Having two moms left him with an orphan spirit

By Michael Ashcraft—

Ross Johnston grew up with two loving parents but suffered from the spirit of the orphan. His parents were both moms.

“The orphan spirit began to take a hold of my soul,” he says on a Delafe Youtube video. “ An orphan spirit is no matter how good things are on the outside deep down inside you feel lonely, you feel like nobody sees you, you feel like you don’t have value. It’s like you’re floating through life and searching for a destiny.”

When she was 32, Ross’s mom longed deeply for a child but knew she had no hope because she was living in a lesbian relationship. She opted for artificial insemination.

Ross grew up in Los Angeles. He first noticed other kids had both a mom and a dad when he was 10. That’s when the longing came.

In high school, his best friend randomly invited him to church on Sunday.

“I had zero on the grid for God, the Bible, the Holy Spirit and Jesus,” Ross says. “I remember I sat in the back row. All of a sudden, I felt for the first time in my life that I was being seen, and that I had value. I felt I was truly loved.

”I remember going home, being on my knees with tears streaming down my cheeks,” he adds. “ For the first time in my life, my soul was connected to the one who created me.”

After imbibing communion with God on Monday and Tuesday night, Ross went back to church on Wednesday — even though his friend didn’t go with him.

“The atmosphere gave me a whole new perspective I had never felt before,” he says. That night he got saved.

God exploded into his life. Satan struck immediately.

A friend introduced him to porn that week. The dopamine dump hooked him.

Ross had two worlds developing simultaneously in him. He went to church and experienced the love of God and growth in his word.

He also had an unleashed beast inside.

“I would to go to church and there was joy, peace, hope, worship, tears, prayer. God was restoring my soul,” he remembers. “I went home, and I felt heaviness, darkness, tension. The enemy tried his best grip to grab me and not let me be saved.”

After graduating from high school he went to San Diego for college. He didn’t get involved in a new church or read his Bible much. Consequently, he started to withdraw from God.

When Ross graduated from college, he went into business with a friend. It pulled him even further away from God. In this retreat from spiritual things, he became more absorbed in sin and selfishness.

“There was always something deep down inside of me that said Ross, you living this way is never going to get your family saved,” he recalls.

His relationship with his mom was always great. The fact he suffered an “orphan spirit” had nothing to do with the quality of his Mom’s parenting. It was just God’s design works, man’s mutation doesn’t. God’s design was for a biological mother and father to parent.

Ross’s mom would do anything for her son. When he wanted to go to church at 15, she drove him and picked him up, no discussion.

Ross loved his mom dearly. (His second mom dropped out of the picture. Struggling with drug addiction, she and Mom slept in different rooms for years and eventually decided to break up.) The specter of NOT seeing his mom come to salvation because he was away from God touched his greatest concern.

“When I was around my mom, I tried my best to make sure she thought I was living the Christian life,” Ross says. “I did my best to make sure she thought I was still pursuing God, even though I wasn’t living for him.”

When 2020 hit with Covid, there was a massive revival in America, and Ross got swept up in it.

“Something began arising me,” he explains. “The best way I can describe it as I was born for this moment. The Holy Spirit stirred me, and once again I was on my knees, surrendering my life to Jesus.”

He repented from walking away from Jesus, and a 9-year porn addiction broke off. “The presence, glory, love of God can transform your life forever,” he says. “When it sweeps into your soul, everything else must go.”

Ross attended a tent revival and joined the movement in which worship leaders like Sean Feucht were staging services across America, in parks and public places, against Covid restrictions, to see revival. Ross is still involved today in that ministry.

Rose believes his mom is close to accepting Jesus.

“Every person is created with a God void,” Ross says. “ We just don’t know it until we encounter him.”

To learn more about a personal relationship with Jesus, click here

Related content: Revivalists Daniel Chand, Sean Feucht, David Hathaway and is the tide of atheism finally turning?

About this writer: Michael Ashcraft pastors a church in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles.