Spiritual Slavery to Spiritual Sonship (20 page)

I was willing to do anything Pastor Phillip needed. If the usher didn’t show up, I ushered. If the nursery worker for Sunday morning didn’t show up, I volunteered. I held babies and got puked on. I did anything I could to get underneath Pastor Phillip and push up. And it is funny how quickly you find out what you are full of when doing commode ministry. Toilet ministry offers you some of your greatest opportunities for growth!

After 18 months serving at Pastor Phillip’s church, I learned that his father, also a pastor, was looking for a new staff member. Pastor Miles’ church had grown to a couple thousand people who were moving into a new sanctuary. A few months earlier, the worship leader had become discontent and walked off with over 100 people. The rift had wounded the soul of the church, and Pastor Miles needed somebody new, somebody who had not been around during the split, to come in and help restore trust.

Pastor Phillip repeatedly said to his father, “Jack has the heart for it. He has a heart of honor, humility, and servanthood. He is even willing to clean toilets. His example will help heal the soul of the church.”

In order to feel me out before making a commitment, Pastor Miles asked me to go to Japan and China with him and Phillip for three weeks. He and Pastor Phillip even helped make a way for it to happen financially by scheduling me to speak in meetings so people had an opportunity to sow into my trip.

As we were preparing to return home from China, I could not stop weeping as my heart was moved with compassion for so many broken and impoverished people who didn’t know Christ. I felt it was time to leave the sea once more and return to ministry. Pastor Miles approached me saying, “Jack, I want you to move to Spartanburg, South Carolina where I live and help at the church.” I acknowledged that I was open to it. He wanted to know what I felt I had to offer the church and what position I should take. My response was, “I believe I need to start on maintenance. I’ll serve in the church, but my heart is not mature enough for a staff position.” He said he would sleep on it.

The next morning at breakfast, Pastor Miles said, “Jack, because you are willing to start in a low place, I believe your character is mature enough to start as an associate pastor. I want you to be pastor over evangelism and missions. I also need you to help restore trust in the men in the church and to focus your time upon ministering to them.” So, we decided that in January 1988, I would go on staff at the largest Spirit-filled church in South Carolina.

Because of the heart of sonship I had toward Pastor Phillip and because I sought to make what was important to him important to me, a staff position at Evangel Cathedral was offered to me rather than to others more educated and experienced. It was my inheritance. I wasn’t chosen because of my ability to speak; I was chosen because of my willingness to scrub toilets and a desire in me to make what was important to my authority important to me.

When my family and I finally arrived in Spartanburg, I was so excited! I’d had such a spirit of sonship with Pastor Phillip who was like a brother, and now I was dealing with his father 24 years older than me. Dealing with a brother figure and relating to a father figure were two different things to this spiritual orphan, and I was about to find out what my heart was full of. Remember, I would act like a son as long as someone was making decisions to benefit me. Outwardly, I appeared humble and honoring, but
inwardly I unconsciously valued authority for what they could do for me.

For a whole year, I never failed to make what was important to Pastor Miles important to me, and he began entrusting me to fill the pulpit more and more on Sundays when he was out of town. I became one of the congregation’s favorite speakers and staff members. Within six months, because of my passionate and aggressive loyalty, Pastor Miles also placed me on the ruling executive board of the church. Decision after decision was made by Pastor Miles that benefited me and helped fulfill my dreams. I was moving up, and my soul reveled in the attention and affirmation!

I was one of nine associate pastors on staff, and early on in my tenure I had moved into sibling rivalry and competition with other staff members for Pastor Miles’ attention and speaking opportunities. I was a man of integrity, purity, and of the Spirit, yet I still classically followed the orphan thinking that is found in Chapter Six and on the chart found in Appendix A. There is nothing easier than self-deception, which I never saw coming.

You do not know what you’re full of until your boss, pastor, or authority in your life makes a decision that you don’t agree with or one that benefits others more than you. A new staff member came on the team who was struggling with orphan issues himself. It was obvious that he was seeking to move his way to the top and become the favored son in Pastor Miles’ eyes and the favored staff member to the church. It appeared to me that more and more decisions were being made that benefited him, and I began to receive it as personal offense. Consequently, I closed my heart to Pastor Miles and began the downward spiral along the 12 steps of the spiritual orphan we looked at in Chapter Two. I started noticing
Pastor Miles’ faults and weaknesses and could not get my focus off them.

Pastor Miles then began asking, “Jack, is everything all right?” And I would respond as if things were fine. Orphan hearts are usually pretty dysfunctional. They don’t trust people enough to talk about their feelings.

I came to work every day doing everything right outwardly, but inwardly I was moving into numb-numb-ville in the sea of fear, snared by my entanglements. I began to think that everyone else was missing God, and I was the only one hearing clearly from Him.

Pastor Miles asked again, “Jack, is everything all right?”

“Yeah, everything is fine.” Months went by, and he continued to question me. Our relationship went from very open and transparent to a closed one, because I had shut the door on my end.

Pastor Miles had been in ministry over 40 years. He was a man of honor, integrity, consistency, and great wisdom. He knew that I was no longer being honest and real, but I did not know that he knew it; so, I kept wearing my religious mask and aggressively striving to achieve recognition and favor.

As I felt others were being more favored than me, I also began feeling that he was not being fair with me, so I practiced forgiving him every day, but often forgiveness is not enough. There needs to be open and honest communication and possibly even the walking out of the ministry of restitution. With the loss of trust in me, Pastor Miles rotated me off the executive board, which I received as rejection. The more I closed my heart, the harder I worked, because now I felt that I had to earn my way back into his graces through hyper-religious activity. But the harder I labored, the more deeply into orphan thinking I sank. It began to consume me every waking moment. I no longer valued the unheralded aspects of ministry but hungered to be seen and heard and to have greater authority.

