Born to Be Born Again: Fatherless! a Blessed Reality

By John Thurston and Freddie Ruth Grier

Jesus says that he came to give us much life in which our living hope is
recovered (1st Peter 1:3), and this life is found in the truth which he is.
In this case the truth is, the devil has not stolen anything from us at all.
We are not fatherless, nor have we been denied anything. Every day that
passes moves us closer to our true inheritance. God is our true Father,
our natural parents were surrogates. They were used by him to bring us
here according to his will.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781493126873

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by John Thurston & Freddie Ruth Grier.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013920357

ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4931-2686-6

Softcover 978-1-4931-2685-9

eBook 978-1-4931-2687-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture taken from The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. The Living Bible, TLB, and the The Living

Bible logo are registered trademarks of Tyndale House Publishers.

Rev. date: 03/21/2014

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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540394

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Endorsements

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1 Born Under Attack (Qualification)

Chapter 2 Under God’s Shadow

Chapter 3 God’s Child: A New Way Of Thinking

Chapter 4 Trusting God Our Father

Chapter 5 Resembling Our Heavenly Father

Chapter 6 Fear Not! God Is With You

Chapter 7 Comforting After Being Comforted (Informative Teachings)

Chapter 8 Established

Conclusion

Notes

Contact Page

To Shanika S. Weaver and Austin Turner, two precious souls

who were without a doubt, born to be born again.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My wife and I would like to thank Pastor Scuffie Shigg and Pastor Daniel Robinson for reading, and then wisely critiquing, encouraging, praying for, and then taking a chance on and endorsing the book of two unknown authors. Both of you are so appreciated.

We would like to personally thank James and Annie Shannon for their many prayers and listening ears. We love you much.

To our dear friends Andre Robinson Sr. and his beautiful family. Thank you so much for all of your support, encouragement and prayers.

Also, to the Remnant Bible Church family, we are so blessed to have a church family who does not just see our vision but also see our hearts. We love you so much and we thank you for all of your support and love.

Our hearts go out to everyone who has humbly spoken into our spirits through prayers and words of encouragement, thank you so much.

Eternal God, we’re not articulate enough to verbally express our gratitude to you for all that you have done for us. Without you, we are nothing, nor can we do anything. We love, honor, appreciate, and praise you. Thank you.

ENDORSEMENTS

The Psalmist records in Psalms 119:11 That I hide Thy Word in my heart, that I might not sin against Thee.

I take this opportunity to thank God for Pastor John Grier and Pastor Freddie R. Grier. For truly, once again, God has produced two people, through life’s ups and downs, to have the ability to transfer their situations of life through the spoken word of God.

This book, this Book, This Book is one that is unique unto itself but yet broad unto all. Born to Be Born Again Fatherless! A Blessed Reality.

As I read the manuscript, I started reading with one attitude. By the end of the book I believe it is a manual for life. This material that God has given them the ability to interpret through Scripture is helpful, is needed, and prayerfully, I hope it will be accepted by millions for the life-changing, life-inspiring, life-directing road map that it is.

May God bless Pastor John Grier and Pastor Freddie R. Grier. Not only to have accomplished this book, but I am believing that there is a series of books on the way. For truly at a time when it is said that over one-half of the students in one of our local high schools are housed in foster care. Truly, we need material such as this to be the roadmap of life as explained through God’s Holy Bible.

I count it such a tremendous honor to have been given this opportunity.

Congratulations and God bless you from Rev. Dr. S. Scuffie Shigg, Pastor/Organizer of the Love Lifted Me Missionary Baptist Church, serving the community for now more than 26 years.

The Griers have written a book that speaks to the very heart of much of the dysfunction that millions of people grapple with each and every day. Fatherlessness has resulted in a wide variety of destructive behaviors which can plague people for their entire lives. This book not only chronicles those behaviors, but in a very systematic way, unpacks each layer of the dark and ugly scheme that the enemy utilizes to keep people in bondage because of fatherlessness. The reader is helped to understand the enemy’s deceptive ploy, which is an attempt to keep them in bondage by blinding them to the incredible offer that God is making available to them in and through the gift of His Son Christ Jesus. The glorious hope that arises throughout the pages of this book is that the God of the universe wants to be the Father of the fatherless. I pray that if you are fatherless, you will take the time to read this book and experience the awesome offer that God is freely giving in the person of Jesus. It will change your life forever!

Daniel W. Robinson,

Pastor Wadsworth

Avenue Church of God

Los Angeles, CA

PREFACE

All those who believe this are reborn!—not a physical rebirth resulting from human passion or plan but from the will of God.

—John 1:13 TLB

Living under the condition of what man considers to be fatherless can, over time, become a harmful mindset for some people. If by chance, one of these people chose to be united with God through Christ, they could then cast that albatross upon the Lord and be freed from and then healed of the wound caused by it. However, as bad as the mindset of being fatherless is as men may see it, it is nowhere near as bad as something else that God desires to reveal to us in this book.

