We are Kingdom People on the King’s mission. We sense that God is calling us to be consecrated (set apart), battle-ready, and into a greater lever of maturity.
Part of maturing and engaging in the Father’s mission is through knowing our identity. As Gary put it last week, ‘Maturity is entered through the gateway of sonship.’ In New Testament theology, ‘sonship’ describes a position of full legal standing, mature identity, and inheritance before God. Biblical writers used the term "sons" to include all believers—men and women alike—meaning both genders hold an equal, joint-heir claim to spiritual promises and inheritance.
Sonship is available for all of us in Christ, but often we can live from a place of the orphan spirit. Here are some marks of the orphaned spirit:
- Needing to earn love and acceptance through deeds.
- Striving for things and pushing to get access.
- Seeing spiritual disciplines as duty to earn God’s favour.
- Walking in self-rejection from comparing themselves to others
To change all this a son had to come forth, and Jesus was born.
Galatians 4:4-6 says, ‘But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”’
We are born again from spiritual slavery and from spiritual orphan hood into spiritual sonship. Our identity is redeemed in Christ and for you and I today, we can call God, ‘Abba, Father.’ There is an intimacy available to us which isn’t dependent on what we’ve done, but on what Christ has already done for us on the cross.
The Father wants to bring you into and take you deeper into sonship. This revelation will bring you freedom as you minister in God’s mission.
We pray, we go, and we go in our identity as sons and daughters who are secure, with nothing to prove.
When we go in sonship, we go knowing that before we step out on the mission field, He is pleased with us.
When we go in sonship, we go knowing our inheritance and that the whole host of heaven is behind us and with us.
When we go in sonship, we cannot help but share who God is because it is written in our DNA.
When we go in Sonship, we go without fear.
When we go in sonship, we walk knowing that we are the answer people are waiting for, because creation waits with eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed (Romans 8:23).
The Father is calling us back today into His mission, and that happens through knowing our identity in Christ.
God, thank you that we can call You, Father. Please give me a revelation of your Father’s heart for me, so that I can be bold, mature and secure as I live for your mission on earth, in Jesus’ name, Amen.
- Taken from Josh Raybould’s message
Next Steps:
- Come into church from Wednesday 28th- Friday 30th October to hand out gospels in town and share the love of Christ. Take some away to share with your community.
- Spend time with your Heavenly Father, asking Him to reveal His fatherly love to you.
- Catch up with the message here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHhMqI3bAJg