A few days ago I met a guy. He had tears in his eyes and was obviously really upset about something. He kept saying that he felt broken because of all the dysfunction in his family situation. Despite his emotional state he seemed like a pretty normal, everyday kind of person. We began to chat, he told me a few personal things about what was happening in his life. It was hard to hear at first because I could relate to everything he was going through as I experienced similiar circumstances a few years back.
We began to chat and dig a little deeper into his life and childhood. He began to open up about his parents being divorced and how he had to become the man of the house, at an early age.
As soon as he said that it hit me. His family situation had meant that this person had never been a son. All his life he had taken the role of the ‘father’, the one providing and protecting. He has never experienced what it is like to just be the son and have access to sonship.
Come to the table
I began to explain to him about the meaning of sonship. Sonship in the Christian context allows you to access things you couldn’t even dream of. Being a son (or a daughter) of God means living under the care and provision of God. It allows you to rely on the King and be a legitimate heir. When a father calls his sons to sit at the table he is allowing them to eat what he eats and have access to the love of a father. This is what God wants to do for his children.
Once I was done explaining this to my friend began to cry as he realised that he needed to take his place in God’s family. Even though he didn’t have an earthly father, he had a Father in heaven that calls him a son. He began to realise the lifestyle he was living was only helping maintain the distructive situations around him. He realised that in order for the chaos in his life to become ordered, he had to rely fully on God and take his place as a son.
We don’t always get to choose our circumstances sometimes we are forced into them but if you take your place and remind yourself that you have God to rely on, life begins to look a whole lot different.
God Speed.