Sid: My guest is Leif Hetland, and just before we went on the air I was thinking you know, every show I start out with “We’re the Mishpochah” which is a Hebrew word for family. And Leif isn’t that what we’re talking about this week when we talk about the orphan spirit and the spirit of son-ship and the devil is the founder of this orphan spirit and he tries to spread it to everyone possible and God is the family of Sonship which God’s really trying to make an extended family.
Leif: Yeah, and that’s the beauty I hadn’t even, because I don’t know Hebrew as well just know a few words, but as you said that first of all, “Heaven on earth is a family business. It started with a family and it ends with a family and we’re living a season where the Father is restoring His family here on earth and eventually they are going to be represented from every nation tongue, tribe and language.
Sid: Well, Malachi talks about this restoration of the last days the Spirit of Elijah is going to come and restore the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers and it says if that doesn’t happen they’ll be a curse on the earth.
Leif: Yeah, and on the other side we are seeing it in Romans 8, “Creation is moaning and groaning.” So, there’s a cry in creation from the poor to Muslims, to people all over in homes and poverty and pain and suffering. Where are the Sons, where are Daughters? Creation is moaning and groaning and groaning for the very manifestation for us to become what we already are. Get back and live a life like we have a home, like the prodigal son that leaves sin and let’s get back home to the Father’s home. If it is rebellion or religion, let’s come home and I have experienced both being, rebellious and religious so I speak out of a lot of experience. But that’s the glorious home coming that’s taking place in the kingdom.
Sid: Well, you know most people with an orphan spirit are under a deception and they don’t even realize that they have this because they’ve pushed that fear and that injustice and that pain down so deep that they rely on themselves and that they’re so deceived they think they’re relying on God.
Leif: Yeah.
Sid: Tell me about yourself. Tell me about how you got an orphan spirit and how you got free.
Leif: Yeah, I believe that some of that orphan spirit is in us from birth. It started with me, give me, bless me, I need a clean diaper, “Wah Mommy I want.” Everything is about self in the center and so to a certain degree some of that is there, but for me a major shift that took place was that I came from a godly home. I mean we have from every angle, both from my Mom and Dad side which is very unusual in Norway, my country, very solid Pentecostal background, good theology, good security. I had it all, had a great great home, but the deception was the enemy came in and there was a abuse that took place when I was about twelve years old. And I didn’t know that I put on fig leaves; fear, insecurities, guilt, loneliness, because pain seeks pleasure, now you feel shame and you feel pain and you start to cover up. And I didn’t realize I started my journey to become a prodigal son, the enemy the ultimate orphan came in and now in the next moment, this is even before I was saved and I gave my life to Jesus, but automatically I started to run towards anything that could try to stop that pain. The good news was that when I was eighteen years old I had an amazing encounter with Jesus. Supernatural encounter with Him where I was saved, I was healed and delivered, set free from all kinds of things. It was just one of those glorious salvations that was the good news! The bad news was that I went to church which was more like an orphanage where they now was training me to go from a prodigal son to become the prodigal brother and I started with all the duty of religion. And that kind of was my journey for many years; I went to Bible College, seminary became a pastor and now of course I must be holy, I need to do this, I need. The prodigal brother issue because if I do that maybe Poppa is going to be well pleased with me. But, I never do enough, my wife doesn’t do enough, my children don’t do enough. I never have enough money and no matter what I did I could not please my Father. So some of those lies that that orphan spirit was there, I mean I was…
Sid: So you were fear driven, that’s what I’m hearing?
Leif: Yeah, and it’s to the root of the orphan spirit that’s why the first thing it starts with is a Baptism of Love because “Perfect Love takes away all fear.” When you’re becoming free from fear than that’s when you can start to live. But yes, I was fear driven, but it is connected to this orphan spirit.
Sid: But as a Baptist Preacher, I recall you just got so dry.
Leif: Yes, I was burned out; I never did enough. I had some amazing encounters with the Holy Spirit, but the problem was that it was leaking. The Holy Spirit visited me and I knew now the anointing…
Sid: And by the way, that’s why the people go from meeting to meeting because they have encounters with the Holy Spirit, but they leak.
Leif: Yeah.
Sid: So, they could go to meetings the rest of their life, but if they’re still leaking they’re never going to be satisfied.
