Galatians 4

WELCOME

Pastor Chris Paavola:

Goodness, who needs caffeine? You guys are rocking it out this morning. Thank you so much band everybody. Good morning. Good morning. Wonderful, wonderful to be with you guys as we continue our series and Galatians where we are every week, going through a different chapter, verse by verse, discovering God’s truth for today. And today we’re going to be going through Galatians for, I’ve loved this series actually, one of the unintended results or consequences from this series has been that so many of you guys have actually purchased Bibles because of this series. You have Bibles that were like, well, this is an heirloom and I don’t want to writing this one, but I want a Bible I can write in. Or you got ones with the wide margins so you can write in. So, it is just cool to hear how many of you guys bought Bibles because of this series?

So, I’m excited about that. And speaking of Bibles, we’ve done this every week. We’ve got to get right into it. So, we’ve done this every week for this series because we are really just going line by line through the Bible, so I invite you to grab your Bible in front of you, and it’s the black one or your phone. It looks like you’re in a concert. If you hold up your phones, we’re all swaying to the big ballad or something like that. But anyway, you guys are all here we go. It’s nice and proud and nice and loud. Let’s pray.

BIBLE PRAYER

Pastor Chris Paavola: This is my Bible.

Response: this is my Bible.

Pastor Chris Paavola: Lord. Use it to teach me.

Response: Lord, use it to teach me.

Pastor Chris Paavola:  Correct me

Response: Correct me.

Pastor Chris Paavola: Encourage me.

Response: Encourage me.

Pastor Chris Paavola: And change Me

Response: And change me.

Pastor Chris Paavola: Open my heart

Response: Open my heart.,

Pastor Chris Paavola: Open my mind.

Response: Open my mind.

Pastor Chris Paavola: To hear what you have to say.

Response: To hear what you have to say.

Pastor Chris Paavola: And in Jesus’ name nice and loud 9:30 am, Amen.

Response: Amen.

GALATIANS 4

All-right, we are digging through Galatians chapter four. I forget if you’re using the black Bible. What page number is that? If you got that in front? I think it’s  1771. There you go, yep. So, Galatians chapter four is what we’re working through and I’m going to scribble and show you guys how I take notes in my Bible when I’m writing, Galatians four. This entire thing that we’re talking about today is all about adoption. Last week was like a conversation on legalism. This is a conversation on adoption and how we are adopted into the family of God. And this is a topic that’s near and dear to my heart. If you didn’t know this about me, me and my family, our family has grown through adoption. So, this is the day that Mark and Kia were adopted into our family.

And so, we were very excited about that day and we all dressed up and it was the judge pronounced them as Paavola. It was a wonderful, beautiful moment. I’m getting choked up even looking at it. So, there it is, this powerful moment. And what’s crazy about it is they didn’t do anything right. They just declared the judge pronounced them, you are now. And that has changed the way I think about the Bible because when we read the Bible and we hear, oh, we’re adopted by God has adopted us or we’re now adopted children of God, this experience has changed the way I perceive that. And I have a hunch as I talk through it, it’s going to change the way you think about your adoption and the family of God as well. You’re going to think differently about your relationship with your heavenly Father today when you walk out than when you walked in just based on the conversation we’re about to have about adoption.

Now, if you remember last week in Galatians three, we looked at this word guardian in Chapter 3:24, chapter 3 verse 24. It’s this word in Greek that was like where we get our word pedagogue from. It’s like this idea of being taught and all that kind of stuff, and it’s a hard word to translate, but in your Bibles it might be strict tutor instructor, school, masters, something like that. Paul is going to continue this analogy into the next chapter, and if you remember, because he’s writing to a bunch of Greek people up in modern day Turkey in the Hellenistic culture between ages six and sixteen, you would be raised by your family, but your family would hire out a slave or purchase a slave to be a pedagogue or tutor or mentor or a harsh disciplinarian for their children while they were away doing mom and dad kind of things.

And this person was very, very strict. And so, between the ages of six and sixteen, you were raised by kind of our idea of a live-in nanny or something like that. And then at sixteen years old, you would become a rightful heir and you would no longer be a child and you would receive the inheritance from your father. That’s the idea Paul is talking about that he’s going to then continue. This is the end of chapter three right here. He’s going to continue into chapter four. Just quick, I don’t want to speak past any assumptions in the room. When Paul wrote this letter to this group of this church in Galatia, he didn’t include chapter numbers, so he didn’t say chapter four verse one, and then right verse two, verse right. Monks put that in later so that we could reference the book of Galatians to each other.

