Pastor Brodie Kalamen | Our Homecoming Journey | January 24th, 2021

Before we begin, take a moment to go ahead and rally some people around you, get kids out of bed, if they need to be out of bed, and pull them around the around the TV.

You want to be able to watch together and gather together.

So share the stream, text some people, say church is online, KCC's here, and uh watch along with someone else.

It always makes a difference.

We want to be able to engage with as many people as possible.

I want to just thank you for showing up each week and being a part of this online service.

It does make a difference in our home.

We have our kids uh rally around and we have worship together and we discuss the message.

Even if someone else is preaching online, we can talk about it.

It's the joy of being online.

Go ahead, take out your notebooks, your pens.

If you're watching on another device, open your phone, take some notes.

In Acts, it says that the message or the word of God grew day by day in the hearts of the people who heard it.

And so sometimes this message needs to not just be heard once, but it needs to be reviewed over the next few days.

Go ahead, write those notes, and then just review them and allow them to meditate in your heart.

I also want to thank you for faithfully giving and giving, uh giving generous at this time.

We want to continue to live full, and that means doing good, being generous with our gifts, with our generosity in terms of our gestures.

We don't want to go short in doing good things during this time.

We want to live full and continue to make a difference.

Now, we're on this series of a journey, our homecoming journey, and this really is a message towards sonship.

And this message towards sonship is a critical piece to our experience in relating to Father God.

And it was Jack Frost, an author who was the first to clearly articulate the meaning of the orphan spirit and why the world needs to know, and the body of Christ needs to understand its implications.

And years ago, I was given a CD series on Jack Frost from spiritual slavery to spiritual sonship.

And I remember I was painting a house as we were renovating a house, and I had those CDs on repeat, and eventually I I got the book, and it became such a life-giving experience to me.

And I've been I'd been going to church since like sleeping under the pews type days, where I slept there and I continued to go to Bible school and after Bible school, and I'd never really come to understand the element of spiritual sonship, the heart of the father towards me, a son.

And so today I want to continue to share this message with you.

In the book Spiritual Slavery and Spiritual Sonship, he says a person with an orphan spirit lives life as if he doesn't have a home.

Now, it's terrible for someone to go through life without a home.

A home actually can mean so many things, and I'm sure many of you of you've been staying at home, have put money into your home, have have recognized the the value of your home as it provides a place of solace, it provides a place of uh safety.

It just is your oasis from the day, it's a place for you to think, a place for you just to relax when you need to relax and just be revitalized and rejuvenate.

It's also a place of learning where we actually are taught how to deal with life's challenges.

And so we have to ask really this question when it comes to a home, how can a person live without a home?

A true orphan knows what it means to live without security, stability, the warmth of a place to go, a physical home.

A spiritual orphan, it's no different.

It's a spiritual orphan is also acquainted with the feelings of fear, rejection, anxiety, the sense of homelessness has a physical effect when you have no physical place to go at night.

In Kelowna, we have a church downtown, and I went and visited the church downtown, and in the church, there was someone working there from our the street ministry, and she said she was really proud.

She said, Listen, I've been homeless and I'm on, I'm on the street, but I finally found a place to call home, and I was so happy for her.

She said, finding a place where you can keep your things, where you feel safe and you're waking up without having to be pushed from one point of the city to another, just a place where you can take a breath and feel at peace and feel like you are, you belong.

And so when she found that home, I was so excited for a spiritual home is where someone can come to face to face with life.

A spiritual home is where they can find that connection and relationships.

Now, a spiritual orphan comes face to face with the real meaning of homelessness, living life without a relationship to the Father.

And the Bible is full of these commandments where we should take care of orphans and we should take care of the widows, because in ancient times that tag, orphan, widow, was a tag that uh diminished a person and titled an individual and made them less than.

And Jesus said, we as a church should surround widows, surround orphans, and make sure that we're pitching in and helping them in and through life's journey.

Now, next week we actually have Larry and Francine coming via video because they're in Katelli, Kenya, and they're going to be sharing about their work in terms of building relationships in their community where they're supporting widows, where they're supporting orphans within their community.

