Whose son are you? by Mike Hendrick

Whose son are you? Are you a son of a pauper or a son of the king? The revelation of whose you are determines how you live as a believer and affects your theology on many issues. Do you believe God wants you to eek out an existence barely surviving? Or do you believe God takes pleasure in the prosperity of His Sons? The Father desires us to live as sons and daughters of the king, ruling and reigning with His authority on earth. If you are not ruling and reigning, you are struggling and surviving. It’s time to shift the mindset in the Body of Christ. All authority was given to Jesus and He gave it to us. We live from a place of inheritance with Christ. Do you believe it’s God’s best for you just to struggle and survive, or do you believe you are meant to rule and reign. We are seated in heavenly places with Christ far above all principalities and rulers. God did not want any poor amongst Israel, how much more as New Covenant believers should it be that there is no poor amongst us. God has created us to prosper in life. If we prosper, we move ahead and live from a place of victory.

Where do we get the idea that God wants us to be poor and needy? Our mindsets need a shift. We don’t need the mindset of snobby, arrogant, entitled believers that have prevailed in the days gone by. However, we do need to think prosperous, act prosperous, and remove the stinking thinking from our minds of a woe is me, poverty, I’m no good, I’m nothing belief. We need to be transformed by the Word of God. We need to have a brainwash of all the negative, low self worth thinking that comes against us. We need transformation. The church is not meant to be a laughed at, negative place by the world. Nor is it to be an elitist place where we are not relevant to our world and treat the world with contempt. It is meant to be a force in the world, affecting change around the world it. Does an army not provide all that their officers and soldiers need? What kind of father would want to see his sons stay poor and struggle all their lives? Is God humbling you when you are poor or just teaching you a lesson? Get a brain transplant. What a bunch of foolish talk is that? Now I am saying learn how to serve, learn how to work. The word has a lot to talk about a diligent work ethic, and not to be lazy, but we are Sons of God. We need to have a healthy view on our life and not just grovelling in the ground. How do we have a healthy view on life if we are struggling all the time, just getting by? It’s time for a total transformation in our thinking.

The word of God speaks to many conditions about finance, more so than any other topic. Could it be that God is so interested in that one area of our lives that we struggle with? So many believers have had a poverty consciousness all their lives and have struggled to overcome. Could it be because we have never had an understanding of our sonship that has limited us? We have seen the abuses where man has told us to give to them so we can be blessed? Have we put our expectations in preachers that have told if you give to them, you will be blessed? God doesn’t work that way. What if God wanted to give us an understanding of Sonship so deeply that it transforms everything in our thinking even financially? Can a revelation do that?

My belief is that it can. Sonship as a believer is a foundational truth that can radically shift and displace a lot of our orphan thinking. If we can start to think as sons, than it has the power to shift everything we do in life and how we live our lives. I am not saying every believer is going to be a multimillionaire, owning national corporations and hiring everyone in the world. But what I am saying is that we will shift our mindsets to open ourselves up to possibilities that we would have never done before, and creating opportunities that we would have never considered. So many believers fail to grasp opportunities because they have not formulated a kingdom work ethic or diligence in their lives. I’ve heard it repeatedly said: I don’t want to hire Christians. They don’t want to work or they are lazy. What an indictment against the body of Christ. Could it be we are looking for God to pour money out of heaven and not know how to steward responsibly another’s vision? Sonship transforms that. Are we so afraid of learning to be wise stewards? I am a firm believer if we can steward another’s, God will trust us to steward our own. We first must learn to be sons to be given our own. Sonship is fundamental to us learning to operate in life.

Does this mean that we will all drive the high-end cars, live in fancy mansions, wear the Rolex watch, have the fancy wardrobe? I will say this to respond. Do you need all that to be complete in your sonship? Is that an attempt to prove you are a son? God does not mind you driving a fancy car, or wearing fine clothing, or living in a mansion, or having the nice jewellery but do you need all that to be complete? Or is Christ’s enough and his love. Are you complete in His love? Can you give it all away should God ask you to follow him? Do you serve things, or do you serve God. Sonship is not meant to strive after or an ends to prove how blessed we are. It is meant to be lived from the inside out, affecting transformation of behaviour, not the accumulation of worldly goods to prove whose we are. How vain is it to have all the toys in the world, but yet feeling like you still have to prove yourself more and more. Toys are fun to enjoy, but don’t use your toys as a definition of your sonship in Christ. Life is way more than the accumulation of tons of toys, having the mansions. It is about an abundant life, loving your neighbourhood, loving your friends, engaging the world around you and being a blessing to all you meet. Not a vain attempt to say look at me, I have all the goods in the world. God has blessed me. I’m His son or daughter.

