Father Never Abandoned Jesus, He will Never Abandoned You

As one who has experienced the reality of an "orphan heart" I would say that my deepest and most pervasive fear is abandonment.  I know that there are probably those who had a great upbringing and struggle very little with this fear.  I also know after ministering to many in the last 18 years, that many have been impacted by this very core and primal fear.  I honestly feel like Father has peeled back many layers of the onion in healing and freeing me from this fear.  Yet I still find this fear exists in dimensions of my heart.  Simply being transparent and real with you.

I know in my mind the Scriptures, "I will never leave you, nor forsake you." (Hebrews 13:5)  Yet I would say I like others may have distortions in both our head and heart theology.  Somewhere along the way we may have heard beliefs like, "God turned His back on Jesus on the cross because He could not look at sin".  It was so comforting to me when someone pointed out from Matthew 27:46 when Jesus cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" that Jesus identified with my experience of abandonment.  There was such a sense that finally someone understood but my heart was far from settled in God's love.  Since the core place of abandonment was my father's suicide when I was 6 years old, the belief in this broken part of my heart was that this is what fathers do (all including Father God).

At a core level I realize there is a core part of my heart that still believes this lie about all fathers.  I recently wrote about a broken "truster", now I am beginning to get revelation as to why.  I don't believe I am the only one who longs to trust God more fully and wholeheartedly, yet seem unable to live this out. There are times when an encounter with God transforms a dimension of our hearts, that later we can then articulate with our minds/logic.  Other times God takes us on a journey to change our thinking to the truth leading to us having a heart encounter with Him.  Is it heart theology or head theology?  I believe it is both that God is after transforming.

How are we as the Body of Christ going to go onto maturity in Father's love (1 John 4:18) and be a dwelling place of God if we are plagued by fear of abandonment?  Father must have dealt with abandonment at the finished work of the cross.  If we look at 2 Corinthians 5:19a we read, "namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself..."  I earlier mentioned Jesus on the cross saying, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", this is taken from Psalm 22 but let's look at another part of Psalm 22.  It was common practice in this Hebrew culture for someone to start quoting a verse, everyone knew it was implied to quote the whole chapter.  Jesus quoted the first line of Psalm 22 to refer to the whole Psalm.  Psalm 22:24 says, "For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Nor has He hidden His face from him; But when he cried to Him for help, He heard."  Between these two Scriptures (there are many others) I believe we have built the case that Jesus identified with our abandonment but God overcame abandonment at the cross by reconciling us with Himself forever.  Since God dwells in us "in Christ" and the Holy Spirit lives in us, we can never be abandoned.  Now I pray for the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth to our hearts, so we can rest in Father's love.

Trust comes out of the heart (Proverbs 3:3-5), so if we have a problem trusting then there is a heart issue.  Trust is rooted in relationship and knowing someone, so for us to trust God we must know He has never abandoned us and never will.

Never Abandoned,
Bret

Jesus Our Model for Sonship

As we talk about sonship there is often a focus on the Father's love and living in that place of love.  This is very important and yet at the same time we never want to forget that Jesus is our model for sonship.  If Jesus did not come to the earth there is no way for us to be sons and daughters of God having the very DNA of God flowing in us.  Jesus lived His life being focused on being a Son to His Father, living in the Father's love, submitting to the Father's will, and on the Father's mission.  When you live from an Orphan Heart you are not subject to Father's mission but your own.  Jesus lived in full dependence on the Father as a man rightly-related to God.

One of the keys of Jesus living as a Son was his submission to the Father at all times which result in His obedience.  Hebrews 5:8 tells us how Jesus learned obedience, "Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered."  I did not understand this verse because how could the perfect Son of God need to learn obedience by the things He suffered.  Wasn't He simply always obedient.  Did His suffering mean everything that happened to Him on the cross or was I missing something?

Jesus in order to be a High Priest that was completely acceptable to God needed to meet certain requirements, one of them fulfilling the Law and another to be the Pure Spotless Lamb.  Jesus was also the High Priest that Hebrews tells us was also acceptable to us in that He was tempted in all ways yet without sin.  He had to know what it was like to be fully human and be under all the pressures, difficulties, temptations, troubles, and even all it means to grow up human.  Learning obedience by the things He suffered meant being under earthly authority that was imperfect, full of sin, and orphan at times.  This included submitting to His earthly parents, their rules, directions, care, their sin, and their failings.

As a Son of God and also son of Joseph and Mary, Jesus walked in humility by submitting to their authority even when they were wrong.  He suffered because He knew the Perfect Authority of His Father but He willingly submitted Himself and honored His earthly father and mother.  He even apprenticed under His father Joseph from age 18 to 30 as a carpenter.  He is the Son of God and yet Joseph is telling Him how to work with wood, when He is the Creator of the trees.  Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness, being tempted by the enemy to take orphan "short cuts" on His Father's Mission of reconciling us with God.