So rather than saying the eleventh paragraph, fourth sentence, sixth word, that’s the word I’m talking about, they gave a frame of reference and put in numbers so that we could refer and have conversations about it. And sometimes those chapters are helpful and obvious. Sometimes the monks would put in a chapter number in the middle of a thought. And so, if we just pick up reading Galatians 4 and we don’t have this understanding of what a pedagogue is or this guardian, then we’re going to miss the whole thought process. And so that’s why reading things in their context is important. He’s talking about this thing from chapter three, verse 23. He’s talking and continuing this thought as he begins chapter, chapter four, verse one here. So, then he picks it up and he says, Verse 1 “I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child”.

So now you know what he’s talking about between the ages of six and sixteen “is no different from a slave though he is the owner of everything”. And this is the idea of an inheritance. So, it’s this idea that while you’re between the ages of six and sixteen, eventually you’ll be the heir of everything and he’s about to equate the law living under the law, the mosaic law. That’s what the people of Israel were like. It was like they were under a guardian for his time set by the Father, and they followed the moral, ceremonial and cultural laws that God had instructed. It was like being under a nanny, a guardian, a tutor until Christ would come. And that’s what he’s going to about to talk about here, verse two. Verse 2 “But he is under guardians”. There’s that word again, “and managers until the date set by his father Verse 3 in the same way also when we were children enslaved to the elementary principles of the world” is kind of this idea of basic laws, the ceremonial moral and cultural laws of the mosaic law, Verse 4 “but when the fullness of time had come”, and Greek has two words for time.

We have one word for time, they have a word kronos where we get our word chronology and kairos. We don’t really use this, but we use time in both senses. Kronos refers to duration.

Kairos refers to an occasion like a one-time event. And so, there’s like a nuance there that we can miss when we just see the fullness of time. He’s saying this time that God had set forth from the giving of the law to the arrival of Christ, that fullness of time had come. We were under the guardian for the ages of six to sixteen when the fullness of time had been completed, God sent forth his, I’m going to add the word eternal here, his eternal son born of a woman. And this is this idea of he became flesh John 1, ”the word became flesh”. That’s the incarnation, the Christmas story when the eternal God becomes and takes on flesh for us. By the way, just quick factoid, if Jesus is born on December 25th, then the date of conception would be March 20th. So, this would be the week that the angel Gabriel visited Mary and said, you are going to conceive and give birth to a son.

So, March 20th this week is the week that this happens. So, it kind of coincides with St. Patrick’s Day. It’s just kind of an interesting little factoid. So, “God sent forth his son, born of a woman born under the law”. He took on our sinful flesh. He lived out a perfect life. He followed every aspect of the mosaic law Verse 5 “to redeem those who were under the law so that they might receive”. And there’s our word of the day “adoption” as children, “as sons”. So, this idea of adoption is we believe that really there’s moments that are these moments of adoption and you can kind of think about it as the moment you take a child into your home and then the moment that the judge pronounces them, you are a Paavola. Write that idea. One is when you believe in your heart and confess with your lips of Jesus Christ as Lord, you are adopted into the family of God.

And the other one is what he was just talking about in Galatians 3, your baptism right there, the moment when, this is why we do baptisms all the time. And if you haven’t been baptized, please go to our website, scroll to the bottom, hit baptism requests. Baptism is huge. It’s why we do what we do. We believe in baptism is the moment that the judge pronounces you as a child of God. It’s this moment that you were brought into the kingdom and now you are a child. Here’s the deal with adoptions, you guys. Adoption is this moment when you go from being an what? Orphan to being a child. Thank you. Right? This is not hard, right? Adoption is a moment. You go from being an orphan to being a child, right? And by the way, we say this to our kids, you are not adopted. You were adopted. Now you are a child. And so, when people say, oh, are you adopted? No, no, I was, but now I am a child. Now I am a Paavola. So, that’s the same idea. You were adopted by God and now you are his child. Ongoing present tense. here’s the problem. After your adoption, you don’t stop thinking like an orphan.