And they'll be sharing their experience on how the heart of a father has transformed, as they've introduced people to the heart of the father, how it's transformed the lives of people.

And they're going to be sharing their own story as spiritual sons themselves and daughters themselves, as well as becoming that spiritual father to others.

And we have a short video clip that we're going to share with you at this point, so just enjoy.

The passion that we seem to have acquired in our walk with the Lord when it comes to missions was always there even before I got saved.

Just the joy of meeting people and getting to know people and love to travel.

When I have the opportunity to help those people for God's glory, I get really excited.

And I can feel the blood in me, and I can feel the love of Christ that I want to share and I want to make sure that everybody around me knows it.

The thing we need to focus on here is that a child is automatically an orphan the moment the father and the mother aren't there to provide security and safety for the individual.

And in the ancient world, they recognized the value of the father's love and the embrace, and that was critical.

It was vital to a family unit.

When you had a father and a mother there creating a home for an individual.

Now, last week we uncovered that Adam and Eve were the first spiritual orphans.

They were not only the first men and women, or man and woman in the scripture or in humanity in creation, but they were the first orphans, and they brought that orphan spirit to the world.

And they did that by disobeying the command of the Father, which was not to eat from a particular tree, the tree of knowledge.

This fruit that they ate from, Adam and Eve, had the ability to actually independently move and independently operate, and they made that choice by eating that fruit to independently live on their own outside of the council of God.

So by eating that fruit, they said, I want to be like God.

Even the serpent said, if you eat this tree, fruit from this tree, you'll know what it's like to be like God.

And they decided, I want to be the champion of my own destiny.

And when they did that, they were began to think for themselves and they began to they wanted to think for themselves and do what they want when they want, and it quickly became a liability to them.

And it quickly had an effect on them.

And this burden that the Father did not want them to experience, as at first they were living in this garden that had been created for them, living in this home that God had made for them.

They decided they wanted out and they wanted to live life on their own.

The moment they ate this forbidden fruit, they wanted to choose and chart their own destiny forward.

And it came with an incredible price tag.

They had to learn to live on their own outside of the Garden of Eden.

And they're in this God-given home.

So their first decision after eating this fruit was to fashion clothes with fig leaves.

It's like designed by fig.

It's fruit of the loom.

It was they created this fashion out of fig leaves to cover their nakedness, to cover it with leaves.

And this first instance is where they tried to they tried to solve the problem that they were experiencing, nakedness, on their own.

And by making themselves look right in the eyes of God.

And so they tried to cover themselves, and that's how we consider religion today, where we do things to look right and look presentable before God.

And it just doesn't work.

The fig leaves, God saw through the fig leaves, they weren't appropriate clothing, okay?

It wasn't right.

The second thing that they did is they hid themselves from God.

And their response was, we're gonna run away from God and not run to God.

And that was an immediate result of sin.

As soon as they disobeyed, they decided, I'm gonna hide.

And I've seen this with my own children in my home when they were younger.

The first thing they wanted to do when they knew they had done something wrong was hide.

And they could have come and shared their story, they could have come and come clean, but instead they hid.

And the fear and the shame that they experienced was an automatic penalty of sin.

They tried to fix themselves, but instead everything they did ended up empty.

They hid in the garden.

God said, Where are you?

Where are you?

And they said, Well, why are you hiding?

And they said, Because we're afraid and we're ashamed.

We did wrong, and now we're naked, and now we're in charge of our own lives, and we're feeling this fear and this shame.

And the last thing they did is they began to blame each other.

And they began to blame others for their failure.

So Eve, Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent, and this cycle or circle of blame continued.

If they would have not taken care or not taking ownership on their own for their own wrongdoings, they tried to just hide from God's look.

They, as soon as God looked at them, they said, Don't look at me, it was her.

And as soon as God looked at her, she said, Don't look at me, it was him.

And this circle of blame just continues as we don't want God to look at us.

And we close ourselves off from God.

So we end up doing making decisions for ourselves that are empty.

We end up, we end up hiding from God, and we end up blaming others and not taking responsibility for ourselves.

When they left this garden, they felt the full weight and impact of what it meant to live in fear and to live in shame.

