is what you will want to seek. Agreement is a very powerful thing and should instead be used with faith to see the miracle works of Jesus Christ made manifest upon the earth.
Although offense is possible with even the most informed, it is what is done with that offense that separates the overcomer from the deceived. Those with faith in God and not their circumstances – know that no matter what happens, God is their ultimate rescue. These prominent people of faith will find those who agree with heaven and not with earth or their only agreement will be in heaven.
There is a higher wisdom that says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.” Understanding this means that you will not find agreement with a true friend but reproof that will cause you to be thrust into a destiny of faith and trust in your glorious King.
The scripture shows us that Absalom had favor in the eyes of his father king David, yet he had agreement with others who were also offended by God’s lack of deserved acclaim. God had not been running the kingdom properly or they would have a better king. A king like Absalom would be so much greater, wiser and more compassionate toward the people.
David, upon the other hand, did not want to destroy the uprising of this rebellious group of deceived people. He instead relied up his God to either protect the kingdom that was given to David to oversee or remove him as its overseer. It was actually God’s kingdom anyway. He didn’t place himself as the king over God’s people and he wasn’t going to cause himself to remain the king. He was either there by God’s choice or he wasn’t. He left the outcome up to the Lord.
The coup d’état of the offended can not only arise in strength but it can cause people that have held your trust to be swept into believing a lie and seeing nothing but lies in every direction. Yet, the fall of the deceived is first felt when offenses go unanswered and the opportunity to listen to the reasoning of another offended person comes to the ears.
The answer is not so difficult. First of all, diligently care for your heart at all times and never give way to offenses. Do not ever think that you are above being offended. Settling these matters is a part of your deep abiding relationship with Jesus.
Next, teach it and keep teaching the matters of the heart as you equip the saints to do the work of the ministry. This teaching gives them a fighting chance against the accuser of the brethren and a relationship with Christ that will not be clouded by unrighteous judgments.
Then, never listen to the person who describes the “facts” of another persons behavior. Listen to the person who says nothing. Jesus said nothing to support Himself against His accusers. The real Spirit filled person will say nothing like their Master. Remember that the Pharisees gave all the evidence while Jesus worked the works of compassion – doing the works of the One Who sent Him.
Now offenses usually start when we allow ourselves the luxury of discouragement. Discouragement is simply pride, ego and vanity. Discouragement cannot exist unless circumstances are not going our way. When we don’t get our way we are offended and wallow in discouragement. To understand this and to accept this definition of discouragement is the beginning of victory in this battle.
