Father’s Love 3 – A Family Losing Its Function Brings the Heart of Orphan
Thursday, 17th August 2023
Pastor Jing Cheng
Proverbs 15:13 says, ‘A merry heart makes a cheerful countenance, but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken.’ After we are baptised, it’s a beginning for us to restore our heart from the hurt of the world. Father’s love is not on the appearance but to help us manage and heal our inside. We need to manage our heart, we need the Father to come into our heart, to cleanse us and to restore us. It’s easy for us to use our outward appearance to cover our mess inside, but the Father is coming to our heart and renew us.
Do we want everyone to love us? Or can we satiating only with the Father’s love? We must deal with our heart first, it’s never about our presentation and outward appearance. The world will reject us and disappoints us. If we want the world to recognise us then we will always feel we are unwanted and we are not understood. Our core beliefs can be like bitter roots inside us, they make us think that our lives cannot be changed. But the Father’s love will tell us who we are, He will affirm our identity as children of God, and we no longer need to live to please anyone.
The core beliefs decide how we look at ourselves, do we see ourselves as the way God sees us? When we wrongly define ourselves we will not live a happy life and we will be full of self-accusation and self-denial. When we don’t see our true identity, we will also fall into negative emotions. Our emotions are greatly influenced by how we see ourselves and how we see the Father’s love in us.
Judges 6:12-16 says, ‘And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him, and said to him, “The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor!” Gideon said to Him, “O my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.” Then the Lord turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours, and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent you?” So he said to Him, “O my Lord, how can I save Israel? Indeed my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.” And the Lord said to him, “Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man.”’ Gideon’s wrong belief taught him that he was weak and small, but God’s Word encouraged him and gave him a new perspective of himself.
Parents thought growling at their children can help them to humble and not be proud, but many words we heard from our parents may wrongly define us and grow many bitter roots in us. We may have anxiety, fear, and self-condemnation. Life experience will affect our beliefs, our beliefs will affect our core values, our values will affect our emotions, our e motions will affect our actions, and our actions will create more life experiences. This is a circle going around, and we must start seeing things differently and behaving differently to break the cycle.
We don’t like to be compared, when we are being compared, how we look at ourselves is twisted. Our childhood experience will determine how we look at ourselves, we see what others have and what we don’t have, our needs are not fulfilled, our desires are not satisfied, and we see us as unworthy or unimportant. Then we will start to tell us to work harder, to prove our worth, and to reach people’s expectations. This is the orphan’s heart in the making, and the growing of the orphan spirit.
We will wear a mask, we will want to be perfect, we don’t want people to see our weaknesses, and we don’t want to reveal our true self to others. We may hear many messages about the Father’s love, but we may still not believe in the Father’s love. The way we see ourselves will also affect the way we see the Father. Can we really see God’s love for us? He is not here to hurt us, He is not here to punish us, but He is here to love us.
So how can we receive the heart of the son? We must differentiate the voice of God and the voice of the world. We are so used to negative voices, saying we are not important and we are not matter. But God’s Word will give us strength, so get rid of all the voices that are not from God. When we really know God’s heart, then we will know God’s voice. Galatians 3:26 says, ‘For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.’ We are all sons and daughters of God, there are so many promises from God for us, we must know His heart, we must know His Word, and call Him our Abba Father. Then we can experience His love abundantly.