Overcoming The Orphan Spirit Part 4
Auto Transcript from the sermon Overcoming the Orphan Spirit Part 4.
Amen.
Good job.
All right, you guys can go back to your parents.
There is no youth class today due to the bug that's been going around.
So you don't get cam today.
Unfortunately you get me.
So there is junior youth.
Yes, junior youth is happening.
So if you consider yourself to be a junior youth, not a regular size youth, then class is still going on.
While they're dismissing, you're hungry?
I'm hungry too.
I normally don't eat before I preach.
I belch a lot.
Same thing when I lead worship.
And I'm leading worship tonight at Women of Merit, so I'm going to have a real tight window of eating.
So I totally feel you're hungry.
I get it.
Some housekeeping announcements.
So my wife and I are leaving Sunday and we will be gone until the 1st of December on our annual sabbatical.
And so Brent will be here, the deacons will be here, but next week we have a special guest and I am extremely excited.
I will be watching in Cincinnati.
I just will be probably kicked up in my pajamas, not having to get all dressed up and dolled up and all that kind of fun stuff.
Squeeze into my flannels, all that kind of fun stuff.
But Joshua Lewis of the Remnant Radio podcast, if you are not familiar with that podcast, you really do need to be familiar with him.
Him along with Michael Roundtree, who is the senior pastor at Bridgeway in Oklahoma City.
And then they have different other hosts and stuff like that that come on.
They tackle theological topics, they tackle doctrine, they tackle all kinds of stuff that they have had guests from everybody from Francis Chan to Dr.
Michael Brown.
And just try to come at some of the topics in the Bible from just a very balanced way.
And so I got to hear him speak not only at Unite OKC but at a pastor's breakfast.
And immediately, as soon as I left the pastor's breakfast, I contacted him and I was like, hey, by the way, there is this date coming up like many months in the future.
Would you come to Norman and preach while I'm not there?
And surprisingly, like, responded right away.
Had a great conversation with him on the phone.
So very, very excited for Joshua Lewis to be here next week.
Just has the anointing of the Lord all over him.
And then we've got Thanksgiving week, the 25th.
And then we've got December.
December is going to bring some new and exciting things for the church.
Our family meeting in August, some of you were here for that, some of you weren't.
We talked about the fact that we wanted to start doing midweek gatherings, having youth have more gatherings together.
And then obviously, I'm still young enough to be considered a youth, so I want to have more gatherings too.
So on the 5th of December, which is a Tuesday night, and on the 19th, so we're going to do them twice a month, so that way we can still keep our house church, our night of praise and worship.
We can still do some of the other things that we're doing.
But on the 5th and the 19th, that will start our first Tuesday gathering.
We're calling them building blocks.
And during the month of December and the month of January, we'll be meeting at what will be our new home, which is Westmore Community Church.
It's about 10 minutes north of here.
Now when I say 10 minutes north for my Blanchard, Newcastle people, that's deceiving, because it's not really 10 minutes for you.
Part of not wanting to leave Norman was like, oh, the people in Blanchard and the people in Newcastle and the people, like, they're not going to come.
So I Google mapped it.
I was going to say MapQuest, but that's not really a thing anymore.
I know, right?
I don't know.
I used to print out the MapQuest stuff.
I know, I'm turning into my father.
You know those commercials, it's happening.
Guys, it's happening.
But I Google mapped it, and it is like one minute difference.
Like I don't know how that works out.
Probably because it's right in between 44 and 35, and so you just hop, skip, and jump rather than having to go down past the casino.
It'll be great for your pocketbook too for all of you who stop in there and gamble away your tithe money on the way to church in the morning.
So yeah, shame on you.
Yeah.
If there's anybody in here, sorry, I literally just made that up.
Like that was the Holy Spirit, that wasn't me.
So those are going to start happening in December, and we'll have those in December and January at our Westmore location.
And then the very first Saturday of February, we'll be meeting in Westmore for our Saturday church services.
So part of the reason why you've seen these ropes up for a long period of time, not that I like to box you in or anything like that, but we're going to go from a sanctuary that has roughly about 500 chairs to a sanctuary of about 300 chairs.
So all those people who come in and they're still practicing the COVID distancing, yeah, that's not going to be a thing for you anymore.
You're going to have to get to like people real quick.
So it's going to be uncomfortable.
If I've had to change and grow this year, I guess maybe you do too.
You're going to have to like people.
So part four and the final part of the orphan spirit.
I will say that this has probably been the heaviest, hardest sermon series for me personally.
Not only just through experiencing the Lord do things in my life that I didn't know existed in my heart, I didn't know existed in my mind, I didn't know that I had these mentalities.
So not only hard from the standpoint of Him revealing those things to me, but then walking through the healing of that and then showing me through His word why those things are there and why those things are important.
And what I've seen over the last three weeks is I've seen the orphan spirit manifest itself in many different ways with many different people in the congregation.
And so I know that the Lord is working.
I know that the Lord is healing.
I know that there's a lot of daddy issues.
There's a lot of church hurt.
There's a lot of those things that exist probably even deeper than some of us are willing to admit.
I thought I was over some of my church hurt from when I was 18 and realized that I never really processed it.
I never really did anything with it.
And so when the Lord steps in and you allow the Holy Spirit to use the word of God by the power of God to make you more like God in the flesh, Jesus, Yeshua, Hamashiach, it's truly life altering.
