Recently, I have been pondering on our relationship with God as His sons and daughters and how vital it is to everything we do in life. It is conducive to living an effective Christian life, from our day to day activities to our jobs or ministries. I grew up around a lot of religion and hardly any emphasis on personal relationship so truth be told my understanding and perception of God as my Father began to unveil itself bit by bit as I truly began to pursue Him not out of fear of going to hell or a desire to receive blessings but through a real encounter with His love.
When you grow up under religion and traditions the way you perceive God can be very limited. It’s almost like peeking through a tiny crack into an extravagant feast with everything good laid on the table and being an outsider looking in when you can actually be a part of the feast because you come to find out you were invited to the party but unfortunately had no idea about it.
Many times this is the reality of a believer who doesn’t have a revelation of relationship with God as His child. We miss out so much when we have been given the full portion at the cross on Calvary through the shed blood of Jesus but live without knowing the price that was paid by Him.
I was always performance driven when it came to my Christian walk because I didn’t grasp nor did I bother to pursue understanding what it meant for Jesus to pay such a high price for me to be reconciled and actually live life as a daughter of God!
What a life to live knowing that you have a Father who is the creator of the universe. I am still learning to live in this truth everyday but I can tell you that knowing God as your Father makes you see life in a whole different manner.
Not too long ago I was having a conversation with my husband about ministry and he said something profound.. “My standing as a son allows me to serve as a servant”. What a truth to unpack because it is relevantly true yet people miss out on simple truths such as this. So many people carry a servant mentality when it comes to serving God. For instance if we look at the natural any good parent won’t treat their child as a servant nor do they want their child to approach them as a servant so if there is an inherent level of love in human relationships why do you think God who is our creator and is love Himself would want to treat and look at us as servants after the price that was paid for us by His son Jesus. The fatherhood of God could not be compared to the most incredible example of a father here on earth because God is the very source of love. So every speck of love that could be found actually came from God because 1 John tells us that God is love.
The love of God is a never ending fountain that could not be described in words but He chose to pour out that precious love on His sons and daughters because we are His family.
“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”
John 1:12-13 NKJV
It was by the will of God that we were adopted into His family and became sons and daughters. So why are we robbing ourselves from living and operating life as a son and daughter of God?
Because when you know and truly understand what it means to be a child of God you live life with a confidence that no one or nothing can give you.
I am nowhere close to walking in the fullness of this revelation but I can tell you that my life has shifted after I tasted a tiny bite of this truth and oh I so desire for the eyes of my understanding to get a hold of this truth more and more everyday.
So the source of our identity must be that we are a child of God before anything else. Some people base their identity on how many followers they have on social media, their jobs, the titles they hold, the wealth or status of their family, how much money they make or not make, their past mistakes, the clothes they wear and for others even the social circles they hang around can become a form of identity they draw from. But first you are a child of God before anything. When you have the right identity source you see, think, live and believe differently. All the other sources you draw your identity from are even beneath ordinary because it could not be compared to knowing your identity as a son and daughter. They are all an aspect of who you are as a person but they are not the foundation of your true identity.
Especially in the context of ministry or serving God, if you don’t have a biblical understanding of your identity you can be acting like a servant barely having access to the Father when you have been called a son with full access to the Father’s house.
Someone who knows his sonship serves and lives differently than a servant. There is a level of confidence and depth in relationship with God that allows one to live and serve effectively in the purposes and plans of God.
I can testify to this reality because there have been times where I knew I was in the will of God but had a servant mentality that carried a weight to it. A weight of never feeling good enough, false sense of humility and suffering for Christ, performance driven Christianity and a wrong perception of God.
A son serves differently than a servant because you are not hired but you are a part of the family serving your Father.
And it is true that the Bible talks about servanthood because the Apostles referred to themselves as servants of the Lord but we have to understand that they had a deep revelation of the love of God and their identity as a son which allowed them to serve as a servant with such power, authority and humility that it turned the world around for Jesus. If we look at the life of Paul, he called himself a bondservant of Jesus but at the same time he wrote some of the most powerful revelations of being sons and daughters of God.
So when we get the most critical or fundamental aspect of our Christian life right, it can provide a strong foundation for understanding and addressing other related issues or details. Getting the essentials right often leads to better clarity and effectiveness in everything we do in life.
Are you serving as a son or a servant?
Are you living as a son or a servant ?
We need to lay the right foundations in our life and give first place to what needs to be first.
But first we are sons and daughters of the most high!
Stand like a son to serve as a good servant!