And we can clearly see there's a dual outcome of sin: fear and shame.

And when fear and shame are consequential to this response when we disobey God and we walk away from God and we choose to do life on our own, we walk in this constant state of fear, constant state of shame.

And when people are ashamed or people are fearful, it's incredible how it perpetuates.

If I do something wrong towards another person, I feel afraid because of what I've done and ashamed for what I've done, but also the other person feels afraid and feels ashamed that it's going to happen to them again, or they allowed it to happen, happen, and the cycle continues.

So Christ comes to break this cycle.

End the cycle of shame.

And so today, when we look at our culture, it's become a masterclass of hiding our true feelings from God and other people.

We have become proficient at hiding our fear and hiding our shame.

When it comes to fear, we're told listen, if you show weakness, if you let people see you sweat, you are in trouble.

You like, don't ever let someone see you sweat.

It's a vulnerability.

It's if you show that weakness, you're just a wuss.

It's and so people cover it and they they push it down and they worry that people will actually see that they're afraid.

We're told to toughen up, man up, woman up, kid up, like we push it from the oldest to the youngest to not show weakness.

And many of us have developed this ability to hide our true feelings from God, which we can't, but we think we can, and from others.

And the reality is that God already knows our true feelings, and there is a freedom and a liberty that comes when we open up.

And the scripture says it very clearly.

You shall know the truth, and the truth actually will liberate you, it will set you free.

When we come clean with God and we show Him our true heart, we become free.

Instead, we mask our fear by replacing it with something else.

We look to beauty, we look to education, we look to money, resources, and we learn that to release that these fears when we're alone.

It's the only place where we can release these fears is when we're by ourselves, where no one can see, and no one can see through that mask that we we put on, and we learn to live with an agony within.

It's an incredible weight on humanity.

When we realize this orphan spirit, you'll never see people the same.

You'll see people and you'll see through the mask and you'll see the heart of an individual and you'll see the agony that they're living within, the insecurity, the anxiety that someone's gonna touch that soft spot.

Someone's gonna see through this mask that I put on.

And when we do not allow the Father to remove our fears, we begin to do what Adam and Eve did, and that's handle the situation on our own.

We're gonna build fig leaf clothes, we're gonna hide, we're gonna blame, we're gonna do all those things that will protect ourselves, and we can trade, we we create controls and measures to manage our public persona so that no one can see, and we push down that fear and that anxiety, and we keep pushing it down, and we become self-reliant, and we begin to steal ourselves so that no one will hurt us.

And we think we can fight this battle within, and we wage war within, but internally there's a wrestling going on, and it's a futile fight with oneself.

And what ends up occurring as a result is an anger towards one's own person.

Where I become angry with Brody because I'm not living, I'm either not covering it enough, I'm not strong enough to put on that face, instead of becoming free in the father's, in the father's presence.

So we begin to work and work and work, and it's like one of my greatest fears when I was growing up is like getting walking down a trail and falling and sink in quicksand.

I just think that would be a terrible place to die.

And the more people struggle and they realize this, the more you work and the more you fight, and the more you travail, the deeper and the quicker you fall into the sand.

I've spent time I've watched as people have tried to cope themselves.

And outside of the Father's help, they do it on their own.

And what ends up occurring is a striving heart just to do better, to do more.

And when they can't do better, and they can't do more, and they think that they've reached a maybe a pinnacle, and and they get prouder and they become a little arrogant, and then they collapse, and everyone sees the collapse, they get angry inside, and they blow up, and it begins to cycle again.

So we have to move away from striving and move into a place where we're at peace in the Father's house, and we don't live with rejection, but we live accepting the Father's love.

And instead, instead of building uh, you know, living in a house that God has provided for you, a home where you feel at peace and feel comfortable, we end up building an island fortress around ourselves and we protect ourselves from everybody around.

We build the moat, we put in the alligators, we put up sentries on the walls, and we just have a strong arm against anyone who comes towards us.

And we reject any type of love, care, encouragement, support, and we see this in people.