And that's been this year for me personally.
It's been very life altering just to see how the Lord has broken chains from my heart, from my life.
My marriage is better.
Like anybody who knows us, we don't fight very much at all, but like our marriage has gotten better.
Our relationship with our children has gotten better.
I don't know.
Why are you laughing at me?
Okay, maybe that one's not.
Maybe that one's in process.
Jude's smiling.
So I got five kids.
One out of five, it's going good.
And Hannah's rolling her eyes at me because she's a teenager and that's what happens.
Open your Bibles to John chapter 14 because we're going to see the disciples wrestling with Jesus and what Jesus is saying no different than personally I have wrestled all year with the word of God and the power of God and how God wants to be my father.
In John chapter 14 we see the disciples are wrestling with the fact that Jesus is talking to them about him leaving.
They've had the greatest Torah teacher.
They've had God in the flesh.
They've had this as their mentor to do life with and all of a sudden Jesus is setting the stage for him leaving, him dying on the cross and not being there daily face to face, physical and the flesh.
They're not doing the handshakes.
They're not doing the high fives, all those types of things that he's going to be leaving them and they're wrestling with fear.
They're wrestling with the lack of control.
There's some abandonment that you can read in the text there where they're just like, what's going to happen Lord?
We're insecure.
With you we're secure.
We have a teacher.
We have a father.
We have somebody who loves us who's going to mold, who's going to walk through this with us and what's going to happen when you leave?
And one of the things that Jesus says in verse 18 is, I will not leave you orphans.
I will not leave you orphans.
You know, a lot of times we look at Jesus as a son and we talk to our sons, hey, we want to be like Jesus.
We want to be like Jesus.
But this year Jesus has really become my father.
He's really become a father, someone who I can look to knowing that I sidestepped the wrong way or somebody who I can go to and say, I don't understand why I'm so mad.
I don't understand why there's a heaviness.
I don't understand.
Rather than constantly just asking him to be somebody who just takes things away or who gives things.
Like I didn't mean to turn Jesus into Santa Claus, but allowing him to actually be my father where it's not just, I'm not asking him to give me things or take things away.
I'm asking him to teach me.
Why did I get mad when this person did this?
Why did I get sad when this happened?
Why do I want to react in a certain way and allow him to take me through his words and through his example by the power of his spirit and actually mold me?
Because I spent 17 years of my life trying to understand God and I thought I had figured out how to walk like God so then I could teach other people how to walk like God.
And what I realized is that I knew a lot about God from my perspective.
From my perspective I knew a lot about God.
I knew very little and still the more I learn I know even less of how to actually walk like God.
Let alone to then be able to stand up here or meet with you guys for coffee or for food or for any other interaction and then teach you how to do that.
Not to be a clone of me, but to be an apprentice of Jesus.
And the more that we become like Jesus, the more our example will set a real life example for people to watch and follow.
But last week we talked about you're discipling people every single day and you're being discipled every single day.
So if you don't truly know Jesus as a father, then how do you know that you're actually discipling people under the fatherhood or under the sonship of God?
A question that I've asked myself a lot.
And even while writing sermon notes and going through scriptures and then throwing it away, I put it in the trash can on my Mac.
I don't physically write.
And Brent still brings a binder up here.
Him and Glenn have that thing in common.
They were talking about the size of the pulpit at the new church because it's like he carries a binder and he puts it up here.
So when I throw away my notes I just move it to the recycling bin on my Mac or iOS.
Like I don't physically throw it away.
Which means maybe it's still out there someplace in the X's and O's lands.
But Jesus will not leave us orphans.
Now while he had to leave the flesh, God the Father was not going to leave them abandoned.
And he promises to send the Holy Spirit to dwell in them.
It isn't the heart of God to abandon you, to leave you alone in your fear, your shame, your guilt, and your condemnation.
It isn't the heart of God to leave you fatherless.
Even when God sent his son Jesus to this earth, it wasn't Jesus' heart to come and then abandon his disciples.
To come and abandon his mom.
To come and abandon the other people who traveled with him.
The people that he ministered to.
You see an orphan is someone who is alone.
And Jesus promises over and over again that you aren't alone.
And I want you to hear that because I am alone a lot.
And when I'm alone a lot, sometimes your thoughts go.
Sometimes they go.
I don't care, like let's just be transparent for a second.
You can read the word of God and you can say, oh man, Lord, I see what you're doing.
And then all of a sudden your thoughts go and you're like, oh that's why that person acts that way.
You can become judgmental and your mind can wander and you end up alone.
Because you end up taking the power of God, the Father, and becoming the judge.
And so when you're alone, you have to remember you're not really alone.
God's there.
And in those moments where you'll sit and you'll think, or in those moments, you see, I used to do the opposite of this.
I didn't ever want to be alone with my thoughts or I didn't want to be alone in the word of God and so I just got really busy doing the ministry of God, which is just the business.
Putting God on top of it.
Like, selling cars for God.
Going to lunch for God.
Doing it for God.
This happens a lot.
This isn't new.
It's not just Christianity.
Anybody who says that it's just Christianity, it's not true.
The Messianic movement, the Hebrew Roots movement, whatever you want to call yourself today, there's a lot of businesses.
And you do that because then you feel like you're accomplishing something.
And this year, the Lord really showed me that we really weren't accomplishing anything.
