ACT THE PART
So you should not be like cowering, fearful slaves. You should behave instead like God's very own children, adopted into His family, calling Him "Father, dear Father."(Romans 8:15NLT)
Has it occurred to you that God is your daddy? We may say, “Oh yes, He is my heavenly Father,” but that does not necessarily carry the same understanding as Daddy. Calling God daddy is not in anyway reducing His stature or importance as some might think. I have heard people say that a person can go to far in being familiar with God. They indicate that it is disrespectful to be so familiar with Him. However, if we really think about it, this is exactly what God wants.
God wants us to be so familiar with Him that we totally trust Him. If we only know Him as “Heavenly Father,” that keeps Him pretty far away when we need someone to talk to or to depend upon for anything. He said that He would be our Father! He did not say, “I will be way out here so don’t bother me.”
Why would we hesitate to get closer to the creator of the universe? Could it be that the author of our other nature does not want us to be too comfortable in our relationship with our daddy? Remember, according to verse 12 we have no obligation whatsoever to do what our old sinful nature tells us to do. Hey, when we were in sins control, we didn’t want to be close to God. But now that we know Him, we know that we can confess our sins and He will forgive us.
He wants us to know Him well enough to be honest with Him. Just because He already knows everything does not change the fact that He likes to hear it from us. Remember when David told God that he had sinned against Him? God already knew, but He wanted to hear it from David. We need to acknowledge that we know. Once we do that, we have taken responsibility for it and God can wipe it away. I have always told my children to tell me the truth. We all want to be told the truth. We can deal with the truth but lies drive us all crazy.
Back to Daddy! Once we have come to this understanding, we can begin to act like we are His dear children. We will cease to be cowering and fearful and planning for defeat. We will no longer be people who expect the worst before we every see any relief.
How do you think it makes God feel when we are expecting Him to do nothing on our behalf? As an earthly father, I may not always do everything perfect, but our Heavenly Father is perfect. He cannot fail! And He wants us to know Him as our dear Father and then act the part.
If we try this and He fails, then maybe we will have an excuse for cowering and being fearful, but that will never happen. I truly believe that the more familiar we are with God as our Dear Father, the more we will experience His greatness. So let’s act the part of being favored children of God.