PRAYER PRACTICE
Spoken Prayer – Out loud,
pray for God to speak to you through your reading. Praise God for giving us His
word. Ask the Spirit to help you read with faith, and to live out what you hear
from God through the passage.
DAILY READING
DEVOTION / REFLECTION
Adopted Heirs!
by Pr. Dave Mann
Some of you may know that I spent 20+ years of my
life living with and serving people of other cultures. All of these people groups, prior to the
arrival of Christianity, have had a religion of their own. Most of these have had a belief in one
supreme God. However, the character of their
deity has been aloof, distant, whimsical, unpredictable, punitive, and most of
all – non-relational. These other gods
have not committed themselves to be connected to people. The relationship with their god is marked by
a mixture of fear and suspicion, dread that the god might do something that
would be hurtful. Verse 15 states that
this is NOT the kind of relationship that we can expect from the one, true
God. For you did not
receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear.
The apostle Paul goes on to write, but you
have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba!
Father!” The original Greek word for “adoption” is the term for
full legal standing as an heir to the wealth and possessions of the father. This clearly states that God is in covenant
with all who believe and trust in him. To
be an heir is the closest of relationships.
To be an heir of God means that all the wealth and resources of God are
at our disposal! This is accomplished by
the working of the Spirit of God within those who repent and believe.
When sharing the good news with another people
group, or when we examine our own belief, it is not just enough for them (or
us) to believe that there is but one God.
Rather, we should ask them (and ourselves), “What is the character of
that God?” Is He trustworthy? For the
one, almighty, cosmic, Creator-God to humble himself to take on human flesh, to
suffer, to die, to rise again, to live in covenant relationship with his people
– that is truly uniquely amazingly Good News!
Abba, Father!
Emmanuel, God with us!
O Father, thank you for deigning to be connected
to us in covenant relationship. We do
not deserve such treatment from the one holy God. In the face of our sin, it would make sense
for you to abandon us. But you stay
faithful to your covenant promise, despite our sin. We are eternally amazed – eternally grateful. Amen
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