Because we were never alone with the Lord, so we never got to experience the power and the might of a Father teaching, molding, healing.
And I'm not going to say that the Lord didn't do good things.
The Lord did good things.
There was a lot of good things that happened.
But when you get alone with the Lord and you actually sit in silence and let Him teach you, heal you, some of the things He's shown me that I have forgotten about, I can only imagine what it's going to look like.
If He actually plays, if it actually gives an account of everything we did good and bad when we get to heaven, like, whew, I have forgotten more in a short period of time.
I can only imagine what He's going to show us in our life.
But this year I realized that I was operating out of an orphan spirit, but I'm not an orphan.
I operated out of a mentality that didn't allow God to be my Father, that didn't allow myself to be vulnerable to the fact that maybe I did something wrong.
And the irony of all of that is being an actual earthly father, you can experience through your own children the very issue you have.
So when one of my children, who will not be named, gets disciplined, he immediately gets angry.
Like, I didn't do that.
That wasn't me.
And you can see the shame.
I didn't do that.
That was what they did.
I didn't do that.
And then all of a sudden in my quiet time with the Lord, when I look at situations, it's like how ironic that I'm arguing with my Father the same way.
Lord, I wasn't thinking that.
I wasn't trying to put judgment on them.
And He's like, what do you call it?
I mean, that's exactly what you're doing.
And as a father, He shows me through my own children exactly some of the weaknesses in the areas of my heart that I am still operating as an orphan.
I don't want Him to father me.
I don't want Him to lead me.
I am safer if I control it.
I am safer if I don't let anybody in.
And what happens is we create kings who rule.
We need fathers.
See, what is the difference between a king and a father?
A king takes.
We see this in the Bible, what king Saul.
They take.
They'll take your sons and daughters.
They'll take your money.
They'll take, take, take, take, take for their kingdom.
And what do fathers do?
Good fathers want to bless.
They want to build.
They want them to go further.
I've spoken to a lot of dads in this church.
No matter how you lead, I've never met one father in this church who wants his kids to have less success than they have.
They all want their kids to go further.
They want their sons to be better husbands.
They want their daughters to be better, better wives.
They want them to go further.
And we see this in the spirit of Elijah where it says that the spirit of Elijah will come before Jesus and it will turn the hearts of the fathers to the sons and the sons to the fathers.
So, prophetically speaking today, if we are towards the end of times, then the hearts of the fathers need to turn to their sons and their sons need to turn to the fathers because if the spirit of Elijah comes before Jesus comes, then we should see the fruit of that spirit.
And right now what we see is we see kind of the opposite globally.
We see fathers distancing themselves from their homes.
We get so busy at work, we perpetuate the fact that we're not really orphans, but we're operating out of an orphan mentality.
You see, the orphan spirit, it's not a demon.
It's not something – I hate to even say this, but if it was a demon it would actually be easier because it says we have authority, so it's just like, hey, I cast that out of you in the name of Jesus and the authority of Jesus.
It's gone.
Like, be gone.
Go find some other parking lot to hang out in or whatever.
It's not a demon, so it doesn't just get cast out.
It's a mentality.
It is a lifestyle by which you operate.
Those are harder because they come rooted in your history.
They come rooted in your culture.
They come rooted in the generations of your family, which means they're harder to fall out of agreement with because you have to make new habits.
You have to make new patterns of lifestyle, and that's not something that happens overnight.
This mental state is one that affects absolutely everything we do.
We see it in narcissists.
They have to control everything because if they control everything, then they don't have to be at the mercy of somebody else.
Well, we also see this on the opposite side where people are so passive that they don't want to do anything because they're afraid.
I don't want to upset the apple cart.
So the orphan spirit is not something that is discriminated just based upon one personality type.
Most people have been hurt.
Most people operate out of that hurt through bitterness, walls, and closing yourself off.
This is the absolute opposite of what Jesus modeled for us.
He was willing to leave himself open to the very end of his life.
Think of how Jesus interacted with Judas.
He knew what was going to happen.
That would have been the best time for Jesus to at least be borderline passive aggressive if he wanted to.
Because he loved Judas through that situation, Judas was so overwhelmed with guilt that he tried to make restitution and repentance.
So overwhelmed.
You see, the orphan spirit shapes how we come to conclusions, the process by which we decide how we do our daily life.
And it normally generates a false narrative and a judgment cycle that's built off our own defense mechanisms.
I understand this because I have operated this way for many, many years of my life.
And for whatever reason, this year, I don't know why the Lord decided that I needed to walk through this.
And I'm grateful for him to allow me to do that.
Because there's so much more peace in not having to control everything.
There's so much more peace in understanding that I don't have all the answers.
There's so much more peace in understanding that I can just run to my Father, and I can just fall into his arms, and I can just be healed.
I can be loved.
I can be nurtured.
I like to consider myself a tough person.
And this year, I found great joy in finding peace in nurturing from God the Father.
Great peace.
I'm not afraid to admit it.
I'm not afraid to walk in it.
I like to crawl up into God's arms.
And I like to just sit there and say, teach me, show me, heal me.
I could have had that as an actual physical son.
I had two different fathers.
Both were actively engaged.
One was a little bit more dominant in his personality.
One was definitely more passive in his personality.
And so I could have had that type of physical affection at any point in time.
But he didn't want that, because I was a very stubborn, strong-willed, and rebellious child.
