Does God really love you like a father?

Yes. In Galatians 3:26 through 4:7, the Apostle Paul describes one of the most comforting truths in the Bible: through faith in Jesus, God adopts believers as His own children. In this study, Dr. Toby Holt explains what it means to call God your Father.

Many people who believe in God still struggle to believe He loves them. Paul’s answer is the truth of adoption. Everyone has a spiritual father, Holt explains, but only those who trust in Christ are brought into God’s family as sons and daughters. And it is permanent — God will not return His children or cast them away. The proof is His Spirit living in us, leading us to cry out, “Abba, Father,” the way a hurting child cries out for a dad who comes running.

Questions this study answers:

1. Are all people automatically God’s children? Not in the saving sense. Everyone is God’s creation, but the Bible says we become God’s children in a saving way only through faith in Jesus Christ.

2. Can God ever stop loving His children? No. Being adopted into God’s family is permanent. He will never cast out or give up on those He has made His own.

3. How can I know I am truly God’s child? God gives His Spirit to His children, leading them to trust Him and call Him Father. That changed heart is the evidence that you belong to Him.

“And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!’” — Galatians 4:6 (NKJV)

Speaker: Dr. Toby Holt is the President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, a Reformed seminary in Colorado Springs. He is known for clear, down-to-earth Bible teaching, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio.

Listen and go deeper: This is Part 7 of the ten-part Galatians study. Find the whole series, along with verse-by-verse studies of other books of the Bible, at newgeneva.org. To support this teaching ministry, visit newgeneva.org/give.

[gentle serene music] In what way is God our Father? In Galatians 4, the Apostle Paul answers that question as he talks about the doctrine of adoption. Specifically, Paul reminds Christians that we're not peons or peasants in God's kingdom, but we are something far better. We are sons and daughters.

There's a lot of folks, even in church circles, even professing believers, who are not sure that God really loves them. There are a surprising amount of folks who pray to God and even praise God but are not convinced that God loves them. They do not have what you might call an assurance. An assurance of pardon, an assurance of forgiveness, an assurance of God's eternal saving love upon them. See, these folks might believe in Jesus, and they might even believe that when Jesus died, he died to save somebody. Their problem is that when they look in the mirror, that somebody is not them. They think it's someone else, someone better, some super spiritual saints, but not them. There are some folks, even sitting in churches, who do not necessarily believe that God loves them in the tender sort of way that we see in today's text. Now, their problem, doctrinally speaking, their problem, you might say, is, well, if you come to church and you profess and you believe in Jesus Christ and yet you don't really have this confidence, then your problem doctrinally is your problem with assurance. The doctrine of assurance is where your problem lies. But what I found is that that's not really the doctrine that's messing us up. Our problem is not so much with the doctrine of assurance. Our problem is with the doctrine of adoption. Our problem is that we don't really understand what it means for God's hand to come through the clouds to hold us close, to call us His son and His daughter and to treat us as such. Our problem is that the doctrine of adoption, we do not appreciate and understand what that fully means and that it is irreversible.

If God has taken the time and poured out His own Son's blood in order to save you and redeem you and reconcile you and regenerate your heart and to sow the gospel in it, if He's done these things and you've professed faith in His Son, if you are a born again son or daughter of God, that's not going to change tomorrow. You cannot jump out of your Savior's hands. Nothing can ever take you out of your Savior's hands. God, out of His volition, is not going to save you, and then because you mess up tomorrow, take you to the return counter in heaven. That isn't going to happen. Why? Because He is a good Father, and good fathers love their children even when their children mess up.

