Orphans In The Family

You don’t have to be fatherless or without a family to be an orphan. A person can have great parents and still live with an orphan spirit. One of the best known parables in the Bible is referred to as the Parable of the Prodigal Son and is found in Luke 15:11-32. It is the story of two sons who had a very loving father. Yet both sons lived their lives as orphans in the midst of a good family environment. Do you see the implication for the Christian life? You can be a genuine son of God and have an awesome Heavenly Father and still operate with an orphan spirit.

The problems in the story did not start because the younger son wanted his inheritance. Actually many young men in that time received their inheritances before their father died so they could learn how to invest it and use it under his wise counsel. A true son loves the counsel of his father and seeks it above the counsel of everyone else. Drayton McLane, owner of the Houston Astros, tells the story of the time Sam Walton came to him and wanted to buy the McLane Company in order to make it the grocery division of WalMart. He resisted the idea until he talked to his 92 year old father. His father told him that selling the company to WalMart would be the best move and so he did. The result is that WalMart Super Centers were born and Drayton McLane made a truckload of money. What a picture of the heart of someone who thinks like a son and not an orphan. Even though he was in his mid-fifties and was one of the most successful businessmen in America, McLane talked to his father about how he should handle his inheritance and his father’s counsel increased the inheritance. That’s how a father-son relationship operates.

The problem in the parable in Luke 15 was that the younger son stopped acting like a son and started acting like an orphan. The orphan spirit will not approach a father. The orphan spirit operates independently and wants to prove that it does not need a father. After all, orphans have never had a father so they have to make it on their own in order to survive. And it is this orphan spirit that drives us to act like orphans even when we are sons.

When you were growing up, who was one of the hardest people in the world for you to talk to? Most people would say their father. Why? Because of the orphan spirit. When the younger son spent all of his money and began to be in want, what did he do? Talk to his father? No, rather he sought counsel from someone else for a solution to his problem. But the counsel of the man he talked to only led him to the pigpen. Someone who is not your father will give you a pigpen solution. One of the reasons so many people today are in the pigpens of life is because they talk to everyone but their Father in heaven and their spiritual father on earth.

It’s time to talk to your Heavenly Father. And if you don’t have a spiritual father on earth, ask God for one. A true father will never give you counsel that will leave you in the pigpen. Cast off the orphan spirit and approach your Father.

To read Rick’s previous article on orphans and sonship called “I Will Not Leave You As Orphans” go here.