And so now at 40, 41 years of age, the Lord is teaching me how to experience that and how to find peace in not having to think of myself like a Steve Jobs.
Oh, I'm a pioneer of things.
What are you going to pioneer?
Says there's nothing new under the sun.
So yes, he might allow you to produce something, but ultimately it was him who produced it.
And he was the one who put Ephesians, put the gift and the calling inside of you before you were born.
Early in John chapter 14, Philip asked Jesus to show him the Father.
And Jesus says, if you've seen me, then you have seen the Father.
Jesus came to show us the heart of the Father.
The majority of the actions and ministry of Jesus on this earth was to show us who and what a Father does, to model an example of the true Fathership to a people who had abandoned the Father's heart.
Jesus' confrontation with the religious leaders of that day was to confront the religious representation that was supposed to model what a Father does.
Religious leaders of the Pharisaical sect were supposed to be the spiritual fathers.
And to a degree they were from an intellectual standpoint, but the interaction that they had was nothing like what God the Father's heart is.
Samaritans were lesser people.
You can't be around them.
We don't do anything with Gentiles.
Stay away from those dirty Gentiles.
That was the Pharisaical religious leadership of what a Father was like, was compartmentalize what is and is not appropriate.
So when Jesus comes and Jesus dines with tax collectors and Jesus dines with prostitutes and Jesus shares a covenant meal with them, He's modeling in stark contrast to the religious leaders of that day what it means to father and love, because they would not be seen with those people.
Every person throughout history wrestles with exactly what we wrestle with today.
We wrestle with allowing God to father us, to mold us, to walk in the image of Jesus.
We see this in our interactions with our brothers and sisters of different denominations of Christianity.
We see this with people of different ethnic groups.
We see this with people of different status of financials.
Religious culture in America is very much a different mentality.
Most of the other worlds operate in an honor and shame environment.
You bestow honor or you cause shame.
And so as sons, as daughters, when we walk, if we're called gods, if we're Jesus and we're bearing Jesus' name, if we're walking in sonship, then we should be bringing honor to His name.
But do we bring shame to His name through what we do?
Let alone do we bring shame to our personal relationship when we hide away the bitterness and the anger and the hurt and the wrongdoings and the things that are three or four layers deep inside our heart.
In John chapter 13, we see that Jesus came to model through the flesh the works and the nature of the Father to counter the very culture we see in America today.
See, the shortcomings we've experienced with our own fathers and our own relationships and our own environments that are there, we wrestle with those and Jesus had to come and show us what that was like.
I would venture to believe if we look at the pattern of Scripture in the history that the Sadducees, the Pharisees, as religious leaders, will end up being those types of fathers if we go with our own interpretation without having a godly model like there is of Jesus.
In John chapter 13, Jesus shows us yet again what it means to walk as a father.
See in the Hebrew culture, feet were dirty.
So I don't know if you like feet or you don't like feet.
In the Hebrew culture, feet are dirty.
No go.
It's a hard path.
We're not doing feet.
And yet what we see is we see Jesus lower himself to take off his garments and wash his disciples' feet.
You would hire a Gentile slave to do that in the Hebrew culture, but you wouldn't do that yourself.
And we see Jesus do it for his disciples.
Now when I was reading through that this week and again, been reading the Scriptures my entire life, I can remember and visually see times where I would kneel down for my kids.
I'm not a feet guy.
Hard pass.
Don't like feet.
They're ugly.
But my sons do not wear shoes.
It doesn't matter how many times I tell them to wear shoes outside, they don't wear shoes.
If we would have been wearing our shoes, we wouldn't have gotten stung on the bottom of our foot this week.
They refuse to wear shoes.
I can promise you, even with the big old sting that he got on the bottom of his foot this week, I can promise you they will not wear shoes outside.
So their feet are nasty.
There's one room in our house that smells like sweaty boy feet.
The sweaty boy room.
But there's been multiple times throughout my life that I have gotten down and washed my son's feet because I didn't want them to come in the house that way.
And this week that hit different.
That hit different going back through Jesus' example and the cultural context of him being a father and saying to his disciples, not only was he acting as a teacher and a leader and a mentor, but he was a dad to them.
He loved them like they were his sons.
And he would get down and he would wash their feet.
And in the Hebrew time, they didn't have the Court Vision Nikes.
They didn't have vintage vans.
They didn't have all these things.
They had sandals of some sort, leather sandals.
It was dirty.
And yet he lowered himself to his children and he washed their feet to show them honor.
Jesus came to be our father because he did everything his father said.
I just want to emphasize this from our roots-based people.
No one comes to the Father but through me.
Our inheritance of sons and daughters is given to us because God's firstborn son modeled the work of the Father.
It's by that relationship you are now grafted in and adopted to God's family.
And when you are adopted in and grafted into God's family, we have some family rules.
And then we walk out the family rules to the best of our ability.
The rules are not the Father.
The Son is not the rules.
And so I understand all the different theologies and all the different things that are out there, but I've got to tell you, the power of God comes through the breath of God.
Why can I say that?
Because when God spoke his breath, it existed.
And then God changed it up.
He said, hey, I want to create man.
And rather than just saying, let it be, Adam come forth.
He got down into the dust and the dirt of the land and like a potter, he molded Adam.
And when he was done in that intimate act of creating man, he breathed his breath into Adam.
