Knowing You as My Son or Daughter
Above all, God desires to know you as God’s cherished offspring, who progressively develops into a son or daughter entirely at peace with God, yourself, and all creation. As it was with Jesus Christ, the first of many siblings, so Father God desires it be with those whom God calls “mine.”
Like Jesus your eldest brother, you are born as a result of God’s decision, by the working of God’s spirit. That inner, spiritual journey of transformation into the image of Jesus Christ continues until at last, the Father says of you what he says of the supreme son, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
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Knowing You as My Worshiper
God longs to experience you as an awestruck and grateful recipient of God’s unfailing and irresistible love, who is compelled to wholeheartedly love back. As God’s child, the love of God is poured into your heart by the Holy Spirit. This outpouring enables your life to point to God’s exclusive worthiness of complete adoration, honor, and reverence. Jesus Christ expressed Father God’s desire for—and your God given capacity to offer—an authentic, Holy Spirit-directed life of worship when he said, “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
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Knowing You as My Slave
Father God longs to know you as one through whom his own goodness can flow to your siblings in the family of the faith. Blemished by memories of evil enacted throughout human history, most people consider slavery an undesirable station in life. Yet those who have experienced their heavenly master’s beneficence deem slavery submitted to God’s rule an honorable condition. As the Holy Spirit enlarges your heart to receive the blessing of bondage to righteousness, it pleases God. For with such illumination, you acknowledge with Jesus Christ, the son with the quintessential heart of selfless servitude, that whoever wants to be great among those who follow Jesus Christ must become a slave in Father God’s household.
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Knowing You as My Friend
The gift of friendship always includes special benefits. So it is when you are God’s friend. God desperately desires to give you the privileges he extends exclusively to those God knows as friend. For a child, it is a blessed experience to be entrusted by their father in service for the good of members in the household. Yet how much more does the heart of a son or daughter rejoice when their father wants to share a secret with them? This is the difference between God knowing you as a slave and knowing you as a friend. God’s desire to embrace you as a friend is much greater than his desire to trust you as one who serves, leading Jesus Christ to say, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”
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Knowing You as My Soldier
God desires to know you as a well-trained soldier, ready and able to defend God’s interests against the evil intentions of his eternal nemesis. Like many in God’s family, you are undoubtedly familiar with the raging cosmic battle between life and death, good and evil. Hopefully your familiarity with this war also includes understanding that you have a significant position to take as a soldier in the conflict. God wants you to know you as a valiant soldier who, like God’s unique son Jesus Christ, chooses life and fiercely contends for the faith, using the entire arsenal of spiritual resources available to you as God’s faithful soldier.
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Knowing You as My Champion
The lives of heroes such as Joshua, Queen Esther, and King David demonstrate that God loves underdogs-turned-champions. As one of God’s children, you honor God when you allow him to set you in action as a champion for people who have been relegated to the sidelines of life. God longs to know you as one whose heart is sensitized to the Holy Spirit, and can be stirred to advocacy on behalf of those in need. As is Jesus Christ the good shepherd, such a heart is moved with compassion when it sees those who are wearied and scattered. It will please God to know you as a champion of the weak.
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Knowing You as My Messenger
God is longing to know you as one who shares and shows the message and the man of God’s great love—Jesus Christ the preeminent son—with those who lack this vital union. Astonished by the fulfillment of his promised resurrection from the dead, Jesus’ first followers listened intently as he told them the Holy Spirit would come on them, after which they would “be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” As you follow Jesus Christ into the presence of Father God today, he is still speaking those words, knowing that the Father longs to experience you as God’s messenger. Are you listening?
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Knowing You as My Mediator
In a world that seems increasingly dark, people are longing for hope. God is desperate to know you as God’s son or daughter who will become a link, connecting those without hope to the man who is hope, Jesus Christ. It is Father God’s delight to experience you as one who intervenes on behalf of those on the brink of spiritual death in hope that they may come to know the source of eternal and abundant life. For whoever has the Son, Jesus Christ, has life.
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R.S.V.P.
From psychologist Abraham Maslow to the mother of the youngest sibling who always gets picked last, observants of human behavior understand we all have a desire to be chosen. “Pick me!” our hearts scream, wanting someone, anyone to tell us and show us we matter. Above all others, God has done just this. You are chosen. And now God longs for your affirmative response with great anticipation. His deepest hope is that you will understand the intentionality and purpose with which God chose to set his love—by the giving of himself through Jesus Christ—squarely upon you.
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