Throughout this book, God exposes a revelation that if allowed, will destroy the feeling of powerlessness that many carry as the result of the fatherless mindset and replace it with the spirit of power. This blessing evolves from the ability individuals will receive to make a particular conscious choice after acquiring understanding of a truth, which can easily be overlooked in this life.

God desires us to understand that being fatherless as we know it is really just a great misconception that has been perpetrated against us. This is being done in an effort to blind us to a truth that can make a wonderfully positive impact in the lives of those who are willing to receive Christ. We believe God to bring clarity of this mistaken belief as the book is read.

It is therefore, my and my wife’s hearts’ desire that God will bring understanding, healing, and deliverance through the renewing of the mind to those who are allegedly fatherless according to man, in order for them to know without a doubt how it is to operate in godly obedience. We also believe that God will, through this book, paint to the readers who are truly grateful for the sacrifice Jesus made on everyone’s behalf, a clear picture with the purpose of enlightening some of those who currently profess to be God’s children, and many who are potentially God’s children, of how they are and will be under obligation to evolve to act and think as children of God. It will also be a wonderful comforting confirmation to the remnant of God’s children who agree with God that they must detach themselves from loving this world and the things of and in it, in order to sincerely love him.

It is for the purpose of glorifying God through the healing of those who may struggle with the issue of being fatherless that my wife and I believe he has graced us to write this book. Being humbled by having been given such a task, we believe we have put forth our best effort to allow this book to be written under the direction of the Holy Spirit. This is so that God through Jesus will be magnified and celebrated and not we ourselves. We believe that this will be realized by our not speaking as much as we could have, but instead, in obedience to the Holy Spirit, inserting God’s scripture as he directed us to, so that he would distinctly address the issue of an individual having to live without their earthly dad, and everything else he saw fit to say to his remnant.

However, it is not our intent to try and convince anyone that we are some type of authority on how God operates because we’re not. We’re just sharing with you what we have learned from our personal experiences with him that resulted from our choosing to believe upon, receive, and trust him to enable us to overcome those issues in our lives that pertained to being fatherless as man sees it.

According to man, the fatherless can be seen as orphans and those rejected, separated from, or abandoned by their natural parents. This book also applies to those who were raised up in the love, nurturing, and admonition of the Lord and can hear what God is saying when he speaks. It has not, however, been written exclusively for the children of God. The reason for this is everyone is born separated from God who created us, whether they have chosen Christ or not, and the continued unbelief of him and rebellion against him by so many people is the proof. Christ, however, came to seek and to save all who will look to him for salvation.

In my need to research the biblical interpretation of fatherlessness in order to understand what God says about it, I discovered that the word fatherless is pronounced yaw-thome in Hebrew, and it means to be lonely, bereaved, and/or orphaned. Lonely is not in the Old King James Version of the Bible, but alone is found in Genesis 2:18 (first mention). In Webster’s New World Thesaurus, lonely is a synonym for the word alone.

Although the word alone in this verse establishes God’s reason for creating a helpmeet for man (a wife), it is important that this, being the first time the word alone is mentioned in the Bible, is not overlooked. According to what is known as the law of first mention, it establishes the basis for the meaning of other derivatives of the word alone mentioned in other verses throughout the Bible. Particularly in Ecclesiastes 4:10-11, where God teaches us that it is not good for mankind in general to be alone.

In Genesis 2:18, the word alone is pronounced bad in Hebrew, and it means a separation, as in separating one part of a body from the whole. The word bad comes from a word pronounced baw-dad, which means to divide or to be solitary.

This information shows us that the word solitary, which is found in Psalms 68:6 (first mention), is being used to a greater degree to describe the fatherless and widows mentioned in Psalms 68:5. In Hebrew, the word solitary is pronounced yaw-kheed, and its implication is that of being beloved or darling. It comes from a word pronounced yaw-khad, which means one.

A family as a distinct group of people can be seen as one body. Those children within the family who are singled out for rejection by their families are the ones who are being violently separated or divided from the whole. It is not unusual for those children to be wounded by this division. The preacher in Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 shares a few of the reasons why God said it is not good for man to be alone. If it’s not good for a man, then it really can be damaging for children.

In Greek, fatherless is pronounced or-fan-os, from which we get the word orphan. It has the same meaning as the Hebrew definition, only it carries an additional dynamic which is that of comfortlessness, which many of us today experience as a result of being alone and rejected.

In view of this enlightenment, no matter how the fatherless see themselves, we believe that God considers those who will choose to come to him through Christ his beloved or darling ones. This is so wonderful to us because by God’s declaration that we are darling, he is saying that our lives are very precious to him.

One person boils down to one life, and this life is the life that God has given us that is so darling or dear to us, as found in Psalms 22:20 and 35:17. The word darling in these two verses is the same word for solitary as mentioned above, yet it is its life aspect the verse is centered on.