I do not care how much you know about the Word of God if you cannot experience the breath of your Father in your lungs.
Because what we've done with our knowledge in the Western culture, in the Western church, we've done it for a long time and it's not in one denomination.
If we can understand God to the best of our ability, then somehow we can live a righteous life.
And God says, I came to model what it's like for you to be a son and a daughter and to be fathered well because everybody else has made a mistake.
Somewhere along the line, they got in the way and made a mistake.
Yes.
Thank you for the amen.
It was in tongues, but I can interpret it.
So he's very happy with himself.
We have to shift our mentality from the wounds and the pain that we have experienced in the fleshly world, inside the church, inside your homes, inside your marriages.
We have to switch our mentality and offer God the ability to be what he says he is.
If you have not experienced the peace and the patience and the kindness of God, it's not because God isn't that.
It's because there's something you're doing in your practice of your life or something that you're doing and how you approach God that is not allowing God to be God.
And look, I understand.
I went through church hurt.
I went through church splits.
I've gone through organizational splits.
I've gone through these things.
I've seen people in the highest level of ministry who cheated on their wives and had adultery and who have embezzled funds and who've done all this.
Like I understand it.
It's hard to open yourself up in religious circles and environments.
Some of you have been married multiple times and you've been hurt.
Some of you were abused.
It's hard.
I understand it.
I understand it.
But you will never experience the power of God as your father to heal you, to set you free if you're trying to continue to control what God can do in your life.
Somebody is in control of your life.
It's either you or it's him.
Take it from a guy, type A, narcissist, recovering.
His way is so much better.
His way is so much better.
And sometimes we don't even recognize that we're being a rebellious teenager and on our spiritual door we've put, do not enter to God.
Sometimes we don't even realize that we've locked away the deepest, darkest places of our heart and we say, God, you're not allowed to come here.
I believe in God.
I believe he does miracles.
Oh, you do?
I believe he heals.
Oh, you do?
Have you asked him to heal you?
Yeah, I don't want to be let down.
I don't want to be let down.
Okay, well, what if his healing for you doesn't look like what you think your healing should look like?
I mean, he healed me.
And I would have never asked him to heal me the way he chose to heal me in January.
I would have never asked for it, but he did it.
Couldn't have even fathomed what God could do in my heart and my mind and my life.
Couldn't even fathom it.
But he had to bring chaos in order to provide me his order.
Luke chapter 3, 23 through 38, we have that wonderful part of Scripture where it's the begots, begots, begots, begots, begots.
It's where we trace our family lineage back to confirm whether or not we're in the mob, whether or not we've got Jewish blood or whatever.
Luke's doing this for Jesus.
And why is he doing it for Jesus?
It's because there's already a question about the validity of Jesus.
Like Mary is a virgin.
She's a teenager by all extensive purposes.
And people are already questioning.
He's the king of the Jews.
So Luke tracks back his entire genealogy here.
Now and sometimes where they track back Jesus' genealogy, they take it back to Abraham.
And then in other times here in Luke, he actually takes it all the way back to Adam.
You see in the Hebrew culture, the family name and where you come from was important.
And so Luke is putting down in his narrative the fact that this guy you see in front of you is the king.
His family line is legit.
This isn't some random guy who came.
So this guy wasn't just adopted.
This is from the line of God all the way back to the Garden of Eden.
Because we talked last week, Adam was created in the image of God.
And then all of Adam's children were created in the image of Adam.
So he tracks back Jesus' lineage all the way back to Adam.
Why?
Because this helps establish the identity of Jesus as a son of all mankind.
It's your identity.
And what does a son do?
A son builds the father's house.
He builds the father's brand.
That brand becomes his brand as well.
And then he multiplies that throughout the earth, the family name.
So when Jesus is making reference in John chapter 14 and throughout the gospel that he only does what the father does because his father sent me, Luke is important for you to be able to go back and quantify who is his father.
This is why they're asking the questions.
Just show us the father.
You say you're the king.
Show us your father.
Well, he's saying, God is my father.
And last week we talked about that's important because when Jesus is duking it out verbally with the Pharisees and they're like, our father is Abraham.
And he's like, no, your father's the devil.
Well how does he have the authority to say that other than just casting stones to the wind?
Because his father is God.
And Luke helps establish that.
What good can come from Nazareth?
That's like saying what good can come from Dell City?
What good can come from Norman?
What good can come from Moore?
What good can come from OKC?
God can make good and bring good any place he wants to because he creates Tove.
You were created to be in his image.
I think it's also important for us to understand that as the second Adam, it's important that Jesus is tracked back to the lineage of Adam because Adam comes into agreement with the first orphan.
You see, the devil was a creation of God.
The devil was given his father's name.
The devil was given authority by God.
And he became the first orphan when he chose that he would ascend upon his father's throne, that his name would be equal to his father's, and that he was going to take it and make it his own.
He became the first orphan.
Can you imagine what the devil must have felt like in the garden when he watched the intimacy of God forming Adam?
And he said, well, he doesn't treat me like that anymore.
He doesn't treat me with that love.
I don't have that.
I'm going to take it from him.
This is part of what the orphan spirit does inside your homes, inside your churches, inside your jobs.
When you look at others and you're like, well, I don't have that.
Well, I don't get to do this.
Why are those people being kind to them and they're not being kind to me?
And you start to become embittered, envious, jealous, and you start to attack God's other children.