I’m going to let that sit and just settle in. Catch up with the magnitude of that. The moment of your adoption doesn’t mean you stop thinking like an orphan. In fact, parents who do foster to adoption or anything like that will often say that again and again. You’re having to teach your child, no, no, no. That’s not how we do it here in this house. You don’t have to steal for food anymore. You don’t have to fight and lie and cheat and steal trying to get your way because what does an orphan do? Or an orphan has a scarcity mindset. An orphan has to scratch, claw, fight, defend their way to defend. No one’s looking out for them, and they always have to look out for number one because no one else is. And they lie, they cheat, they steal because they’re trying to navigate a way through life and they’ve been dealt a bad hand.

That’s an orphan mindset, maybe an analogy to kind of help it stick in your brain a little bit. Y’all ever seen the movie Annie or the musical Annie, right? Y’all seen this? Okay. And this is the moment she walks into Daddy Warbucks’ house and she’s walking in into this mansion, just this opulence, and she’s taking in the crown molding and the frescoes and the servants are all doting on her, and she’s just like, wow, she’s an orphan and she’s brought into this house. Anyone remember in the movie or the musical, whichever they ask her, what’s the first thing you want to do, Annie, now that you’re in this house, now that you’re here, what’s the first thing you want to do? Annie? Do you remember what she says? Anyone?

She wants to clean the floors and she reaches for the bucket because after your adoption doesn’t mean you stop thinking like an orphan. And she says, I’ll start with the walls that way. If it drips on the floors, I only have to clean them once. And she reaches for the dirty mop bucket and the nanny who’s with her is like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Annie, you don’t have to do that anymore. You live here now. This is your house. You’re not a servant. Stop thinking like an orphan. This house is yours. And that should change the way you think about your relationship with your heavenly Father because every time you scratch and claw afraid that he’s not going to provide for you or worried about what’s going to happen in the future, you’re thinking an orphan. Again, start thinking like a child.

Start thinking like an heir. In fact, every time you struggle to obey God, he tells you to do something or makes a promise to you and you’re like, I don’t know. And this is really hard. And you just hold tight-fisted onto what you have. You’re thinking like an orphan. And in fact, every time you sin, whether a sin of omission for what you fail to do because you’re afraid every time you rebel against him, every time you do a sin of commission, there’s something you willingly rebellious do in rebellion. You’re thinking like an orphan and maybe the victory, listen, okay, listen. Maybe the victory that you’re looking for in your life, breaking that addiction, finally reconciling with that person, but you’re too proud or maybe the breakthrough that you’re looking for is as simple as starting to think like a child. Just trusting that your heavenly Father will provide for you will care for you.

He lacks nothing and it’s all available to you. This is what Jesus was alluding to when he says, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. So, stop thinking like a slave. Stop thinking like an orphan. Start thinking like a child and crying out to your heavenly Father because that’s what he is. That’s what Paul writes about. Then in Verse 6, “because you are sons”, you are daughters, and “God has sent the spirit of his son”, the Holy Spirit “into our hearts, crying out Abba! Father”! So, he wrote the Hebrew and then the Greek word for Father. The Greek word is er, Latin, Greek, er, Spanish, French, all that kind of the same kind of root word, but in Hebrew it’s Abba. And I think he did this because he wanted to show just the juvenile nature of this word, Abba. When I was in Israel in college, I did a summer of archeology in Israel and I loved it.

And on the weekends, we had a lot of free time. And I went to this beach in Caesarea that’s right on the Mediterranean there. And as the sun was setting, and it was this awesome scene, there was a dad and a son walking down along the beach and it was just like maybe five, six people. It wasn’t crowded at all. And I’m watching this sunset and they’re kind of coming and they just make their way down the beach. And this dad keeps walking, but the kid is picking up rocks and throwing him into the ocean. And he’s like two years old, and he’s real close to me and he stops and he’s throwing rocks and the dad walks by and say hello. And then the kid looks up and realizes his dad is further down the beach and he kind of gets scared and he has this moment and he goes, Abba, Abba.

And he’s like a little kid two years ab, that’s what he say, ah, ba-ba. And he’s running down the beach after the stat. And I realized this is the equivalent of daddy. I mean, there’s reverence and respect, absolutely, but it’s so basic. It’s the most basic sound of baby can say it’s even more basic than deda. That’s the first sound a baby makes. And that’s the word that God attaches to himself, Abba, that he gives that call me Abba. The most basic, the first word you utter Abba, I am your Abba. And this is why moms get angry. They’re like, you’re sucking the life out of me. And you can’t say Mama first, but mama is too hard. Mama, mama, right? But da or Abba. And just seeing that moment, it changed the way I think about calling God my father, like the term Father.