When I look in the room here today, I see a lot of parents and I see even some grandparents. Let me ask you, is there something that your child could do today that would make you stop loving them tomorrow? For most of us, if that were possible, our kids would have already done it. For most of us, if such thing were possible, it would have already occurred. But the thing is, we, even as sinful men and women, we even flawed and failed as we are, we desperately love our children even when they've gone 100 miles astray. Our overwhelming desire of even our sinful hearts is to love our kids and to forgive our kids and desire the best for our kids. Well, if it's by and large the nature of fallen, sinful mankind, then how much more so does a perfect and heavenly God who volitionally calls Himself a father love you and I as children? And what in the world can ever happen to take someone that He has called a son or a daughter and convert that individual into an enemy or just an acquaintance of God? There's nothing. If you've ever had problems with assurance, the assurance of pardon, assurance of forgiveness, I tell you your problem is that you don't fully appreciate what adoption is and what it means for God to say, "You are mine, and I will be faithful even when you are faithless." Doctrine of adoption, that's our focus today. All right, if you will, I'm going to go back. I'm going to reread verses 26 and 27 from chapter three. We'll look at these verses, then we'll kind of work our way through the text in order to see what Paul was saying to the Galatians, how it applies to them, how it applies to us. Chapter 3, verses 26 and 27. "For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ." All right. Let's start that very first verse, verse 26. "You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus." You are all sons of God. Let's put on our thinking caps here for just a moment. When you think of the children of God or sons and daughters of God or what have you, when scripture says here that you're all sons of God, who's the all? Who's included in this? Now, some people believe in a concept that's called the universal sonship of mankind. Some people believe in this idea that everyone simply by virtue of having been created is therefore a child of the Creator. Some believe that everyone is a child of God and that the promises to children of God apply therefore to everyone. Now, in a sense, in a limited sense, it is true that we are all children of God if you're only saying that in the context of creation. If you're saying that everything or everyone who exists is a function or a byproduct of a Creator and that we're all His offspring in a way, then yes, that's true, we're all children of God. If that's what you're saying. But that's not what Paul was saying in verse 26. He says you're all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. He's not referencing your creation or your mere existence. He's referencing your faith. He's saying there's something about faith that sets an individual apart and gives them a unique relationship with their maker that is far greater than simply having been created. There's a reference Paul's making to the concept of adoption, to this picture that yes, it's true that everyone has been created. Absolutely. We've all been created. In that limited sense, we're children of God. In God we all live and move and have our being. Absolutely true. But Paul here and elsewhere says that there is a special relationship that believers have that's different and better than the relationship that those in the secular world have with Him.That God, of His volition, of His will, and of his love, has determined to place his saving love upon some. And those some that He has placed his saving love upon, he calls children. He doesn't call friends and acquaintances and peons and what have you. He says, "Those that I place my saving love upon, those I put my spirit into their chest, those that I regenerate, those that are born again in the faith, these are children to me, and I treat them as such."

But again, there's a distinction. You have to understand that that distinction exists. For our purposes, let's think of a few examples, biblical examples.

When you think of David, sometimes you hear of David in combination with another man, a man named Goliath. You have David and Goliath. Now, I won't rehash the story. I am sure you're aware of the story of David and Goliath. Both David and Goliath could appeal to having been created of God. Both could appeal in a sense that God was their father in the limited sense of creation, that they're both byproducts of God's handiwork. However, even though both could say that, "I am the byproduct of the volition of the Creator, and in that sense, I'm a child," only one of the two could legitimately claim to have been treated as a child, as a dear and beloved child, and that was David. Only one of the two could claim to have a unique saving relationship, a forgiving, a reconciled, a redeemed relationship with his God, with his maker, and that was David and not Goliath. Think of probably one of the most famous examples. Think of Jacob and Esau. Now, Jacob and Esau, this is not an Israelite and a Philistine. Jacob and Esau, these were both of the tree of Abraham. These are both of the Hebrew people. When you have Jacob and Esau, you have brothers who were born of the same womb. They were twins, in fact.

And yet, one of the most famous verses in scripture that deals with matters of adoption and election and like is this. God says, "Jacob, I have loved,

and Esau

I have hated."

In God's own words, he says, "Look, there is a distinction. There's a distinction. Even out of the womb that bears two children,

both of them are by necessity of being born or created my children. Jacob is.

I have a relationship with Jacob that I have never had with Esau.

I have a relationship with Jacob by which he can approach me as a heavenly father. My relationship with Esau is that of a judge."

And there is a difference. Now, if you fast forward into the New Testament. In the New Testament, you had the Pharisees. Now, the Pharisees, I think in their job description was to be antagonizers of Christ. Because every time they show up, what are they doing? Well, they're antagonizing Christ or his disciples or what have you. They're constantly throwing barbs at Jesus and what he has to say and the disciples and the like. So Christ and the Pharisees had clashes, battle royales, where they would both say very challenging and difficult things to one another. Well, in the course of one of their battle royales, in the course of one of their discussions, their public debates, the Pharisees were talking and accusing Jesus of various things in John 8, and at that point, they appealed. They said, "Look, you, God is our father." First, they had appealed to Abraham as their father. They said, "We are of Abraham." They also appealed to God as their father. They said, "God is our father." Now, at that point, Jesus stops them in their tracks