Meanwhile, you're also dying inside.
And because you're dying inside, because you don't have the heart of the Father, because he's not loving you and he's not there and you've closed him off, and the cancer's growing inside of you, and you're just all bound up, you're on a suicide mission to destroy as many people as you can feel exactly the same way that you feel.
Jesus comes along and he says, I don't care.
Your worth is not that.
I love you anyways.
You say, well, how can you love them when they're sinning?
What other way is there?
While we were yet sinners, Christ died.
While we were yet sinners, Christ died.
Christ didn't wait for you to get healed.
Christ didn't wait for you to become a better father.
Christ didn't wait for you to become a better mother.
He died to show you that even though you were still struggling as orphans to do it on your own, to not do it the way of the Father, that he was going to step out and he was going to provide you a way back to the family because he loved you.
There's not a dad I've met who wouldn't give his life for his children.
If somebody's going to harm your children, you will gladly give up your life.
That's not religious.
That's a dad.
It's innate.
A real dad says, nope, if there's going to harm come to my family, I'm going to give myself.
So there's parts of us that were just innate, the nature of God, in the sense that we walk that way.
Then there's other parts of us that are innate in the sense of our own flesh, of the orphan spirit, the devil's spirit who says, but I'm not sure that God's really important.
I'm not sure God can really heal.
I'm not sure this is really relevant.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
The father's DNA, Yahweh's DNA is literally woven into each and every single one of you.
Before you were born, he put a gift, a talent, a skill set inside of you.
And then like a good dad, he's like, you don't want to play baseball anymore?
Okay.
You want to play basketball?
We've gotten so weird now.
It's like, you want to play basketball anymore?
You want to play pickleball?
But it's the same thing.
It's like, okay, so you don't want to be an apostle anymore.
Okay.
Why didn't he give you the gift of being an apostle?
You want to be a teacher?
God gave you a gift and then gave you the opportunity to choose to walk in it.
Many of you don't walk in your gifts.
Many of you don't even know what your gifts are.
God wants to heal you.
I also want to point out for the people I know, I just want to be uber sensitive to those in this room.
We're a church of a lot of children.
We have a lot of kids.
Praise God.
But there are some in this room who haven't been able to have children or just never did have children.
You are a father and you are a mother.
You know how I know?
Because I consider you to be my mom.
I consider Brent to be a spiritual father.
And so you can be mentored and you can be fathered and mothered by other people who aren't your own flesh and blood.
Welcome to the family of God.
Hi.
I said welcome to the family of God.
You coming to the family of God?
Yeah, fantastic.
Fantastic.
But you have that and this is why you see the father in the mother motif with God.
When we come together, it doesn't just have to be in your home.
There's multiple applications.
When we come together, there's a hierarchy in the family.
Interestingly enough, we talk about the New Testament.
We talk about all those things.
But it was Moses' father-in-law who came in and said, hey, I know God's called you, but you need some help.
You need some help.
Like you can't do this on your own.
You can't disciple a million people.
We need to put structures in place.
We need to have people that are there.
Those things are put in communities and they are also modeled in your home.
But you have to be open.
I have to be open to allow Tanya and Brent to mother and father me.
My wife has to be open to allow them to do so.
It takes some vulnerability.
It takes some casting down of things.
It takes some pride you have to cast it down and say, hey, teach me.
Teach me.
Teach me.
Teach me.
Relinquish control.
It's one of the hardest things to do.
Because when you relinquish control, you have to trust that whatever is going to control, whatever is going to guide, whatever is going to lead has your best interest at heart.
Let you in on a little secret.
Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and I could be here all day saying overs and I still wouldn't say it enough.
Genesis to Revelation, God writes testimony after testimony after testimony after testimony after testimony to teach you that he's going to have your best interest in mind and that he wants to take care of you.
Over and over and over and over again.
He uses men, he uses women, he uses donkeys, he uses all kinds of things.
So how messed up is our world when we struggle to allow him to do what he literally said thousands of times and gave thousands of examples throughout the scripture that he's going to do?
How hurt are we?
I'll take him at his word.
If he said it, I'll believe it.
Do you?
I'm asking for a friend.
I would have answered that question, yes.
Yes, I do take him at his word.
And this year God has taught me that I didn't.
There was areas of my life I didn't.
To be fully transparent with him, to be fully walking in confession of shortcomings and not feel like you all have to have all the answers to walk in a place of humility of love of your father.
In Genesis chapter 3, we see that the first assignment for human beings was to guard the home and cultivate the home.
You protect the home, the atmosphere, your family, your relationship, you protect it.
Just like as a spiritual father in this place, I do my best to do that for your family when you come here.
And I ask people who have a good track record of doing it in their own home to help me do that here.
But it's also one of the most important reasons why we spend so much time with the worship pastors and the deacons and with the teaching pastors talking about what they do in their home because what you model in your home, you will model in an environment, whether it's your workplace, whether it's the church, whatever.
So how can you lead positively in any other environment if you're not doing it in your own home?
It's the age old sin.
Cultivate, protect.
You're to protect your home, protect the atmosphere, your family, the relationships you have, and to cultivate it.
Husbands listen to me, if you do not cultivate your marriage, I promise you somebody else will.
Wives, if you don't cultivate your marriage, somebody else will.
I promise you that.
They will.
If you don't cultivate the relationship with your children, somebody else will.
