Advice From Our Heavenly Father

Scripture: Matthew 6:7-13; Matthew 10:29

Theme: God as Father

Proposition: Advice from our Heavenly Father

This sermon is dedicated to sharing some Fatherly Advice from our Heavenly Father –

I. Take Care of Yourself – You are one of My Precious Children – Psalm 8

II. Live Life to It’s Fullest – Live the Abundant Life My Son Jesus Made Possible

III. Make Our World a Better Place – Bring Heaven to Earth - Matthew 6:10; Matthew 28:18-20

INTRO:

Grace and peace from God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!

This morning I want to talk to you about receiving and accepting some excellent advice; advice that comes from our Heavenly Father. Advice that I believe wholeheartedly will help us be able to live the Abundant Life that He desires for all of us to live here on this earth and on the New Earth and New Heaven to come.

Too often people misunderstand the true nature of our Heavenly Father. They see Him as cruel, capricious and unfeeling. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Over and over again Jesus shares with us the true nature of Our Heavenly Father. Jesus reveals to us that He is Loving, Kind, Creative, Caring and full of Joy and Peace. He is not cruel, capricious or unfeeling. He is not even mad at us. Instead, He deeply loves us and wants the very best for us.

With that in mind let’s take a few moments and look at some advice that I believe that Our Heavenly Father wants to share with all of us this Father’s Day.

I. Take Care of Yourself – You are one of My Precious Children

– Psalm 8

One of the things that we realize as we read God’s Word is that we human beings are very unique and special. We are different than anything around us. We are not the same as the trees, the plants, the insects, the birds, and the fish of the sea or the animals that live on the land.

Oh, we may have some similarities but in the most important things we are not the same. That most important thing of course is that we were made in the image of God. We were made to be One with God. We were made to co-exist with God and be creators.

We were not made by accident. We are not a fluke of nature. We were purposely and wonderfully made.

The Psalmist reminds of this fact with these words:

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands and have put all things under his feet. All sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.” - Psalm 8:3-8

The writer of Genesis puts it even more clearly:

“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, after our likeness.” – Genesis 1:26

“So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God he created Him, male and female He created them.” – Genesis 1:27

We are different than the rest of creation; even the creation of the angels and heavenly beings that inhabit heaven. While they are glorious and wonderfully made they were not created as we were created. We have been formed by God in His image and the very breath that we breath is God breath.

No other being has the ability to create with His words like God created with His words in the beginning. No other being can be filled with God’s Holy Spirit as we can be filled with God’s Holy Spirit.

We have been given the power to bring order out of chaos even as God brought order out of chaos in Genesis 1:1-2.

We have been given the ability to rule over the planet and have been given the mandate to create, to multiply and to make our earth look like Eden. Potentially through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit we humans have that power, that majesty and that honor.

We are not God but we are not exactly nothing either.

Now, of course many would want to remind me that we (human beings) have sinned and that we have fallen short of the glory of God. That too many times we find people living lower than the animals around us than where God wants us to live.