Spiritual Food to Live By. A Celebration of Friendship. Seven Mantras to Shape Your Day: The Power of Thought and Visualization. God in the moment. Trust in the Lord. Visiting on Behalf of Your Church: Lenten Meditations with Fulton J. A Testament of Our Time. Stressed-Out "In the World of Truth". There's Triumph in T. The Eastern Path to Heaven. Are You Cheating God? In God We Must. Lenten Reflections for Peace and Healing. A Self Expression of My Emotions. Facing Illness, Finding Peace. An Outpour of My Heart.
Finding Joy at Christmastime. The Key to Transformed Thinking. Reflections Of God's Work. Preparing your Heart for Christmas. Reflections Of A Sheep: The Series - Book Two. Saying Goodbye To Self. A Fragile Gift of Love. The Ultimate Woman of God. Rx for the Soul. It might never happen. I Will, I Will A Better Life Awaits You. Awakened, Empowered and Enlightened by the Holy Spirit. Tapping into Spiritual Renewal. All the children of God on earth are alike in this respect. From the moment there is any life and reality about their religion, they pray.
Just as the first sign of the life of an infant when born into the world is the act of breathing, so the first act of men and women when they are born again is praying. This is one of the common marks of all the elect of God, "They cry unto him day and night.
ABBA PRAYER
The Holy Spirit who makes them new creatures, works in them a feeling of adoption, and makes the cry, " Abba, Father. The Lord Jesus, when He quickens gives life to them, gives them a voice and a tongue, and says to them, "Be dumb no more. It is as much a part of their new nature to pray, as it is of a child to cry.
They see their need of mercy and grace. They feel their emptiness and weakness. They cannot do other wise than they do. A Call To Prayer. O that all that hear me would be persuaded to bow their knee, and their hearts, as soon as they go home: None have a right to call him father, but those who have received the spirit of adoption, whereby they have a right to call him, "Abba, Father.
This you must experience, this, this you must feel before you are Christians indeed. Thou art my Father, and I am, thy child, then wilt thou not treat me like a child? I believe that this is an invincible plea, because, when God calls himself our Father, he means it. There are some fathers, in this world, who do not act at all as fathers should; shame upon them; but that will never be said of our Heavenly Father.
He is a true Father, and he has bowels of compassion towards his children, and he does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men; and when we know how to appeal to his Fatherhood, we shall prevail with him. There is music in that word, but not to a fatherless child—to him it is full of sorrowful memories. Those who have never lost a father can scarcely know how precious a relation a father is. A father who is a father indeed, is very dear! Do we not remember how we climbed his knee?
Do we not recollect the kisses we imprinted on his cheeks? Do we not recall to-day with gratitude the chidings of his wisdom and the gentle encouragements of his affection? Who shall tell how much we owe to our fathers according to the flesh, and when they are taken from us we lament their loss, and feel that a great gap is made in our family circle.
Listen, then, to these words, "Our Father, Who is in heaven. Did you ever look into the face of death, and as you thought you were about to depart, cry, "My Father, help me; uphold me with thy gracious hand, and bear me through the stream of death"? It is at such times that we realize the glory of the Fatherhood of God, and in our feebleness learn to cling to the divine strength, and catch at the divine love. All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.
Jesus Himself use of Abba in addressing God was without parallel in the whole of Jewish literature. The explanation by some early Church fathers Chrysostom, Theodore, Theodoret was that Abba was the word used by a young child addressing his father. It was an everyday family word, which no one had ventured to use in addressing God. Jesus introduces "Abba" as a quite natural way to address His heavenly Father, manifesting a childlike, trustful, and intimate way a little child would address his father.
As an aside, notice that those who are privileged to cry "Abba" should be willing to do "Abba's" will! And so in intense agony in the Garden of Gethsemane Lk We see this same dependence on the Holy Spirit continuing throughout His earthly ministry cp Lk 4: When we are chastened, as we must be for what son is there whom his father chasteneth not?
