1.1.4 從孤兒到兒子的身份-學做家人
Shared by: Juliane
Orphans have no sense of self-esteem. His sense of self-esteem is based on whether others like me. When we are like this, God will raise up a lot of circumstances where others reject you, to let you know that your acceptance and your joy is not from people. I found that I have a reaction of hiding myself in this part. As an orphan, you usually have three types of reaction. The first one is offensive type, the second one is hiding type, and the third one is compensation type, which is trying to cover up the sense of shame on oneself through the way of compensation.
Because of this, she does not know how to interact with people, and her interpersonal relationship is very fragile. My old behavior pattern is that I simply don’t interact with people. It turns out that this is the behavior pattern we carried on from our young age: our family relationship was broken when I was young. Although we lived under the same roof, we did not interact with each other, e.g. my older sister did not interact with me. So our relationship was very cold. When I grew up, the relationship between my classmates and me was that I would be isolated by my classmates. After I got married, I got along with my family in the same way. I am afraid of being hurt, so I simply do not interact with them. I use this way to hide my injured feelings. Gradually I also sealed the emotions inside me, because I think I will get hurt easily if I open my emotions. Therefore, God enlightened me on this.
An orphan usually has a very obvious feature, that is, he doesn’t know how to be a family member. He has already been used to be alone. After I entered the ministry, I found that my relationship with people was also in such a dilemma. I found that I had a lot of conflicts with people. Self-protection is my habit and mode of thinking. I have all the three reactions mentioned at the beginning. During the time, I realized that I really didn’t know how to be a family member. I don’t know how to love, because I did not feel loved since I was a child. But He started talking to me, and He told me through a lot of circumstances that He was going to heal me.
There was a very small incident a while ago. He came to enlighten me. I felt very strange. Why the negative emotion was suddenly stirred up when I was ignored. Then I realized that I had a wrong belief in me, that is, if I am not notified or ignored, that means I am not loved; as long as I am noticed, I am loved. It turned out that my great pain was caused by my own wrong belief.
I came to God to participate in a prayer meeting. In the prayer, God healed me. It turned out that he raised this environment intentionally to help me break this wrong belief. Suddenly at that moment, I realized that God loves me. It turns out that I don’t need the attention of others to know that God loves me. How can we change from an orphan to a son? We need to change our old pattern of thinking as an orphan, otherwise the such thinking pattern like an orphan will continue to circulate, just as the people of Israel went around in the wilderness. The people of Israel always complained to God, and said to God why you led me to this place, where had no food and no water. This is a wrong way of thinking.
There are two ways to change from the orphan to the son. One is the path of Calvary and the other is the path of Jericho. The city of Jericho represents the intervene of the supernatural power of God, and the environment can be turned around immediately. The road of Calvary is that God demolishes the strongholds inside us layer by layer through the environment. Then we can enjoy the experience of being renewed day by day inwardly. Every day we need to reject the beliefs and ideas that are not from God. We need to resist such ideas.
To enter into the identity of son of God, we need to reject the orphan's thinking mode continuously. Proverbs 23: 7 for he is the kind of man who is always thinking about the cost. If you think like an orphan, you will behave like an orphan; if you think you don’t have a home, you will live like a homeless person. But if you think like a son, your life will be like a son. If you think you have a home, you will live like a person who has family. So, Commitment is very important. Commitment can take us into the identity of son.
Many of us are like a footless bird, and don’t know where to go. This can cause us to be ignorant about entering the identity of son. An important point about the orphan’s thinking pattern is that God wants to help us uncover that wrong belief. You have to constantly combat against that thought. 2 Corinthians 10: 4-5 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we can take captive every though to make it obedient to Christ.
There is one more thing that can help us become son, that is, obedience, obeying the guidance of the Holy Spirit. You need to obey; you need to follow the Holy Spirit. You shouldn’t compromise just because of what others say, because in that way you will get into the situation of manipulation. Obedience is one of the ways to help us restore our relationship with God as His children. Just like Adam and Eve, they did not obey God, so their relationship with Heavenly Father was broken and they became spiritual orphans. Recently I found it is very important to obey the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
I learned a lesson last night. I found that I had disobedience in me, so there was no way for me to change from an orphan to a son. I was used to doing everything myself. One of the features of an orphan is always used to depending on himself, and not knowing how to rely on God. Yesterday I felt that God asked me to fast. I thought that it was okay for me to only fast on my breakfast and lunch, and I didn’t need to fast in the evening. But I had a feeling in the afternoon that I should continue my fasting to the evening. But my husband said, “we will go out for dinner tonight, and a seat has already been reserved for you, you should come”. Then I said yes. When I got there, I thought it should be okay for me if I just ate vegetables. However, the other people in the dinner showed great hospitality, and the final result was that I also ate the meat. After the dinner, I went back home and started to prepare the words I would share. But no matter how I worshipped, I could not break through. Then I had to ask for help. I asked the brothers and sisters to intercede for me. During this period, I suddenly understood the reason. It was because I compromised. After I repented, I found my relationship with God in spirit had been restored.
Therefore, I discovered the obedience to the Holy Spirit is very important. It reminds me of the example of King Saul. Saul was rebellious. He offered up the burnt offering himself for the sake of man. So in the Bible, it is said to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. The obedience allows us to connect with God. We also need to be very keen to distinguish whether the sound we hear comes from God or from people.
If the voice is from God the Father, it will take you back to affirmation, love, and forgiveness. Instead, the voice of the father of lies will lead you away from home, into fear, self-judgment, self-protection, nitpicking, shirking responsibility, self-exaltation, and proving yourself to be innocent. This is a method to help us distinguish.