and offers one of the most stinging rebukes you will see anywhere in scripture's pages. Specifically, to that claim where the Pharisees said that God was their father, where they claimed to have this intimate, close tie with their God, Jesus says, "Oh, no, you don't." He said this in John 8. He says, "If God were your father, then you would love me. If God is your father, you would love me, for I proceeded forth. I came from God. I've not come from myself, but he sent me. Why do you not understand my speech?" He says to the Pharisees, "Because you're not able to listen to my words." He says, "Why don't you hear me? Because you can't. You can't, you won't." And then he says this. He says, "You think God is your father." He says this. He says, "You are of your father all right. You are of your father, the devil,

and it is the devil's desires that you want to do." Now, see what happened. The Pharisees, along with Jesus, they were both making claims with regards to a relationship with the God of creation, saying, "That is my father, and I have this close tie with him." However, the Pharisees were not acting as such. They were not honoring the father. They were not honoring his son. They were attacking his son. So Jesus says, "You got this all wrong." He says, "You do have the characteristics of your father. That's true. You do have attributes of your father. You're doing the things that your father would do. Absolutely. The problem is you got the wrong father. If that was your father, if God was your father, if Jehovah was your father, then you'd act accordingly. And first and foremost, you would know and love me, but you don't. You don't love me. You don't love the people. You're making everything difficult for those around you. You're antagonizing. You're accusing. You are showing the fruits of your true father, the devil."

You can imagine how that went over. You can imagine the thought and the response. The point for our purpose this morning is this, that everyone does have a spiritual father. It's one of two. It's him or him.

Christ here says the Pharisees, they are not of their Father in heaven, and if they were, then they would love him. "If God were your father, you would love me." Now, in verse 26 of Galatians, to go back to our text, Paul is saying the same thing, the exact same thing. He's not saying it in the context of arguing with the Pharisees, but he's making the exact same point. He says your sonship to God, the evidence that you are God's child, son or daughter, the evidence of that, the sonship that you have is contingent upon one thing, your faith in Christ, your faith in his only begotten son.Specifically, he says this. He says, "You are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ." There is no universal sonship that all mankind can appeal to. If there were, everyone would be in the kingdom in the time yet to come. But that's not the way it works. God's saving love is not upon all, but it is upon those that He has reconciled, those who He has called His own, "Those who have faith in me," Jesus says. That is a singular distinction of whether that's your Father, how you relate to His Son. Let's see how Paul builds on that in verses 28 and 29. Verse 28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there's neither slave nor free, there's neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and you're heirs according to the promise." Let's rewind a bit to what we talked about last week. One of the problems that they had in Galatia was that the Galatians had been influenced by a group of people called the Judaizers. The Judaizers went around saying, "All right, faith in Jesus, that's good and that's right, but you also need to undergo circumcision. You also need to adopt the Jewish feast days. You also need to add other things." So that was one of the problems out in Galatia. The other problem they had is that they only esteemed those, they only esteemed or valued those in the faith who met certain parameters. If you were a Jewish convert, if you were an apostle, a Jewish convert to the Christian faith, then you held a high position. But what if you're a Gentile?

