A few weeks ago, I was praying with a small group of pastors for our city when we received a strategic download from the Holy Spirit concerning the Father's Heart toward our city and the Orphan Wound that plagues so many who live here. As we prayed and shared our hearts we were struck with three clear points of understanding. First, Father loves our city and knows every single person by name. Second, the majority of the people of our city are alienated from the Heavenly Father's love due to rejection, abandonment and neglect of our natural fathers and mothers. Third, a significant key to bringing revival and transformation to our city is for God's leaders to assume responsibility to represent God's Father Heart and become spiritual "fathers and mothers" to the spiritual orphans, who live and work in the various spheres of our city.
This is the first of several articles designed to equip us to pray and position ourselves to father our city.
As we consider spiritual father and motherhood, there is perhaps no better place to start than Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son. In this parable, the father was a wealthy landowner with two sons and many servants. One son was dedicated and dutiful, religiously obeying the father's will but secretly resenting his life. The younger son was restless and demanded his share of the inheritance. He took his portion and went far away from the father to indulge himself in pleasure and prodigal pursuits.
San Francisco is a Prodigal City. We have been raised in the lap of luxury and blessed in so many ways. We are a low point along the beautiful coast of California where the rivers release their fresh waters into an extraordinary bay with a Golden Gate that welcomes the world. Our natural harbor has been a haven and refuge for wayfarers for over two hundred years demonstrating in the natural realm a spiritual gift of welcome that continues to characterize our city. We are blessed with wonderful natural resources like water, forests and farmland, not to mention the silver and gold that marbled, "them-there hills".
San Francisco also has many of the qualities of its namesake Saint Francis, who rejected the hypocrisy of religion (although not perfectly) and began a people movement that brought justice to the poor, mercy to the downtrodden and truth to hungry hearts. Our region seems to generate world-changing, people movements such as the Beatniks, Hippies, New Agers, and more recently the Homosexual movement. We have been blessed in so many ways, it's impossible to count but instead of giving thanks to the Father for letting us share His wealth, we have become proud, self-centered and demanding. We have taken our inheritance and rejected our Father and squandered our blessings in prodigal pursuits.
Yet, just like the Prodigal Son, we have soon discovered that there is no true satisfaction or fulfillment in serving and pleasuring ourselves. We were created by the Father with a great identity and a powerful destiny. We will never be truly happy until we discover and fulfill the reason for which we were created. Let's pray that the people of our city, like the prodigal son in the story would come to their senses and recognize the foolishness of their self-inflicted orphanhood and return to the Father's house and heart.
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