Listen to the way we even say it. If you hear it in movies, people are like my father, and it’s always in relation to this disciplinarian or my father never hugged me or Father. My tie part, there’s this era of formality to father kind of a stiff-arm distance when we use the word father, but dad, daddy, man, that’s close. How many of you guys have called God dad? That’s where God, it feels so, so irreverent. But that’s the word he attaches to himself. That’s the word. The spirit inside of you is crying out, Abba, it’s beautiful. Verse 7 “So, you’re no longer a slave”. Y’all say no longer a slave,

Response: No longer a slave,

Pastor Chris Paavola: no longer an orphan. I’m no longer an orphan. I’m a child and a “son if a son and an heir through God.” And then Verse 8 kind of goes into this discourse “formerly when you did not know God, you were enslaved by to those that by nature are not God’s”. Verse 9 “But now that you have come to know God or rather that you are known by God”, if you fail to catch the gravity of that idea that God knows you, just imagine for a moment that the God of the universe didn’t know you existed.

Now rejoice in the fact that he does and he has plans for you and you’re not an accident and you’re not forgotten. “How can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles”? There’s the same idea that he referred to up in verse three, the kind of the idea of basic laws, “whose slaves you want to be once more”. Now remember, he’s writing this letter to this group of Christians in Galatia who were doing fine, and then some Jews became Christians, which is fine, but they started Judaizing and they’re called the Judaizers. They started Judaizing, the Christian faith saying, no, no, no, no. If we’re Christian, we’re followers of Jesus. Jesus was Jewish. So, we got to follow the ceremonial and the cultural laws along with the moral laws. And Paul’s the entire reason he is writing this letter. It’s like, no, no.

Christ has fulfilled the ceremonial and the cultural laws. We only have to follow the moral laws in response to God’s, what God has done for us, but Christ has fulfilled that and we can’t do anything to make God love us more. And so he is trying to address some of that. And then he gets into Verse 10, ” you observe days and months and seasons and years”. He’s referring to the Jewish holidays in Leviticus 23 that God again, ceremonial laws follow these laws. He’s like, you think that by observing those, they’re going to get you closer to God, but you can’t make God loving you anymore if you’re in Christ, if you’re a baptized follower, he is your Abba Already, Verse 11 “I’m afraid that I may have labored over you in vain” Verse 12,”brothers, I entreat you”. I beg of you “become as I am” crucified with Christ, become as I am “for I also have become as you are.

You did me no wrong”. Verse 13 “You know it was because of a bodily ailment”. Now we’re getting a little backstory. We didn’t know he was sick “that I preached the gospel to you at first”. So, it’s almost like he was traveling, got sick, stayed there, and he was like, well, I guess I’ll start a church here. And so that’s how we have the book of Galatians today. Verse 14 “And though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but receive me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus” himself. Verse 15 “What then has become of your blessedness for I testify to you that if possible, you would’ve gouged out your eyes and given to me”, they would. Sounds kind of weird, but we have idioms, we say cough up along or spill your guts and we don’t bat an eye. Same thing. It’s just kind of this weird phrase, I’d willing to do anything for you, Verse 16 “have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth”.

And so, this entire letter, he knows he is upsetting guys, and he’s saying, don’t shoot the Yeah, right, don’t shoot the messenger. I don’t make the news. I just deliver it, right? So, he’s saying, I know what I’m saying is going to be offensive and bother you and be confrontational, but I’ve got to say this, Verse 17 “they make much of you, but for no good purpose”. He’s talking. They here is the Judaizers that he’s referring to and he knows us sitting in the room by the way, which is pretty funny. “They want to shut you out that you may make much of them”. They don’t want what’s for you, they want what’s for them. Verse 18 “It is always good to be made by you for a good purpose”. And not only when I’m present with you, Verse 19 “my little children”. So, here’s by the way, this is why Paul does this a lot.

