Healing the Orphan Spirit- Part 4- The Coming Revival

Healing the Orphan Spirit- Part 4
The Coming Revival
By Ron Wood

Earlier this year, I gave this prophetic word to a pastor: "Your next church is 13 years old."

When I returned to his church weeks later, the Lord had given me insight as to what that strange word meant. It meant his church was now a teenager, and he had to quit treating his followers like children. With children, you do everything for them. With teenagers, you realize they are growing up so you delegate duties in order to train them. The age of thirteen, for most teenagers, is a turning point in their lives. Raging hormones make their bodies mature. Do you remember how awkward this period was? Teenagers become able to reproduce, but don’t yet have the maturity to handle that responsibility. They are insecure in their identity and unsure of their abilities. This is when they need a father’s strong guidance even more than a mother’s gentle care. It is a transition time.

My prophetic word was an insight into that developing church’s age and stage and was intended by the Lord to help the pastor focus on his primary mission at this point in time.

Last month, I sat in another meeting where the spirit of prophecy was very strong. I pulled out pen and paper and wrote what I was hearing by the Spirit…. "I’m laying the ax to the orphan spirit that has invaded the church. I’ll no longer tolerate systems and structures that abandon my children. Grace to become a father and a mother in the faith is returning to rescue this orphaned generation. I will heal the bitter root of rejection and put in its place the certainty of acceptance. You will feel the Father’s love and see his goodness and share his glory and grace. For it pleases the Lord to bring many sons to glory in this day, and through his family, to heal the land, and to end the curse."

As I reflected on this word over the next few days, I realized that in the modern church, we have many preachers, but very few fathers. Most of the preachers, as they become successful, adopt the business model of the church rather than the family model. Just like natural dads, they can become so consumed with their work that they have no time left for personal relationships. They spend all their energy keeping the programs going but fail to invest significant time in developing the next generation. The work becomes more and more impersonal. Or, they mistakenly think teaching can replace training. A lecture in a classroom will never do the job. If that were true, school teachers could raise our kids for us. Teaching might impart more information, but it falls short of character formation or on-the-job training or discipline which is necessary for adulthood.

What is an orphan spirit? Why is God angry at this attitude; this deceptive mindset?Whatever it is, I believe it is the opposite of the spirit of adoption which comes from our Heavenly Father.

Pastors, churches, even whole denominations can be infected with this attitude of cold love. Cold love is like artificial light- it lacks the warmth of the sun and stunts growth to maturity. God’s kind of redeeming love takes spiritual orphans and places them into spiritual families-- healthy families with both mothers and fathers. It isn’t an orphanage run by a director. Even a well-run, well-organized orphanage is still an orphanage. God wants healthy communities, kinship groups, spiritual families, much more love, honesty, and real relationships than provided by the typical organizations we now call churches. He wants his family to express a spirit of adoption so that lost people can discover their identity in Christ and develop their gifts and be deployed on their mission. That identity should be reinforced by familial love guided by the truth of God’s word.

The worth of each person is validated in Christian community, not in splendid isolation. Anyone living in an orphanage knows that it isn’t an ideal family.The process God uses to heal the orphan spirit is called the spirit of adoption.

Adoption is first an attitude of unconditional love, a spiritual posture of acceptance, before it is ever verbalized or recognized. This Godly attitude manifests divine love for someone else before they are worthy, while they are still weak, before they have ever deserved it or are able to appreciate it. We love others because God first loved us. God’s love is redemptive and it is inclusive. I’ve seen it work in peoples’ lives, as I shared previously concerning my own wife who was an adopted child. "That which we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ" (3 John 1:3 NAS) (This is the original U2… the "you too" phrase of inclusion for people to whom we testify!)

The end of salvation is more than a solo experience; it is being adopted into God’s family. Our modern church methods have disembodied God’s word until we just share a word of salvation instead of sharing a way of salvation; a way that includes sharing our lives as well. The testimony of Jesus is more than an abstract truth with eternal life attached: it is a transforming power that incorporates us now into Christ’s living body.

