BIBLE STUDIES ARCHIVE.....

I Will Not Leave You Orphans

This month’s Bible Study is a departure from our usual approach to digging into God’s word and mining for treasure. This month, I relate my experience of Scripture in a whole new way to you, the reader, in the hope that it may minister to you the way it has ministered to me.

First, let me share my experience. On June 1st of this year my father passed away. Despite his advancement in years (dad was 88), and broken heart (my mom passed away in June of 2006), my father’s passing was sudden and I was completely unprepared for it. We managed through the week that followed, by God’s great grace. And then life resumed. Yet I had this hole in my heart and knew only the Lord could bring me lasting comfort. In God’s perfect timing, He eventually brought forth to me a single powerful verse. It is John 14:18 and it simply states, “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.”
For the first time I was experiencing the orphan. No more mom and dad; no parents to call with the oddest questions or to share a funny story. Those who had raised me had left me. I was surprised to feel like an orphan, being an adult. There it was, nonetheless. So I received this beautiful verse and meditated upon it. Jesus was speaking to me – telling me that He loved me so much that He would not leave me an orphan, but that He would come to me. And He did. And He does. And He will. After a considerable amount of time simply meditating upon this truth, it resonated deep within me and began to be a healing balm of Gilead. During this time I read in a devotional these words of Jesus in John 6:63, “The words that I speak to you are spirit and life.” My Savior-King was reminding me that His words were spirit spoken to my spirit and they were life. They had resurrection power. His words for me were, and are, truth.

It took me months to reach the point where I could begin to dig a little deeper into the Scriptures about these two realities in my own life: orphans and adoption. My digging led me to understand that some translations rendered John 14:18 as Jesus promising, “I will not leave you {comfortless, or fatherless, or desolate}.” The word orphan is perhaps most accurate, from the Greek “orphanos.” This word is used in only one other place: James 1:27, which states, “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.” This verse also ministered in a powerful way and I could not help but wonder how many men and women I’ve met in prisons have felt orphaned or widowed.

I found that the Hebrew word for orphan is “yathowm” and also means fatherless, coming from a root word meaning to be lonely. Among the Scriptures that brought me comfort were:

Hosea 14:3 – “For in You the fatherless finds mercy.”
Psalm 10:14 – “You are the helper of the fatherless.”
Psalm 68:5-6 – “A father of the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in His holy habitation. God sets the solitary in families”
Psalm 146:9 – “He relieves the fatherless and the widow”

God’s timeless message had perfect timing in my life: for He would be my Father. God would be my Daddy in a whole new way. He would be my “ab” in Hebrew, giving the precious name Abba. Not only that, He would be my “Abiad” – my Everlasting Father. Though my mother and father had departed, the Lord my God would not. I would find comfort, relief, healing, and help in His Holy Spirit. And I would come to know His Spirit in a very specific way – His Spirit of adoption. Though I knew I had been adopted when I surrendered my life to Jesus, now I was coming to experience it deeper, higher, wider, and longer.

Romans 8:15 - 16 states, “For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” I began to comprehend the significance of the Spirit of adoption – allowing me to continue to cry out Abba – Daddy. I am part of the royal household of God – an eternal family. My spirit recognizes and realizes and agrees that I am a child of God. I belong and I am part of Daddy’s family. This truth also brought a new illumination Galatians 4:4-7, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out Abba, Father! Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.” I’ve been redeemed and adopted. I have a divine inheritance. I am an heir. Though I knew all these to be true years ago, they have become part of my experience now. It is now part of the fabric of my life.

I miss my dad very much. I was the one daughter and so was subject to the spoiling that can come from a healthy “father-daughter” relationship. I could tell my dad things that no one else seemed to understand. I knew he loved me, he believed in me. I try to honor both he and my mom in the ways that I can. Sometimes I think that at age 88, he entered into his “new beginnings” and went to be with his wife, through the divine hand of God. It strikes me that both he and my mom went home to be with the Lord in the month of June. June is my mother’s name. God has been very good to me with my earthly parents. I know not everyone is so blessed. God has been faithful. He has fulfilled His word. I have in heaven a Perfect Father. And so I am subject to the spoiling that can come from that perfectly healthy “Father-daughter” relationship. I can tell my Abba Father things no one else understands and He perfectly understands. I know He loves me, He believes in me. And He gently reminds me when I am sad, “Beloved, I will not leave you an orphan; I will come to you.”