Q: Are we God’s children, friends, or servants? Or are we more than one? How is it that we can be His children and His servants, or more specifically, to call Him Father and Lord?
+Christ is risen!
Q: Are we God’s children, friends, or servants? Or are we more than one? How is it that we can be His children and His servants, or more specifically, to call Him Father and Lord?
Response:
We are all of the above.
If God declared Himself as Father, and our Lord told us to pray saying, Abba (which means, literally daddy), then we are sons.
Our Lord told us, I no longer call you servants but friends.
But if He is Lord and master of the universe, then, well, we are servants in that we don’t belong to ourselves, we belong to Him.
But the Fatherly relationship is the one to really work with, because it has everything in it. Think of an ideal relationship with a father: a good father loves so deeply that the children enjoy being in his presence, they feel that the dad would do anything for them and that he is full of love. They feel like friends because they can talk about anything with him, spend time with him, just have fun. At the end of the day though, he’s still the dad and if he gives an order, it goes, but that’s because of love, not fear. If He makes a decision, the whole family goes with it, because they trust his judgment and know that everything he does is for the whole family. So we have all three with our God.
It is very helpful to meditate on your earthly father whom you love, and then start to look for those traits in your heavenly Father who your earthly father is supposed to mimic. It may help you to enter into greater depths in your spiritual life. For example, if your dad makes time to speak to you when he is tired or away or whatever, your heavenly Father is listening 24/7 even to the most tedious of information and without impatience. While on earth, people told the kids to leave CHrist alone one time, and He said, “Let them come to me!” He was playing with them!
If you see that your earthly father is working so hard to make ends meet, think about how your heavenly Father put the whole world into motion for our – His children’s – existence…literally.
If your earthly father sacrifices for you, think on how our God was willing to die Himself so that we wouldn’t have to, so that we would be happy…
Think about traits for your father, and look for them in the Bible, in the history of our relationship with God, and in your own personal life. You will begin more and more to see that though He is all three at once, the Love is the most overpowering aspect of Him.