But by calling his disciples to share in the kingdom of heaven, they now have entered into a relationship with his Father as well. Abba is an Aramaic word that was used by Jews as a term of endearment, a familiar term like Papa, which children might use in addressing their father. The idea of God being a father was extremely foreign to Jewish thinking in the Old Testament. But being adopted as sons and daughters of the Most High God has given us a special, intimate, and unique relationship with Him.
Because we are in Him, we may use the very word He used. Only children can do that. But no Lord, no, that never shall be, rather I pray thee blend my human will with thine. Barclay's translation of Ro 8: For all who are guided by the Spirit of God, these, and only these, are the children of God. Nor are you meant to relapse into the old slavish attitude of fear - you have been adopted into the very family circle of God and you can say with a full heart, "Father, my Father".
Abba, Father means "Dear Father the Father", reminding us of a small child who seldom cries "Daddy" just one time, but more often cries out "Daddy! One proof that we are in Christ and are truly adopted sons of God comes from the instinctive cry "Abba! Indeed, fallen man's deepest need is to be allowed to cry out to God as "Father! When we are supernaturally impelled to cry "Abba! The Spirit is poured out into our hearts to confirm and make real our adoption. How does he do that according to Ro 8: He does it by replacing the fear of a slave toward a master with the love of a son toward a father.
The work of the Holy Spirit in our lives is to change our slavish fears toward God into confident, happy, peaceful affection for God as our Father. Adoption gives us the privilege of sons, regeneration the nature of sons. The Law produces a spirit of fear; a servile, Cain-like spirit. But grace produces a free, filial, Abel-like disposition, through Christ the seed of Abraham.
Adoption is a greater mercy than Adam had in paradise… God has made his children, by adoption, nearer to himself than the angels. The angels are the friends of Christ; believers are his members… Since God has a Son of his own, and such a Son, how wonderful God's love in adopting us! We needed a Father, but He did not need sons. That term of intimacy connotes a Spirit-generated petition of praise and worship offered to the Father. No, they confidently ask for whatever they need whenever they want it.
To be in bondage under the law, to be afraid of being cast away by God, and visited with destruction on account of sin after we have trusted in Jesus, — this is not the work of the Spirit of God in believers, but the offspring of unbelief or ignorance of the grace of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It is significant that the Spirit indwelling is the power whereby we cry, Abba, Father, —by His enlightenment. His encouragement, His energy. The conclusions of philosophy are based upon theories and hypotheses and are always being challenged and perpetually overthrown by succeeding new schemes of philosophy.
And even the dearest discoveries of science await new explanations—of the very constitution of the universe they are invented in. But with the child of God—the born-again family, there is no such uncertainty! A child of God knows. And the blessed Holy Spirit, by whose inscrutable power he was born again, keeps forever witnessing with his consciousness,—and that through no processes of his mind, but directly, that he is a born-one of God.
This is most natural and could not be otherwise. Children in an earthly family grow up together as a family, their parents addressing them as children, their brothers and sisters knowing them to be such. It is the most beautiful thing in the natural world!
This that we can cry out "Abba! You whisper his name in the darkness and he comes to your aid. Every father understands this principle. I can be in a room filled with people and a welter of voices. A father knows when his children are speaking to him. The same is true with our heavenly Father. He hears the faintest cry of his children.
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Life in the Spirit. God does not want His children to be in fear. When Jesus Christ died the sword of judgment was forever sheathed in His body, and not even God Himself can draw it forth to strike a man who has put his trust in the Savior. All this is involved in our position. All this is guaranteed in our sonship…. The witness of the Holy Spirit is that which draws us into the center of the experience of Jesus Christ, makes us conscious of our union with Him in His eternal plan for us, climaxing in our union with Him in His death and resurrection.
Ye did receive it once the spirit of slavery , and it was a great blessing to you. This came of the law, and the law brought you under bondage through a sense of sin, and that made you first cry for liberty, and then made you accept the liberating Saviour; but you have not received that spirit of bondage again to fear. Is God your Father? Have you learnt to trust him as his children trust him, and to love him as his children love him? Do you depend wholly upon him?
