We have been learning about the ways of God. We have been seeing that the Kingdom of God operates completely opposite to the ways of Satan and even completely opposite to our own best thinking.
Spiritual authority lies in our relationship with the Lord. For instance:
- We experience God as sons and daughters, we are his family
- As sons and daughters we are moved away from being servants and slaves
- The work of Jesus Christ establishes our return to being sons and daughters of The King
Yet, we may take years to realize and to live as sons and daughters of the King! It is hard to imagine exactly what a son or daughter to the King may be like. So let us begin by considering what is missing when we do not yet know we are sons and daughters.
Let us revisit the story of the prodigal son and take caution for ourselves. This story gives us a view of what happens to believers when they do not live as sons or daughters.
In Luke 15:22-31 we read,
“His father said to the servants, ‘Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. And kill the calf we have been fattening. We must celebrate with a feast, for this son of mine was dead and now has returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found.’ So the party began.
Meanwhile, the older son was in the fields working. When he returned home, he heard music and dancing in the house, and he asked one of the servants what was going on. ‘Your brother is back,’ he was told, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf. We are celebrating because of his safe return.’
The older brother was angry and wouldn’t go in. His father came out and begged him, but he replied, ‘All these years I’ve slaved for you and never once refused to do a single thing you told me to. And in all that time you never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends. Yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the fattened calf!’
His father said to him, ‘Look, dear son, you have always stayed by me, and everything I have is yours. We had to celebrate this happy day. For your brother was dead and has come back to life! He was lost, but now he is found!’ Luke 15:22-31 NLT
First off, we see that this story is one of sulha. As we have noted earlier in this course the prodigal son had wasted and stolen and defiled the inheritance from his father. The younger son had done great harm and insult to his father. But, as we know the younger son came back to the father.
Upon the younger son’s return, the father breaks out a feast, (remember, sulha is an ancient middle eastern tradition whereby all harm and insult and great wrong is laid to rest and forgotten no more and where the injured person prepares a meal as a way of declaring forgiveness and restitution).
It is the way of God’s heart toward us. Each of us have done great harm against God. But God breaks out a feast to welcome us and to put to rest all hurt and harm and insult. God celebrates, (because he loves us deeply and we have returned to him and to his kingdom where he has our very best in mind).
But the older brother cannot enter into the celebration and refuses to go into the feast. This would be like those of us who have walked with God for some time, those of us who have tried for a long time to be good, those of us who have slaved and sacrificed and done many things for God, and those of us who have become leaders in the Kingdom of God (we may forget that it is God who saved us), and from this place of privileged servitude we may come to a pride of life that cannot accept the full and unconditional acceptance of others (those who have not been as good as what we believe ourselves to be).
The older son said to his father, “All these years I’ve slaved for you and never once refused to do a single thing you told me to. And in all that time you never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends.”
The older son is angry. He has been sacrificing and sacrificing and now it all seems a waste! We can almost hear his heart, “The prodigal son didn’t sacrifice, didn’t slave, didn’t put any effort into being good! Yet, this son who has insulted and caused great harm also receives the love of the father just the same and more so!”
Can you hear the older son’s heart? He is bitter, and tired, and angry. And this is what happens to any of us when we live in the house of the King as a servant and slave rather than a son or a daughter.
The father says to the older son, “‘Look, dear son, you have always stayed by me, and everything I have is yours.” And yet, the older son obviously did not know this. The older son had all the father’s resources at hand all that time. The older son could have had a feast with his friends anytime he had wanted. Yet he was not acting as a son but as a hired hand. The older son is the prodigal. 98
I wonder what the older son would have done if he had been living as a son and not as a servant?
How might he have invested his life differently? What might he have chosen to do or to become?
- When we live as servants in the house of our father we reveal that we do not:
- know the father
- trust the father
- understand the love of the father
- The older son was focussed on:
- doing it right
- living perfectly
- being as a servant
- taking no risks
- This birthed in him:
- bitterness
- a hard heart
- small thinking
- a dead kind of life
- Which resulted in:
- judgment and condemnation
- an inability to enter the feast of the Lord
- he missed out on sulha
We don’t want to live in this way. We do not want our hearts to become bitter, hardened, without the grace of the Lord for others. We do not want to live calculated, keeping track of all our good works and how this will make us right with God. All of this is nothing more than dirty rags and false living.