Working in harmony with this is the fact that God has declared that he is the father of those individuals who are without earthly dads or families who enter into right relationship with him through Christ. It is only through his son Jesus that we can be united with God and him with us. When we become one with God, it is then that we can receive the truth of being darling to him. Our lives are precious to him just like a man and woman who are married. The woman’s life should be more precious to the man than his own life and vice versa. If this is the case, then they are each other’s darling ones. It is this understanding that convinces us that we are darling to God. Therefore, throughout this book, we will occasionally refer to the fatherless as either God’s darling or beloved ones.

Throughout the Bible, God also uses the word beloved many times to characterize his children. However, the use of beloved in this book is to comfort those who have been hurt by their experiences with rejection or abandonment within their homes. Also, it is our desire to encourage you by revealing to you how God views you, in the hope that you will be eased and choose to believe and receive the consolation of the blessed reality.

Whether an individual was fatherless or not, rich or poor, many find themselves living life in grief, aggravation, and discomfort because there is a far greater familial tie in life that they either choose not to be a part of, or do not know of. The alliance that some are rejecting is a relationship with the family of God. The actual mindset of fatherlessness can be very unpleasant.

Put simply, being fatherless can be viewed as something that has gone terribly wrong. This terrible wrong comes against the family structure that God originally designed, and it begins with his family. Whether the dad is in the house or not, there are going to be problems if the truth of the family structure as God intended it to be, is not being taught and displayed.

In speaking with people who have been affected by this issue of familial dysfunction or were in what seemed like unfortunate situations in life, the one common denominator many of them shared was poor and/or no relationship with their dads. We believe that God has and will reach out to those to whom it applies and those who desire to hear from him.

In this book, God is shining a light on fatherlessness that glorifies him in the highest and can ultimately lift readers to a higher level of understanding the name Heavenly Father (Matthew 6:26). The ability to genuinely appreciate and appropriate this name will be acquired by anyone who will hear what God is saying and as a result, choose to both believe and receive that they may have conceivably been born to be born again.

My wife and I both hope this book blesses you, and may the peace of God be with you.

Pastor John and Pastor Freddie Ruth Grier

AKA Salt & Pepper

INTRODUCTION

One day, I came to realize and face the fact that I had a problem with my fatherless state of existence. At that time, I began to reluctantly seek help from God. Even though I was hesitant in reaching out to him, I truly did believe he was the only one who could really bring about permanent healing in my life.

I place the blame for my reluctance to reach out to him solely on my pride, which had me at variance with God my Father. The reason I was not in accord with God was because the more I thought about my fatherless status, the more the fact that I had been born that way hurt me. Through my pride, this wound served to fuel my argument with him that I did not ask to be here in the first place. Adding to my foolishness is the fact that, at that time in my life, I was actually professing Christ as my Lord and Savior.

For the longest time, I struggled with having been rejected, and I still have to occasionally put it under my feet. However, in God’s time, I learned that Christ was also rejected. Acquiring the knowledge that I was rejected like Christ produced comfort within me.

The moment I chose to receive that as truth, the peace of God began to come into my life, and I began to feel accepted. In like manner, Christ experienced the same thing that many of us are experiencing today, which is something that God the Father desires us to understand. Over time, the rejection I experienced turned me away from the world; this made it easier for me to humble myself in order to turn to and receive my real father who is God.

I am so thankful to God that in his sovereignty, he never stopped loving me and has always remained merciful to me, which at this time seems as though it is being manifested by his gracing me and my wife to be his choice to write this book.

He moved us to seek understanding in his word about my fatherless issues. As I searched the scriptures, I became disturbed because I saw only one instance of the word fatherless in the New Testament, and yet it is cited many times in the Old Testament. Upon seeking why this was the case, it was revealed to me that the reason why God only mentioned the fatherless one time in the New Testament is because the blood of Jesus has set everything back in order. Christ has fixed the problem.

The Holy Spirit taught me that because of the devil’s rebellion against God and the sin of man, which he was able to bring into being through Adam, congenital fatherlessness is a work of the enemy of all mankind. The good news is, Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection have destroyed the devil’s work. Many, who God has graced to be grateful for this, have and will receive unto themselves the sacrifice of Christ as payment for their sins. We hope that after reading this book, many more that haven’t, whom God has granted to, will also understand and choose to be reconciled back unto the one of whom we are the true offspring. God is the real father of those who receive Jesus as the Christ; this is one truth we truly must receive in order to have life more abundantly.

As a result of what God has given us to share with you, we hope that, in writing this book, someone will hear the truth about whose child they are, and whose child they hopefully will become. Our encouragement is that they will let that truth take its place as being more important in their life than who physically birthed them into this world. Our desire is that many will receive affirmation in the knowledge of the one who is calling them unto holiness. Deliverance is another blessing we believe people will receive and, through the renewing of their mind, come to understand why they are really here, which is to glorify God.

Paul wrote in Romans 15:9:

And that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy; as it is written, for this cause I will confess to thee among the Gentiles, and sing unto thy name.

We also believe that as a result of the above verse, someone will overcome present adverse situations and be healed from the hurts of the past. Readers will also acquire a clear vision for the future for those who feel that their life here is just wasted time,