Do you seek to submit yourself entirely to his will, and to walk in his way? For, if you are not a child of God at all, certainly you are not one of his firstborn. This to cry "Abba! Oh, that God may give it to you, dearly beloved, to the very full! Thus it is clear that the Spirit of adoption is a spirit of liberty, and a spirit of confidence.
The spirit of bondage made us fear, but the Spirit of adoption gives us full assurance. The Spirit of adoption, moreover, is a spirit of gratitude. Oh, that ever the Lord should put me among the children! Why should he do this? He did not want for children that he should adopt me. And yet the Lord puts us among the children. Blessed be his name for ever and ever! The Spirit of adoption is a spirit of child-likeness. It is pretty, though sometimes sad, to see how children imitate their parents. How much the little man is like his father! Have you not noticed it? Do you not like to see it, too?
ABBA-Father | Precept Austin
You know you do. Ay, and when God gives the Spirit of adoption, there begins in us, poor fallen creatures as we are, some little likeness to himself; and that will grow to his perfect image. We cannot become God; but we have the privilege and the power to become the sons of God. Thus, dear friends, let us see with great joy that we have not received again the spirit of bondage. We shall not receive it any more. Whenever the Spirit of adoption enters into a man it sets him praying.
He cannot help it. He does not wish to help it. He enters heaven with prayer. And this praying of the true believer who has the Spirit of adoption is very earnest praying, for it takes the form of crying. But it is also very natural praying: It is not necessary to send your boys to a Board School to teach them to do that. It seems to me to be not only an earnest cry and a natural cry, but a very appealing cry. Dear father, by your love to me, forgive me.
Therefore, like as a father pitieth his children, have thou pity upon me. It befits you to fear, and crouch, and, like miserable sinners, to keep yourselves a long way off from God. My soul delighteth herself in thee, for thou art my God, and my exceeding joy. I am as sure of it as that I am the child of my earthly father; and I am more sure that thou wouldest deal tenderly with me than that my father would.
It is easy for us to see Jesus relating to the Father with this joyful confidence, but we may see ourselves as disqualified for it. However, remember that we are in Christ - we have the privilege of relating to the Father even as Jesus Christ does. In the Roman world of the first century AD an adopted son was a son deliberately chosen by his adoptive father to perpetuate his name and inherit his estate; he was no whit inferior in status to a son born in the ordinary course of nature.
Under Roman adoption, the life and standing of the adopted child changed completely. The adopted son lost all rights in his old family and gained all new rights in his new family; the old life of the adopted son was completely wiped out, with all debts being canceled, with nothing from his past counting against him any more. The Spirit brings about a response in our hearts to the love of God that cries out, "Abba! That is not the picture.
The witness of the Holy Spirit that you are a child of God is the creation in you of affections for God. And the reason Paul uses the word "cry" and the Aramaic word "Abba" is because both of them point to deep, affectionate, personal, authentic experience of God's fatherly love. He didn't say that the testimony of the Spirit was that we affirm doctrinally that God is father. The devil knows that doctrine. Doctrinal affirmations, as important as they are, don't make children. What he said was that the testimony of the Spirit that we are God's children is that from our hearts there rises an irrepressible cry — a cry, not a mere statement, a cry: We don't infer logically the fatherhood of God from the testimony of the Spirit.
We enjoy emotionally the Fatherhood of God by the testimony of the Spirit. The testimony of the Spirit is not a premise from which we deduce that we are children of God; it is a power by which we delight in being the children of God. Don't Wait for a Whisper — Look to Jesus! If you want to know that you are a child of God, you don't put your ear to the Holy Spirit and wait for a whisper; put your ear to the gospel and your eye to the cross of Christ and you pray that the Holy Spirit would enable you to see it and savor it for what it really is.
The testimony of the Spirit is that when we look at cross we cry, "Jesus, you are my Lord! Thus the Father decreed our adoption, the Son came to redeem us from bondage, and the Holy Spirit takes possession of our hearts, teaching us to call God, "Father. When believers in Jesus find rising in our hearts the cry, "Abba!
