“The cry of Abba Father”
www.planttheseedministries.org
Allan H. Kircher
1 John 1:5-7 “This is the message God has given to us to pass on to you: that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. So if we say we are his friends, but go on living in spiritual darkness and sin, we are lying. But if we are living in the light of God’s presence, just as Christ does, then we have wonderful fellowship and joy with each other and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from every sin.
Christ is the secret plan of God for ultimate victory in the life of every Christian.
The Christian life is in reality only the Christ life.
Christ actually wants to live his own life new and fresh in you every day.
The problem is:
Thousands of people today are disillusioned with bootstrap religion (trying to “do it” themselves by much prayer, many devotionals, much holy living).
They always fail, and that will always be the case.
What triumph there is, what relief when we loosen those straps and take what is already ours in Jesus Christ.
Then prayer becomes a delight, Bible study a joy, and holy living a natural consequence.
What we have become, in the process, something highly contagious.
Wherever we go, almost without trying, we kindle little fires of God in the souls of others.
We are refining our Christian Maturity through the obedience of our Heavenly Father.
It is time for us to be devoted. Devoted to the mission of the gospel.
It is time to say “I will not play Sunday anymore.”
It’s time to say “I will not just come to Sunday morning worship and live like the devil the rest of the week.”
It is time to say “Abba Father,” and cry out deeply to our heavenly Father.
Crying out so deep that we humble every morsel of our being.
It’s about time to weed out the impurities of our life
Plant the seed ministries is designed to empower individuals to root out and destroy those things that have kept them from growing in their lives through the word of God.
All of us have too many impurities to list and when left unrefined they can and will impede our progress in our road to maturity.
Whether it’s something as simple as passing by somebody deliberately as to not to speak to them or something a little more complicated such as a drug addiction they all need to be dealt with in order to grow in the spirit of God.
There are too many things out there that get us in trouble. Everyday things.
1 Cor 10:23 says “everything is permissible, not everything is acceptable, everything is permissible, not everything is beneficial, nobody should seek his own good but the good of others.”
Everything we do in this world is permissible. Our sins, our impurities, our hurts, our habits are not. Not in God’s eyes.
We have to weed them out and we do that through the testing fire of God’s word as he refines them for our benefit.
We cannot do it ourselves. That’s the problem. Satan tells us were OK. Just go to church, eat your lunch and go home. And your done growing. Satan loves that.
There are still some Christians today after 10 years of service to the Lord who still gossip. Or still boast upon their accomplishments….or still complain……can you believe that.
or still say “I can’t believe that person is walking to the altar.” “I really would like to know why-they must have some problems in their life.”
We need to get a t-shirt made up with the years of service that you have as a Christian.
This way when a brother or sister makes a error in their walk such as a negative comment, we can say, “Hey brother,I can see by your shirt you have 1 year service as a Christian, let me give you some spiritual guidance on that comment you made.”
On the other side, maybe this will help the 20 year Christian be a little more accountable for his actions.
Now after saying that here comes the big H word……….Humble..
This is the first step of refining our Christian maturity “Make a humbling decision that I am completely helpless to do anything good in my life.
Romans 7:18 “I know nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have a desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.”
Here’s how it works at RCM for the first step.
There is a mistaken notion that the world is divided into two groups of people—the worthy and the unworthy, the sinners and the non sinners.
But such a world’s view does not agree with God’s Word. Scripture tells us that no person ever has had or will have the power to be good or righteous or worthy.
In ourselves, we do not have the power to obey God or to be worthy of His goodness.
Those who go through life falsely believing in their own ability to be good persons whom God will ultimately accept into heaven are the big losers both now and eternally.
However, those of us who come to the end of ourselves and realize that we are totally powerless to be what we want to be are fortunate indeed.
Even thought we may come to that realization through pain and anguish and deep frustration, we have taken the first step down the road to true peace and goodness. We have agreed with our Maker.
In assessing the presence of worldly dependencies in our lives, allow me to use a diagnostic question. Is the dog wagging the tail, or is the tail wagging the dog?
For example: the conscientious workaholic may have very strong values concerning the primacy of home and family life. However, as the workaholism progresses, the workaholic does violence to those values by diverting increasing amounts of time and energy into work pursuits. The tail is now wagging the dog.
Now you can replace workaholic with anything you like…choose your dependency. Anger? Timidity? Co-dependency? Lust? Witnessing?
And perhaps worst of all “not doing what you’re supposed to be doing as a Christian today?”
A universal warning sign of all dependencies/impurities/addictions/hurt/habits/hang-ups or whatever you want to call them to fit your need, is the frightening recognition that I have begun to “do what I will not to do.”