He refers to his followers or the churches, as his children. This is why priests in the Catholic church are called Father, right? It is this idea of like a pastor is a shepherd, but also, I am a spiritual father to you. I am leading you and bringing you up in the faith and I’m saying become like me as I have becoming like Christ. Imitate me as I imitate Christ, which is what Paul will later say later on, continue to develop and mature and grow as little children into this image of Christ. Follow my lead and my example as your spiritual father, that’s what Paul is saying. And then he gets another insight into the idea of being a pastor. He says, “for whom I am in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you”. And that’s kind of a wow. But that’s how much anguish he has for the Galatians.

And what his heartache is, is that he wants Christ form in them. If you guys want to know what keeps me up at night about you, what bothers me, what keeps me up at night is not the budget or is our building going to fall down or is who going to be there on Sunday morning or even who’s sick or who’s traveling and they need safe travels. What keeps me up at night is Christ being formed in you. What gives me heartburn and heartache and anguish is that I want you to continue to grow and to develop into who God has made you to be. I want you to continue to grow. The Christian life is a constant growth, a constant developing and maturing into the faith, becoming more and more like Christ growing up to him. And when it bothers me and it gives me anguish, is when people stall out in that Christian walk and I’m like, no, there’s too much at stake.

There’re too many people who don’t know you have no idea what God wants to do through your life. And when I see stasis, when I see people plateaued in their spiritual growth, man, that’s what breaks my heart. That’s why we offer the things that we do so that you continue, whether it’s Prayer Nights or Prayer Walks or different services that we do or Prosper the City or encouraging you to give or whatever it is that we’re compelling you and urging you come serve in this ministry is because I want you to continue to grow. I never want you to stall out. I want you always to be able to say, this year, man, I have grown so much from last year and next year I want you to be able to look back at who you are today and be like, man, I have grown so much and when people are not growing, that’s what keeps me up at night.

And that’s what you see in the Apostle Paul here. And by the way, if you have that kind of anguish, that’s a pastoral anguish and we should have a conversation someday, then he goes, so you can kind of hear Paul’s thought process. He’s talking about guardians and children and orphans and slaves and adoption. He’s talking about these tutors and these mentors. And he then jogs his memory of another example of this that we see in scripture. And if you remember in the last chapter, he had a long paragraph where he was just quoting Old Testament scriptures trying to prove to the Judaizers that Christ is the completion and the fulfillment of the law. He does it again. He has another thought process that starts in chapter 3, verse 21. And this is really cool stuff, but he’s again, so he shifts gears. He’s not talking to the gentile Christians anymore.

Now he’s talking to these Judaizers who are in the living room. He’s like, wait, I got one more thing I want to say to you. So, Verse 21 “tell me you” again. These are the Judaizers, you Judaizers “who desire to be under the law. Do you not listen to the law” that you are advocating for? Verse 22 “For It is written that Abraham had two sons”, and we talked about Abraham last week, but he goes on to talk to him about a little more. Abraham had two sons, didn’t he? You guys? And the first one was a son born to a lady named Hagar, like Hagar the horrible the comic strip back in the day Anyway, and then the other one was Sarah Abraham had heard from God and God said, you are going to be a father of many nations and out of you shall come a descendant and I’m going to give you a child. Well, Abraham was old. Sarah is old, nearing a hundred years still not able to conceive. And so, Sarah gets this bright idea, you should sleep with my servants and Abraham’s a dude. And he’s like, sure, sounds good.

Abraham had two sons. First one was Ishmael, the bad idea. And by the way, Ishmael goes on and these become important, right? And then Sarah, has Isaac Ishmael, the son of the slave goes on to become the father of the Muslim nation. Isaac goes on to become the father of the Jewish nation. And so, the conflict we see between Palestine and Israel today or Israel and pretty much every other Middle Eastern country comes back to this indiscretion, this moment here between Abraham, Hagar, Sarah, Isaac and Ishmael. Isaac and Ishmael did not get along. Sarah and Hagar did not get along. So, it shouldn’t surprise us today that the conflict continues. So, then he starts to do this compare and contrast between them two sons, “one by a slave woman”. So, this is a slave “and one by the free woman’. Okay?