People afflicted with an orphan spirit do not feel like they belong. Like kids left to raise themselves, they are often misfits, strangers at the table, without a spiritual home or a spiritual father. Disconnected from covenant love, they feel lost in a crowd, just another number on a list. Frustrated, they may even want fathering in the Lord, but feel neglected or rejected by those who should take them under their wing. Or, maybe normal people have run from fathers who were not normal: dictatorial, controlling, or power-hungry. Amen… get quickly away! B

ut often the church’s CEO is just too busy running the church business, preparing sermons, being distracted by the BIG picture of lofty goals. Many a man of God has worked to save the world but risked losing his own children in the process. I know… it nearly happened to me.

There is a notable reference from the last word in the Old Testament, a word spoken by the prophet Malachi. Afterwards, God was silent for three hundred years until John the Baptist, with the spirit of Elijah upon him, thundered forth, "Repent!" This last word under the Old Covenant also spoke of a curse that comes when fathers are absent. It describes the prophetic task of Elijah, using him as a symbol of the anointing upon certain prophets to restore foundations of the faith. Malachi said that God would use the Elijah anointing to turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers. In other words, it would repair the breach between fathers and sons and build a bridge from one generation to the next. (Malachi 4:6)

For this breach to be healed, there has to be in place identifiable fathers in the faith. God has been preparing the fathers and now he is pointing them out for all of us to see. True spiritual fathers may be any of the five-fold ministries named in Ephesians 4:11. However, Ephesians 2:20 tells us that the foundational spiritual fathers for each generation are the apostles and prophets ministering in the Body of Christ. For many folks this comes as a shock, since their dispensational bias is to think that only pastors and teachers still survive, along with a few evangelists. Not so. These offices are "set in the church" and haven’t gone away, they've just been ignored (1 Corinthians 12:28).

If all we have are pastors-- the "caring for the flock" ministries-- then the aggressive advance-the-kingdom pioneer ministries will go lacking. The family DNA and the model of Christ’s ministry will be incomplete. Just like in an ordinary home, the healthiest family unit has both male and female leaders- a father and a mother.

Yes, the church needs tender mothering care, especially young believers, but the maturing adolescent church needs fathering in the faith by masculine apostles and prophets! Their grace gift is unique. That equipping task for maturing the saints is a work that local pastors or teachers cannot accomplish by themselves. It will go unfinished apart from working with apostolic or prophetic teams who are resident in their ranks or extra-local teams who come alongside for a season.

Today we need ministries with diverse gifts teaming up to finish equipping the church at the end of the age.

How do I know that the next move of God has two stages-- the first a restoration of fathers to heal the orphan spirit rampant in the church; and the second, a wave of miraculous power?

Because Lord says so. The Spirit of God is bearing witness through many prophets about the times and season we are now living in. The Scriptures foretell significant events that help us discern the times. A year ago, I heard the Spirit of God say to me, "If you can hear it, if you can bear it, if you can receive it, the Spirit of Elijah has come." The implication was that this is not an easy anointing to welcome in most religious circles. Certainly, the Scribes and Pharisees didn’t like the anointing that was on John the Baptist when he called them a brood of vipers and urged people to repent. He required the most religious people on earth to repent in order to step into a new season in God. It is still so today.

All of my life, I’ve been fascinated with Elijah. Unlike Moses, Elijah was a prophet of God who never wrote a book for our Bible. He was brash, extreme, and probably a difficult man to be around. He had the gift of faith so as to pray down fire from heaven or to pray and stop the rain. He confronted Jezebel, rebuked Ahab, and turned Israel away from Baal worship thus saving Israel from extinction. Jesus said this "Elijah endowment" of spiritual grace was on John the Baptist and made him "more than a prophet." (Matt. 11:9) He also said this gift is coming again. (Mk. 9:12)

This refers to an unusual anointing on certain modern prophets to confront idolatry, repair the breach, and point people back to God’s ways. As I said, I believe there are two waves of revival yet to hit the church. I also believe that both are coming in our generation. They will involve God’s good ways and God’s mighty deeds. Religion as we know it will either be transformed and become potent or it will become dry as dust and barren. There will be no escaping God’s move.

