“So that you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, also an heir of God through Christ.”
(Galatians 4:7 MKJV)
Looking for a starting place. Looking through my notes. Some thoughts float around in the sea of my conciousness. I am not a slave, but a child to G-d. I don’t want to fear coming to our Creator, our Heavenly Father; and also don’t want to presume to come to Him as a buddy. A.W. Tozer mentioned in one a sermons his dismay when a preacher came to the podium saying he’d just come from a huddle with G-d.
Perhaps our Father asks us to sit upon His lap, to cuddle with Him, even to have a huddle. But first we must come to Him with awe and respect, as a soldier approaches his commander and chief, standing at attention, waiting to be asked to come forward.
Some years ago a movement began in America that helped us understand better how to relate to our Father, our Creator. For many of us, our image of G-d was to view Him as the military General or Supreme Court Judge: standing far off, rigid in his authority, only a select few being allowed in His presence. For some of us that image forever ended with “The Jesus Movement” of the 1960s.
It was during this movement of the Spirit that we came to understand the love of the Father by observing Y’shuaJesus in the Gospels and other writings. We saw how Y’shuaJesus wept at the pain of Mary and Martha when their brother lay in his tomb. We saw the compassion of Y’shuaJesus for the sick, the sinful, the possessed. We discovered He desired to be with us, in our sorry and dirty condition. We found that He would clean us up. This countered the notion that we might come into the presence of the Holy One if we straightened ourselves out, cleaned up ourselves.
Then another shift happened in America. It was in the mid-1980s that churches began to popularize the liberty and freedom we have as children of G-d. The teaching produced a great following that thought they would be happy all the time, wouldn’t suffer any pain or disease, that our buddy Jesus would take care of everything for us. This led to many to play the name-it-and-claim-it game. It led to preachers running to the pulpit proclaiming, “I’ve come from a huddle with G-d!”
It’s a narrow road we walk upon the ridge with liberty in one valley and bondage in the other. There is the pagan way of idolatry, worshiping to get the idol to do the worshipers bidding. The worshiper is the center of the universe, the chief end to all that is. This is humanism, in modern jargon. One the other side of the ridge lies legalism that binds us with laws we can’t observe, guilt that holds us captive, leaving us with a gulf between us and our Creator.
Y’shuaJesus came that we might have life! Abundant Life! This is true liberty, freeing us from the law that we can’t live anyway. This is accepting our salvation in Messiah Y’shuaJesus and relationship with the Holy One, in a relationship with our Father. The veil that separated the Holy of Holies is torn away, and we come into the presence of the Father. But, as the great Apostle to the Gentiles, Paul, teaches, we are not to take that liberty for granted. We are more than children of G-d; we are maturing into sons and daughters of the Most Holy Father. This maturity means we not only have the right but the mandate to come before the King, our Father. We come into His presence, seeking an audience, unafraid, yet with awe and reverence. He is the true center of the universe. He is the King. He takes pleasure in us, and all that we do.
May His Will Be Done in our lives and hearts. Lord Bless, Keep, Shine. . .
JonahzSong 