Leaving our parents and joining our Parents

“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” (Gen. 2:24).

“What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.” (1Cor. 6:16,17).

“The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.” (Rom. 8:16).

“The family institution is a divine ordinance. Parents stand in the place of God to their children. How grievous in the sight of heaven is the neglect of parents to train their children for the future immortal life. Christians should look upon children as the younger members of the Lord’s family, intrusted to the parents and to the church to be trained up as children of God, to be brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. The Christian family is to be a school of Christ, where parents are to be the visible teachers, but Christ himself the great invisible teacher. The lessons which Christ imparts to the parents they are to repeat to their children line upon line and precept upon precept. Patiently, tenderly, and lovingly their steps are to be guided in the narrow path of holiness. Parents are not to compel their children to have a form of religion, but they are to place eternal principles before them in an attractive light.” Signs of the Times, May 14, 1894 par. 1.

As children we grew up under the guidance of the ones who gave us life. Our parents were everything to us. They were all that we knew as consummate leaders. We needed their love and training. We were completely open to them and to their lessons. We learned from our parents rapidly because our hearts were knit with theirs. We had no fear to doubt their loving protection and providing. Home was our world and our parents were our Godhead.

Our young minds couldn’t comprehend a world bigger than our home. We couldn’t comprehend a humanity much larger than our family. Our young intellects couldn’t comprehend a Godhead bigger than our parents. Naturally we accepted our parents as God, their voice as the voice of God.

But wisely, they began to explain to us a bigger world, a bigger family, and a bigger God. They needed to stay ahead of our developing minds and hearts and consciences. If they had not trained us in the truth as we developed, the world would train us. We would get our training from somewhere and someone. We are always sponges for more knowledge.

So, as we developed under the tutelage of our self-sacrificing parents we were slowly being handed over to God. While our comprehension was young the home protected us from the ravenous, roaring lion-like devils who want to devour every child born to planet Earth, especially those being raised in the truth. While we were developing intellectually, spiritually, and physically we were vulnerable, but protected in those areas. While the devils were raging that we were over-protected and “mommy’s boys” and “daddy’s girls”, we passed on remaining oblivious and innocent of the grotesque traps those devils had created for us.

As we moved into adolescence our dependence on our earthly parents began to be challenged. Our natural-born identity and personality, which we were designed to have for our self-guidance as adults, came to the fore. We were becoming adults. We were transforming into the people that were coded into our genetics at birth. Our adulthood was the real purpose for our birth—to be rational, good, loving, energetic beings that would glorify our Creators in the heavens and bring honor to our parents who invested their lives in us.

As our intellect developed, so did our concept of God. Jesus became increasingly real to us because our godly parents and our pastors trained us to study for ourselves, to meditate on the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy, and to think for ourselves. An early foundation of faith was laid for our later conversion, a true conversion where we could understand the concept of sin, and have a conscience that recognized our personal sins. A need for a Saviour grew stronger and stronger until we cried out to Him and crumbled at His feet. Then the Son of God, who has charge over our redemption, justified us by our faith. He who died in hard labor to give us this second birth must raise us up in spiritual adulthood, sanctified and pleasing to His Father in heaven that He can trust us to assist Him in faithfully handling the affairs of His eternal kingdom.

Now we are walking in full man-hood or woman-hood. Our dependence on our earthly parents is cut off because our consciences are fully developed. Our moral compass is guided by our Creator, our spirit linked with the heavenly Spirit, Christ’s Spirit and God’s SPIRIT.

We are men and women by God’s estimation. We walk by faith. Faith links us to the Creator of the heavens and the earth. Our internal guidance system is not imagination. It’s not intellectualism. It’s not passion or emotion or epiphany. It’s faith. It’s surrender to the only true God. It’s trusting in the Father who alone is 100% faithful and true. And perfect trust brings liberty such as the world cannot comprehend. They that are in the flesh cannot please God because trust means everything to God. Trust is the whole loyalty and fealty that He requires for the restoration of His eternal government that Satan compromised.

“So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.” (Rom. 8:8). Only those in the Spirit can please God, and “Without faith it is impossible to please him.” (Heb. 11:6). Therefore, faith is the “eternal Spirit” (Heb. 9:14). The eternal Spirit is the permanent faith that comes with genuine conversion. Born again, we are all the necessary spiritual genetics encoded into our consciences that will either result in a sanctified representative of heaven, or it will result in death.

Being born again, Jesus is now our teacher. We will still have under teachers, such as our parents or pastors or educators. But, with Jesus as our Master teacher, He will show us which teachers to choose. Faith in Jesus is the operating program that we follow. We have followed after Him, fought to have Him, felt Him in the dark, and found Him. Now we will always fear that we might lose Him and say with Mary, “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him.” (John 20:13).

Being led by the Spirit of the Lord Jesus we have life and peace.

“For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” (Rom. 14:17).

The mind of faith is a happy, free mind. The Christian has a liberty that the world doesn’t have. The Christian can think for himself like the world can’t. The Christian can be honest with facts like the world can’t. The truly profound things of life are comprehensible to his peace-filled, quickened, free mind. The worldling is blind to reality because Satan won’t let him be honest with hard facts.  But with those who have found the Saviour reality is perfectly acceptable and wonderful.

“Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (2Cor. 3:17,18).

“Every soul that refuses to give himself to God is under the control of another power. He is not his own. He may talk of freedom, but he is in the most abject slavery. He is not allowed to see the beauty of truth, for his mind is under the control of Satan. While he flatters himself that he is following the dictates of his own judgment, he obeys the will of the prince of darkness. Christ came to break the shackles of sin-slavery from the soul. ‘If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.’ ‘The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus’ sets us ‘free from the law of sin and death.’ Romans 8:2. 

     In the work of redemption there is no compulsion. No external force is employed. Under the influence of the Spirit of God, man is left free to choose whom he will serve. In the change that takes place when the soul surrenders to Christ, there is the highest sense of freedom. The expulsion of sin is the act of the soul itself. True, we have no power to free ourselves from Satan’s control; but when we desire to be set free from sin, and in our great need cry out for a power out of and above ourselves, the powers of the soul are imbued with the divine energy of the Holy Spirit, and they obey the dictates of the will in fulfilling the will of God.   

     The only condition upon which the freedom of man is possible is that of becoming one with Christ. ‘The truth shall make you free;’ and Christ is the truth. Sin can triumph only by enfeebling the mind, and destroying the liberty of the soul. Subjection to God is restoration to one’s self,--to the true glory and dignity of man. The divine law, to which we are brought into subjection, is ‘the law of liberty.’ James 2:12.” Desire of Ages, p. 466.

“He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.” (1Cor. 6:17).

By our parents letting go of us so that we could grow up into Christ we know the fullness of life, all the happiness and pleasures that He originally intended for Adam. Today we can be with Him in paradise.