Romans – The Play Part 6

I feel that there’s no one in this room weaker than I am as a Christian. I don’t think there’s anybody in this room who blows it more than I do, and I doubt that there are many of you who can get down any lower than I can when I blow it.” And it seems as though a large part of my blowing it is done right before a meeting. But I have never once come in and said, “Let’s just—can’t do it tonight, saints.” Now, I don’t know why I’ve never done that. You don’t know how many hundreds of times I’ve been tempted to. You don’t know how many times I’ve gotten up to go do that very thing right in front of y’all, but I can tell you this: to His honor, to His glory, and to His praise, He lives in me. And He’s still calling me a Son of the Living God.

It is well, it is well, with my soul, and my spirit.

Now then, just one other passage here, and that is verse fifteen, which gives us one of the very few insights into first-century Christian praying:

“For you have not received the spirit of slavery leading again to fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons, by which you cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’ “

Now, one of us, one of you scholars, would you tell us what Abba means in Hebrew? You know somewhere. Daddy. Papa. I think this is a very important verse of Scripture because it has to do with first-century praying. Now, if you only had the book of Romans, and all you ever knew about first-century praying, most of it would be right around that verse right there. That you pray: Daddy. I doubt there is anybody in this room who has the nerve to call God your Father, Daddy.

In Tyler, Texas, some years ago, when I was just leaving the organized church and was getting into this other little world, we had a group of Christians who were meeting. And I’m going to tell you that the testimony the sister gave. She had just been converted; she had little or no religious background, and when we read this passage one night together, she could not believe it. She said a few days before, she had been so anxious, and she had gone to the Lord, and she had just been saying to Him, Abba, Abba, Abba, and she did not know what it meant. And she found out – it was the endearing term for a Father with whom you love, who loves you, whom you trust, and with whom you have very close fellowship.

Abba, Father.

Look, y’all. Here’s not a call to pray for the salvation of the world. This is not saying to intercede and pray all night. This is not confessing your sins. This is not nine ways to approach God. Seven things to say when you begin. Four things to ask Him. Eleven things to never ask Him. All of that garbage. This is love between a child and his daddy. This is intimacy. This is an interflowing, an intercourse of love.

This is one of the few places in the Word of God where you get a good, clear idea of what a first-century Christian experienced in prayer. And it is as intimate, as close – I don’t know, I’m going to say it again – intimate. Private. Personal history of intimacy. It’s not a bluff. It’s two people who know one another really well. And one who really senses the devotion of the other. And the Spirit is in you, just encouraging you:

I lead you; therefore, you’re a child of God. You are a child of God; therefore, I lead you.
Your spirit witnesses that you’re a child of God. Witnesses to Me -I witness to your spirit that you’re a child of God. And the Spirit begins to encourage you to reach out to your Father and treat Him like a loving Daddy, who isn’t angry, who isn’t put out with you, who seems to understand the mess you’re in and the mess that you are.

I’m a grandfather. I don’t feel like a grandfather. I raised my two daughters too harshly, too strictly, too legally. This year, I have my grandson with me. I’m not doing a perfect job, but one thing – he’s a boy. And I’m a boy. And I understand him better than I understand girls. I never even knew what was going on in my family when we had two; I really didn’t understand. And I tried too hard. But this little kid, oh man, this kid’s got problems. I mean, he has really got problems. You know, he takes his clothes off and leaves them right where he takes them off. You know where he is at any time of the day or night; you can follow his clothes.

I wish to God I had been as good a father as I am a granddad. I don’t care. I don’t care. I’m so proud of that kid. I’m not going to throw him out in the street. I’m not going to throw him out in the street if he lies to me, if he cheats, or if he steals. I’m not going to throw him out in the streets, no matter what he does. The fact of the matter is, he is such a good kid that it bothers me – he’s mine. If I can, I, a heathen Gentile, can do that, what can love do? Do you understand what I mean? What can love do? I’m speaking of a divine being.