He Is Daddy

Meditation

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.”

(Romans 8:14-15)

When I truly follow Jesus, not just on Sundays but every day, I feel completely like a child of the Almighty God. When I really stop to think about that I am humbled. He doesn’t have to even acknowledge my existence. I am a normal sinner with more flaws in my character than I care to admit or disclose. I deserve an eternity of punishment in hell for the things in my past, and for the things I’ll do in the future. Still, knowing every sin I would ever commit, God thought enough of me to offer Jesus up to die on the cross to pay the price for my sins. If I pay attention, my heart will hear the Holy Spirit call me to live a holy life.

Have you ‘heard’ the Holy Spirit speak to you? He does you know. He speaks to me through the lyrics of a song, in the midst of a sermon, or even when I’m standing in a long check out line, and I’ve got a lot of better things to do. Which brings up one of my failures to listen to the Spirit. I was in the afore-mentioned check out line. I was late getting somewhere. There was a young lady, two customers ahead of me, being checked out. I was totally absorbed in being held up in this terribly slow line. When the young lady ran her debit card to pay for her things, the card was rejected. Had I been paying attention to the Spirit, I could have offered to pay, giving glory to God, but I was so wrapped up in my own world, I missed the opportunity.

When Jesus became the Lord of my life, I essentially became his slave. Slavery, in the human sense, has a very bad connotation. However, unlike being the servant of an evil human master, I am not given to fear what Jesus will do to me. He always has my wellbeing as his guiding thought. He blesses me every day with his protection and provision. Even though I am his bondservant, I have nothing to fear. Not because I’ll never have another earthly problem, but because I no longer have to fear eternal punishment. I am not only his bondservant; he has made me an adopted child of God.

God excludes no one from the free offer of salvation. No matter what you’ve done, Jesus wants to welcome you to his family. You can have a real family relationship like a loving father with his children. Abba is the Hebrew word for father, but more intimately used for daddy. How many other gods that people have ever worshiped were called Daddy? None! Whether or not we’ve had a kind and loving human father, we have a loving Father in heaven. He loved us before we were even born and paid the ultimate price to redeem us, so we can spend eternity with him. So now we can call out to him, Abba, and he is there. Hallelujah!

Prayer Time

Abba! What a privilege it is to be able to have the kind of relationship with you that, though you are the Most High God, the author of creation, we can call you Daddy. No other deity that men call god is called, “Father” by its followers. The only kind of relationship people have with these other gods is one of fear. Fear that if they don’t carry out some wicked task, their god will bring calamity on them. We can have a real, one on one relationship with you even though you are so much higher than we are. It’s slightly comparable to ants having a personal relationship with Superman, where we are the ants, and you have no Kryptonite to worry about. Whether or not our earthly fathers were good and loving, we now have you, our heavenly Father, who loves us unconditionally. We thank you for thinking us worthy of your love. You have adopted us to be your sons and daughters, not so we will remain mired in our past lives of fear and desperation but be reborn into lives of courage and determination to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s in his precious name, we pray. Amen!