This if the beginning of the awareness of powerlessness and can be used by God as the beginning of the end of the dependency.
This is just the first step in eight.
The Beatitude that goes with this first step is:
Blessed are those who are poor in spirit. (Matt5:3) plain and simple.
There is a reason this is the first beatitude.
We should have ultimate well-being and distinctive spiritual joy in our lives.
A simple distinctive spiritual joy that becomes you.
This is a gift. It is not earned, it is not a reward.
We can never experience the quality of life that is the heritage of the child of God until we come out from behind the masks of respectability, self-righteousness, and pseudo piety that hides our real selves.
And we wonder why we so easily fall into our own private sins,
And wonder why we are often so miserable,
And wonder why we have no vital, everyday contact with God.
Many of us Christians live defeated lives, almost totally devoid of joy, based on something God did in us years ago.
Our present life is not grounded on what God is doing in and for us in the eternal present.
But we need to be refined by the fire of the word of God.
We were created in the image of God with the potential to reverence God and trust him and obey him and glorify him, but we were born in iniquity and in sin.
We are shot through with the impurity of rebellion and unbelief, and we fall short of God’s glory again and again.
Prove it to yourself.
Can you notice how readily your heart inclines to those things that will show your strengths to other people, and how resistant your heart is to communion with God in solitude?
We are impure by nature and by practice. We can do nothing about the nature, but we can control the practice.
“Blessed are the pure in heart “for they shall see God.
You see, the Christians who have a pure heart will be the mature Christian in Christ.
It is a long refining process. A Process of removing all those impurities in your life.
Sure, some us have many impurities which takes multitudes of time to refine, and some of us have many more, but I assure we all have too many to list in this life.
You cannot do it on your own. God is the refiner, the restorer.
Now this is where we indulge in the second step for Refinement in Christian Maturity.
You cannot go any further until you Accept Jesus Christ as your Savior.
That is step two:
Accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior knowing only His spirit can restore me to sanity.
Only Jesus’ blood can cleanse us clean and begin the process of refinement.
God refines us to remove impurities from our lives by exposing us to the adversities of life.
There is no need to pass through years of penance, of hard labor, and of trial.
The gospel is as free as the air you breathe. You do not pay for breathing.
You do not pay for seeing the sunlight, nor for the water that flows in the river as you stoop to drink it in your thrist.
So the gospel and the blood of Jesus is free. Nothing is to be done to get it.
You have a free pardon.
Step two says take this pardon and bid way to exciting things happening in your life.
Jesus is willing this morning and he is willing in this step to blot out every sin and cleanse every iniquity of every soul present who is now prepared by God’s grace to seek his mercy.
God does not make you his child today, and turn you out tomorrow.
He does not forgive you today, and then punish you the next day.
When you put yourself in the hands of Christ you have a sure keeper.
Yes, there may come strong temptations and strong affections, and there may come strong pains and hard duties, but the God that has helped us bears us through, and makes us more than conquerors too. In the name of Jesus Christ our Savior.
Now the process begins. You now have a sure investment.
We emerge from the process as pure and beautiful vessels for His spirit.
We emerge through difficult impurities that may include financial hardship, health problems, emotional difficulties etc
These are on the course of refinement. God will strengthen you through each trail.
He promises us in His word.
“Consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds. Because you know the testing of your faith will develops perseverance and perseverance must complete its’ works so you may become mature and complete. Jas 1:2-4
How many of us in here have pure joy when we go through those trails in our life?
Raise your hand if you are just bubbling over when that certain person comes across your path that continues to try to aggravate you to the breaking point. (and it never happens when you yourself are in the best mood either.)
This is the inner moral trail that God wants us to overcome through his spirit.
We can ill afford to do anything on our own accord.
If we do, it is detrimental to our state of mind in Jesus Christ.
We should be walking around on eggshells constantly prying open our conscience mind to the absolute of God’s will in our lives.
No man living has ever realized to the fullest what this means.
Believers are at this moment heirs, but what is the estate? It is God himself!
We are heirs of God! Not only of the promises, of the covenant engagements, and of all the blessings which belong to the chosen seed, but heirs of God himself.
"The Lord is my portion, say my soul." "This God is our God forever and ever
David said, "The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup."
As he said to Abraham, "Fear not Abraham, I am the shield and the exceeding great reward,"
So we can also say as every brother and sister born of the Spirit.
These are his own words—"I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people."
Why, then are we as believers today still so poor in spirit?
All riches are yours.
Why then are we so sorrowful? The ever-blessed God is yours.
Why do we tremble in our temptations and trials? Omnipotence waits to help us.