Furthermore, what if you were an uncircumcised Gentile from one of these pagan nations? Once you profess Jesus, was that enough? I mean, was that really enough? Well, the answer to many was no. They said, "Look, if you want to prove you're one of us, you got to go get circumcised. You want to prove that you're one of us, honor the feast days. You got to do more than this, man. You can't just be from Antioch or Galatia or Corinth or wherever and just have this faith stuff and have that be enough. We've been doing this in Israel for centuries. You can't just say 'I believe' and be in and have the same value as me." That's what they were saying. Paul repeatedly says, "Eh." Paul, what does he say here? He says, "There's neither Jew nor Greek." In the church community, in the gathering of the saints, you don't look around and value the Jewish convert more than the Gentile convert. You don't value the man more than the woman. You don't value the master more than the slave. You don't value these things. There's neither Jew nor Greek. There's neither slave nor free. There's neither male nor female. You are all one. You are of equal value in God's eyes. In the same way that we as parents, we value and love our children equally, at least we should and we're called to, God has a love, an equal love for the Gentile uncircumcised convert from Antioch or Galatia or wherever, as he did for Apostle Paul. And that's pretty cool because sometimes we can fall into a trap of thinking that we're lesser Christians or that God loves us a little less than He loves someone else. Why would He love me? My background's not great. I haven't done the right things. In fact, I did the wrong things yesterday, we might think. We might start seeing ourselves as the lower class. Well, in first-century Christianity, there were some wolves that were teaching a class system, a class system where you could rank up to a higher level of Christendom. Paul says no. He says, "Look, if you are Christ, you're Abraham's seed. You're heirs according to the promise." That reference to Abraham's seed, we also lingered on that last week. There were some who believed simply by virtue of their Jewish background that they had an advantage in God's eyes over the Gentiles. There are some who said, "All right, I am of Jewish stock. My lineage, my roots, my ancestors, you can trace them back to Abraham. And because that's true, that makes me better than Titus, or it makes me better than someone else, a Gentile convert might be." Well, remember last week and even in this week, Paul brings up this concept. He says, "Look, the true Jew, the true Israelite is not the one who is an Israelite outwardly by virtue of what gene pool they came from. The true Israelite is the one who has the faith of the father of Israel, Abraham. The true Israelite, the true son or heir of Abraham is not necessarily the Pharisee who can happen to trace his lineage back to Abraham. Rather, it is he, even if it's Titus from Crete, even if it's the non-circumcised Gentile, such a one is more a son, more a daughter, more an heir of Abraham and of God the Father than the greatest Pharisee among us if he does not know Christ." So this is Paul's emphasis in verses 20 and 29. He's leveling the playing field. He's been doing this throughout the Book of Galatia, but it hits a crescendo here. There's no segregation. There's no qualifiers in God's church. All right, let's look at verses one through five of chapter four. "Now I say that the heir, as long as he's a child, does not differ at all from a slave, though he's master of all, but is under guardians and stewards till the time appointed by the father. Even so we, when we were children, we were in bondage under the elements of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons."

This is an even cooler phrase than if he were to say we might receive salvation. This is an even more important phrase than if he were to say even that we might be justified. I'm very glad to be justified. I'm glad of what that means for my eternal future. But I'm also glad I'm not justified and just told to go live in the outhouse of heaven. I'm also glad that I'm justified and not told that I'm on the fringes of the kingdom. I'm glad because when I see this, not only am I saved, not only am I redeemed and reconciled and justified, but I'm adopted and called into God's royal family, and He treats me as such, and He'll never treat me less. In Jewish culture, a boy was not considered to be a man until he reached a certain age. In the first century, this was true even of the Romans. Unless until you reached a certain age, you weren't considered to be a man. And during the times when you were still a child, you might be destined to receive the inheritance of your father. That might be on the radar down the road, but for the time being, you were under stewardship and guard and care because you needed to learn and be instructed before you were to receive that inheritance.Well, one of the things we talked about last week is that one of the main ways that God teaches you and I, and it kind of raises us up as children in the faith, is he gives us rules and laws to follow. He gives us laws. He gives us a structure. And when we keep those laws, when you keep God's laws, you become more godly. When you do what God has told you to do, you become more like his son. The laws teach us, they instruct us. They tell us something about the attributes of the one who made the laws. There's all sorts of benefits of the laws. They tutor us, they train us, and the like. They reflect back to us our own sinfulness, show us where we need to improve. They reflect the glory of God. There's all sorts of wonderful benefits of the law. But there's one thing the law can't do, won't do, will never do.

It won't save us.

For all the benefits that God having given us laws accomplishes, you will never be saved because you go out and try your hardest to keep them.

Now, that was a message that many of the Pharisees, many in Galatia, many in Israel, many even in the world around us today believe. That law keeping, being good, doing enough, accomplishing enough good works, minimizing bad works, that that's sufficient, that that's really what God's looking for. Well, in this text, we see that the law can't save us. The law can't save us, but in time, God had to send his Son, which is what we're going to celebrate when we come to the table. God knew that we can't keep his law, won't keep his law, didn't keep his law in the past, won't keep his law completely in the future. He knows that we've failed, and he knows that the wages of that failure is death. And so he sent his only begotten Son to die on the cross, that our punishment, the punishment that was due to us, would fall upon him.

In time, he did this. He redeemed us. And upon redeeming us by pouring out that which was most precious to himself, his own Son's blood on Calvary, upon purchasing you and I with that price,

he then says, "Welcome into my family."

Man alive, sometimes we have a small view of these sorts of things.

Sometimes we look at this and we say, "Yeah, Jesus died and saved me," and we don't really fathom that cost.

The perfect Lamb of God, the divine Son of God, hung on a cross, and he willingly said, he willingly desired that your sin would come upon him, that he could pay your debts. And then when all was said and done, when we were redeemed and reconciled and justified and made righteous because of what he did and his substitution on our behalf, he didn't leave it at that.

