Granada Church Devotionals
Welcome to 2025, Wednesday, January 1st
This is Wednesday, January 1st, Happy New Year. We've been getting started with the year as we are looking at creating a rule of life. That is designing a life pattern that supports and encourages a relationship with God. We have begun with prayer. One of the most prayer-changing discoveries I've made in my life happened under the teaching of a man named Jack Miller. Jack went through an immense crisis in his life during middle age. At the time, he was a professor teaching students heading in the direction of ministry. He found himself depressed and unable to move forward. He was exhausted and discouraged. How could he do that? How did he move forward? He began by reading the Bible searching for all the promises of God. The result for him was a deeper internalization of the gospel. In the process, he discovered that God was his loving Heavenly Father and that he could take everything to him in prayer. Prayer became for him a daily going to the Father to talk about his life, what he was learning and what he was experiencing. He found a radical change in his prayer life as a result. He used to feel that prayer was a duty, a burden really. He struggled to spend even brief moments praying. He felt like he was failing God if he didn't pray. In a return to the core message of Christianity, the love of God in Christ and the gospel, the burden of prayer fell away and the joy of coming to his Heavenly Father blossomed. He experienced a personal spiritual transformation that became the fuel for his spiritual life until the day he died. Now as we approach prayer, we need to begin here. Let's go to our text for today. This is Romans 8, verse 14 to 17. For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you receive does not make you slaves so that you live in fear again, rather the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship and by him we cry, "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our Spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. If indeed we share in his sufferings, in order that we may also share in his glory. Here is Paul describing this transformation that Jack Miller experienced. When we come to faith in Christ, we enter a new relationship with God. The God who seemed distant and felt like our judge has become our loving Father. They were such intimacy here. The word "Abba" is like the word "Daddy" or "Papa." Gone is the fear we know of carrying the shame and guilt of our sin. It is replaced by this new status we receive as God's dearly loved children. The term "sonship" doesn't mean there are no place for women. No, Paul the Apostle is applying the rule that the Romans had for adopted sons to all who belong to God. You see in their world, women could not inherit the estate of their fathers, only sons could. But Paul uses this language for all of us. We are given full status as children of God. This is loaded language because adoption in the Roman Empire was so important at the time. This was the way a man who had no sons could have a heritage, a continuing family and an heir. How his family could name could go on. Here is what would happen at such an adoption. All of your debts or debts are cancelled, you receive a new name and become an heir of all your father has. Your new father becomes liable for all your actions, that is all your coming debts. You live to honor your new father and assume a permanent place in your new family. This describes the status we possess if we are in Christ. You see we have made prayer transactional, a means of trying to get something from God, trying to convince God that he should hear us and hoping that God would care for us. But we have already been adopted as his children, perhaps we just can't see it. We're worried about whether God will care for us. When Jesus said, "Do not be afraid, little flock, for your father has been pleased to give you the kingdom," that's Luke 12-32. For Jack, prayer became a source of joy. He could talk with his father about whatever was happening in his life. He could enjoy his father's presence without obligation or fear. He knew the father delighted in him and enjoyed hearing his prayers. As we begin this year, how might seeing God in this way affect your prayers? How might before you have what might seem like a chore before begin to become a source of joy in your life? Let's pray. Father God, we need your spirit to help us pray, to help us know that we are your children and you care for us. Teach us how to enjoy and know you, for in your name we pray, Amen. [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]