The Father is serious about giving his Son Jesus his inheritance among the nations. (Ps. 2) The first wave of revival will be a restoration of God’s ways that will turn the hearts of fathers back to their children, naturally and spiritually. This will heal damaged families and will transform church structures. This requires a rediscovery of the primary purpose of God’s apostles, that is, to make spiritual sons. The second wave will be a restoration of miracles, signs, and wonders that will confirm God’s word about Christ’s kingdom, causing people to be astounded at the great power of God.

This will occur when the church learns to value and receive God’s prophets, his agents of the covenant, his fiery messengers. Sadly, most of the church will try to quickly skip over the first phase while intensely craving the second, but it won’t happen that way. Choosing God’s deeds over God’s ways, they will miss the mark and lose their blessing.

Here are Scriptures from the Bible that prophetically describes this two-stage end-time revival.
Hear these words of Jesus which he spoke soon after the Father’s anointing was manifested for the first time on his life. He said in Luke 4:25-26 that Elijah was sent to a widow, to a mother with a fatherless son (1 Kings 17:9). In this illustration, this Elijah anointing refers to providing for a fatherless generation. Later, Elijah raised this widow’s son from the dead (vs. 17-24).

What a picture of the end-time ministry of prophets carrying an Elijah anointing! But that isn’t all, the move of God wasn’t yet finished. There’s more to come. Jesus referred to the next anointing in Luke 4:27 with the story of the gift of grace that appeared on Elisha. Elisha was Elijah’s protégé, his servant, who was like a son to Elijah. He caught Elijah’s mantle, the great symbol of the anointing on the man of God.

This next-generation gift manifested in twice the power and twice the miracles as Elijah, as for example, when he healed the foreign businessman of leprosy (2 Kings 5:1-14). I repeat- I see two waves of revival coming. The first has to do with character, relationships, responsibility, structure, purpose, goals, methods, and the shape of the church in our generation. The second wave has to do with charisma, gifting, power, authority, attestation to God’s word and Christ’s kingdom being supreme over all.

We can’t have the second without embracing the first. We can’t have the equipment if we don’t have the men who can use it. As one U.S. military commander said prior to the war in Iraq, "We equip the man, we don’t man the equipment." God is well able through his awesome gifts of grace to release the equipment we need to finish the work of the Great Commission, but we first have to have soldiers of the faith who are able to endure battlefield conditions, be under authority, and be men of courage and integrity.

Yes, God is an equal-opportunity-baptizer for male or female when it comes to the things of the Spirit. But in this area, "Only real men need apply."

Healing the Orphan Spirit, © 2006 by Ron Wood, President Touched by Grace Inc. Subscribe/Unsubscribe at www.touchedbygrace.org. Permission to forward or reprint with no changes to content. We are Touched by Grace to Touch the World! Mailing address- P.O. Box 12749, Wilmington, NC 28405. Your partnership is appreciated.

Healing the Orphan Spirit- Part 3- Fathers in the Church

Healing the Orphan Spirit- Part 3
Fathers in the Church
By Ron Wood

Picture a dining table in a typical home. Seated around the table at dinner time are the mother, her two small children, and at the head of the table, an empty chair. The empty chair belongs to daddy, but he’s not there. Where have all the fathers gone?

In too many homes the father is either physically absent due to divorce or emotionally absent due to his own issues that have never been dealt with. So the wife feels the pain of betrayal or the struggle of poverty from being a single mom, and the kids feel abandoned or rejected from an AWOL man. The girl never feels the security of a strong man’s protection and thus falls prey to the affections of some young stud. Or the boy battles insecurity or lack of confidence since he never heard his father’s voice saying to him "You are my son!"