Let's see this in relationship to 1Corinthians One is a humble demeanor of submission: And the other is the joyful, bold, childlike demeanor of confidence: God is my Father. Jesus is my Lord! God is my Father! That is the humble, hope-filled cry of the Spirit-indwelt Christian. And out of this humble confidence we are led "by the Spirit" to make war on our sin and put to death all that does not exalt our Lord and honor our Father.
Now, beloved, this may not seem to you to be of very great importance at first sight; but it is so; for the church is never happy except as all her members walk as dear children towards God. Sometimes the spirit of slaves creeps over us: This spirit gives peace, rest, joy, boldness, and holy familiarity with God. A man who never received the spirit of a child towards God does not know the bliss of the Christian life; he misses its flower, its savor, its excellence, and I should not wonder if the service of Christ should be a weariness to him because he has never yet got to the sweet things, and does not enjoy the green pastures, wherein the Good Shepherd makes his sheep to feed and to lie down.
But when the Spirit of God makes us feel that we are sons, and we live in the house of God to go no more out for ever, then the service of God is sweet and easy, and we accept the delay of apparent success as a part of the trial we are called to bear. Our Urgent Need of the Holy Spirit. We're the children of God, and as such we need to speak to our Father as well as listen to what He says. In fact, the Christian life begins with the Holy Spirit speaking in our hearts and giving us the assurance of salvation by saying, "Abba, Father" Gal.
We, Thy children, bless Thy Name! Note the preceding context where Paul writes "But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that purpose for Jesus' incarnation He might redeem exagorazo - pay the ransom price to set a slave free those who were under subject to the Law all who are not born again , that we might receive the adoption as sons.
And so just as the Son had the right to cry out "Abba! Father, and impels us to cry out Abba! In short, Jesus became the "Son of Man" in order that we might become sons of God, those who could now cry out "Dear Father! In the Greek world a slave had no freedom.
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Adoption was one way of giving freedom to a slave. If a slave was adopted into the family of his master and made a son, he received his freedom. To move from slavery to sonship meant to move from a life of bondage to a life of liberty. When we were spiritually adopted by God His was sent to dwell intimately in us.
He is now our Abba, our "Dearest Father" in a way no human parent can be. Yet that is exactly what God has done for his adopted sons and daughters! And one of the rights we now have as sons is to call God our "Abba," our dear Father, just as His Son did in Gethsemane! Regarding adoption , notice that the Greek word huiothesia is not so much a word of relationship as of position. In regeneration a Christian receives the nature of a child of God; in adoption he receives the position of a son of God.
Every Christian obtains the place of a child and the right to be called a son the moment he believes Gal 3: The indwelling Spirit gives the realization of this in the Christian's present experience Gal 4: And so while we are fully sons now, we will not receive the full inheritance of our adopted sonship until that future day when we redemption is consummated, we are glorified and become like the Beloved Son, for "when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is. We would no longer lie Like slaves beneath the throne; My faith shall Abba, Father, cry, And thou the kindred own.
God sent his Son to redeem men from every type of spiritual slavery. He changed slaves into sons. Moreover, he sent the Spirit into their hearts in order that those who were sons in position might also be sons in disposition, for adoption implies transformation. Deliverance means freedom of access, so that the ransomed one cries out, "Abba!
The Epistle to the Galatians - F. The fact that a believer has an intimate relationship with God, and can confidently cry out to Him as Father, is beautiful and magnificent proof of sonship.
Those who have the status of divine sonship through the Son also have the essence and the assurance of it through the Spirit, who draws them into intimate communion with their heavenly Father. While the Jewish believers, like children, were under the law, they did not have such direct access to the Father as we have. They could not enter into such close fellowship with God as now we can. Persecuted But Not Forsaken - scroll toward bottom for brief expositions on Galatians 4. Here is our true position, we are moved by the Spirit to claim our adoption, and we no more live in bondage to the law.
