Sunday, April 23, 2023

ABBA!

Today’s Reading: Galatians 3-4

Click scripture link to read online or HERE to listen online (then click the symbol of the audio speaker above the scripture portion).

 

Looking up the stairs from the Chapel of Saint Helen in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, you can see hundreds of crosses that have been carved into the stone walls.

GOOGLE MAPS – To see where the photo was taken, click HERE.

 

Key Verse: Galatians 4:6

And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!”

What a great change! We were enemies of God, but have become His friends…and more than friends, we have become children of God. As His enemies, we deserved His wrath. Instead, He has shown us His infinite love. We deserved to be punished, separated from Him forever. Because of His initiative, the opposite has happened. We are welcomed into His Kingdom as members of His family.
In these chapters, Paul explains an astounding change. The Galatian believers have come from being slaves — slaves to sin and from trying to obey God out of a sense of duty — to being heirs of God. In reality, they have the rights, privileges and freedoms of sons and daughters of the King. We have these same rights. Therefore, we can call God “ABBA, DADDY!” If we struggle with this, consider praying the prayer written in our Prayer for Today…

PRAYER FOR TODAY:

Father God, I pray for the Spirit of Your Son to fill me now. I pray in faith believing that You are now keeping Your promise to me. The promise of the Spirit was given to me by Jesus, Himself, when He said, “How much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him” (Luke 11:11-13). I’m asking, Abba Father, and You are more willing to give of Your Spirit than I am to receive. Therefore, I am receiving the Holy Spirit at this very moment. I praise You! I thank You! I worship You! Hallelujah! Glory to Your Holy Name! Amen!

100 PERSONAL WORDS:

As a child and in my early teens, I would go forward to the altar at church from time to time, asking Jesus to come into my heart and to write my name down in His “Book of Life.” I was confident that He did this at the time. However, when I did something that I knew was wrong, that confidence was gone, and I would give up until the next time I came forward to kneel at the front. We called the bench in front of the pulpit “the penitent form.” Sometimes it was called “the mourners’ bench.” Of course, I knew I was to be “penitent” and I was to “mourn” over my sins. It was not until I was 16 that I realized that I truly am a child of God by faith and faith alone. I believed that even as my human father would not ever cease to be my father, even so God, my Father, my Abba, would not ever take an eraser and rub my name out of His Book. The day after I fully believed that, I went down to the creek behind my sister’s house at Shady Nook, just outside of Pembroke, Ontario, and quoted over and over John 6:37. Jesus said, “The one who comes to Me, I will by no means cast out.” I came to Him! He does not lie! Therefore, He does not cast me out. He receives me! What freedom and confidence that fact has given me right up to this day, over 64 years later.

Yours for believing Ephesians 2:8-9 (our next New Testament book after we read 1 & 2 Kings): “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast,”

David

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