The personal economic cost, the vacuum of manly values, and the social chaos are perpetuated into the next generation. Fatherlessness is the primary factor in unwanted pregnancies, gang membership, and grinding poverty in American homes. Why does this happen? Because a man-- a key man for that real family-- abandoned his post and reneged on his duty. In the human situation, there is no substitute for a faithful father.

Years ago if people walked into the church you could assume they came from a two-parent home with a pretty good idea of how to live a successful life. The role models were still intact. But for pastors to say to young people today, "Receive the Lord and when you die you’ll go to heaven," is an inadequate answer to their confusion as they come from the culture of MTV, materialism, drug experimentation, biblical ignorance, dabbling in the occult, sexual promiscuity, gender blending, welfare addiction, and failed families. They need a new lifestyle based on God’s word; built on kingdom values.

If men are not masculine and emotionally whole, if they are given to insecurity or fits of anger, if they are over-controlling or abusive, they will kill romance, alienate their kids, and distort the image of our Heavenly Father they were meant to model. This is true in the home, the church, and even in business. Since so many men are damaged emotionally and never get healed, it is no wonder that so many churches led by these men are also filled with spiritual orphans; people who are saved, but still alone. These people never get adopted into the family. They carry their unhealed hearts like invisible scars.

Somehow, the version of church we’ve created and marketed in the 21st century has become anti-masculine. The virile DNA of our founding apostles and prophets has been genetically snipped out. One author* who has researched this problem writes "Western Christianity has become part of the feminine world from which men feel they must distance themselves to attain masculinity." He also says, "Men can be taught to be men only by other men, and all too many pastors are not real men."

Primarily, the modern church has been mothered but not fathered. Despite being prejudiced against women and having mostly men for leaders, the modern church has taken on a decidedly feminine culture. Manliness often seems out of place. To be a real man of God, most men think they have to become emotionally vulnerable like a TV preacher weeping into his handkerchief or like a patronizing pastor who holds your hand and says it will all be okay. Most men see this and mistakenly think, "Real men aren’t needed here."

For years I’ve declared, "The time will come when it will be more important for you to know what apostolic father adopted you than what denominational mother birthed you." I’ll say more on this subject in the next section on The Coming Revival.

It is time for fathers of families and fathers in the faith to arise and pay attention to the next generation. For too long, men have sacrificed their offspring on the altar of their success. They have lived well while their children have been left to themselves. It is the same attitude in mothers who abort their babies or in fathers who abandon their children that is anti-child, alien to God’s nature, and for which we must all repent. When my first son was born, I remember returning home that evening alone to our house, falling to my knees in awe and gratitude and crying out to God, "Father, I know how you feel!"

Real fathers invest in their children and provide an inheritance for them. It is time for fathers to lay up riches for their children, both naturally and spiritually. The only treasure you can take to heaven is your children. Apart from imparting biblical vision and kingdom values to your offspring, there is no real success in this life. To succeed without successors is in reality to fail.

If you read between the lines in the New Testament, you’ll discover spiritual bonds, fathering relationships, by mature men in Christ toward the young leaders they were mentoring. This was the case for the elders and the deacons, both men and women. It was so natural and so common-place that it was taken for granted as THE method of reproducing new leaders in the movement known as The Way, the early church.

Today we use impersonal methods to mass-produce new leaders. We send them away from their local church and trust strangers in distant seminaries or Bible colleges to finish our job. We institutionalize young leaders rather than apprentice them. Yes, biblical knowledge, sound theology, and awareness of church history are important for church leaders, but nothing can take the place of being equipped under the wings of an experienced God-called man or woman. And it shouldn’t happen for only a few paid staff members.

