“The great downfall of the Christian life is that, even where we trust Christ, we leave the Father out. Christ came to bring us to God, the Father…His life of dependency on the Father was a life in the Father’s love…Our life must have its breath and being in a heavenly love as much as His. What the Father’s love was to Him, His love will be to us…” Andrew Murray

The church has neglected the Father heart of God. Over the years, Christian movements have emphasized the Holy Spirit and Jesus, the Son of God, but the fatherhood of God remains vastly forgotten. By neglecting the Father heart of God, we have enabled the orphan heart to go unhealed both inside and outside of the church.

In this series, Mark Stibbe passionately shares his life message on healing the orphan heart. Drawing from personal experience as an orphan adopted at a young age, Stibbe refers to the pandemic of fatherlessness around the world as the cause for our blindness to the Father heart of God.

Stibbe begins with the characteristics of the earthly father in Luke 15. This is one example of Jesus revealing the Father through parables. In the second lecture, Stibbe reviews the foundational blessing of justification and provides a deeper understanding of the highest blessing of adoption, which is often missing from the gospel message. It is this concept of adoption that moves the orphan heart from seeing God as judge to receiving Him as a loving father.

The series continues with a definition and diagnosis of the orphan heart. Mephibosheth, Saul’s grandson in 2 Samuel, provides the Biblical source for the beauty of an orphaned heart set free through King David’s compassion and love. Mephibosheth’s experience and his own words reveal the pain of separation and the shame that many Christians suffer today because they have not received their freedom as children of God.

Healing The Individual

The struggle to receive the freedom God offers stems from the great need for forgiveness between children and their parents. This unforgiveness reaps an ocean of ills on individuals and in our society. With the Holy Spirit’s help, we can release others from our unforgiveness and in the process become free ourselves.

In this freedom we find rest. Jack Frost describes rest as “a posture of the heart that feels so sheltered in God’s love that it does not allow itself to be pulled into a place where we strive to feel valued, affirmed or secure.” Jesus encourages us to keep company with him so that we may rest in the unforced rhythms of grace (Matthew 11:28-30).

Stibbe picks up on this concept of rest as he compares the life lived in a cycle of grace to that lived in a cycle of law. Paul addresses this issue with the Galatians when he says, “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). The orphan heart, like the Galatians, seeks to strive. The adopted heart learns to rest.

As we rest in the Father, we grow in the desire to bring Abba’s love to the fatherless. We see this modeled as Jesus interacts with the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus lived in such a deep level of intimate communion with the Father that He knew where to go, who to speak to, and what to do (John 5:19). The orphan heart, like the woman at the well, shifts in the healing process from a me-focus, to Him-focus, to them-focus. The result of this healing is a healthy soul that overflows with the Father’s love and ministers from that overflow.

Rebuilding The Church

The final sessions focus on rebuilding the church to see the Father heart of God. A panel discussion on ministry for the orphan heart provides practical guidelines and suggestions for establishing this ministry in the local church.

The Father message is not just for Christians. It is a mission of words, wonders and works. As the church rediscovers the Father’s love, so it will rediscover the Father’s mercy and compassion for the lost. The whole of creation is waiting for the adopted sons and daughters of God to be made manifest, to be revealed, to be declared.

This series will most likely touch the needs of your own orphan heart and place within you the desire to see the church grow deeply in love with the Father. Let’s be the church that moves out in radical ways to minister the Father’s love to the fatherless.