You Are God's Special Child

Knowing You as My Son or Daughter

Douglas continues:

"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.'”

Knowing You as My Son or Daughter

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.”

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.

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.”