News and Updates

February 1, 2018

David Copeland · February 1, 2018

Newsletter · Volume: 18 Issue: 2

In our stream of Christianity, we have a tendency of calling everything that comes against our walk with God a “spirit”. I know and understand fully there ARE demons assigned to us as believers to steal, kill and destroy us if possible.  I understand the well-orchestrated demonic strongholds that are over cities and nations. But everything we battle is NOT a demon spirit from hell. Some things we face are the results of wrong decisions we have made in our lives. Other problems we face are the result of our wrong eating, a lack of adequate rest, not taking heed to the Word of God or ignoring Godly counsel that has been given to us.

And often times the struggles we battle are the result of wrong thinking we have developed over our lifetime. A mindset that is contrary to the Word and will of God for our lives.

A mindset is simply a habitual way of thinking that may, or may not, be based on scripture. Those mindsets left unchecked will develop strongholds in our lives that will actually rob us of the healing, deliverance, joy and victory Jesus’ Blood has already paid for.

I have found a stronhold is simply a mindset impregnated with hopelessness.

In continuing with the theme on mindsets, this month I want to begin a list of characteristics I have discovered on the orphan mindset.

1.An orphan by definition means “without natural parents”. Pam and I have the great honor of being considered “Mom & Dad” to hundreds of young pastors and leaders around the world, specifically across East Africa. We also have the privilege of being considered “parents” to many true orphans in the Hope Centre Children’s Home in Kenya, and in the PEFA Orphan Fellowship in Malava. Our greatest thrill is to still be the parents of Megan and Missy, our natural born daughters. Even though they are full grown, married with families of their own, my heart still leaps when I know we will get to see them or even talk to them on the phone.

While in reality, I don’t know what being an orphan is really like in the truest sense, I have felt it’s power in the fact that I lived the majority of my early spiritual life and early ministry without the influence of a spiritual father. Just as a natural father gives a son his identity and a daughter her security, a spiritual father is one who speaks to a persons identity, teach you to pray, teach you how to deal with people, how to study the Word and hear from God for yourself. That was my story until early 1987 when God brought a man named Bobby Powell into my life.

We would sit for hours at a time with him expounding the Word, praying together, him pouring everything he had and knew into me. But in spite of him pouring his life into me for almost ten years, I noticed over the last year of studying this subject that I actually had developed an orphan thinking that I was having trouble letting go of. I missed so much of what he was trying to speak to me because of my mindset. Maybe I didn’t know how to let go of it. Part of an orphan mindset reveals itself in not knowing either how to relate or receive from those whom God places in your lives as parents.

I have watched parents who adopt children love those children as it they were natural born children. I’ve watched them as they play and interact with them, and if they happen to have natural born children in the mix, I have noticed almost every adoptive parent I have met never makes a difference between the adopted children and their natural children.

But if aa adopted child has developed an orphan mindset; a habitual way of thinking that is impregnated with hopelessness, that child seems to never be able to completely receive the love of those parents and their new siblings. Sadly, many will never receive until his or her mindset changes.

For many reading this newsletter, your childhood was so dysfunctional, it created a thinking pattern in your mind that has hindered you from receiving the love of our Heavenly Father. It has also hindered you from being able to receive the love of a spiritual father or mother that God has actually sent into your life to help you get to another level.

Because of the abuse of a few, many people totally reject any thought of God wanting to give us spiritual parents. I am well aware that there is no scripture commanding us to become a spiritual father or mother to others. Paul even told the Corinthians that

“Even though you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you have not many fathers…”  1 Cor 4:15

If you are having trouble receiving breakthrough in your life ask yourself: is an orphan mindset keeping me from being able to receive the love, identity and security that comes from having someone really believe that God has called me to be more, do more, and accomplish more than anyone in your family ever has?

I break this first stronghold of the orphan mindset out of your lives today, in Jesus name!