We want to live as sons and daughters of The King. As sons and daughters we know our vast inheritance in the Lord. We know our authority in Christ. We enter into the peace that passes all understanding. And we have restored to us the rest that God promises his people. This, and more, changes our lives — we are never the same.
As sons and daughters of the King we have vast inheritance to draw from and to live by:
We have peace that passes all understanding. Philippians 4:7; 1 Peter 5:7; John 14:27
We have our Father delighting in us and singing over us. Zephaniah 3:17; Psalm 147:11
We have the help of our Holy Spirit in all things. Romans 8:26; John 14:26;
We know that the Father restores our lives unto his good plans. Psalms 23:3; Psalm 51:12
We find rest in the Lord. Hebrews 4:10; Matthew 11:28; Psalm 62:1-2
We find refreshment with God. Psalm 23:76; Isaiah 40:28-31
We enjoy fellowship, deep relationship, with both God and man. 1 John 2:1, 10; John 15:7;
We settle into acceptance of each other Colossians 3:13; Ephesians 4:2-3; Romans 2:11; Galatians 3:28
We are led by the voice of our Lord. Romans 8:14; Galatians 5:18; John 13:16
All commanding and declaring and living unto God must be done from this place of knowing, deeply knowing that we are sons and daughters of the most high God. The only safe way through the spirit realm is tucked in close to Jesus Christ. So we refuse to use pagan practices, we do not put focus on the enemy, we rest in the strength of God for us, and we move forward as the Lord directs and in explicit response to his leading.
We come to know and live from a place as sons and daughters of the most high God. As this new awareness and freedom begins to take hold in our lives we will find that our mindsets change, our assumptions about life and God and others also changes. We are made new from the inside out.
Application
Let me tell you about a book called The Soul of Money. 99 In this book the author shares her experiences of being all over the world, over a fifteen year period of time. She was working with an organization with the mandate to eliminate world hunger, and so she was with many people of varying economic brackets, from those very wealthy to those very poor.
What she discovered is interesting. She came to find that mindsets of poverty or mindsets of sufficiency have nothing to do with how much money or possessions people have or do not have.
She found people who had great wealth living with fear and mistrust, with habits of grasping and hoarding. These people experienced life from a mindset of lack and want, even though they had much.
And she found those living with very little (in the way of worldly goods) who had great thinking and mindsets of sufficiency. These ones may be considered poor but they lived with peace and trust and a freedom to share and without fear for tomorrow.
It appears that the perspective from which we live has little to do with what we have or don’t have, but what we believe about the things we have or don’t have.
Mindsets of sufficiency versus poverty are evident in each of us. Each of us are living from either:
- a perspective of sufficiency (knowing that what we have for each day is what we need for each day — even if we don’t have all we want)
- a perspective of lack and poverty, (a mindset that what we have each day is never enough and never will be — even if we do have enough)
Steve Siebold, 100 spent nearly three decades interviewing millionaires around the world to find out what separates them from everyone else. What he found is a vast difference in the mindsets, the thinking, of people regarding life and money. How people think seems to make a difference in how they live.
Below is a small sample of the differences in thinking that he found. On the left we have one way of thinking and acting while on the right we have another way of thinking and acting. 101
Middle Class Thinking versus World Class Thinking
Poverty Mindset versus Sufficiency Mindset
| competes | versus | creates |
| avoids risk | versus | manages risk |
| lives in delusion | versus | lives in objective reality |
| loves to be comfortable | versus | is comfortable being uncomfortable |
| has a lottery mentality | versus | has an abundance mentality |
| hungers for security | versus | doesn’t believe security exists |
| sacrifices growth for safety | versus | sacrifices safety for growth |
| operates from fear and scarcity | versus | operates from love and abundance |
| sees themselves as victims | versus | sees themselves as responsible |
| slows down | versus | calms down |
From what I can tell, from all my years and experience, the column on the left looks like the lies of the enemy (in our very thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs) while the column on the right sounds more like what I read in the Bible and what I know of God and how he calls us to think and live.
Now, to be sure, there is a process of moving from the way of thinking (as on the left) into the way of thinking (as on the right). This process requires grieving all that has gone wrong, forgiving self and others and God even. It requires careful thought and a humility that is able to admit to wrong thinking (all these years), and a willingness to change thought and action and world view.