Paul said this about several of his spiritual protégés, "I do not write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me." (1 Corinthians 4:14-16 NASB)

These words from Paul could lead us to ask some diagnostic questions of ourselves. First this observation: Paul did not use manipulation or religious shaming as a method of coercing their obedience. He did use clean, clear warnings or precautions to admonish them, reminders like (and I paraphrase), "If you indulge in carnal pursuits, you’ll reap the things of the flesh; if you invest in spiritual things you’ll reap what the Spirit can give." Re-read the words from Paul in the verses above then ask yourself these questions: Who is my spiritual father? Who cares enough to admonish me? Whose way of life or ministry am I attempting to imitate? What spiritual family has adopted me? Who am I being a father or mother to as they grow up in Christ?

Today, we have thousands of powerful preachers and Bible teachers, but not many genuine leaders willing to devote the time or trouble to personally equip the emerging young leaders around them. In fact, many well-established senior pastors view people with gifts or callings in their flock as a threat to their own position or security, someone to keep down, not someone to value, to recognize, to rise up, or to release. They fail to realize that the greatest thing any leader can do is multiply ministries and send them into the world.

The leaders of western Christianity have almost universally adopted a fatherless form of church structure. This method can effectively merchandise Biblical faith to crowds while leaving individuals neglected as orphans within their own house. It has the illusion of success but sacrifices goals that go beyond preaching or teaching, that is, training and equipping. It is a weakened type of Christian structure that can’t mold emerging leaders for the church, much less for business or government. Real fathers in the faith lay enduring foundations that equip the next generation so they can go further than us. Our ceiling should be their ground floor.
For decades, I’ve prayed this life-text from the Psalms. It describes my purpose: "O God, You have taught me from my youth, And I still declare your wondrous deeds. And even when I am old and gray, O God, do not forsake me, Until I declare your strength to this generation, Your power to all who are to come." (Psalm 71:17-18 NASB)

The next generation is vitally important to God. The church is always one generation away from graying out into retirement and declining into extinction. Christianity is multi-generational. We follow in the steps of the faith of father Abraham, who discovered that God keeps covenant from one generation to the next. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God is a covenant-keeping God.

Earlier this year, I stood with my son, Scott, as we dedicated to the Lord his third child-- our first grandson-- Israel Barak Wood. I looked at my two children and my three grandchildren and realized that the Lord had been true to His word when he first called me to preach, when He told me that the Word he had put in my mouth and the Spirit that was upon me would not depart from me, my children, nor my children’s children. I was seeing the evidence that God had kept covenant even to the third generation.

Without intending to do so, an orphan spirit in a preacher or pastor uses people rather than invests in people. It values big crowds rather than a few disciples. It sacrifices long-range results for the immediate gratification of feeling good about itself. The orphan spirit is impersonal and performance-oriented. It won’t let people get close or be real. An orphan spirit treats people as disposable; as a means to an end, rather than the end itself, which is maturing in Christ and thus bearing much fruit.

The Bible offers this promise from the Lord, found in 2 Corinthians 6.8- "I will be a Father to you…" Our Lord Jesus said, "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." (John 14.18) and "…for the Father Himself loves you…" (John 16.27) What magnificent good news, that we can become God’s child simply by receiving Jesus and obtaining new birth! What a privilege to walk with God as our Heavenly Father!

But children cannot raise themselves. They are ushered into a world helpless as babies, and then go through years of childhood needing constant supervision. It takes work to raise a child. But they do grow up and the way you fulfill your role as a parent does necessarily change over time, whether you are guiding a natural child or a spiritual child, someone you are mentoring in the faith. As I said to my son when I performed his marriage, "I spent the first third of your life raising you, the next third resisting you, and this final third before your adulthood releasing you."

Most churches are filled with spiritual babies, still needing milk from the word, not meat, never being disciplined for righteousness sake, never being trained in the family business, never being put to work in the Father’s fields. It is time for the perpetual childhood of the believer to be finished and for mature sons and daughters in the faith to arise. This task requires spiritual fathers and mothers. Who are the spiritual fathers? Why don’t we see more of them fulfilling this role?

Being a father requires being present to the moment, knowing where your children are geographically and relationally. At home or in the church, daddy may live in the same space, but if he is distant in his affection or distracted in his attention, he will renege on his responsibilities. A renegade is a rebel. For that reason, Bible teacher Derek Prince used to say, "Most American men are rebels."

