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“Abba!
Father!”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: Romans 8:14-17
“When
we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with
our spirit that we are children of God.”
Dear Children of God, Sisters and Brothers, we have the spirit that God has made in us, in
creating us as who we are. And we are accompanied by another Spirit, God
the Holy Spirit, who is the ultimate leader in our lives. Today is the Day of Pentecost, in the church, where we
celebrate and learn about the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
The gift of the Holy Spirit has many forms.
One of the first forms that come into our minds are the
miraculous stories of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues.
We always read Acts chapter two, where many of the first
disciples were in a place together, and suddenly from heaven there
came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire
house where they were sitting. Divided
tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of
them. All of them were
filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as
the Spirit gave them ability.
A sound like rushing wind, fire looking tongues resting on each of them,
and then all of them, each one of them, began to speak in other
languages, so that they could witness about Jesus Christ to others in
the community who were from foreign countries.
This is another amazing Bible story that we can hardly even
imagine.
We are probably all familiar with the Pentecostal church denomination,
quite popular in our times. As
the gospel spread and the church grew in the south direction through
Central and South America, the Pentecostal Church has had a massive
influential participation in these missions.
The charismatic aspects of the church in the USA grew very strongly in
the early 1900s. It had
instances in many mainline denominations.
One of the most famous events was on January 1, 1900, where a
Holiness preacher, Charles F. Parham was preaching at Bethel Bible
College, in Topeka, Kansas, and a Methodist lady, Agnes Oman, shocked
the meeting because she stood up and spoke in a number of foreign
languages that she had never learned before in her life.
This event has since been regarded as one of the most important
rebirths of the Holy Spirit in the modern Pentecostal movement.
The Holy Spirit has the ability to do this kind of work in our lives, if
that is God’s will for us. Still,
there are many forms of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and this morning,
in our Scripture passage, the essence of the Holy Spirit’s presence in
our lives is much different from what we just remembered and imagined in
our minds again.
The immediate context of the passage we read from Romans was verse 13:
“for if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the
Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” John Wesley, who was the founder of the Methodist Church,
while he was still a student at Oxford University in England, as a young
man, received a letter from
his mother that read, “anything which increases the authority of the
body over the mind is an evil thing.”
One form of the Holy Spirit being present in our lives is increasing the
authority of our minds over our bodies.
What does that mean? It
means that very simply, one way that you may know and see the real
presence of God in your life, is being led to make decisions and actions
based on your Christian reflections, instead of merely your present
emotional or physical feelings. It
means thinking as a Christian before you do something just because you
are a human.
More than likely, this is not nearly as entertaining, nor as miraculous
as being filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues or being
involved in quick healings, but it is every bit as real because of the
presence of the Holy Spirit in you.
As you learn to make decisions, in your mind, in your
contemplations, in your prayers, and not so quickly based on what is
inherent to being a man or a woman, then you are being led by the Holy
Spirit.
Have you ever noticed something about yourself, through many times in
your life, where you have continuously acted in a certain way based on
feelings that you have, and now you are realizing you need to change how
you behave? As you begin to
stop and think about it and learn to conduct yourself differently,
especially out of care for another human being, then you are being
guided every but as much by the Holy Spirit as someone talking in
tongues. This is not merely
psychology. Yes, counselors
can help us with this kind of learning.
Still, that is every bit as much from God.
As we tend to grow this way in our lives, we are growing in our
understanding of God. Being
a Christian is not about being intellectual.
Someone with Down Syndrome is every bit as close to God as
someone with a lifetime of Christian education.
In truth, many times they may be even closer.
But, as we grow in using our minds, our thoughts, and knowledge
of God to make decisions with more authority than quickly following our
fleshly leaning, we are being led by the Holy Spirit.
Then, when we come to a time where we are in extreme pain, high stressed
anxiety, on what we feel like is the edge of our being, and we are not
able to use our minds as much as we have in the past, we cry out, in our
hearts to God, “Abba!,
Father!” We don’t
just cry out the cliché “Oh my God!”
We actually cry out to God in the most personal orientation that
we have in our life. We
turn to God as our ultimate divine parent because of the Holy Spirit’s
reality in our hearts and souls.
At the beginning of it all, only God knows God.
God is the subject and the object.
God is the one known and the one being known in God.
The Son knows the Father in the Holy Spirit.
The Father knows the Son in the Holy Spirit.
As we grow in using our minds to think about God’s ways and not
just our feelings, and even come to the point where we cry out to God,
we do that because that is God knowing and loving God in and with us.
God is for us. God
is in us. God is with us. And we are in God. Keep
thinking about that and every day for the rest of your lives, will be a
day of Pentecost.
Let us pray…
Amen
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