Let’s look further and see what scripture might say about these things:
NOTE: Take the time to look up the full scripture verses
- avoids risk – (but God says) and who by worry can add a single hour to his life, Matthew 6:27
- versus manages risk – the parable of the talents, Matthew 25:14-30
- competes – (but God says) do nothing from rivalry or conceit, Philippians 2:3
- versus creates – whatever you do, work heartily as unto the Lord, Colossians 3:23
- lives in delusion – (God says) the god of this age has blinded you, 2 Corinthians 4:4
- versus lives in objective reality – think of yourself with sober judgment, Romans 12:3
- loves to be comfortable – (but God says) in this world you will have tribulation, John 16:33
- versus is comfortable being uncomfortable – endure hardship, 2 Timothy 4:5
- has a lottery mentality – (but God says) do not store up treasures on earth, Matthew 6:19-21
- versus has an abundance mentality – sell your possessions and give to the poor, Luke 12:33
- hungers for security – (but God says) for whoever would save his life will lose it, Luke 9:24
- versus doesn’t believe security exists – though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Psalm 23:4
- sacrifices growth for safety – (but God says) for God has not given us a spirit of timidity, 2Timothy 1:7
- versus sacrifices safety for growth – unless a grain of wheat dies, John 12:24-25
- operates from fear and scarcity – (but God says) do not wear yourself out to get rich, Proverbs 23:4
- versus operates from love and abundance – be devoted to one another in love, Romans 12:10
- sees themselves as victims – (God says) all day long he craves and craves, Proverbs 21:25-26
- versus sees themselves as responsible – each of you must take responsibility, Galatians 6:5-7
- slows down – (but God says) therefore we do not lose heart, 2 Corinthians 4:16
- versus calms down – peace I leave with you, John 14:27
I don’t know about you, but I want to have world-class thinking. I want to be reaching for all that God has for me, I want to be giving my life away for the betterment of our communities and nations. I want to be settled into His truth for me. What about you?
The agreements with the enemy, our agreements with God, and how these things play out in our lives are subtle, very subtle. This is why we are admonished by the Lord:
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” Jeremiah 17:9-10 ESV
“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” Proverbs 4:23 NIV
“And we tear down every proud idea that raises itself against the knowledge of God. We also capture every thought and make it give up and obey Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5 ESV
We can tell what is in our hearts by the thoughts in our minds. We can tell the thoughts in our minds by the emotions and judgements of our hearts. We can tell the judgements of our hearts by the words coming out of our mouths and by the decisions and actions we take. Agreements with either the enemy or with God show up in our judgments of life and the conclusions we have made about many things.
These conclusions, our judgments, the emotions of our heart, our thinking, all either lead to life or lead to death.
We do not want to live according to “life will always knock you down”
- we want to live by “I have plans for you, a future and a hope.”
We do not want to live according to “I just can’t figure this out”
- we want to live by “he is our help in times of trouble”
We do not want to live according to “All the other people are just lucky”
- we want to live by “He who is faithful with a little will be faithful with much”
Bringing our thoughts and our judgments captive and obedient to Christ is nothing more than receiving God’s worldview deep into our beings. This is part of how we experience a restoration as sons and daughters of The King.
We lose our focus on all that is bad and wrong and ugly and chaotic and we come into focus of Jesus Christ and all that he intends and has accomplished in bringing the Kingdom of God to this earth once more. We stand as restored people. And we can take that restoration to our communities and nations.
As sons and daughters of God, we take back our inheritance and our place at the table of the Lord. We re-find deep intimacy with God, we re-enter into the peace of the Lord, and we realize that the Holy Spirit is for us and is actively leading and guiding our days. We are loved. We are cherished. We are whole. Glory be to God.
______________________________
98 https://www.patheos.com/blogs/bradjersak/2020/01/why-the-father-didnt-seek-the-prodigal-because-he-did-brad-jersak/
99 The Soul of Money, by Lynn Twist
100 Steve Siebold is author of How Rich People Think — For more: http://mentaltoughnesssecrets.net
101 what in North America we might differentiate as middle class versus world class thinking and what I would call poverty mindset versus sufficiency mindset. (sufficiency mindset is where we live in the care of the Lord knowing there is enough for each day)
102 REVIEW from Module One, Month #1, Chapter 6, Freedom, pages 31-34 (Inner Healing Prayer Process)
=> Congratulations on finishing Month Eight. Make sure you take the Month Eight Quiz before moving on to the Module Two Assignments.
=> Congratulations on finishing Module Two. (Assignments)
Capturing Courage International Ministries :: capturingcourage.org
College of Capturing Courage :: collegeofcapturingcourage.org
Email Us :: college@capturingcourage.org
College of Capturing Courage 