As we come to the fullness of time, and as the world stage is being set for the conflict of the ages and for the return of Christ, God is moving to raise up, restore, and repair the missing foundations in our lives. These foundations are not just spiritual gifts or fundamental doctrines, but they are also men with vision, virtue, and values embedded in their hearts and minds and lifestyles imparted from the Word of God. To be a man of God, first you have to be a man.

I pray with all my heart that I may play my part in turning fathers toward their children and children toward their fathers, to see genuine fathers in the faith arise and take their place to help rescue this demonized generation from despair. Amen.

*excerpts from The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity by Leon Podles, thanks to Andrew Strom for circulating the article in his email newsletter.

Recommended Reading: the excellent book, Fatherpower by my brother, Don Wood. Available at his website which is: www.fatherpower.com.

Healing the Orphan Spirit- Part 2 - Real Men Aren't Religious

Healing the Orphan Spirit- Part 2
Real Men Aren’t Religious
By Ron Wood

The men Jesus selected weren’t religious. They weren’t preachers, priests, or seminarians. Ordinary men captured by the extraordinary call of Christ, they became the foundation for His new kingdom culture on earth. Nothing has changed, has it?

Growing up, my Dad believed in God but wanted nothing to do with the church. He thought church was for silly women or weak men. My Dad was a man among men; he didn’t have any lace on his drawers. Despite his dislike of church, after many years of resistance, he eventually came to terms with the Lord Jesus and was wonderfully saved.

When I was pastoring a Baptist church in Florida, a man in my congregation invited me to go hunting and fishing with him. I never did get to shoot a buck, but I had some awesome experiences in the lovely wilderness woods and swamps, all familiar turf to me since I grew up in that environment as a boy. We fished on the Suwannee River and caught hundreds of bluegill.
But I had been "citified" on the big streets of Dallas, and needed to get re-oriented to the ways of the wilderness. Delton was patient with me and didn’t make fun of me as I got familiar again with the ways of the woods. Yet he knew novices with guns could be dangerous.

Delton loved his wife, Ena. She was very devoted to the Lord and to church, and Delton was devoted to her. He faithfully sat beside her every Sunday morning, but never was vocal or expressive when it came to the things of God. Delton like beer and he smoked cigarettes. But he never cheated on his wife and I never heard him take the Lord’s name in vain.

He took me hunting one Saturday morning before dawn in an area where he knew we had a good chance for a kill. "Wear your boots," he said. I wondered why he would say that.

At 5:00 am that morning, I opened the truck door, stepped down into a foot of cold black water, and shined my light around me. Our trail led us through fallen cypress trees, brackish water, and dark woods. "Look out for moccasins and alligators," Delton said.

A quarter-mile into the woods, we hit higher ground. "This is your tree," he said. "I’ll be a tenth of a mile further on." He disappeared into the woods leaving me to climb the tree with my gun and to get settled to wait for dawn and hopefully, some deer.

I prepared my two-piece tree stand so I could inch my way up the soft bark of the palm tree. As I did so, my 30.06 rifle slipped from my grasp and speared straight down into the soft wet earth. My rifle stood there like a grave marker on a battlefield. All it needed was a combat helmet to make the picture complete.

I pulled it out of the ground, saw the plug of mud, and knew it was now suicidal to try to shoot it. I broke off a branch, whittled it sharp, and tried to unplug the barrel. No luck… the stick was now broken off in the barrel.

I stood there wondering what to do. Finally, I decided to go back to the truck and get my shotgun. But Delton had the keys. So off I went, lost as a goose in a snowstorm, trying to find my hunting partner.

I was just about to give up when I heard a voice over my head say, "What do you want?" I looked up and saw Delton. "I need the keys. I’ll tell you why later." Without saying a word, he dropped the truck keys to me. "If you go that way," he pointed, "you’ll hit a tram and if you turn right at the corner you’ll see the truck."

