Orphan Slave Son
Ben Pasley's latest book explores in depth the spiritual worldviews of orphanhood, slavery, and sonship.
Find it Amazon.com, or buy it from Ben's site, Enter The Worship Circle. The ebook is coming soon.
The first two conditions affect everyone on the planet because of human brokenness and displacement. The third is the eternal reality of those who have received the love of the Father through Christ Jesus. The spirit of sonship is the position we receive in Christ but it is not an automatic transformation from the old ways of thinking or acting. Even after being transformed into the likeness of Christ in the eyes of the Father we still, as believers, have the opportunity to view things through the lens of slavery, or act out with the beliefs of an orphan. This book contains a thorough look at these three worldviews and how we can conquer everything that does not agree with our new positions as sons in the kingdom. Robin Pasley's book "The Healing Path" is an excellent companion book as it focuses on personal healing and a workbook style journey into this process of maturing as sons.
Here is an excerpt from the book:
"RECEIVING SONSHIP
We know our agreements with the basic principles of the world must end. Our slave-soul’s need to work, work, work for absolution must end. Our wandering as lost orphans must come to an end. The only way to see the ending of these things is not in warring against them to defeat them head on, rather it is by turning our attention to the privilege and favor of sonship. Sonship will displace the other broken self-views with such powerful force that they shatter and scatter into the wake behind our new lives moving forward in Christ. The obvious challenge is that we will never accomplish our way into sonship, or achieve our way to daughterhood. We cannot satisfy a contract or form a more perfect community to gain ground with our Father. Sonship is truly a gift that only a father can give.
Well, then, what we are left with is terrifying.
In order to overcome the spirits of slavery and orphanhood we are going to have to receive a gift of pure, undeserved love from God. He is going to give us sonship, and we are going to have to humble ourselves and learn to receive it. He is going to visit our orphanage and pick us out, and we are just going to have to accept that this is really our day and we are really going to have a home ... and that we did nothing to make that happen.
Jesus came to prove that receiving and believing were, indeed our only hope. He came to introduce sonship in person, and then offered to share it with us. He invited us to be born again into his family, but first demonstrated in his own miraculous birth that we would have to follow him in like kind. We are to be born of both water and the spirit, both naturally and supernaturally.
When we receive Christ and believe in the miracle that he is for us, then there is nothing that can separate us from the lavish love of the Father because we have been born again as his sons. Romans 8 is a beautiful chapter on this subject and Romans 8:39 says that nothing “in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Our proximity to God and our position in his heart is no longer in question when we receive Christ; what is in question is our ability to believe that the miracle is really true. We have tremendous problems simply living into what is true about us now that we are in Christ. The fact that the complete miracle of our new life in God is believing and receiving is really quite difficult for all of us. It would seem so much more natural if we could fight for it, earn it, or pay for the opportunity ... but we can’t. All there is left for us in this grand exchange is to hold out our hands and receive. This work of humbly receiving can be so hard for us. We have been at the work of helping God out for so long it feels wrong to put down our tools, but we will never come into who we were meant to be as long as we continue to accommodate
these lies that obligate us to earn his love. Jesus knew this would be the hardest part of “working out our salvation” (Phil 2:12) when he said “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force” (Matt 11:12). The war we must wage is simple. We must war against any instinct that keeps us from receiving God’s great, overwhelming, completely perfect love for us as a free gift.
While reading this book did you discover slavery and orphanhood in your own heart? Did you find places where you have left the safety of sonship to return to the elemental things that have soothed your soul in the past? Have you fallen into the trap of using self-measurements to give you the feeling of being OK. Do you sometimes entertain the basic principles of this world that tell you that you must work to win the love of your Father? I know I do. Well, these are simply the signs showing we all have difficulty walking in the reality of our sonship.
It is time to overcome what is nothing more than old habits.
Sonship is ours and has been since we received Christ. It is now time to walk in it."
Find it Amazon.com, or buy it from Ben's site, Enter The Worship Circle. The ebook is coming soon.