A Child in the Father's House // An Abundant Life in Jesus, Part 4

One of the ways that God explains His relationship with us, is that He is our Father, and we are His children. And actually, when you think about it, a father–child relationship is, or at least should be – an incredible blessing. So, if God’s our Father, and we’re His children – shouldn’t that be … a blessing?

We’re chatting together this week on the program about living out the abundant life that Jesus promised us. A life overflowing with His grace and mercy, and love and peace, and joy and blessing. By that we don’t always mean abundant finances or complete safety. God has a tendency not to wrap us in cotton wool but to be with us out there in life, in the good times and the bad with His presence, which is what gives us that sense of overflow, that sense of abundance.

It’s funny how most of us in our heart of hearts desire a life that’s, well perfect. Blessed in every way, every relationship perfect, finances perfect, home life perfect, our own sense of self-perfect, everything’s perfect. But life just isn’t like that. In fact as you and I think back on our lives thus far chances are that there are very few times, if ever, where we could tick the box in every part of our lives as having been perfect. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

And yet somehow we yearn secretly, even subconsciously for this time in our lives when everything’s going to be perfect and the mere fact that it isn’t can be so disappointing to so many people. And yet I come back to the fact that Jesus promised this abundant life – not wrapped away somewhere in cotton wool, but out there in this precarious sometimes threatening place that we call ‘life’. This is in fact is what He said. John chapter 10 beginning at verse 1:

Truly I tell you anyone who doesn’t enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, the sheep hear his voice, he calls his own by name and leads them out.

 When he’s brought out all his own he goes ahead of them and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They won’t follow a stranger but they’ll run away from him because they don’t know his voice.’ Jesus used this figure of speech with them but they did not understand what He was saying.

So again Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits but the sheep didn’t listen to them. I am the gate, whoever enters by me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture.

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy. I came that you may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

As we saw yesterday the life of a shepherd and the lives of sheep back there in the 1st century were indeed precarious. The shepherd would take his flock out onto the rocky plateau of Israel in search of pasture. There were many threats, thieves, wild animals and it wasn’t unusual for the shepherd to have to defend his sheep sometimes with his own life. And interestingly in that beautiful prayer that Jesus prayed just before He was crucified, He actually said this about you and me to His Father as well, John chapter 17, verses 12 and 15:

While I was with them I protected them in Your name that You have given me. I guarded them and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled. I’m not asking You to take them out of the world but I ask You to protect them from the evil one.

In other words, “Dad, let’s not take them out of all these situations and wrap them in cotton wool but rather let’s be there with them and protect them from the evil one.” Do you see how different God’s perspective is? His promise is for an abundant life not a perfect one and I have to tell you as I sat and thought about that a lot it makes an enormous amount of sense to me.

I’m a father, I have children, I love them dearly. When they were young they lived with my wife Jacqui and me in our house under our care and our protection with our provision as is right. That’s why God gives us children and that’s why He gives children parents. But there comes a time and in fact it starts quite early, where as they grow up we as good parents give them more and more responsibility for themselves.

Because one of the main parts of growing up is shifting the responsibility for their care from the parents to the children as they become capable of accepting that responsibility. Not always easy and it’s one of the reasons that teenage years can be so stressful because often teenagers and I know this was true of me as a teenager, they want to behave like children and be treated like adults.

In other words they still want their parents to do all the things they ever did for them when they were kids and incapable of doing them back then, whilst at the same time giving them all the freedoms that an adult has. Tension with a capital ‘T’; children in effect want the best of both worlds, the perfect life. Sound familiar?

And it’s the same often in our relationship with God. We want Him to fix everything, make everything perfect in our lives whilst at the same time we do things that don’t honour Him and those things, which He calls sin, actually have consequences. And yet He’s the perfect Father, have a listen, Romans chapter 8 beginning at verse 12:

So then brothers and sisters we are dead as not to the flesh, to live in accordance to the flesh, for if we live according to the flesh you will die. But if by the Spirit you’ll put to death the deeds of the body you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God, for you didn’t receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear but you’ve received a spirit of adoption.

When we cry ‘Abba Father’, it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God and if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. If in fact we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.

It’s a beautiful passage. One of the most beautiful passages in the Bible because it puts everything into perspective for me. Sometimes in the cut and thrust and hurts of life we lose our heavenly perspective, we lose sight of the fact that God is indeed our Father, in fact Jesus called Him ‘Abba’ which literally means Dad. If we live our lives for Him, if we choose to be led by the Spirit of God rather than by the desires of our flesh then we are children of God. And deep down if we’ll let Him the Spirit of God witnesses to us that we are His children, the children of the living God.

That means something. It means what Jesus prayed for you and me back there in the Garden of Gethsemane. It means God’s protection from the evil one rather than being wrapped completely in cotton wool. Do you see the difference? God wants us to be out there in life just as you and I as parents want our children to be out there in life and we’ll help them and protect them where we can but they need to grow up, they need to live their lives and they need to suffer the consequences of the things they do wrong because its the only way that they learn.

I for one would hate to be wrapped in cotton wool by God. I want to experience life and all that it’s meant to be and that means sometimes, well sometimes we get hurt but all along God is my Father. Father’s know this, when our children grow up we don’t stop being their father, we don’t stop being there to help and to advise when they need, we don’t stop caring for them and one day they will receive their inheritance from us.

Same with our Dad God, we are and always will be His children and His protection is always available to us from the evil one. Can I tell you something? Somewhere in that knowledge, deep within, lies a source of His abundance in my life. He loves me, He wants me to know Him and to honour Him and to be all that He made me to be, to experience every day that He wrote for me in His book even before any of them ever existed.

That’s where abundance begins, as a child of the Father who is God who created us and created us to live a life in all its abundance.