I turned and headed for the old logging trail he had indicated. After a while, I saw it, but it was guarded by water along the side of the road. A log had fallen across it and I thought I could make it. Stepping on the wet log, I slipped and landed waste deep in icy water. Determined, I hiked ahead until I saw the truck and retrieved my shotgun. Grimly determined now, I forged ahead. Entering the woods, I miraculously found our original trail and in a few minutes arrived back at the base of the tree where my gear and rifle were waiting.

How to get safely up the tree while carrying my gun?

I hit upon a solution. I tied a cord around the shotgun and left it lying on the ground while I slithered up the tree on my tree stand to about ten feet above the ground, then secured my position, turned around and sat down, and hauled my shotgun up and laid it across my lap.
Finally, I was set. I relaxed, looked around, and saw dawn’s early light starting to break. Leaves drifted down from tall trees in the shaded forest. It felt like a sanctuary, so still, so pristine, so peaceful. I glanced down at the shotgun lying across my lap and saw that the safety was still on. I wondered, How loud is the click if I take it off safety now? Better to do it now before any deer might hear it. So I snicked the safety button off.

BOOM!!! It blasted a load of buckshot and the recoil jetted the gun horizontally six feet out and ten feet down, lying fully loaded on the ground with the safety off, the cord still tied around the trigger guard where I had forgotten to remove it.

I was shocked, scared, embarrassed, and instantly angry! If I had been any good at cussing, I would have done it. I knew I had spoiled the hunt for Delton and myself. The only deer we would see that morning would have to be totally deaf. At that precise moment of utter humiliation and discomfort, God clearly spoke to me: "You’ve been mad a lot lately, haven’t you?"

I instantly became meek from His reproof. I responded, "Yes Sir… I have." That was all He said about that, as though just observing it was enough to help me repent, and it was. Then, as though I could see His face turn toward the direction where Delton was, the Lord asked me, "Do you know how uncomfortable you are in this hunting environment? Delton is just as uncomfortable in your church environment."

I sat there amazed. Immediately, I got it. I realized that the woods are full of men who love God, but are not comfortable with the feminized church world we’ve offered them. We’ve expected them to change their culture in order to adapt to the church. Maybe it’s our religious traditions that need to adapt so men can fit in and follow a manly Savior.

If this is true, then we need to ask ourselves: In our religious structures, what encourages transformation among men? What activities waste our time and energy?

Healing the Orphan Spirit- Part 1- Men and Marriage

Healing the Orphan Spirit- Part I
Men and Marriage
By Ron Wood

My wife and I watched the video, An Unfinished Life, starring Robert Redford, Jennifer Lopez, and Morgan Freeman. This film portrayed the agony of a man who had lost his beloved son, then had to overcome the anger in his heart so that he could again become the kind of man who was able to show love to his family. He was a good man but eaten up inside. Like a wild bear, anger can devour us.

A missing element in many families is a good man. A good man with integrity can provide a stable environment as he fulfills the role of faithful husband and loving father. His presence in the home provides something that is irreplaceable. Just like the Marines, the Lord is looking for a few good men to recruit into his kingdom.

I grew up in a home where the only emotion my Dad displayed was anger. He had a violent temper that raged out of control when he was drunk. He was a brilliant leader at work and could handle any crisis, but at home he was tormented by his own demons.

On one side of the living room, Dad sat forward in his recliner with a lit cigarette sending a slow plume of smoke toward the ceiling from his nicotine-stained fingers. His right index finger was short by one knuckle, having been cut off in an accident. Beside him was a hotel-sized ash tray with an open carton of Salems on the table beneath the lamp. Directly across from him was the big color television that was always turned on. At most meal times, Dad wanted food brought to him on a TV tray. Later, when I was newly married and my wife set the table for a lovely meal for us, I was impressed!