He then says, "You, you have now a relationship with the Father." Says, "You are adopted. You are adopted, and you will never be disowned, no matter what you might do." This is the fatherly aspect of God. Let's consider that fatherly aspect in our final verses, verses six and seven.

"Because you are sons," because you're adopted, which is the last thing verse five said. "Because you're sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, 'Abba, Father.'" Let me stop there for a moment. So we can kind of, sort of get the basics of the gospel, that Jesus died on our behalf. He took our punishment, and because of what he did in sacrificing himself, that we're saved if we believe in him. We can sort of, kind of get that. But let me ask you, what's the proof of that, that it's happened to you? We sort of understand it in the abstract. That's how the gospel works. That's the equation that equals salvation. But what's the proof that it's happened for you? What's the proof that you have been saved, that your sins have been forgiven, that you are adopted? What's the proof of that? Well, the proof is what he says in verse six. He says, "Because you're sons, because you're children, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts." And he cries out, "Abba, Father."

When you were saved, when your heart was changed, God sent his Holy Spirit into your hearts. We call it the indwelling of the Spirit. Now, what's the proof that's happened for you or for me? What's the proof? Well, those who are of the Spirit, those who have been changed, those who the Spirit is within, will live differently than we used to live. We'll live differently, and we'll be convicted of sin in ways that previously we might not have cared about too much. We'll be increasingly sanctified. We'll still mess up, we'll still sin, we'll still do things that are wrong, and yet we'll feel more guilty as we do it. We'll have a sense that God is cleaning up. If he purchased us, he's now busy fixing and cleaning up that which he's purchased. The example at the nine o'clock service, an example I gave of this, it actually is Charles Spurgeon's example. He said this. He says, all right, before you were adopted, before the Spirit came into your heart, you were like a pig at a trough, right? The trough is all the things of this world, all the sin and wickedness and depravity and all that stuff. He says at one time, you were like a pig at the trough, and your head was just buried into that stuff, and you were eating it down, and you thought that that was fine and sufficient and the like. Well, you could take that pig at the trough, and you could go over to the side, and you could put down several plates from the finest restaurants in Gulfport, Mississippi. You know one of them's going to have a po'boy on it. You could put the finest plates, the finest meals. You can go to Shaggy's, Felix's, my favorite. You can go all these different places, and you can put all those plates down with the fine food, all shaped, looking delicious, and the like. And you can have the trough, and you can let loose the pig, and where's he going to go? Well, the pig is going to go to the trough. Why? Because that's what he knows, and that's what he likes. That's what he wants. The fine, good quality, maybe even healthy stuff, not so much. He wants that. Now, let's say that you could [snap] snap your fingers and change the heart of the pig into the heart of a man. Let's say you could make a man out of a pig. Well, what would happen? Well, a man looks down [chuckles] at the trough and says, "Dear heavens, what am I doing? This is gross." Man looks down at the trough and says, "Ah, I don't want that. Ugh, ugh, that's disgusting. But those dishes, those look pretty good."The heart of a man understands something about the trough he had previously been immersed in. The heart of a man understands what sin and depravity looks like, and it doesn't fill him up the way it used to. He desires better things. He desires spiritually healthier things. Now, occasionally, such a man might still return to the trough. Occasionally, such a man might still like and even engage in things he shouldn't do and put his head down in that mire. But it's like rot in his gut. It doesn't fill him. It just makes him sick. He just can't abide by what he used to love. That's a picture of what happens when the Spirit indwells you. That's a picture of what it's like when the Spirit comes within us. We might still do what's wrong, but we no longer feel the same way about it. We no longer crave the same things we used to crave, or at least if we do, it's to a lesser and lesser degree. Because God repeatedly, consistently makes us more holy and more sanctified than we used to be. His Spirit's within us. And sometimes, and you might be able to relate to this, you've been thinking about pursuing something that you know is not right, and you feel this sense. You might call it your conscience. The book would call it the Spirit. But you feel a sense, this is wrong. The Spirit convicts us of our sinfulness, of what we're doing that we shouldn't do, and leads us in right paths.

