Sonship is a heart that feels at rest and secure in God’s love; it believes it belongs, it is free from shame and self-condemnation, it walks in honor toward all people, and it is willing to humble itself before man and God. It is subject to God’s mission to experience His love and to give it away.
Somehow when we are with Him, we become greater than we are.
Jesus’ comment about how serious it is to cause a child to stumble reveals the jealous, protective love of the Father for His lost, orphaned children—which includes all of us. Jesus went to the Cross to avenge the stolen innocence and broken trust we all inherited after the Fall. When He declared that we all had to be “born again,” He was saying, “We’re going to start this trust thing over again. I’m placing you in the Father’s arms, where you are going to experience unconditional love, acceptance, and care. He is going to meet your needs when you cry out to Him—especially your need to be loved. You’re going to learn how to trust again. And you’re going to be able to build relationships with Me and one another, relationships where your heart will be satisfied.”
God’s thoughts for you outnumber the grains of sand. He is thinking all day long about you. He is planning good things for you before you wake up. He can’t wait to reveal the solutions to problems you face and uncover his hidden secrets to you. He can’t stop thinking about you.
You don’t work for your inheritance, your Dad did that already. The Gospel is our great inheritance from our Heavenly Father that we don’t have to work for.
Is God as proud of me as I am of my children? Like the insufferable dad who can’t stop yelling “that’s my boy” every time his son scores? You can accept He loves you and occasionally likes you. But proud of you? Seriously? If He’s not then He’s not a good and perfect Father. If He’s not proud of me then I’m a better father than He is. Don’t think so.
We have… unbroken fellowship with Him. A father never sends his child away with the thought that he does not care about his child knowing that he loves him. The father longs to have his child believe that he has the light of his father’s countenance upon him all the day – that, if he sends the child away to school, or anywhere that necessity compels, it is with a sense of sacrifice of parental feelings. If it be so with an earthly father, what think you of God?
Today, the dominant global culture is that of fatherlessness. This culture is a subtle and pervasive one that teaches people to think like orphans. It is a culture separated from the beneficial influence of one’s forebears and leaves the orphan defenseless in his own mind. An orphan has no protection and no provision other than what he can create for himself and must struggle for survival by whatever means necessary.
His joy is His fellowship with His children. He is a Father. He is the Father after whom all fatherhood is named. And the Father loves His children. He longs to fellowship with His children, to play with His children. To laugh and dance, sing and talk with His children.
The kind of devotion that God delights in comes about when a person finds security in the pure, unselfish love of God. We don’t find our security or our value from the rules we obey or the way we live. But in the love of God, we know that there is nothing we can do to make Him love us more or less—He just loves us!