How to break away from the orphan's heart? It is just to go home. That home is where the Abba Father is. The orphan’s heart can only be replaced by our Abba Father. You can’t get help through other ways besides God. When we come to God’s house, we need to learn how to interact with others, be willing to depend on each other in the interpersonal relationships, and rely on the love of God, and open our heart. Please remember what we just shared. If we encounter something that hurts us, we must go back to God, and let Abba Father’s love renew our strength to continue to love. If we shut off our hearts, we will fall into a state of weakness.
Many parts of us need to be broken, just like what Jesus Christ did. He even died on the cross to lay down his life for us. Put down a lot of selves inside us. Under the circumstance of being surrounded by orphans, what would you do? God has already given us a commandment. The general principle of the law is love. Love God, love others, and deny yourself. A celebrity once said: Almost every spiritual person will endure a certain degree of spiritual exclusion or misunderstanding. If we really want to learn to become spiritually mature, it is necessary to learn to deal with exclusion. Exclusion provides us with an opportunity to become mature in grace. If we hold the exclusion tightly and treat it as the discipline of the Lord, we will grow in the love and grace of the Lord. Otherwise, we will get into the manipulation.
If we learn to use God’s grace under His guidance, we will show the love of Christ. For example, if you know this person has a problem like an orphan, to some extent his life cannot be broken through. If he just wants to listen to a word of encouragement from you, you just give him the encouragement. The encouragement will not take too much of your effort. But this can train you how to express the language of love.
To overcome the manipulation, a very important portion is love. I have experienced it myself. I was stumbled greatly by manipulation before. Sometimes I can still fall into that situation again if I am not cautious, and sometimes the situation can become even beyond the boundary. Manipulation is to impose your own will onto the other’s free will. It can be done through many different ways: emotions, intimidation. Later I found out to overcome this, we do not need to resist people. At the time I setup the boundary between other and me, I should still love him, instead of letting him feel rejection. Although there is a boundary between her and me, it should also have the language of love in it. This requires the wisdom from God and balance. So that we can enter the identity of son because we changed ourselves, then the family will become a family.
The most important part is we need to repent so that we can demolish the strongholds in our lives. The theme of the orphan’s heart is a very big topic. Thank God, whenever we repent, God will come to heal us. Ask God to enlighten us whether there is any darkness within us, whether there is unconfessed sin, or any broken relationship, or a protective stronghold raised because of the broken relationship. Satan works in darkness and secret, but when we repent, we re-open ourselves to be transparent in front of God. In this way, the enemy has no way to bind us through our flesh. When we are afraid to tell others about our problems, the sense of shame will bind us, and we will fall into the darkness. But humble repentance can help us enter the light of God’s kingdom.
Our tongue is a fire. James 3:6 The tongue is a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. The more we talk about the hurts and offenses we experienced, the more we focus our attention on this. Then there is no way for the hurt to leave, and it will be constantly stimulated. So please ask God to help us. If we hurt our family in the process, we need to come to God to repent and help as much as possible. When you have such a heart to help him, I believe that relationship will change because our family relationship can never be cut off. If each of us does this, our family will be formed, which is what God cares about most, and this is the purpose Jesus died for us.
Prayer: Lord, I thank you for telling us through these words, how much you love us. I repent before you for the wrong thing I did in the past. We often don’t know that we are in the mind of an orphan. Oh Lord, I long to enter your beautiful land of Canaan. Oh Lord, please fight for the strongholds in my heart, I forsake all the orphan’s thinking modes, and please forgive me. We often have conflict with other people in the world, because of our self-protection, because of our pride, because of something in our heart which does not follow God’s will. I want to repent for these things. Lord, I’m willing to let go of all these things that we hold on, I don’t want to fall back into the life mode of distinguishing good and evil. I don’t want to just focus on right and wrong any longer. Please come to guide me to ascend the higher mountain. I will come to taste all the fruits on your tree of life, mercy and compassion, peace with each other. Oh Lord, give me the capability of love. Lord, I am willing to repent all I did, all self-protection, no more hurt. I repent for the fears I had before, in order to prove the value of myself. Lord, please forgive me. Thank you for the revelation to us in these days.
I repent to you for all my complaints, for the judgement in my heart. Lord, I am willing to let go of everything, and I am willing to open my heart again to accept them. Please do the healing and repairing work in the relationship between others and us with the anointing of love from you. Help us be able to love others. You are the source of the love. Lord, come to touch us first, please give us the wisdom that comes from you. I offer you thanks for everything you give us. Thank you for repairing the hearts of our family. Please give me a compassionate heart, let me truly become the vessel loved by you Lord. Lord, your love fills me and gives me courage. Thank you, you say perfect love drives out fear. Lord, please continue to work in our lives. When the wind and waves rise, let us understand what is the part of our life needs to break through. Lord, may your love make us feel accepted.
Help us know how glorious our identity is, so that we do not live in the shame. Pour down your love, and comfort all the broken heart. Lord, I am willing to reconcile with those who hurt me. I once rejected them. I once closed the door of my heart to that person. Please pour down more of your love to fill me, thank God.
You are to bring us into the identity of the true son. Lord, we thank you, you listen to our prayers, you want to bless each of us, Oh Lord, to inherit the son’s inheritance. Lord, guide us into your predestined blessings, the spiritual blessings. Also pour down all the blessings on materials. Yes Lord, you embrace us with your love. I have courage and confidence. Yes, thank you, Lord. Please put on the full armor of God for us. Lord, I want to really put on the shoes of peace and righteousness. Thank God, thank you for teaching us how to be a family. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen!
