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Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Pastoral Pings ~ A Father’s Word to His Beloved Children

          Two things especially ministered to me this morning. The first was the reminder of what it means that God is a Father who wants people like me as his children. The verse I considered is this: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”[1]
          What this came down to for me is that there is this God who is “the Father.” The thing that stands out about him in relation to people like me is the “kind of love” that he has. Not only is there a distinctive characteristic to this love that makes it utterly desirable to the human heart, but it is “given to us”. And, the way this Father has given his love to the people referred to as “us” is that “we should be called children of God.”
          All of that communicates such a profound reality that it leaves the seeking heart in awe and wonder that such a thing could be true. That is, if the “and so we are,” is talking about us.
          This Scripture is talking about people who are the children of God through their faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life who brings us to the Father,[2] and, once we come to the Father through Jesus Christ, God assures us of both the certainty, and the security, of his love.
          Along with this wonderful and wonder-filled expression of the loving relationship between Father and child, I was reminded of the three ways that God speaks to us. It is as though God has covered every possible way that we would need to hear from him, all with the aim of assuring us that he is the Father who loves his children with undying love.
          God speaks to us through creation. This is something like the way we can speak to one another without words, showing our affection for each other with smiles, hugs, kisses, cuddles, tears, and the like. God’s word says, “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”[3] The things God has made tell us a lot of things about God, but there is more.
          God also speaks through his word, the Bible. This is what he says about his written word, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”[4] God gives us his words so we have no doubt who he is, and what he has done for us. While the glory of his creation is wonderful, he makes sure we will have no problem knowing what he means by putting his thoughts into words.
          The third way God speaks is directly through his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is called, “the Word of God”.[5] God has thoughts that are invisible to us, and Jesus is the Word who reveals those thoughts. Jesus is the “image of the invisible God,”[6] meaning the one who makes the invisible God knowable to us. The written word of God explains it further like this: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.”[7]
          God makes his eternal power and divine nature known through creation; he clearly describes himself to us in his written words; and he speaks through his Son, the Word of God who makes God known as personally as God can be known.
          In a world that believes the lie of evolution, tramples on the written word of God, and denies the Son of God, those who can say that God has reached into our hearts and made us into his children through our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ must rejoice that God has spoken to us, and that all his words lead us to the grand and wonderful conclusion that we are the beloved children of the God of everlasting love.
          All of us must make sure that we are one of these children.

© 2014 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)






[1] I John 3:1
[2] John 14:6
[3] Romans 1:20
[4] II Timothy 3:16-17
[5] Revelation 19:13
[6] Colossians 1:15
[7] Hebrews 1:1-2

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