If Jesus learned obedience by the things He suffered as a Son, we also have an opportunity to learn obedience when we suffer or come under someone that our flesh does not want to submit to.  When we live from an orphan heart we are looking for shortcuts, escapes, or some form of comfort to relieve any suffering.  I don't believe that Father is focused on us suffering, He wants us to learn obedience and submission as a son.

Learning to Live as a son,
Bret

Trust and Rest in Father's Embrace

I am discovering that an important dynamic in this journey of sonship is rest.  Yet the very dimension of relationship with Father that I desire most in this season of my life, seems at times the most difficult and far off.  I am standing on Matthew 11:28-30, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”  I have spent time listening to soaking messages, quietly worshiping, allowing the Lord to bring healing to my heart, and yet the elusive reality of rest seems to escape me.

I know I am not the only one who struggles to enter into rest (Hebrews 4:9-11), yet rest is an important part of our inheritance "in Christ" and our sonship.  One very important dimension of relationship with Father I have found to be critical for rest is trust.  We often think of the great trust in God it takes to give extravagantly, be a missionary overseas, to boldly witness to those who don't know Christ, or to prophesy truth that others may question.  These are just a few but to do great exploits for God means operating in a high level of trust.  Yet I find my "truster" is broken at some level, while my head and heart long to trust God there is a little boy part of my heart that fiercely holds on to not trusting.

When you are in an environment when people are stepping out in trusting God and taking risks, when you have a broken "truster" then self-condemnation quickly sneaks in.  I remember reading Proverbs 3:5 talking about trusting in the Lord with all your heart and not leaning on your own understanding; thinking deep inside that would be amazing but it's not possible for me.  Yet Jesus reiterates this same anchor for all of life as the Great Commandment in all of the Gospels (Love the Lord with all your heart, soul or mind, and all your strength).

So where does a person with a broken "truster" go.  We must take the journey of discovering the Father's love for every part of our hearts through Jesus because trust is built through love.  In the beginning of our lives while we were in the womb we learned to trust our connection with our mothers (umbilical cord) and even our heart beating in rhythm with her knowing that our needs would be met.  Trust is not some extra that we get, it is a critical dimension to all of life and relationships.  Then as we grew, we were very dependent especially on our mother for all our basic needs to met, especially in the first five years of life.  This is the time of developing trust and also the place that we can because of broken trust get our "truster" broken.  Father through Christ is able to heal those broken places of trust in our heart, so that we can learn to fully trust Him as He expresses His love to the most distrusting, fearful, and doubting places in our heart.

Trusting and Resting in Him,
Bret

The Majesty of Receiving

I have heard it said that the current revival we are seeing impact the United States is a "grace" movement.  God's grace is all about what God has done on our behalf through the finished work of Jesus Christ, as opposed to what human beings try to do to reach God.  Jesus introduces the New Covenant in the Sermon on the Mount completely opposite of the Pharisee and Sadducees of the day. They required more and more laws and rules of the people to be acceptable to God, while Jesus begins with "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:3)  This is like the torrents of heaven's waters being opened up among a people living in a spiritual desert for the last 400 years who lived daily with their oppressors.

In stark contrast to the mounting 600+ Levitical laws that were administered by the increasingly legalistic Pharisees and Sadducees, Jesus offered to those spiritually parched living water that the only requirement was to admit their need.  Jesus introduces a radical New Covenant that is based on believing and receiving, instead of the Law which stirred orphan hearted desires of earning, striving, legalistic obedience, anxiety, performance, competition, jealousy, envy, and the like.  The Law was good and Holy, yet there lie a sickness in each person's heart that was exposed by the Law but had gone unhealed like a growing cancer.

The New Covenant in God's love came to address the deepest cancers of the heart, mind, soul, and body through a restored relationship with the Father in Christ's blood.  The most difficult part of this Covenant is that there is no room for pride, selfish ambition, earning, or performance.  We need to learn to receive from Father as a child, because He has everything that we need, long for, and crave.  Romans 5:17 says, "For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ."

I will be honest I struggle to rest and receive from God this abundance of grace that I see spread out across the pages of the New Testament and the majestic life of Jesus.  There are many reasons and excuses I could make for not being a good receiver, yet I look again to Jesus.  Jesus Christ as the Son of God received every word, direction, affirmation, and thought from the Father while on the earth.  As a son He was always attentive to His Father and through the intimate relationship delighted to do His Father's will.  Father mold me into image of the Son as a receiver that I may also be a giver as Jesus was.

Learning Sonship,
Bret