The Spirit Of AdoptionSample

The second thing that the Holy Spirit does is give you intimate access to God. Rom. 8:15, “You have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again.” When you were an unregenerate person, when the image of God was so marred that you were doomed for the trash heap of the universe, the trash heap of eternity in hell, you lived in fear. You lived in dread. You lived in the anticipation of judgment. You were in bondage to sin; therefore, you were in bondage to guilt, anxiety, fear, trepidation, judgment. That's how you lived. 

What happened when you were regenerated and the Spirit began a work of sanctification is this: You received a spirit of adoption or perhaps better, the Spirit of adoption, which some theologians say is the supreme name for the Holy Spirit.  If you wanted to take the name of all names to give the Holy Spirit, He should be called the Spirit of adoption because it is His work of bringing us into the family and conforming us to the family resemblance that dominates what God has given Him to do, what the Father has given Him to do. 

It is the Spirit of adoption or the Holy Spirit who gives us a spirit of adoption, enabling us to cry “Abba, Father.”  You didn't just rush into the presence of an infinitely holy God and say “Papa.” That's what Abba means, “Papa.” That kind of intimacy with God? That would shake the Jews to their sandals.  Because in Israel, no slave could call his master “abba” unless he became a son in the house. 

Imagine how it must have been when the apostle Paul wrote and taught about this grand truth to most of his Jewish listeners. “What?  God is distant and holy and here comes this gentile person rushing in crying out 'Papa, Papa, Abba, Dad, Father.'” There's no fear, right? There's no fear. This type of an address gives one an intimate access with God.

One of the great joys, I guess, in some ways of being a spiritual father in the work of the Lord is that amazing, unhindered, unrestrained affection that comes from spiritual children. I'm sure it must be the same with those who do have biological children and who are responsible fathers in that sense. For example, some people think I'm an important person, but they don't. Some people think I'm hard to get to know, but again they don't. Some people think you should kind of keep your distance, they don't.

When I talk to other men of God who have experienced the same I have often wondered out aloud if there is anything more precious than these spiritual children who I meet from time to time in the ministry running up and throwing their arms around me as though I were their own biological parent or a grandparent in those times of basically unlimited, unhindered, unquestioning affection? “Pastor,” and then those words “Papa.” They come flying at me from every direction—in church, in meetings, in airports, in the most unexpected places. 

And that's exactly what we have here. There's a sense in which we just rush in without fear to the presence of God because the Holy Spirit has made us sons by birth and sons by adoption with all full access to the Father.

Remember: IT’S YOUR BIRTHRIGHT IN CHRIST TO REACH OUT TO GOD AS ABBA, FATHER, EVERY SINGLE TIME AND NOT BE REFUSED AN AUDIENCE WITH HIM!