Now what’s interesting, I forgot to mention this. Muslims claim that Ishmael is the firstborn and the rightful heir to all of Abraham’s blessings. Why? Because he’s the firstborn Jews claim, hold on. The promise was given to Abraham and Sarah. And so, Isaac is the rightful heir. And then there’s other verses later on where God commands Ishma own Hagar to be cast out. So confirming that Isaac is the rightful error through whom the promise will be kept. But this is where all the conflict starts right here, Verse 23 “but the son of the slave was born according to the flesh”. What’s the opposite of flesh guys spirit? And then he also talks about a promise in just a second. And this would be the command. Command is you do a promise is what he does, right? We talked about that last week, right? Difference between long gospel is who’s doing the verbs?

Are you doing it? It’s the command. Is God doing it? It’s the gospel. Same thing here. Command and promise. “While the son of the free woman was born through promise” Verse 24. “Now this may be interpreted allegorically”. This is not an allegorical event. He’s saying this literal event, this literal event may be interpreted allegorically. If you think about it, you Judaizers, “these women are two covenants”. We’ve got the old covenant follow these laws, but now in Christ we have the new covenant given to us by his body and blood a little bit later on we are about to confirm and receive that covenant from God yet again when he gives us his body and blood, he says, eat, take and drink. This is my blood shed for the new covenant, for the forgiveness of your sins. Wild, wild stuff, man. And we’re entering into that covenant with him every time we receive this meal.

Crazy stuff. “One is from Mount Sinai” down in Egypt where the 10 commandments were given. And then the other is a representation of Jerusalem, the city of God where he dwells, for she is Hagar in Mount Sinai in Arabia, ”she corresponds to the present Jerusalem for she’s in slavery with her children”, Verse 26 “but Jerusalem above is free and she is her mother”. So, there you go. You can read about all of this in Genesis 16. Genesis 16 is where all of this goes down between Hagar and Sarah and Ishmael Isaac. It’s wild stuff man. And then he quotes, he does kind of this compare and contrast and then he quotes Genesis 21, which really hammers home the point that Ishmael is not our father. We are sons and children of Isaac. Verse 27 “For it is written says in, rejoice o’ barren one who does not bear break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor for the children born, the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband”. I’m sorry, this one I made a mistake there. That’s not Genesis 21, that’s Isaiah 54.

Genesis 21 comes in a second. Verse 28 “Now you brothers like Isaac are children of promise”. Verse 29  “But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh, persecuted him”. So Isaac and Ishmael, they fought all the time, “who was born according to the spirit, so also it is now” Verse 30, “but what does scripture say”? And this is Genesis 21, here, sorry, “cast out the slave woman and her son for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman”. Verse 31 “So brothers, we are not children of the slave, but of the free woman”. You aren’t this, you are this. So, stop living like this and live like this, call on God, not as your master only, but also as your Abba, your father. And it all has to do with our understanding again of the adoption. I go back to the point, I think it’s kind of our big idea, take away the day.

Just because you are adopted does not mean that you’ve stopped thinking like an orphan and growing up in the faith and becoming and living out this Christian life, becoming like Christ is becoming more and more like the son of God is becoming more and more like a son. And I think so many of us just walking out of here and realizing, you know what? I can forgive that person. I don’t want to, my pride, my flesh fights back against swallowing my pride and forgiving them, but I can because I’m a child of God. You know what? I can live with the generosity that God wants for me because I’m a child of God. You know what? I can go and demonstrate Christ and tell people about Jesus in my workplace because I’m not a slave to fear anymore. I’m not a slave. I am a child of God and I think differently, and I live differently because of it.

I hope this has been helpful to you and just a shift in thinking can have a lot of dramatic impact. Like one degree, if you’re leaving a flight from Los Angeles to New York and you go one degree shift, then you end up in North Carolina. One degree can change a trajectory of our lives. So don’t underestimate the importance of just one simple understanding like that. Please pray with me.

CLOSING PRAYER

Heavenly Father, forgive us Father Abba, forgive us for the times that we live as orphans. We live as slaves. We live under scarcity. We live under fear. We scratch and claw and scavenge for our existence looking out for ourselves. Help us more and more God to grow up into the image of your son because indeed that is what we are. Your children help us live with the abundant mindset that we are living in your mansion and we lack nothing.

Everything you have is ours. So just help us live that out. And I think about the prayer that your son taught us to pray. It’s interesting that the first thing he wants us to do is to call you Father for that is what you are now to us who believe and help us understand what it means to be your children. God. That’s it. And in this prayer, he describes your kingdom. And so we pray, God, that we would continue to live like your son as we pray together. Our Father who arts in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power forever and ever. Amen.