Defining the orphan spirit and the spirit of sonship ~ Jack Frost

“If you (or a church) have an orphan spirit, as I did for a long time, you feel as though you don’t belong. Love, value, honor, and acceptance are foreign concepts to you. You believe you have to act right, dress right, talk right, and do right in order to be loved and accepted; and even then, it still doesn’t happen. You feel as if there is something more you have to do or put in order to find rest and feel valued. With a spirit of sonship, however, you feel loved, valued, honored, and accepted for who you are as God’s creation. You have no need to “prove” yourself to anyone. As a son or daughter, you feel a sense of total love and acceptance. Contrarily, as an orphan, you feel like you are on the outside looking in, trying as hard as you can to perform and be good enough to earn a place in someone’s heart.

“When wanting to cast out an orphan heart, remember that you can displace it only by introducing it to a loving Father. Even then, an orphan heart must choose to embrace the spirit of sonship by willingly becoming interdependent in relationships and embracing God’s community of love. This is not a once-and-for-all choice. You choose sonship over and over because orphan thinking doesn’t surrender easily, and it often comes back and tries to assert its influence once again. The orphan spirit tries constantly to weaken our families, relationships, and the nations by deceiving us into becoming subject to our own mission rather than living life to experience God’s love and to give it away.”22

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Frost, Jack. Spiritual Slavery to Spiritual Sonship. Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers, Inc., 2006. 69–70. Print.