And if your eyes are open, you'll see it in the heart of a culture that's not just pushing people away, but just they're doing it out of a protective measure, but you know that God, God's solution and God's heart and God's love is the only thing that can break down that wall.

When we move from fear, we also deal with this shame.

And shame is another result of sin.

It's where we learned, we learn to pretend like everything is alright and that everything is perfect.

And the more we pretend, the more we begin to feel like a fraud.

And we begin to feel like a hypocrite because we push down any shame and we put up a front that says everything is okay, everything is perfect.

Check out my Instagram, check out my Facebook posts, check out my My LinkedIn account, check out my life.

Isn't everything good?

Look at the car I drive, the house I live in, look at the food I'm eating, and the places I'm traveling when all of this bandlifts.

That's the world we live in.

Look at the money I have.

And it's there to cover the insecurities of the result of sin, the anxiety.

And we live with this shame because the true person is pushed down and covered with something else.

And we navigate through escapism.

And escapism is like, okay, I'm just going to cover my shame with socially acceptable things like books and movies and video games.

And then we'll move to things like drinking and parties and travel and buying new things and shopping online and all these things are there to cover the shame so that others don't see what we're actually going through.

And oftentimes the things that we choose to cover in our lives, they're justifiable in terms of culture.

It's okay to pursue those things, and no one would ever see that you're actually living that duplicitous life.

So we're created to be different.

Adam and Eve showed us this.

Our home was to be a garden experience where our first touch was from the Father, our first glance is from the Father, our first emotion was from the Father, where we experience the Father's embrace.

We were called, we were created to live in the environment of peace and tranquility and life and joy.

We were called to be in that place, but instead we find ourselves in a different space, left to ourselves, on our own, fighting and thriving or striving every day to thrive.

And the scripture says it very clearly.

It says, listen, if you want to choose a better way, better is one day in the house of the Lord than a thousand days anywhere else, whether it be Disneyland or Bora Bora or some penthouse suite, it's better is one day in the house of the Lord because that's where your whole soul is captured and connected to the one who loves you most.

The tree.

When you're in the shadow of the Almighty.

And we want to live inside that place.

We want to live inside that place where we learn his love and we learn his touch and we learn his embrace.

We learn that emotion.

But if we don't have that, if we don't have that experience, we'll turn to two things.

We'll turn to either we'll turn to this fear of God.

And oftentimes we don't, or we won't turn to him because we have this fear of who he is.

And sometimes when we read the Bible, we read the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

And we think we should fear God, but in no way are we supposed to be afraid of God's presence.

We are to be in awe of God, awe of who he is and his awesomeness.

But we're never to be afraid of God's presence.

In fact, the Bible tells us that God invites us to come and reason with him, speak with him, sit on that bench with him, and talk to him and allow him to identify you and call you out.

And even David talked about God as the good shepherd.

And I can't ever see David at any point where he was afraid to go to God.

In fact, God's arms were always open to David.

He ran in through the Holy of Holies and hung onto the altar.

He said, I want to be with you, God.

And there was never ever rejection of him.

We want to live in the Father's embrace.

We want to live in the Father's house.

We want to live with the Father.

But this fear and the shame lingers with us.

And fear creeps into our heart.

And it tells us that we can't trust God.

It tells us that we're not able to trust God and we're not sure if He'll deal with us kindly because the media says that God won't do that.

God won't treat you kindly.

And we learn it from experiences.

Man, I've done wrong things, and even my own family didn't treat me kindly.

How can I expect God to treat me kindly?

And we develop this relationship with God where we see Him as a terrible God and we're afraid to trust Him.

Just like the Hebrew people did in the desert, where God had literally rescued them from bondage and slavery in Egypt, rescued them from the thousands of soldiers that were chasing after them, brought them through the Red Sea miraculously, got them to the other side.

And when they got to the other side, they yearned for Egypt again because they thought that God was bringing them to a place where they were going to die in a desert.

In fact, God was just taking them through the desert to come to a promised land.

But they thought that God had led them into the desert because they had a mistrust of who he was, a mistrust of his intent.

So what we do is we fear God.

And this fear causes us to create like this religious build around God.

And sometimes we respond to it because if we don't know if we can trust him, then we'll just control him.

