- Play:
- Song Name: Session 2 - Paul Worth and Dave Weston - The Orphan Heart Condition
- Artist: Elijah Anointining for Northamptonshire
- Album: Fathers Heart Conference
- Year: 2013
Dave Weston - Session 2
The Orphan Heart Condition
Symptoms of Pain and Interpreting the signs
God calls us into perfect and loving relationship with Him as a father. We live in the new covenant of Grace, with a Father on the walls not waiting for us to come home and beat us, but to welcome us. But when our view of father is warped by our own experience of parent’s, or simply from being disconnected to the perfect heavenly father, our lives can be troubled and we are left with an orphan heart, with little expectation of good or blessing.
Our experiences cause various signs and symptoms to be felt and manifested. My father was a good father, loving in the best way he knew how, yet a warped view of the Father heart of God can still be conditioned by applying earthly parenting to Godly parenting.
One memory I have of my childhood is sitting in the evening meeting at church with my mum and Joy my sister whilst my dad was on the platform preaching, and Joy would get me into trouble by messing around! My mother in her exasperation would utter the dread words: ‘wait till we get home!’ The rest of the service, which seemed to drag on for hours, was torture as I awaited my fate. The walk or drive home was conducted in silence on my part as I awaited my punishment. And the hardest part of all would actually be the fact that my mum would sometime remember I had been bad, and sometimes not. If I knew I was gonna get slapped it would have made it a whole lot easier. But there was this big unknown. But my usual way to deal with it would be to be as unnoticed as possible, and sneak upstairs to the bathroom and sit it out in silence. After about 20 minutes, it felt safe to go downstairs. But, sometimes, I would hear the heavy footsteps coming up the stairs and hear the words ‘David! David, where are you?’…
I tell you this story not because this incident scarred me. He disciplined me as He saw best and he was probably right. But I share this by way of illustration because it produced in me certain symptoms and signs. And an Orphan Heart, a heart with a view of our Heavenly Father warped by wounds be it from mothers or fathers or whatever, will find that they carry symptoms and signs which may stay hidden, but are known to you and when the pressure comes on they come to the surface.
For me, this episode evoked within me symptoms of fear and dread and uncertainty. Symptoms are feelings or attitudes you carry within you which indicate to you something is wrong. The sign this produced in me was that I hid myself away. The sign is the result, or the output or outworking, behavioural patterns produced by the internal symptom.
Now the wounds we carry which damage our view of God our Father have the power to impact every area of our life, and take truth and turn it into hurt. For example:
See God as Master IMAGE OF GOD See God as a loving Father
Live by the Love of Law THEOLOGY Live by the Law of Love
Insecure/Lack Peace SECURITY Rest and Peace
Strive for the praise, approval and acceptance of man NEED FOR APPROVAL Totally accepted in God’s love and justified by grace
“Must” be holy to have God’s favour, increasing a sense of shame and guilt MOTIVE FOR PURITY “Want to” be holy; nothing to hinder intimate relationship with God
Self-rejection from comparing yourself to others SELF-IMAGE Positive and affirmed because you know you have such value to God
Competition, rivalry and jealousy toward others’ success and position PEER RELATIONSHIPS Humility and unity as you value others and are able to rejoice in their blessings and success
See authority as a source of pain; distrustful toward them and lack a heart attitude of submission VIEW OF AUTHORITY Respectful, honouring; you see them
as ministers of God for good in your life
Fight for what you can get! FUTURE Sonship releases your inheritance!
The wounds or blessings of Fathers go towards creating our view of God. And this list we see here, along with a few obvious symptoms and signs I am going to show you now, help us to recognise the Orphan Heart condition.
Now church, I have a thing about hanging around the streets of Negativity City looking for problems! It is possible I think to jump on negative things and try to make them fit into our lives, almost looking for trouble and engaging in personal witch hunts! So remember this has purpose: the goal is healing and health, and we refuse condemnation! Ask the Holy Spirit to bring to your heart what He wants to show you, because it is only revelation that will change us. Otherwise we can wallow in self and failure.
I am going to give you some symptoms, internal feelings which can demonstrate am orphan heart, disconnected from the true love of the Father. Ask yourself if you recognise any of these in yourself. And I will highlight a couple of them…
Symptoms of an Orphan Heart
Abandonment: feelings of being left alone or deserted. Can come from temporary acts of abandonment – dropping off at nursery, etc., or the wound caused when a parent leaves permanently. Can leave a sense of being utterly forsaken, producing low self-esteem
Rejection: This can be an act or a state of being. Can be produced actively (e.g. bullying) or passively (by neglect or silence). Deliberate exclusion can result in isolation and pain. The act of rejection generally intends to harm and leaves a sense of little or no worth in the one rejected.
