The Orphan Spirit

Posted in Daily Meditation on 03. Feb, 2010

I’ve heard several people mention “the orphan spirit” lately. While I don’t like calling everything wrong with us a spirit, I understand the purpose behind it and can at least engage the term in dialogue.

What is an orphan spirit? It’s a lifestyle, attitude, and belief that one is unloved, unworthy of love, unlikely to receive love, and all alone. People with this attitude are typically a drain on others. They have a victim mentality most of the time and simply expect less than what God has promised.

Is that you? For that matter, is that me?

It’s a question worth asking. I’ve just recently had a time with God where I talked out this issue.

Side Note: Here’s what I do. I usually get ideas and questions while I drive, so I record my voice with the Evernote app on my Android phone (the less-than-fabulous Motorola CLIQ). I pray, strategize, or talk through whatever is on my heart and then save it to Evernote with a title and some topical tags so I can easily find it later. This way I don’t lose whatever revelation or burning question I have at the moment. Now back to the topic.

The issue in every man and woman’s heart with an orphan spirit is Does God REALLY love me? This is the most important question we can ever get answered other than “do I believe Jesus died for me and do I accept His payment for my sin?”

Why it’s so important

Without love, we behave out of a sense of duty (or a sense of failed duty, for that matter). Evangelism becomes an heavy obligation, both uncomfortable and undesirable. Obedience is difficult. Even hearing God in one-on-one conversation is difficult. After all, if God doesn’t love me, what might He say to me? What might He tell me to do? What might He ask me to give up? We feel poor, as though at any moment God will ask for that one thing that brings us comfort and leave us to feel cold and alone.

It’s a lack of trust. And we don’t trust Him because we don’t know Him. We don’t yet know His character and personality well enough to know how easy it is to fall into His lap without a concern in the world. We’ve heard about it, but haven’t experienced it.

I believe in honesty, so I’m going to be real here: this is where I am. I have encountered God several times in my life, but I’ve yet to receive a revelation of His love for me. I can hear Him speak much more easily for other people than for myself.

So I cried out to God yesterday. On the drive home, I mulled this over and cried out to my Father whom I have never felt in a loving embrace. Because as grateful as I am that He’s saved me, set me free from addictions, and given me His Word which makes me feel good and clean, I can’t say with confidence that I can walk up to a stranger and tell them that they need Jesus. It’s not that my life isn’t a thousand times better than it was before I accepted Christ. It’s that my life isn’t overflowing with power or love. The two things that demonstrate the Kingdom of God on earth are POWER and LOVE. Jesus had compassion on the sick and he healed them.

I prayed a prayer yesterday. It’s a very difficult prayer. I confessed my unbelief in His love. I confessed that I have chosen to believe my interpretation of events over the truth of His Word. I chose by an act of my will to accept His Word as absolute truth. But I also prayed and asked that He would reveal His love to me. That He would overwhelm me with His love.

A revelation came to me while I prayed: I don’t receive His love because I chose not to. What? How can that be? Why on earth would I choose to not receive limitless love from the Creator of the universe?

I was born with a sense of justice. I have seen my sin. I know how deeply I have hurt people. And my personal sense of justice tells me that it is not okay to wipe the slate clean and let me get away with what I’ve done. I should pay for my sin.

Do you hear this? I decided in my heart that God’s forgiveness and love were too good for me. I refused to allow His love in because it wouldn’t be fair. He shouldn’t love me, and if He’s not going to be just, I WILL be.

Wow. While the emotion here is understandable, it is also grievous. I attempted to override God with my own judgments. I decided that my judgments were better than His. That my evaluation of the situation was more complete than His. This is dangerous territory.

It is time for repentance. If you, like me, have believed that God was unjust in forgiving and loving you, you have deprived yourself of the love the Father earnestly wants to give. You are robbing yourself. The ONLY way to right this wrong is to confess the sin of prideful judgments opposing God’s Word, to repent and turn away from agreeing with those thoughts, and to choose by an act of your will to agree with what Scripture says about God’s love for you.

May we all walk in a limitless measure of God’s love. The world needs us to be aficionados of His loving kindness. Only when we live the reality will our testimony be what it was meant to be.

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