Leif: Yeah, and one of my favorite picture of the Holy Spirit is the dove and because I have started to study and look more and more at doves. And what I realized I can have the dove and this is how I realize in year 2,000 when I first an encounter with the Father’s love I realized that I was in a big Word of Faith Church, a black church preaching and a dove was there, signs, wonders, miracles. The power of God just touched that place, it was amazing and then I came into the car and I started to think certain thoughts and every else, the dove was gone, the presence was gone and by the time I got to my wife and kids and got home; I mean I was irritated, I was this and I was that. I didn’t have love, joy, peace and all of these wonderful things that the dove brings. I had pigeons but I didn’t know what happened and I started to just notice in that in my life that…
Sid: But why would you leave such a wonderful place so filled with the Spirit of God and come home irritated; I don’t get it?
Leif: Well, that’s why I think that that orphan and that orphan spirit comes in, because I didn’t understand that the superglue on your life that is going the dove to stay that’s where we have been anointed by the Spirit. So we’ve had a baptism of water, a lot of people that are listening and some have had what we call a baptism of the Holy Spirit, the dove came upon you, but they’ve not had a baptism of love and have not been affirmed of the Father. That was the key for the dove to stay upon Jesus. Even in the wilderness had the dove stay there and when He came out of the wilderness He was full of the Spirit. That’s what happened to me in the year 2000. Suddenly the Father came and similar what Jesus had and there was a voice from Heaven, lying on the floor in Melbourne, Florida that says “You’re My Beloved Son whom I am well pleased.” I just wept because I couldn’t understand God could be pleased with me because I looked at all these different issues.
Sid: How does this play out in your marriage with an orphan spirit?
Leif: Well, when it said that, “You do not do enough,” and you strive for approval when you are constantly having to do something and you are competing with other people and the next moment you are often judgmental because your wife doesn’t pray enough or suddenly in the next moment you start the blame game. And it affected my marriage and I many times weep about it because I didn’t realize what I was doing that I had such expectation that I thought that God had on me. And now I put this same expectation on everybody else and it was built up on this fear base and so they didn’t do enough. So they did feel the affirmation and just the love and the “I’m well please with you, you are my beautiful bride.” And they didn’t hear that so much, but “You didn’t do this,” or “I wish when I’m preaching you should be up in the front or the kids should be quiet,” or woo I’m still getting drained even talking about how my life use to be as an orphan, it’s just a… It was just a very painful thing for us. We just survived in it and a lot of orphans do; they learned how to survive in the orphanage. But why would you want to live your life in the orphanage when you can come home into a beautiful beautiful place?
Sid: …When people hear this teaching and you pray an impartation of the Father’s love, what changes are you hearing that occur to people?
Leif: The biggest thing is I say first of the individual life. People are becoming free from themselves because self has been I the center of the orphan spirit life. And second of all that I see what major changes they are stopping and they are not judging a lot of the people that are around them because the measurement is not based upon what everybody else does. You suddenly feel the pain of a brother falling or you feel the pain of your spouse that has been struggling because you’re viewing them with the eyeglasses of love the way the Father views you. And the other thing I’m seeing, I’ve seen some amazing miracles, I’ll just share one of them in Ankeny, Iowa that I never forgot; Renee was sitting in a wheelchair and it was in an Assembly of God Church in Hawkland Assembly of God, late that night I prayed and we saw a lot of healings but one girl sitting in a wheelchair. She had been prayed for by all the big names in America, actually I had prayed for her before. Tragic accident and from her neck and down she cannot move. And suddenly I didn’t have a lot of anointing or faith, but I asked, “Renee what would you like the Father to do for you?” And she said, “Healing my orphan spirit.” I never forgot it, tears coming to her eyes and I just started release a Father’s Blessing for her and to make that story short, because we have watched it over and over again, but I said, “Father I know that if this was my daughter Lila that was sitting here, I know what I would do, and now Father I know that you love Renee much more than I love Lila, give her a sign that you are going to heal her and in a matter of one hour and forty-five minutes, Renee is running all over the room, everybody is shouting. Her father comes in who is in from a different theological equation that believes maybe this was God’s will. But we had tried faith, we had tried anointing, we had tried giftedness and I have seen major miracles happening when suddenly they realize that, “I am a beloved daughter, my Poppa loves me, He is well pleased with me, He wants to give me great gifts.” And when something shifts in the view towards God and God’s view towards them, suddenly now the view towards others and their views towards the future is just changing in people. Some major miracles are happening, mainly all kinds of mental disorder; four people bipolar, I mean we have just had so many things where they are laying on the floor for just hours just weeping like I did.