Many even among Christians are afraid of being too sure of their sonship, lest they should be presumptuous; this is very dishonoring to their heavenly Father. There is a contrast here between being a servant and being a son. The word son refers to a mature son, not just a little baby When you are a child, you are under all kinds of rules and regulations. Don't touch this, and don't go there.
Paul informs us that the Holy Spirit who has come into our lives is the Spirit of adoption. We have not received "a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear" Rom. I suppose these two words best describe little children—fear and bondage. They are always afraid of something, and they are in bondage—they must always obey others.
They are under the control of parents and teachers. You and I, as God's adopted children, have freedom from the Law. This does not mean we are lawless; it does mean that our relationship to our Father is one of love and not of bondage. We have freedom; we are able to walk. The witness of… assurance Ed: The Holy Spirit brings us into a personal, intimate relationship with our heavenly Father, whom we may approach at any time and under any circumstance, knowing that He always hears us and lovingly cares for us, because we are truly His own.
When that Spirit comes, he shows us the vastness and value of the privilege, stirs up in us a burning desire to enjoy it, and also persuades of the fact that it is ours, and enables us to cry, "Abba, Father. His adopted children, and this grace of adoption, is the greatest privilege we can enjoy below. As Christians, instead of shrinking from GOD in dread, we now cling to Him in love and trust; and yet how many Christians fail to enter into the full blessedness of their filial bonds with GOD!
How an earthly parent sorrows when his child is afraid of him for some reason or other - probably without any real foundation! If we cold but realize more fully how our heavenly FATHER loves us, our hearts could not contain the love and joy we should find in Him. The ecstasy experienced by an earthly father when his little one first cries, "Daddy! If you grieve by your willful sinning he that alone can gladden you, who then will make you glad?
Nigel Turner makes the interesting observation that the NT uses of " Abba " are in the context of spiritual warfare and prayer writing that. Abba was part of the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane Mk I would argue that while unusual for even pious Jews, it was not unusual for Jesus to address God with the intimate term "Father" which He used many times in the 3 years preceding His Garden of Gethsemane trial. With the Spirit's help believers too make the cry of Abba in the hour of their spiritual struggle Ro 8: The prayer is part of the battle of flesh against spirit, of the old man against the new, of the Law against grace, of the first Adam against the last.
There is certainly support for Nigel's premise, given that Ro 8: Come, disaster, scorn and pain! In Thy service, pain is pleasure; with Thy favor, loss is gain. Storms may howl, and clouds may gather, all must work for good to me. God had one Son without sin, but never a son who did not pray. True prayer is the sign of a true-born child of God: What, then, must be the condition of such as never pray?
How dwelleth sonship in them? O my heart, dread above all things a prayerless spirit! Thou hast not the key of David; how, then, canst thou enter into glory without knocking? He who had power to enter of himself yet asked that he might receive. Flowers from a Puritan's garden, distilled and dispensed. Abba, Father is A noble cry, with far more true eloquence in it than all the orations of Cicero and Demosthenes.
Then are we miracles of divine grace. We are not afraid of our own Father; we have a filial fear of him, but it is so mixed with love that there is no torment in it. There are the touches of dramatic reality supplied by Mark's retention of the very syllables which fell from our Lord's lips in the Aramaic dialect, sometimes with an interpretation, "Talitha kum" Mk 5: It is from this shorter Gospel that we owe almost all the snapshots of our Lord's looks, gestures, and emotional reactions.
Explore the Book Golgotha - Mt Now, through Thy rended veil of flesh, We dare the throne draw nigh, And sprinkled with Thy blood afresh, With boldness Abba cry. When the disciples asked Jesus how to pray, He answered by in essence inviting them to have the same level of intimacy with God that He experienced ultimately something possible only for those in Christ by grace through faith ….
