Belonging to the Father
QUOTES FOR REFLECTION
“No one cares for you a smidge
When you’re in an orphanage
It’s the hard knock life.”
~from Annie, the musical adaptation of Little Orphan Annie
“We all are born into the world looking for someone looking for us, and…we remain in this mode of searching for the rest of our lives.”
~Curt Thompson in The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves
“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”
~Morrie Schwartz (1916-1995), professor of sociology at Brandeis University
“Childbirth is an act of nature. Adoption is an act of God.”
~Anonymous
“A man ain’t nothing but a man. But a son? Well, now, that’s somebody.”
~Toni Morrison (1931-2019) in Beloved
“No man has any ‘right’ to be a child of God – it is an act of pure unmistakable grace!”
“If we are born into God’s family – it is a miracle of mercy. It is one of the ever-blessed exhibitions of the infinite love of God, that has set itself upon us.”
“And if an angel could exalt a gnat to equal dignity with himself – yet this would not be as great a privilege as that which God has conferred on you.”
~C.H. Spurgeon (1834-1892), famed London preacher
“It’s natural that anyone is compared to their father.”
“Each father wants their son to be just like them, really.”
~Ziggy Marley, Jamaican reggae musician and eldest son of Bob Marley
“It is not imitation that makes sons. It is sonship that make imitators.”
~Martin Luther (1483-1546) in his commentary on Galatians
“This hard place in which you perhaps find yourself is the very place in which God is giving you opportunity to look only to Him, to spend time in prayer, and to learn long-suffering, gentleness, meekness—in short, to learn the depths of the love that Christ Himself has poured out on all of us.”
~Elisabeth Elliot (1926-2015), missionary and author
SERMON PASSAGE
Romans 8:12-17 (NASB95)
1 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. 6 For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, 7 because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
9 However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. 10 If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.
12 So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— 13 for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. 15 For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.