Loneliness: This is not simply the condition of being on your own: it is having no one to share your heart with or share intimacy with. Those who have suffered relationship breakdowns with their father can feel dislocated, uprooted and isolated – an outcast
Hopelessness: A person separated from a fathers love can carry around with them a sense of despair, unable to think of themselves as having gifts, potential or a future. A good father is a cheer-leader and a dream-giver. Without this understanding the future is bleak
Worthlessness: Shame about who they are can radiate from the heart of an orphan. They carry little or no sense of honour. They do not hear a father saying how proud they are of them, or how beautiful they are. They easily believes lies about themselves and presume failure
Sadness: An outward comedic approach can mask a deep sadness. A void is filled with grief and upset which should be filled with the love of a father.
Insecurity: The absence of the reassuring and affirming love of a father can produce symptoms of profound insecurity. This person requires and lives off constant affirmation from those around them. They are unsure of their own identity as they have never accepted their true selves and find it hard to believe others would accept them.
Hypersensitivity: Twinned with insecurity, those unsure of their own identity can carry symptoms of hypersensitivity towards the words, actions and even gestures of others. It turns harmless signals into hurtful, spiteful attitudes against them. This can create a reclusive character who avoids contact or an obsessive character prone to fits of jealousy and envy
Fear: Having no positive father figure can mean an absence of security and safety right where you would expect it to be, bringing a constant state of fear regarding people and events
Poverty: A good father is a provider, and the absence of this can produce a poverty-mentality: never having enough or constantly hoarding away for the future. This in turn can generate a selfish attitude. Also, it can produce a life devoid of expectation, good and of blessing
Signs of an Orphan Heart
Mistrust: Being unable to trust your father can result in a person unable to trust others, arising from a deep suspicion of the motives and purposes of others. This mistrust can stretch from people to organisations and institutions. Churches and church leaders included. This attitude often leads to that person being mistrusted by others
Hiding: A person battling an orphan heart can find it hard to show their true selves or feelings. However much they are hurting inside, they conceal their emotions. This can lead to a person saying nothing of meaning, even if they talk a great deal
Superficiality: Linked with hiding, some people never allow others to see below a very superficial level. They comment generally on life and focus on material things, or in Christian circles are happy to debate doctrine or practices. But they never delve very far below the surface for fear of exposing the hurt of a fatherless heart. Such people can form relationships not based on what they can give but on what they can get
Attachments/Addiction: Wounded people can become attached or addicted to objects because they mask pain, alter moods and takes our minds off reality. This can involve substance abuse but could incorporate such things as sex/relationships, shopping, materialism, danger, sport, computer games, gadgets, etc.
Manipulation: An orphan heart can be highly manipulative, seeking to gain personal advantage and control of others by underhand means. This is generally born of fear. Having been hurt before, there is deep fear of being hurt again and so such a person is eager to manipulate people and circumstances to protect themselves
Anger: An obvious sign, an orphan heart can be prone to regular bouts of anger and resentment. This can come for example from wounds of abandonment as they react in anger to their father and therefore to anyone else who causes them pain. Or from abusive behaviour carried out towards them which causes them in their anger to do the same to others
Independence: An orphan heart may seek to be free from control, oversight and guidance from other people. Disconnection from fathers in general society has produced viral independence: ’No one can tell me what to do’. Where the father has been absent there are a lack of boundaries and therefore a rejection of authority figures; a cruel or abusive father can produce an unwillingness to submit and a presumption that others seek simply to control them
Striving: An orphan heart is constantly working, never at rest, seeking to find solutions to all the symptoms and signs listed by their own effort and means.
Some points from these above
Symptoms:
Hopelessness. To be devoid of hope is a horrible place to be. You hear many people speak of their future with no expectation of good or of God. This is the great lie and deception caused by the orphan heart. It removes Gods greatest achievement, the cross, from our lives and reduces the Christian to the same plane as those in the world. Paul said in Ephesians 2:12
‘That at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.’
To live without hope is effectively to live without God and a revelation of His heart. It is a deception. So many Christians use language exactly the same as those in the world: well the economy is down so I guess we will struggle; there is a history of heart disease in my family so I will get that too; I’ll never amount to anything… We speak as if the cross never happened. Ask yourself and one another: what about the cross? An understanding of the Fathers Heart of love restores hope to its throne.
Poverty. A poverty mentality can rob individuals and the church of all the goodness of God. We have a fear of the word ‘prosperity’ but I am afraid you cannot escape it in the Word of God. He wants to prosper you. He wants to bless you. This is not just money of course, far more than that, but I believe it includes this provision. The lie that God wants to keep us humble through trouble and strife may be alive if you have a misunderstanding of the Fathers Heart of love. I want to bless my family! I want to provide for them. Would the God who put that in me not have it in His own heart? How much more then does God feel this way about us? You can work for and get reward from the world, and enjoy it. But it will come with strings. The best kind of prosperity is Gods. Proverbs 10:22
‘The blessing of the LORD makes one rich, and He adds no sorrow with it.’