You want proof that you're adopted? Ask yourself, is the Spirit within you? Are you becoming increasingly more Christ-like? Maybe not perfectly, and maybe it's like the stock market. There's ups and downs. But is it going in the right direction? Are you increasingly becoming more like Christ from the moment that you first professed his name? The evidence or proof that you ever, ever truly repented unto a saving faith is that you continue to repent of your sins, and you continue to put them behind you, and you continue to lift your head up out of the trough. If you can see a history, maybe it's just a short history, but if you can see a history of having done that, increasingly so, you can say, "This is the evidence of the Spirit within me." In Romans 8, it says, "God's Spirit bears witness to our spirit that we are children of God." God's Spirit bears witness to ours. We detect his presence. If you want some assurance, if you want some confidence, ask yourself, what is the Spirit doing in your own life? Now, in a couple of weeks, we're going to talk about, Paul's going to expand on this. He's going to talk about the fruits of the Spirit. Most of us remember, peace, patience, kindness, joy in the like. We remember the fruits of the Spirit, and we're going to talk about that. Fruits of the Spirit are things we do that bear witness to the hope that's within us. With that said, we'll close with this point this morning, but one of the key fruits that we have is that we now relate better with one another, but we also relate better and different with our God, and we begin to relate to him as a father. In verses six and seven, it talks about crying out, "Abba, Father." One of the proofs, one of the evidences of our salvation is the fact that we see our God as not merely someone who made us and not merely a long-bearded judge far, far away, but we see him as a close and abiding father. I'll share another anecdote here, another story. Something happened about 15 or 16 years ago. My wife and I, at this time, were at a carnival. I don't remember if it was around 2003, 2004. We're at a carnival, and it's set out in one of those parking lot sort of carnivals. It's the sort of thing that they assemble on Friday and take down on Monday, kind of a rickety sort of thing. Well, we're at this carnival, and it's filled with people from the community that we're in. All sorts of people have come in to check out the carnival. There's kids, and they're loud, and people are yelling, and there's noises, and all things are going on at the carnival. Well, there was a child, a smaller child, and he was running around as kids do, and I saw him out of the corner of my eye. He ran, he tumbled, and he took just a tremendous fall. And immediately, I look, and I can see he skinned his knees just horribly. It was kind of a bad scene.

Now, I watched this. I think a couple other people might have seen what happened. But I watched this, and of course, I kind of froze, and you want to come over and immediately do something. But I watch and I see what his reaction is. And of course, the kid immediately cries out. The kid sees the blood on his knees, feels the pain, feels the heat and the emotion of what had just happened, cries out. And as the kid is crying out, he's looking around,

looking for his father.

And he screams out. He says, "Daddy,

Daddy."

Well, within just a moment,

look there across the parking lot, and there's this man, and he's running. Not a lot of men are running at the carnival. This guy was running. He was running straight to the kid. He runs to this child. He picks up this child. He holds this child tight.

The kid buries his head into the, I guess, the nape of the man's neck.

Now, why did this man

treat this child this way, and why did the child respond to the man this way?

Well, because this was his father, and this was the father's son. Among all the voices that are already loud and screaming stuff at a carnival, this father could discern and pick up on the sound of his child when his child was hurting.

Of all the sounds and noises and children yelling, things going on at the carnival, this father's ears were attuned

to the sound of his child, especially his child in distress.

You and I, we have a unique relationship with our God. We have a unique relationship as sons and daughters.

Our God hears our voice, recognizes our voice, knows our voice, and he doesn't have to run 100 yards to be with us. He is with us in the moment. It's us who sometimes keep him at arm's length. But he's with us. He desires this intimate relationship, this close relationship with those that he has made. And when we cry out to him, he's there in a heartbeat, holding us tight. It's a picture of the prodigal son. The prodigal son went off with the pigs. He did all the things that he shouldn't do. And the moment he returns to the father, and the father sees him across the fields, the father runs across the fields, flings open his arms, holds his son close, kisses his son, gives him the signet ring, does all these things. Why? Because that's his child.

That's a picture of God's love for you this morning.

That's a picture of God's love for you and I, this close relationship we have. And so,

as we contemplate our own skinned knees this week, as we contemplate the horrors and the heartache that we may be going through, maybe things that no one else even knows about. In church circles, everyone knows if so-and-so's got an illness. Hardly anyone knows if someone is suffering from a horrible depression or anxiety, or if there's some spiritual or sin issue going on in their hearts or lives.

If you and I, if that's where we're at, if our hearts are broken and we're hurting, and there's things that we can't even tell anybody else for fear of what they might say or think, know this, the moment we cry out, "Abba, Father," he's there.

He's there with us.

He's caring for us. He's holding us tight.

And that won't change tomorrow.

Others might let you down in life. It can and it probably has happened, but our Heavenly Father won't. If you are hurting today or tomorrow,

remember that promise.

Try crying out to him in prayer, "Abba, Father." Let's pray.