Children of God

Intro: Knowing this can make the difference between coming to God or running from God. A child will run to their parents. This is their parent. Sure they are disciplined sometimes, but in a healthy relationship they still run to their parent. God will discipline sometimes, but it is because He loves us.

Children of God

I John 3:1 What kind of love is this?

It’s not all revealed yet. We don’t know everything.

Gal. 4:1-7

The fact of being a child makes us an heir.

That’s just how it works. Children are normally heirs.

You get this on the merit that you are a child.

So what do we get?

What does this mean?

We get Jesus.

We get freedom from sin… from ourselves....

Freedom from condemnation.

We get Eternal life.

We even get the mind of Christ.

Think about this meditate, dwell on that. The scriptures say “we have the mind of Christ.”

We get to be part of a family.

Sure there are things we don’t do, because we are part of this family.

This is how it is in a natural family.

But the things we give up are fleeting and temporal.

Abide in Him

Abide: Stay there, don’t move.

We go out into the world, but we aren’t of the world.

Like Jesus we are friends of sinners as long as they will have us.

But this isn’t home or family.

We come back to Christ.

To our home.

We keep coming home.

John 15

Jesus invites us to stay with Him.

In busyness of life.

In sorrow.

In Joy

In confusion

This is a mainstay.

This is a foundation.

We don’t have answers to everything.

Yet we know and believe.

We know Christ is the Son of God.

We know He is working in our lives and others.

So, we believe and we stay.

Where else would we go?

The world is really not appealing.

Sure on the surface, but you hardly have to dig at all to know that is unappealing.

Even in this life, and for sure the next.

Sure bad things happen, even in the church, but it does in the world as well.

David Bercot mentioned this.

Love

God has loved us.

We abide in His love.

John 15:2 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

I John 3:16 “By this we know love”

So, we stay there, we sit there in His love.

In our marriage; we stay there.

Sure we get upset at each other sometimes.

But we know we aren’t going anywhere.

And then love can be perfected.

In the pain of life, we stay there.

God invites us… come here dear children.

This is how it is with God.

We stay in His love.