Signs:
Superficiality. A big problem, especially maybe for guys here. The macho propensity to say everything is ok, to deflect hard questions and deal only with ‘men’s’ stuff is legendary. We don’t like to face issues, whether it means opening up to our wives or the doctor! But this is so dangerous and unnecessary. Many pastors or leaders will recognize the experience of having met with people and spent an hour talking with them and realised you have learned nothing at all! We must understand that darkness is the devils domain. If he can keep things in darkness he will succeed. But when the light is exposed to it, the darkness has to flee away. It may be painful but it is more than worth it. James talked about confessing our trespasses to one another so we can be healed for this very reason. This is not talking about forgiveness but healing. Why confess it to one another? Because you expose it to the light. Those fears that keep you from addressing the deep issues of your heart can be healed today.
Striving. For me, this last issue is actually prevalent in all of us. The effort to achieve, to win, to be accepted, to perform, to earn respect and love, trying to measure up to fathers expectations, to find acceptance especially from God. This is the major sign we all experience and is actually the battle Paul describes between law & grace, and where I want to end today with sharing a bit of my testimony…
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Paul Worth - Session 2
The Orphan Heart
Intro: Session on the orphan heart what is the orphan heart? What are the effects of an orphan heart?
Wounded heart > wounded behaviour
In a fatherless generation there is a deep and sorrowful cry;
Lucien Lawrence: Dear Father Christmas, (p.69 I am Your Father- M Stibbe)
Orphan Heart not Orphan Spirit > wound that needs healing not a spirit which can be cast out.
Orphaned physically orphan by degrees because of poor father
All orphaned spiritually because of the fall
1 Imperfect Fathers
No one has a perfect earthly father > we need to acknowledge and forgive where they failed us (whether deliberate or not)
• Distant or Passive Father: rarely speaks his love or shows emotion toward you / feel rejected
• The Authoritarian Father : over bearing and demanding wants obedience not intimacy / feel worthless
• The Absent Father: through death or divorce love and affirmation has not been communicated / feel abandoned
• The Abusive Father: deliberately inflicting hurting you emotionally and or physically / destroys emotions
• The Performance based Father: love is conditional based on achievement / driven
• The Good Father: loved so well that we find theres little need for a heavenly Father
Combination of earthly fathers and spiritual orphan condition > wounds > negative feelings and behaviours
rejection, shame, hyper sensitive, critical, perfectionism
2 An Orphaned Race
We may have had great earthly fathers but we are all spiritual orphans
Genesis 3:1-10, 22-24 Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field
Two key ingredients of the orphan heart separation and shame > covered themselves and hid
Covered themselves > shame negative feeling about who I am a loss of identity
Hid > separation fear loss of intimacy
An orphan heart keeps us from intimacy with God we hide (in Christian circles we put on the mask)
God wants to restore identity and intimacy
Little wonder that the revelation of Christ is a revelation of the Father
God as Father mentioned 16 times in OT and 160+ in the Gospels alone!
John 14:9-11 Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves.
The Spirit of Adoption
Intro: All of us suffer with orphan heart what is the cure? The Spirit of adoption
If we are going to be healed and restored then we need to receive the Spirit of adoption
Capital S Spirit because this is part of the role of the Holy Spirit
1 Servants or Sons?
Story of Prodigal Son > son returns to his father
Luke 15:17-21 "But when he came to himself, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants
Many of us stay as servants and orphans > we stop at the point of confession
We dont receive His embrace His kiss
2 Adoption Legally a son
Eph 1:3-5 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,
Amazing that God predestined us to adoption
Dont get caught in theological debate > important truth > God chose you despite your sin
It was His good pleasure! > because He is a good Father > it was His desire, His plan, because He loves you!
Paul writes with understanding of Roman adoption
Childless couple adopt son of slave
Lifted from slavery > Debts cancelled > heir to estate (puts us in credit!)
New person > old person no longer exists
Legally a son > legally free but are we actually free (like prison cell that we choose to live in even though its open)
3 Adoption Living as a son
Rom 8:14-15 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."
Free from fear orphans live with fear > anxiety (what will become of me?) > fear of what others think > fear of being alone / abandoned / rejected God wants to break off fear!
God wants us to receive the Spirit of adoption > imparted to your spirit > know that you are accepted, loved, liked
First fruits (v21) the Spirit of adoption is just the beginning (explore your sonship)
We are going to ask God for healing of Father wounds
We are going to repent of orphan tendencies (and receive forgiveness)
We are going to ask for the Spirit of adoption