Why do we distrust? His immutability will abide with us even to the end, and he makes his promise steadfast.
All things are yours, for Christ is yours, and Christ is God’s;
and though there be some things which at present you cannot actually grasp in your hand, nor even see with your eye, the things which are laid up for you in heaven, can be seen by faith today.
We enjoy even now the pledge and earnest of heaven in the indwelling of the Holy Ghost.
Oh what privileges belong to those who are the sons of God!
Now notice the place where God takes up his residence.—"God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts."
Note, that it does not say into our heads or our brains.
The Spirit of God undoubtedly illuminates the intellect and guides the judgment, but this is not the commencement nor the main part of his work.
He comes chiefly to the affections; he dwells with the heart, for with the heart man believes unto righteousness.
Now, the heart is the center of our being, and therefore dwells the Holy Spirit that occupies this place of vantage.
Rom 5:5 says, “and hope does not disappoint us because God has place his hope into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which he has given us.
He comes into the central fortress and universal citadel of our nature, and thus takes possession of the whole.
The heart is the vital part; we speak of it as the chief residence of life, and therefore the Holy Spirit enters it, and as the living God dwells in the living heart, taking possession of the very core and marrow of our being.
It is from the heart and through the heart that life is diffused.
The blood is sent even to the extremities of the body by the pulsing of the heart, and when the Spirit of God takes possession of the affections, he operates upon every power, and faculty, and member of our entire manhood.
Out of the heart are the issues of life, and from the affections sanctified by the Holy spirit all other faculties and powers receive renewal, illumination, sanctification, strengthening, and ultimate perfection through the refinement process.
This is deeply interesting. I think it will be profitable if your minds enter into it.
Where the Holy Spirit enters there is a cry. "God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son, crying, ’Abba, Father.’"
Now, notice, it is the Spirit of God that cries—a most remarkable fact.
We are always right in keeping to what God says, and here we plainly read of the Spirit in our hearts that he is crying "Abba, Father."
The apostle in Romans 8:15 says, "for you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, Abba Father.”
Again as we look at God’s Spirit in our lives, let us look in the 26th verse.
“In the same way the Spirit also joins to help in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with unspoken groaning.”
Every single one of us God tells us that we all have weaknesses.
The spirit will reveal our refinement needed, our weaknesses, our problems that are secretive.
INSERT ABOUT THE NOT KNOWING WHAT TO PRAY FOR. OUR WEAKNESSESS.
God represents the Spirit himself as groaning with unutterable groanings within the child of God.
How is this? Is it not ourselves that cry? Yes, assuredly; and yet the Spirit cries also.
The expressions are both correct. The Holy Spirit prompts and inspires the cry.
God puts the cry into the heart and mouth of the believer.
It is his cry because God suggests it, approves of it, and educates us to it.
We should never have cried this if God had not first taught us the way.
As a mother teaches her child to speak, so he puts this cry of "Abba, Father" into our mouths;
It’s God who forms in our hearts the desire after our Father, God, and keeps it there.
God is the Spirit of adoption, and the author of the adoption’s special and significant cry.
Not only does God prompt us to cry but he works in us a sense of need which compels us to cry.
It is God’s spirit of confidence which emboldens us to claim such relationship to the great God.
God assists us in some mysterious manner so that we are able to pray aright;
He puts his divine energy into us so that we cry "Abba, Father" in an acceptable manner.
There are times when we cannot cry at all, and then he cries in us.
There are seasons when doubts and fears abound, and so suffocate us with their fumes that we cannot even raise a cry, and then the indwelling Spirit represents us, and speaks for us, and makes intercession for us, crying in our name, and making intercession for us according to the will of God.
The cry "Abba, Father" rises up in our hearts even when we feel as if we could not pray and dare not think ourselves children.
Then we may each say, "I live, yet not I, but the Spirit that dwells within me." On the other hand, at times our soul gives such a sweet assent to the Spirit’s cry that it becomes ours also
Then, at that time, we more than ever own the work of the Spirit, and still call out to him the blessed cry, "Abba, Father."
I want you now to notice a very sweet fact about this cry; namely, that it is literally the cry of the Son.
God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, and that Spirit cries in us exactly according to the cry of the Son.
If you turn to the gospel of Mark, at the fourteenth chapter, thirty-sixth verse, you will find there what you will not discover in any other evangelist (for Mark is always the man for the striking points, and the memorable words), he records that our Lord prayed in the garden, "Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Take this cup away from Me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will."
I pray that as we refine our Christian Maturity this cry in us copies the cry of our Lord to the letter—“Abba, Father.”