Now before I lose you. I like nice cars. I really enjoy driving BMW’s, not because it is a BMW, but it is a driving experience when you drive something quality wise. I happen to like the driving experience of a BMW. I like looking fashionable when I go out in public and I like good-looking watches. For certain, I don’t believe that God gets glorified in poverty. I don’t want to drive a rusted out bucket of bolts that I am consistently have to put money into. But the BMW does not and cannot define who I am or whose I am. If I am using any of those to define me as a son, than I have missed the mark. Only Jesus can define me. His love for me is not determined by the dollars in my account, the car I drive, or the material goods I possess. I don’t intend on living a poverty stricken life where I just get by and drive a junky car and live in a shack where I eat the scraps. I believe in an abundant life, richly enjoying my relationships and want to use my entire resources to be a blessing to many causes and my life is to be a testimony of God’s goodness.

So when I ask you who’s Son are you, do you want to live as a pauper or as a loved Son of God. Sonship is primarily an identity transformation personally and seeing yourself and the world around you differently, while transforming the world around you. The revelation of being a loved son and daughter transforms your life and affecting everything and everyone in it. It really does influence your friendships, your finances, and your future. It’s time to shed the old grave clothes of a pauper’s life. It is time to prosper yourself. It is time to have a brain transplant. It is time to renew ourselves in who we are with God. It’s time to repent of our immature behaviours and act and behave whom we represent. We are sons of the king of kings. We need to let the Spirit of God transform us. We need to get rid of an arrogant attitude, or an entitled attitude and have a grateful attitude. Behaviour transformation is at the heart of Christian Sonship, which is a work of the Spirit of God within us as we co-partner with Holy Spirit and the Word. It is work of grace and truth working itself within us and affecting change through us. It does affect every bit of us. It is a transformation from the inside out and a place to recognize that every thing we have been given is from Him for us to use and utilize. Sonship does not give us license to be arrogant. It in fact shapes us and conforms us to the identity of Jesus Christ on the inside to live and act more like Him.

I suggest that we need to totally let the pauper mentality die in the body of Christ. We so need a work of the Spirit to rid ourselves of such heinous thinking. It robs from us, it lies to us, and it makes us live far below what we are called to as Sons. Why would we want to feed such a victim mentality? Do we think living as victims, will ever attract the world to the Gospel of Christ? We need a victorious ecclesiology and eschatology to overcome in these days. We have had such a defeated, anemic, escapist view for far too long. We need to start living in a believer’s authority and take our rightful place in this world, as sons who live in the fullness of the victory of Christ. We have lived far below what we have been given by Christ that it has caused the world to label us as irrelevant to the times around us and made us a laughing stock. For far too long we have wanted to escape the world and let the world go to Hell. It’s time to change that!

As we take our place in the 21st century, we see such a polarization of a church that seems so irrelevant to the world around them. We have tried to become hip and cool but the world are not coming to our meetings, and all they find is empty, vain repetition with no power, no life, and just rehashed sayings and finding nothing that would resemble something they want or need. We need to take to the challenge of showing an unbelieving, sceptical world a new model of Christianity that will transform culture and transform relationships. We need to display the world the power of our sonship in Christ and engage the world around us. Not looking like a handout, charity place, barely surviving, but a place you learn how to live in a victorious way that will attract the world to you and live in healthy dynamic relationships in love and adversity. When your life is being tested, and every thing you go through is shaken, will you whimper down, and complain or can you rise to the occasion and with confidence stand through it and become an overcoming Son. I believe we are coming into a season where it will be imperative to demonstrate the Kingdom. Light is getting brighter and darkness is covering the earth. We need to arise and shine, showing forth the glory of God. God wants to manifest His Son, through His sons on earth. As the Apostle Paul told the Roman church that all creation is groaning for the sons of God to be revealed. We need to reveal ourselves to the world around us while shaking off the old grave clothes of religion and having a form of Godliness but denying the power. Christ promised power from on high once the Holy Ghost came upon us to empower us to become witnesses. This power is for all believers and He is looking for sons to manifest His glory on earth.

We have so long regulated that power to the five-fold ministry. It’s time we take our place and release the power of Christ within us to the world around us. We don’t need a prophet to always wait on for a word to tell us where to go. Christ is waiting on us to activate on the inside where we are. There is no need to always go to the mission field or cross-cultural. We need to tap into the believer’s anointing on the inside of us. There is no separate Holy Spirit in five-fold ministry and believer. It is the same Spirit of Christ. It has been regulated to Sunday services, special meetings, but Christ on the inside is asking us to just let Him out. It does not have to be a Benny Hinn style or a Reinhard Bonnke style. He has a style that is unique to us. Stop trying to be like them. Be you, be the Son of God you are called to be and affect the world around you with the Power of God. He won’t let you down. He wants to be released outward, into the world around in situations that you face. Most of the miraculous works done in the book of Acts and in Jesus life were done in the Marketplace. We have regulated it, controlled it, but now it’s time to just release it. We are carriers, couriers, and conveyers of hope. The world needs us. They are not looking for special services to attend at our churches; they are looking for Sons to manifest the Kingdom of God to the world around them.