We already looked at the statistics in week one of the amount of people who didn't have a father present and what happened in their home.
If you don't protect and cultivate your relationships, somebody else will.
And that also goes for inside the church family too.
If you come and you just sit in the furthest corner and you don't talk to anybody and you don't get engaged, you'll be the first one to go out the door, somebody will get you.
Somebody will come in and they'll, same thing, God didn't say you would die.
That didn't happen.
You'll be the first person to go out the door.
God allowed the devil in the garden to tempt his children.
But you see, the devil did not honor his father.
He didn't serve his father.
He made the decision that he would rise up and he would promote himself, his agenda, his character, his name.
He was full and is full of bitterness and hatred and spite and envy against God and God's family.
A lot of times we think of the devil as, I'm not like the devil, I'm not sinning like the devil.
If those attributes are in you towards other people in God's family or towards God or some of the blessings you see in other people of God showing honor to people and he's blessing them and you find yourself to be like, oh, why is he blessing them?
Same spirit, same interaction.
Why won't God bless me?
Why can't I experience this from God?
I see them do it.
Oh, God.
Same spirit.
Many of us have fallen in the same trappings that Adam and Eve did.
We see in Luke chapter 4, it says that by listening to the lies of the devil that Adam and Eve had betrayed their father.
If we're listening to lies about God or we're walking through lies about God or we're walking through lies of our fathers or we're walking through lies of other people's fathers, then we're walking in betrayal.
And when betrayal came, shame also came.
And the consequences of the shame was that guilt came into their lives.
And when you have guilt and you have that oppressive shame in your life, it robs you of who God said you are.
See, guilt is something you can repent of, you can turn away from.
But shame is something you need someone else to come and lift you up and pull you up and pull you out of and restore you.
Israel was shamed and brought shame on God and yet God sent Jesus.
And then when you have guilt and you have shame comes fear.
The fear of being exposed, the fear of being rejected, the fear of not being received by your father.
You retreat.
You retreat from the dinner table, you retreat from the interactions, you retreat.
God doesn't retreat.
When you retreat, He stays exactly where He was.
Yet the distance grows further, not because of anything He did, but because of what you did.
We see this in the garden with the shame.
Who told you you were naked?
Romans 8 tells us that you weren't given a spirit of fear and that you aren't slaves.
Through Jesus you've been adopted.
The man who gave His life to be slashed, beaten, mocked, spit upon so that He could guide you, protect you, and heal you.
That He could provide a way back to the family.
When we walk in an orphan spirit, we tend to cover up and project something that isn't true.
It's not really who we are.
And so we never really have any intimacy in our relationship.
And if we're practicing that with our friends, with our spouses, with people at work, how much more does it hinder your relationship with your Heavenly Father?
When we hide who we really are, we hide from true intimacy.
Intimacy of a relationship with our sons and our daughters, with our friends.
I have some friends that I have 100% faith that I could call, and it does not matter what I said to them, they would still love me and they would still walk with me.
I try to model that friendship for my friends as well.
Why?
Because this is the sonship of a Father who can heal, who can restore, who says you're never too far gone, who will leave the 99 to go find the one.
The one who's a pig farmer, the one who's out buying prostitutes, the one who's out squandering the name of His Father.
He will go find Him and He will heal them.
But how many in this room have experienced that love and that healing from their Father?
Many in this room, you can tell me what happens in the Torah portion.
You can tell me all of why the Trinity isn't in the Bible or why it is in the Bible or whatever your thing is.
You can tell me all about the cosmology of the world.
You can tell me all about what you should or should not do on the Sabbath.
But how many of you have found the Hebrews chapter 4 rests in the arms of your Father, Jesus the Sabbath day rest?
How many of you have broken down the walls of sin and shame and guilt in your own life and allowed God to restore you to the family name?
Not your name, the family name.
Some of you are waiting for the restoration of your last name.
If I can just bring the McClure name, if I can bring the Frankie name, if I can bring the Jeffries name, whatever your name is.
And you may never get the opportunity to do that in this life.
But you all are granted the opportunity to take on His name, be a part of His family.
The Roman culture of that time of the first century of Yeshua says when you take on and you're adopted into His family, He takes your debts, He takes your pain, He takes your shame, He takes your guilt, He gives you a new name, He cancels out any of.
.
.
Like you can't even go do the $23 background check online because it doesn't exist anymore.
You're not there.
You're bought and paid for in the family of God.
Are we walking in that freedom?
Some of you do, some of you don't.
And the last three weeks has told me that.
And the most important thing I can do as a pastor, worship team you can come, is not fill your head with knowledge, it is to help you experience God the Father through the power and the presence of Him.
Because when you cast down what you have and you start to follow Him, He then models discipleship.
He teaches you how to walk.
Well if He did this as Jesus in the flesh, how much more when He says that it's for your benefit that the helper will come, that it will give you a new spirit and a new heart to teach you how to walk.
How much more beneficial is it for you when you lay it down if you allow the Lord to actually empower you.
But sooner or later, you have to stop coming to church, you have to stop coming to your worship dances in the car, you have to stop coming to these places of your relationship with God and see them as entertainment or as something that you just must do.
And you have to start treating them more like the altar of the Lord where you can be refined, you can be burned, and you can be pleasing in the sight of God.
The power of God came and dwelt in the temple and the tabernacle.