And we'll control him by creating practices and measures and put sacred things in place that keeps God far enough away from us that we're not truly relating to him.

And that's what religion does.

Religion says, you're not good enough, but God's out there and he wants to know you, but it's in it's not good, it's not, you're not able to know him the way he wants to know you.

So put all these measures in place.

Look good, dress up good, do all the right things, and then God will approach you.

And God will approach you on his terms, and and just but just keep him far enough away that you feel safe.

And put enough measures in place that you feel like you can control him.

And we create a religion after our own build, our own design.

And we have this choice.

We can either rebel against God, and that's where we just give up hope and we just say, forget it, God, there's no hope for me, or we can build a religion that says, okay, I know you exist, but I'm going to keep you far away.

And instead, Jesus came and he made a third way.

We thought, rebel or become religious, and Jesus came with an astounding message that he is the way, the truth, and the life.

And that you can find the Father if you go through him.

You can go home if you go through him.

You don't have to rebel, you don't have to become religious.

You just have to follow Jesus.

He will provide that relationship that will join you to the Father's heart.

And this religious spirit can draw you, you can put it aside.

All the walls and the and the systems and practices you build up to protect you can be torn down so that you can actually begin to follow Him.

So we follow Jesus, and this invitation that the Father gives us through Jesus is for all people, everyone, that they could come and actually develop this relationship with him and actually spend time in his presence.

I love this picture of the prodigal.

I love the picture of the prodigal son when he was finding his way home.

He saw the father was sitting on the porch and the son, he sees his son from afar off, and the Bible says he ran towards the sun and he collided with the sun and welcomed him back.

And that spirit is in the Father for you and I, for all of his sons and daughters.

So whether you're dealing with the rebellious nature in you because of fear and shame, or you're dealing with the religious nature in you because of fear and shame, my challenge to us today is to drop both and open up your heart to the Father and welcome Jesus to make a way for us where we can approach Father God with an open and humble heart and come into his presence and allow his presence to heal us.

Before we close today, while you're here and while you're listening, I often take time in the evening or take time in the morning to spend time with Father God.

And I just want to take a moment and invite you into that space where we can take a moment together and invite the presence of God into your home wherever you're at, whether you're listening at the gym or at home with your family or traveling from point to point in your vehicle.

Would you just open your heart to God?

And if you can, just close your eyes and look internally and look to Him and open up your spirit and just experience His love while I pray.

Father, we thank you that we're loved by you.

In fact, you've prepared a table for us.

And the banner over that table is love, love, love.

That's how much you love us.

And today, Father, you say we're valuable, that we're worthy, that we're capable and we're gifted and we've got a purpose.

And today, Father, we open up our hearts to experience the love and we tear down those protective measures that we've put around our own heart to protect us from the fear.

And we say, today, Father, we trust you.

We trust that you have good towards us.

We trust your heart towards us.

And we weel up peel away the things that we've put on top of the shame to cover us from shame.

And we say, Father, this is truly who we are, and we want to come to you authentically.

And Father, would you see the stain that we carry?

Would you see all the things we've tried to do to cover ourselves?

Would you see the fig leaves and the covers that we've placed on our own lives?

And Father, would you place a new robe on us?

Would you clean us up?

Would you put sandals on our feet?

Would you bring us to the table and seat us at the table?

And would you pour that emotion and that that spirit upon us so that we can live with you today?

We thank you, Father, for your love.

We thank you for your embrace.

We thank you for your heart towards us.

That we're not alone, that you're with us.

You're always there to teach us.

You're always there to welcome us in.

We thank you for the home you've prepared for us.

We thank you for the life that you've given us and the joy that's in our heart when we can walk in security and with an identity that's rooted in something solid in your view of us, in your your uh love towards us.

We thank you for that today.

In Jesus' name.

Thank you, Jesus, for making the way to the Father.

Amen.

If you were praying along with me and you've never had that experience before, and you're just on that first step of the journey, we welcome you to go ahead and connect online and let us know that you're on this journey.

And if you want to call the office, the office is open Monday to Friday.

Go ahead and make that step.

We love you, we care for you.

God bless.