For far too long we have lived as a body with pastors and teachers leading us, and yet God has given us five offices to glean from. We need a restored headship. Apostles and Prophets are missing! Having a pastor/teacher model has only left us with being more concerned about having right theology, right methodology without the release of the power of the Gospel. The Gospel is a transformational Gospel. So often we believers have waited till we have the right theology, right beliefs in place before we step out and begin to work our faith out, worrying about trivial beliefs. Now I am not saying, there is a process of working out our salvation. But we must come to the realization that we already have everything on the inside of us and all we need to do is start activating it.

For example, we have self-limiting beliefs imposed on our thinking that make our theology passive. One major example is that we need to believe right before God can use us. We have to be perfect in my theology because God will be upset if we don’t say everything perfectly, and doctrinally correct. This is what the pastor/teacher model has brought into us. However if we look at the scriptures, the power was released and transformation happened because the New Testament believers acted on the Spirit on the inside of them. Perfection from a Godly way is not how we have interpreted it. Let’s get over our legalism and into liberty. Perfection is not everything done right, 100% of the time or a checklist we did everything perfectly today, so God is pleased with me. God is already pleased with you. He’s your father. He loves you with the same love He loved Jesus with. Perfection is the Greek word Teleios, which should be more translated maturity or completeness. We are seen already as perfect already in the finished work of Christ. Yet we are being made more and more into His likeness day by day as we invite His transformational power to work in our lives. It is a word implying that we are already fully grown, gone through all the stages of maturity, wanting nothing to be complete. Could it be because we have been so focused on having pastor/teacher models feeding us so much theology in our churches, we have just regulated the power gifts for the minister? Have we felt God cannot use us, until we have right theology and excused ourselves from doing the work of the ministry? Is this because, we are ruled by pastor/teacher models instead of apostolic models who made us consumers rather than releasers? We want the ministers we pay to do the work of the ministry instead of taking our kingdom positions as sons to demonstrate it. Every five-fold minister I know has an incomplete theology and God still uses him or her. Yet we are waiting on God to be used. I humbly suggest, God is waiting on us as believers just to act, rather than us wait on Him to send us. I do believe that God has to take us through process, but the process sometimes can be an excuse to shirk our responsibilities and role in the Kingdom. We are already complete, being daily transformed by the Spirit as sons of the kingdom.

Let me show you through the prophetic ministry. I love the prophetic ministry in many of its facets, but we have regulated prophets to tell us time in and time out, our destiny, our calling. Yet the primary purpose of a prophet is not always to proclaim, it is also to equip, helping the body hear from the Spirit and act prophetically and grow and mature. If prophets just proclaim, then we are still weak. We must become healthy and learn how to become prophetically led by God. That is where the equipping side of the prophetic must come in.

I am not giving excuse for having bad theology and understanding what sets apart Christian faith over all others, rather I am saying we must overcome our fears and start doing the work of the ministry, demonstrating it to a world who needs to see to see a tangible Kingdom. I am not saying we don’t need a revelation of what God is saying to us personally, but we must grow up into the full stature of Christ. How many prophetic words do you need to hear before you will act? What are you doing with what God revealed? God is looking for partners to release His purposes on earth. He’s already completed His side, stop waiting and act on what He has revealed to you in the light about your calling and destiny. By doing that you make your election and calling a sure thing.

I leave you with this. Will you take the challenge to manifest who the Son of God is to the world around you? Will you pick up your identity as a loved Son of God and take a hold of it in your spirit. Will you let him bring a transformation that will radically shift you from being a consumer to a giver? Will you let the glory of God in your life come out? It’s a kairos, defining moment for the Body of Christ and the five-fold leaders in it. Five-Fold minister, start equipping the body in your gifts, so they can do the work of the ministry. Member of the body of Christ, grasp a hold of your sonship so you can work the works of God, and demonstrate sonship to the world around you and release him from the inside. Realize who you are and see the power of God activated in and through your lives and you will see God fulfill far beyond what you ever thought possible. We can break this pauper mindset in the Body of Christ, and see us advance and become everything God has called us to be and show a relevant, authentic Gospel that transforms the world. The gospel needs to be proclaimed, demonstrated, and explained. Our ecclesiology and eschatology will influence our soteriology and our pneumatology as believers and how we live out our sonship in this day to our world. Let us be found living in a revelation of the fullness of what it means to walk as sons of God and manifest the kingdom to a world that needs to see us in victory and not defeat, living a healthy, authentic, kingdom life. We must dedicate ourselves to shaping and influencing the world around us through a Godly transformation of our minds, knowing who we are as sons of the kingdom of God and bringing it to earth, through the help of Holy Spirit.

Contact Michael Hendrick at mbhendrick@gmail.com