Jesus words used to open this model prayer must have "shocked" the ears of His hearers, as He instructed them to address God as Father , indicating a personal, caring relationship for those in His family as should characterize any godly father. And so the fact that He is " our Father " clearly establishes the family relationship. Only believers can call God "Father," and then only on the basis of the fact that we have become His children through reception of Jesus as Savior and belief in His Name Jesus means "Jehovah saves".
Most scholars agree that the language that Jesus spoke was Aramaic, so that the word He would likely have used for " Father " was the Aramaic word " Abba. The exception would have been when He addressed God in Mt Hooker on Mt These words provide a profound theological comment on the oneness of Jesus with humanity, and on the meaning of His death, which shares human despair to the full. Recall that in the parable of the prodigal , Jesus picture God as a loving Father reaching out in grace and forgiveness to the younger brother who had dishonored him. It is interesting to notice that the prodigal's first thought on returning was "I will go to my father" and his first word to him was "Father!
MacArthur commenting agrees writing: Christ does something more for us. He gives us grace to feel our sonship. As we sang just now,—. Having given us grace to feel sonship, Christ gives us the nature of our Father. By his divine Spirit, shed abroad in our hearts, we become more and more the children of our Father who is in heaven, who doeth good to the undeserving and the unthankful, and whose heart overflows with love even to those who love not him.
If an earthly father watches over his children with unceasing love and care, how much more does our heavenly Father? He who can say this, hath uttered better music than cherubim or seraphim can reach. There is heaven in the depth of that word—Father! There is all I can ask; all my necessities can demand; all my wishes can desire. We come to God as to our own Father.
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The expressions in the verse which reveal this truth lose much of their force by the insufficiency of translated language. A name is here given to believers which implies that God is their Father. We trace it in the declaration that believers constitute one family. But there can be no family without a presiding Father.
Hence in Christ we are privileged to cry directly to God, Abba, Father. Who can depict their privileges and their joys! This family has existed from all eternity in the counsels of heaven. It will exist through never-ending ages. The elders of this family have already passed through the grave and gate of death to the happy mansions of the redeemed. Their race is run—their fight is fought—their struggle is endured—their victory is won—their triumph is secured.
We now are prisoners in the flesh. But soon we too shall be conquerors through the blood of the Lamb, and help to contribute to the blessed company. We shall be presented through our Elder Brother, who will recognize us as given of the Father unto Him. But while we tarry, let us tarry at heaven's gate, daily and hourly crying, Abba, Father. It is a sweet compound of faith that knows God to be my Father, love that loves him as my Father, joy that rejoices in him as my Father, fear that trembles to disobey him because he is my Father and a confident affection and trustfulness that relies upon him, and casts itself wholly upon him, because it knows by the infallible witness of the Holy Spirit, that Jehovah, the God of earth and heaven, is the Father of my heart.
There is nothing like it beneath the sky. Save heaven itself there is nothing more blissful than to enjoy that spirit of adoption. The writers of the Old Testament certainly believed in the Fatherhood of God, but they saw it mainly in terms of a sovereign Creator-Father. In those fourteen occurrences of Father the term was always used with reference to the nation, not to individuals. You can search from Genesis to Malachi, and you will not find one individual speaking of God as Father… But when Jesus came on the scene, he addressed God only as Father.
He never used anything else! All his prayers address God as Father. The Gospels just four books record his using Father more than sixty times in reference to God. So striking is this that there are scholars who maintain that this word Father dramatically summarizes the difference between the Old and New Testaments. No one had ever in the entire history of Israel spoken and prayed like Jesus. Jesus transferred the Fatherhood of God from a theological doctrine into an intense, practical experience, and he taught his disciples to pray with the same intimacy.
And that is what he does for us. Does it undergird your prayer life? Addressing God as Abba Dearest Father is not only an indication of spiritual health but is a mark of the authenticity of our faith. Paul tells us in Galatians 4: This is precisely what happened to me when I came to faith during the summer before my freshman year in high school.
Before that I had a cool theological idea of the universal paternity of God as the Creator of all mankind. His Fatherhood was there, but it was not personal. But with my conversion, God became warm and personal.