The Difference between Sons & Orphans

Day 15
When I moved to New York to start my ministry training I was invited by the Brown family to come stay with them. When I say family, I’m not talking about 2.7 kids and a dog, no, sub the dog for another 4.3 kids. Abbi, Wesley, Anna, Haddon, Hudson, Baxter, and Ester, for those keeping score that’s seven children. Seven is a big number when you come from being an only child for most of your life. Things work differently in a big family. The older one’s help the younger one’s, every one has different jobs, and if there’s not some sense of working together the whole thing turns to chaos.

Which is kind of what Paul says about the church. We all have different roles, but we are part of the same body. We all cary the same “family name”. There’s also an encouragement for us to aid one another in growth. We have a fancy word for it, it’s called discipleship. If you break it down it’s not more than the older ciblings helping out the younger ciblings, so the whole family works toward a common goal.

There are always disagreements and disputes and times where things are not as smooth as we’d like. But most of the time, for most of us, giving up on our family is not an option. It’s not like a social networking site where we just click a button and the relationship goes away. It’s work, but so much can happen when it starts to pull together.

I was at a conference and I heard this teaching on “sonship” vs. “the orphan” and What the speaker defined as “orphaning out” were, “areas that we are not allowing the presence of God to fill in our lives”... And it’s not like you are one or the other. “I wish it was something I could just pray off you” the speaker said, “but it’s not it’s something He needs to do in you”.

The notes from the talk look something like this.

http://www.lifeway.org/download/Characteristics_SonOrphan.pdf