I want to wrap up this week of the names of God with one that I feel is most important: Abba Father. I spent the entire week in the Old Testament, so I thought I’d bring you one from the New. It’s a name we may use in prayer, but really never give much thought to. Abba is really like saying “Dad”. If you have a relationship with your earthly father, chances are that you call him “Dad” and not father. Dad implies a certain relationship. One that is close. One that is personal.
That’s what God wants to have with you. A close, personal relationship. He wants you to call him “Dad”. When you were born into this world, you were a spiritual orphan. We are all born without a spiritual father. Our sin nature separates us at birth. God saw that we were separated and couldn’t just leave us in an orphaned state. He chose to adopt us as His own.
As you may know, adoption isn’t cheap. Ours cost Him His blood son’s life. He gave up His only son so that you and I could be adopted into His family. Think about that for a minute. He had a son, yet He saw us fatherless and chose to pay the highest price possible because He thinks you are worth that much. Yes, you. The adoption process was long and hard. He had to wait until just the right time before He did it.
Romans 8:15 says, “You have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when He adopted you as His own children. Now we call Him, ‘Abba, Father’.” God didn’t want us to be His slaves who had to do what we were told because He was our master. Instead He wanted us as His own children who would serve Him out of love. There’s a huge difference between those two relationships.
You may not have had a dad growing up or you may have had one that wasn’t really there or involved. Psalm 68:5 says that God is a father to the fatherless. He wants to be more than your father. He wants to be your dad. He wants to be who you never had. He wants to fill that relational void in your life. He’s not content to just have you believe in Him, He wants to talk with you, walk with you and to provide the kind of wisdom and insight that you would get from an earthly father.
I don’t fully understand what it is to adopt or to be adopted. I have many friends who have adopted or are in the process of adopting. I can tell you that my friends who have adopted love their adopted children as their own because they are their own children. They don’t see them as adopted. They see them as blood. That’s how God sees you, not as adopted, but as His own, because He bought you with His blood. You have a dad both physical and spiritual in your Abba Father.
Devotions by Chris Hendrix 