Every Sunday I taught the Equipping Class on Spiritual Authority from Watchman Nee’s book of the same title. My life was full of outward loyalty, integrity, purity, service, and faithfulness. I never intentionally spoke against Pastor Miles. I didn’t consciously criticize or demean him publicly. I never sought to undermine him. But my heart was closed to him and he could feel it, so trust was lost.

Feeling like I was on the outside looking in, the father of lies led me unconsciously into self-deception. Because my orphan heart had such a deep need for the approval of man, my words were often directed at influencing people to see how caring, wise, and right I was. I often said things in such a way that put me in a better light in the congregation’s eyes than other staff members. People with whom I was in relationship with began to believe that I cared more about them than Pastor Miles did. They began believing that my focus in ministry should be the vision of every church. It really gave me “warm fuzzies” for people to whom I ministered to agree with me and think I was anointed and wise! But it also demonstrated my immaturity and my need for the praise and agreement of man.

Totally unaware of it at that time, I stepped into
marginal deception
. This does not involve a direct lie; rather, it is sharing information or speaking in such a way that influences a person to form conclusions that are beneficial to me. Marginal deception occurs when I give only partial information or relate circumstances in a way that influences people to come into agreement with my point of view.

Due to my unhealed need for love and affirmation that manifested as an orphan heart, I unknowingly was influencing others to
form wrong conclusions about the senior pastor to which I never sought to bring correction or proper clarity. This was also done by the absence of
deflected praise
. Deflected praise occurs when someone speaks words of honor or affirmation to me and I, in turn, share the glory with others who are part of the team. When I did not deflect praise, it resulted in my taking illegitimate praise unto myself. It made me look good, but it also drew people’s hearts to me and away from Pastor Miles and other associate pastors. It revealed that my heart was insecure with God’s affectionate love and that I still struggled with rejection and the need to be needed and affirmed by man.

One of my duties was to visit the hospitals and people’s homes each week. Often the people I visited would say something like, “Oh, you have such a caring and pastoral heart! Pastor Miles used to visit, but he doesn’t have time for me anymore. But you take time from your busy schedule every week. God bless you!”

I would often respond, “He is very busy, but I will be sure to visit and pray with you, and if you need anything, just call me.” I would illegitimately take praise unto myself by not deflecting it back to Pastor Miles. I believed that I was 100-percent loyal to him, when in reality I was unconsciously relishing in drawing the hearts of the people to myself.

Deflected praise would have responded, “As the church began to grow, Pastor Miles started paying me a salary in order to visit you. I am here only because he has sent me to you. I am personally representing him and know that he is praying for you. Next time you see him, thank him for sending me to visit you.”

Can you see how easy it is for orphan hearts to be deceived by what seems right and fair to them? We need to be independent of needing something from someone before we can effectively lead them or minister to their needs. Otherwise, we unconsciously become manipulative in our pursuit for affirmation, acceptance, and achievement. We are often left with a sense of heaviness or
guilt and feel insecure in our relationships. This binds others to us in an unhealthy, codependent relationship, because we want them to need and admire us and to think that we are more mature and wiser than we really are.

These two areas (marginal deception and deflected praise) in which I struggled revealed how deeply the orphan heart had deceived me. I was subject to my own mission and was illegitimately winning hearts, and I never saw it. Even though I had integrity and thought that I was being totally loyal, it was such an easy thing to unknowingly draw people’s hearts to myself. This held me back from maturity, promotion, and favor with God and man. In the church, I unconsciously caused tension and division in the spiritual realm because of my lack of maturity and my need to feel accepted and liked.

Over the next year and a half, I experienced some of the worst emotional pain and confusion that I had known since my childhood when I felt that I did not have a place in my father’s heart. During this same season, I was being trained in every type of deliverance and prayer counseling ministry. I was leading prayer counseling sessions with men and started ministering to pastors and their families. I could set others free but was becoming more and more personally bound by orphan thinking.

Over that year and a half, there was a lot of betrayal and hurt from another staff member who brought division to the staff as he tried to win Pastor Miles’ heart by making other staff members’ motives seem questionable. Something inside me needed Pastor Miles to put me back into a high-profile place before the people. It was my orphan heart, always striving but never achieving, always longing but never satisfied.

People would come up to me and say, “You’re my favorite speaker on staff; why don’t you speak much anymore?” It was like getting kicked in the gut to have to say, “Well, Pastor Miles just wants to give others an opportunity,” while inwardly I was seething with hurt and disappointment. And of course, I felt that I didn’t have a problem; it was all Pastor Miles’ fault! I thought he was unjust and unfair, because as an orphan I could not recognize my own closed spirit. Every time Pastor Miles came around, I would run to him with my “IV system,” telling him all the wonderful things I was doing, hoping he would pat me on the back and tell me how wonderful I was. Do you see what kind of craziness an orphan spirit will drive you to?

I started turning in reports on all the ministry I was accomplishing so he would know how hard I was slaving for him in the church. After all, an orphan is a slave, not a son. During this time, I felt that I was a man of absolute integrity, truth, and character, and I slaved away 70 hours a week. I was one of the favorite pastoral care persons on staff, but I’d lost trust in Pastor Miles’ eyes because I lacked an open heart and wasn’t honest with him, and he could feel it. Every time he asked how I was doing, I continued to assure him that everything was fine. No problems. But I wasn’t real, and I didn’t know he could see through my religious mask as easily as he did.

Things at the church for me just slowly leveled out, but we never talked through this issue. I wanted to resign many times, but my mentor, Pastor Phillip, would not agree to me leaving. He told me, “You do not leave when you feel that the chips are down, or you will repeat the pattern in the next place you go. You leave only when you are sent out blessed.”