How every path of our own doing ends in the same place, and how the Father has a different path in mind for us.

Pre-Adoption and our Paths:

Our lives, pre-adoption (pre-salvation), are run by us and our community (family, group, school, etc)  We encounter failure, difficulty, pain, and success. But God is there, in the failures, the pains, and the difficulty, as well as the successes, speaking to us, waiting, and working to lead us to the adoption. One problem is that we almost always don’t hear His voice, instead wonder where God is. Usually, through difficulty or pain, we are drawn to seek answers other than what our experience has to offer.  This is The initial work of the Spirit to draw us to the Father, that we often misinterpret and go on our own to seek out answers ourselves apart from God.

The Search

At some point, we realize the foolishness and the futility of solving our life on our own. We begin to search for answers outside of ourselves, either by relational connection, informational searching, media influence, or simply looking for answers anywhere. We have patterns of searching that also come from our history, Good and Bad. We have patterns of medicating the realizations of our own failures that usually delay the True Answer, because as we search, the pain of our situations or the shame of failing to solve them ourselves can drive us to hide in our own addictions and running. We encounter communities of others who claim to have answers – Some Good, Some Not-so-Good, Some Bad. Depending on how quickly we realize the failure of some of these Not-so-Good and Bad Communities, we can spend years thinking we’ve solved it, only to find out these answers are foolish and fruitless as well.

Belief System Communities and Attachments – We think we found an “answer”

When we affiliate with a sub-culture and their belief system community, it can give us a sense of belonging, which actually may be one of the pains that we are trying to solve. We usually begin to take on characteristics of our belief system community.  We begin to think and act and value similarly.  We begin to see the community as “us” and “we”  and people outside the community as “them” and “they.”  We soon are part of a belief system sub-culture. We gain value and identity from those that we connect to.  This happens in good, healthy ways, as well as not-so-good, or bad ways. We get value and identity from what we think the answer is either way. We begin to identify with the sub-culture. These attachments can be strong and deep. Attachments to both good and bad influences are still attachments. We can misperceive that all attachments are good because they do provide a sense of connection and belonging. But they can also tie us to pathways that don’t lead to life.

But Did We Find the Truth? The Answer is not our partial answers

Interestingly enough, almost all belief system communities have a combination of truth, values, and misbelief/justification. The ability to discern what is true and what is not true depends upon outside Influence.  We absolutely need perspective beyond our own view and it must be gained to understand what is right and true. We still need to realize that even as we try to find our own answers, we can be misled. Almost always, if done in our own strength, without God, we align with a sub-cultural belief system community that only gives a partial truth, a partial help, or actually a false hope and a fruitless path. Still, as before, God is nearby, speaking and calling.  He is always still offering a True Answer to the questions of our hearts. As we languish in our partial answers, God waits for the pain of our search’s fruitlessness to weigh on us enough to finally be willing to listen to Him.

Realizing that our answers don’t satisfy…

Usually, there is finally a lack, a gap, a need, that is unfulfilled in our belief system community that we’ve found on our own. It will manifest in strange ways – usually during difficulty and pain, when we turn and try to find help or hope, only to find that the sub-culture belief system community is more about propagating itself and requiring a sacrifice to the system than it is in caring for and connecting its adherents to True Love. False “love” and sacrifices feel good for a while, but end up feeling empty and silent when they are needed most. The belief system community is now beginning to look like perhaps it has a form of truth, but no real power behind it to provide answers or love or real connection. Finally, we begin to see and to hunger for something that satisfies that perhaps we can not find for ourselves or manufacture.  Now we are ready for a path to “The Answer”, for deliverance from the bondage of Egypt and passage to the Promised Land of God the Father’s identity for us and the life we were originally designed to have.

Little g “gods” we make ourselves

Mankind has forever been impatient and wanting badly to accomplish and solve and overcome and be equal with the Creator.  It is in us, the image of the Creator. We misdirect this drive with our own effort and solutions. That is why we usually build our own little g “gods” while we wait for the Real Answer to come down from the mountain. Impatiently, we construct or follow these gods. We build them, worship them, let them give us false hope, false life, and false love. We build communities around them and build belief systems to justify why they are good gods. They may contain some truth or valuable characteristics, but they also require sacrifices that steal our lives. Eventually, these little g “gods” own us. We burn out and are burdened and not granted real life by these gods. If you feel spent, feel used, feel like your resources are draining and you are being sucked lifeless without hope, it usually means that you are following one or a series of little gods that have demanded of you sacrifices that use and abuse you without giving life in return.