Across the room my mother sat on her sofa with several Bibles stacked up beside her along with some Oral Roberts commentaries. Mom was a deeply committed Christian. The Lord had healed her of TB. She had started the prayer chain at her church that eventually saw thousands of answers to prayers. Stretched across the back of the sofa was her five-foot long white sign with twelve-inch tall letters from the Red Cross where she was an instructor. It read, "Thank You for Not Smoking!" They were quite a pair.

I caught some things from my parents, some good and some bad. Most of us do. Without realizing it, I grew up with a smoldering anger laced with embedded shame. In addition to that quick temper, I also developed a very deep love for the Lord and for His word.

The anger inside me came from two sources. One was ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder. God gave me a great intellect but a short attention span. I kept feeling constant frustration with myself over my inability to finish projects due to being easily distracted. I could make straight A’s at school anytime I set my mind to it, but I had too many interests. Later as an adult, I was diagnosed and learned coping skills and accepted medical treatment (see Random Notes on ADD available on my website).

But most of my anger and low-level depression came from being shamed as a child. You must understand that shaming a child always produces low self-esteem and self-hatred. Shaming and blaming are never good discipline tools, just forms of verbal abuse.

My shame was not from his words toward me but from his life lived in front of me. What I saw made me feel ashamed. I grew up with a constant dread of his explosive temper, and a continual question of what kind of Daddy would I see when I came home from school? Would I see the capable leader who could manage hundreds of men as he supervised a complex mining operation? A self-educated man who could intelligently discuss any current news topic? Or a brilliant man who could skillfully write poetry at the drop of a hat? Or would I find my Dad disheveled, lying drunken in a stupor, filthy with his own vomit? Would he be the dad we had to help stagger from the bar and carry home to his bed? It was never safe for me to bring friends over to my house.

Until I got healed of shame by Father-God’s agape kind of abba love, until I faced and got rid of the fear of my father’s anger, I wasn’t a whole man. Part of me was locked up inside. Despite being a Christian and a pastor, this emotional pain affected all of my relationships at home and at church. I had to learn through my experiences, by God’s grace, about being a whole man and about becoming a good father.

God is in the business of turning unsaved, carnal, selfish men into Christian men worthy of his kingdom; into Godly followers of Christ, faithful husbands, and effective fathers. God loves men and wants their dignity restored so they can earn and deserve respect. God loves women and children and wants every woman to know a representation of his husbanding care and every child to know a representation of his fatherly love.

I know a woman who lived in New Orleans years ago. She ran away from an abusive husband with her small son and was divorced. In her distress, she fell in with the wrong crowd, got careless in her behavior, and became pregnant by another man. What should she do? This was years ago when the stigma of having a baby out of wedlock was a great scandal. When the young man heard she was pregnant, he hopped on a plane and flew home to Arizona. She followed him, confronted him, and said "This baby will have a father and will not be illegitimate!" They were married, she returned to New Orleans where she gave birth to the baby, and then filed for divorce. At least her baby was not a bastard.

Her sister in Mississippi, married for two years but still childless, heard of her plight. She and her husband agreed to take the baby and adopt it. They gave her a new name, Lana, and raised her as their own in a new home with a father who happened to be a preacher and a mother who was his hard-working partner. God’s redemptive love kept that little girl from being raised without a daddy and instead gave her exceptional poise and self-confidence. I know… I’ve been her husband for thirty-seven years!

Real fatherhood is a spiritual connection-- a deliberate relationship-- even more than it is a biological event. I honor Lana’s adoptive father, Rev. Douglas Stone, for raising a lovely woman who loves Christ and who is my partner in life and in the Lord’s work.

Lana grew up knowing she was adopted. Her parents had prepared her with information that became more complete over time. She always felt she was special because she was selected on purpose. She has never felt the need for tracking down her biological father. Lana says, "I have a Daddy and I know who he is." It’s the same way with God. "The spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God." (Romans 8.16) To our Heavenly Father, each of his children is his favorite! We are not an accident, but are chosen, wanted, dearly loved, and especially adopted by our Father in heaven.