And if this is the temple and the tabernacle that we currently have right now, He can dwell in there and let the fire burn away the things of this world.
But you actually have to cast your cares upon Him and you have to say, Dad, I'm ready for you to love me and heal me.
So many people are so closed off.
As we conclude this series, as we conclude this message, you cannot experience the power of God while you try to control Him.
I understand people have been hurt.
I get it.
I feel the same way you do.
I've been hurt too.
But I have never experienced the power of God while I try to control the power of God in my life.
And when He showed me that I had this orphan spirit that I needed to control and I need to operate this way, I hit my knees and I just said, I'm sorry, I didn't even know.
I thought this is what we do.
You know, type A people, it's what we do.
There's not a hill I won't take.
There's not a mountain I won't climb.
There's not a fight I won't win.
I might literally die too, but I'm going down.
I'm swinging.
We're going for it.
And He said, that's great.
All those imaginary fights you've won.
All those things you controlled.
How's the last year been for you?
How's the last 30 days been for you?
Do you really control that?
Was that your wisdom?
And I started to think back in what I would have done, what I would have done a year ago.
I was like, oh, I didn't do that this time.
I wonder why I didn't operate that way.
And I started to realize that I was actually opening up my heart to the Lord and allowing the Lord to do things.
But I didn't realize that's what I was doing.
And when those revelations come, I had to ask myself, how do I expect to see healings, signs and miracles?
How do I expect to see people who are wrestling with pornography or are wrestling with anger or guilt or shame?
How do I expect them to experience the power of God to heal them, to restore them, to set them free if all we do is try to manifest the spirit and the power of ourselves?
If everything in this church service is so controlled, then we can say all we want, God, come move.
The scripture says where two or three are gathered in His name, He's there.
So we know you're in the room.
You're theologically correct.
He's in the room.
He's just not allowed to do anything.
He's in the room, but we took His mic.
Today as we respond, I'm not saying God's not in you.
I'm not saying God's not in your life.
But how many of you have taken His microphone?
How many of you have locked them in the shed?
How many of you have shut yourself off to the power of God to heal you, to restore you, to outpour His miracles, His signs and wonders through you because you're afraid to get hurt?
You're afraid somebody will judge you.
Guess what?
They're already judging you.
As a pastor, you're already being judged.
Everybody judges everybody the moment they walk through the door or someplace.
It's happening.
So wouldn't you rather be judged by the fruit of God working and manifesting in your life?
Wouldn't you rather that be the gossip they talk about?
Wouldn't that be what you want the testimony to be?
I want to go talk to that guy because when that guy prayed for me, I got healed.
I want to go talk to that guy because I see that guy in his relationship with his wife and his sons and his daughters.
And man, I want to be like that man.
God is showing His fruit of His Spirit through that person.
Or hey, I want to be like that lady because that lady is just amazingly kind and compassionate.
And those are things that were not put into my DNA.
And so like I need you to come speak them into my DNA because the Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.
I'm not.
I'm quick to anger.
I'm quick to judgment.
I'm quick to not being compassionate.
I'm judgmental.
I'm haughty.
Little by little, I have to lay those down and let the Lord heal me, mold me, make me.
Maybe that's not your struggle.
Maybe your struggle is something else.
But you've been adopted into a family.
You've been given a birthright.
You've been given an inheritance.
And today as we respond, you have to do something with what God's given you.
God is a multiplier.
Through His sonship, He wants to revolutionize the world.
He wants to bring His kingdom to this earth.
Through His sonship, He wants to multiply.
In the parable of the talents, if you give me something, if He wants to multiply and He gave me and He entrusted me with something and I do nothing with it and I say, hey, I just buried it because I knew you were going to be mad if you came back.
And He says, you're wicked.
Take it and give it to the other ones.
Multiply the talents He's given you.
You have to respond to what God has done in your life and be grateful and be thankful.
You have to respond to laying down your struggles.
If you can't get to a point where you can see God as Father and say, I'm willing to lay something down, you can't be healed.
The Lord has healed a lot of things in this church in a really short period of time.
I don't even understand it.
I just know He's gracious and compassionate.
I know God wants to heal you today.
I know God wants to love you today.
I know God wants you to walk in your calling today.
I know God wants you to experience something maybe you've never experienced before in your life.
Maybe you've never experienced the love of a father or the nurturing nature of a father.
Maybe it's so twisted in your mind that you're like, I can't even do that because we've got too many Epstein Island people out here.
Guess what?
God isn't creepy.
He's perfection.
We're the ones who make it creepy.
It's not creepy to crawl into the arms of your dad and let him love you and hug you.
It's not creepy for a man to cry.
It's not creepy for men to put their hands up in abandonment of worship and say, I'm not enough.
If you can't come and do something with me, this isn't enough.
That's not creepy.
That's God.
And so today, as we sing, the altar is open.
If you need to come pray, we'll pray with you.
If you want to get on your knees, that's fine.
If you don't want to get on your knees, that's fine.
But don't allow the spirit of God to be closed off from your heart.
Don't allow the power of God to be closed off from your life.
Don't allow the love of a father to be excommunicated from your walk.
Because it literally will change every area of your life.
It will change how you interact with your spouse.
It will change how you interact with your friends.
It will change how you interact with your children.
Because it first changed in how you interacted with your heavenly father.
And he is perfect in all of his ways.
Amen.