The end of ourselves and our “gods”

One day, the poverty of our souls and the powerlessness of our gods and their belief system communities becomes evident. We are coming to the end of ourselves. It can be a painful season in any life. I’m not trying to minimize the pain we feel when we come to the end of ourselves and the poverty of our little g “god” solutions.
Nothing we have tried really works:

• Relationships fail if we use them only for ourselves and try to get our value from them
• People fail if we see them as our answer and hope and the only source of meeting our needs
• Things and possessions don’t satisfy long term
• Systems, Societies, and Governmental/Political solutions only serve themselves
• Addictions and Medication only cover the real pain and create cycles of shame
• Success and accomplishment eat us up and demand increasing sacrifice to continue the high of achievement
• Giving ourselves away to others so they will give us worth ends us failing because others don’t really care and we end up being used and discarded when they find someone else who can give them more

Maybe now – will you hear “The Voice”

• “Come if you are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest”
• “I knew you before you were made.  I saw you while you were being formed.”
• “No matter where you go, where you run, where you attempt to find the answer on your own, there I will be.”
• “A path, which seems right to a man, leads to destruction.”
• “You shall have no other gods before me.”
• “If anyone wants to follow me, they must deny themselves and take up their cross, and follow me.”
• “You can not have life unless you are born again of water and the Spirit”

The Prodigal Father

God the Father, the Prodigal Father, who allows us to take and use everything we had coming as an inheritance, and either squander it or misunderstand its blessing, is ready to welcome us into His home. We are either returning from the folly of our running and spending and attempting to satisfy ourselves through our freedom and license, or we are returning to him through the folly of our own self-justification and self-righteousness.  Either way, we were on our own path, and He’s got a real “Answer” path for us. The offer is for us to give up our lives, accept the death and resurrection of the Son on our behalf, and no longer live our lives for ourselves, but for the One who gave His life for us. We can now be in the Family of God the Father, and FINALLY – Be Home! We may have actually been in a church, in a sub-cultural belief system community, and still not known the love of the Prodigal Father. As such, we may have been “living” with the Prodigal Father, and not even known the relationship because of our own self-justification. Or, we may have been far from the Father, and out on our own. In any case, coming to Him and being welcomed in through adoption finally begins life as a Son or Daughter.

Sons and Daughters

Sons and Daughters begin to live the new life in the mansion by giving up their original, false self lives and accepting the new life in the Spirit, under the leadership and Lordship of Jesus the Son, who is now King of the Kingdom. They become both followers of the King, and temples where the Spirit dwells, which is a renovation, reclamation, and redemption project of building this temple with Holy Hands doing the construction. As areas of our original false self are put to death and demolished, the Spirit builds new, renovated spaces in us, that is to house the presence of God and be places of refuge and hope to others. Our job is to follow, to listen, to allow change, and to choose, every day, to die to the old self

The Family of God

Sons and Daughters who begin to live like children of the Father, under the King, and made new by the Spirit, began to treat one another differently. Their identity comes from the Father. This initial transformation begins to develop a healthy attachment to God the Father (The only fully appropriate Father we will ever know). People who are now Sons and Daughters also treat others differently, even those who are not yet in the family, because their eyes see from the inside out – They see as the Father sees.  So- when they look at someone, they begin to see what God saw when He formed them. Even before a non-adopted person knows it, a true Son or Daughter of the Father can see them and understand how the Father wants them to be.  Everyone, in this case, is potentially a brother or sister, they just don’t know it yet. The Sons and Daughters can also speak clearly and strongly to others who have been adopted or have moved into the mansion but are not walking in the way of the cross and death to the old ways. The Son and Daughter perspective allows their vision to cut through the deceptions of the enemy, who always tries to redirect and recapture a heart and make it believe that it is an orphan instead of a member of the family.

What to do:

Give up and accept the adoption offer from the Father. The adoption offer is provided for you by the sacrifice and empowered by the resurrection of the Son, Jesus the Christ. Repent of trying your own solutions, of going your own way, be baptized, and give your life to the only One who can replace your life with a new, real, designed only-for-you life. Move into the mansion and come under the Lordship of Jesus. Receive the new life that comes in the power of the Spirit. Begin to be a part of a Son and Daughter community where you learn to give and receive love and see with the Father’s eyes. Find your place in the adoption agency and your family chores in the mansion. Everyone who lives in the mansion will have assignments and chores that help with the family. In addition, they’ll be given assignments and duties for the adoption business, which is what the Father is always doing. He is always, always, always, searching for and seeking the lost orphans, and offering them life in the mansion. As these orphans are brought into the family, the Kingdom of the King is established increasingly. It is worth our every moment, our every dollar, our every breath to be about the Father’s business, once we become adopted. He will take care of us. We simply need to follow the leading of the leader, Jesus the Son. And know that we will be empowered by the Holy Spirit, who will bring the person of God into us and fill us with fruit and power.

How to pray

• Pray that the Lord would lead people to healing, committed Son and Daughter of the King communities throughout Kansas City.
• Pray that anyone who has been adopted and has moved into the mansion would live there as a Son or Daughter and not as an orphan.
• Pray that if anyone is caught in a misbelieving sub-cultural community or pattern of living, that they would gain perspective and insight into what is true.
• Pray that God would make you a Son or a Daughter, who can die to yourself and allow the Spirit to bring new life.
• Pray that God would provide for you a community of other Sons and Daughters who can see you as the Father sees you and call that out in you, in love.
• Thank the Lord for the hope of the cross, the plan of adoption, and the new life.