Abba, I Belong to You
Sermon Theme: God’s Love makes us thankful children
Goal: to encourage Christians that God’s love makes us thankful children
Need: We often don’t recognize the wonder of the love of God.
Sermon Outline:
1. Introduction
2. God lavishes his love
3. We belong as children
4. We respond with love
5. Conclusion
Sermon in Oral Style,
GEMS,
One of the biggest fears of school kids is the fear of being left out? You girls know what I am talking about. It doesn’t feel good at all to be the one person sitting around not knowing why there is no one around to spend time with. Some of you know it from the one or two times that you were sitting by yourself because the rest of your friends had something else going on during that recess time. Some of you GEMS might know what it feels like because that is your recess time almost every single day. All alone.
What does it feel like? That Loneliness at its worst can make people wonder, “why did God waste flesh and bones to make a worthless person like me.” It feels like there is no one around who cares, no one loves us, no one notices what we do or don`t do. Talk about an awful feeling.
It doesn’t take long before a few days or months of loneliness make us think that that feeling of being ignored and forgotten is just part of who we are. I am lonely. I don`t belong. I am nothing to anybody.
The first verse of the chapter is just one of the verses that God put in the Bible to make us feel differently about our identity. Its like we`ve been looking into some fun house mirror for a long time. That reflects an identity of ourselves that looks all out of shape and messed up. When we start to believe that we are a twisted person who can never have a friend or never be really loved, God’s word is trying to change that. You see God’s word is like the perfect mirror that helps us see who we really are. It helps us see us the way God sees us.
Our true identity begins with what it says in this passage. 1How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
We are children of God. This is the beginning of the straightening out of that fun house mirror image of us. We are not worthless or hopeless. We belong to God as his child.
God is our Dad. That’s who God is going to be to us. The theme for this service Abba, I belong to you. Abba means daddy in the language Jesus spoke. When we talk to God we can call him daddy.
He`s like that perfect daddy. Perfect how? Well I have a feeling God won’t take you shopping and pick out awesome clothes and then pay for them all. Not quite. God is the perfect daddy in that he is a very good listener. When you have a bad day, he’s the one that doesn’t ask what the problem is and then try and fix it all up for you. He’s the God that understands the hurts and will let you just cry it out while all he does is let you sit on his lap and keep his big arms around you.
The verse that we read actually says, he’s a dad that lavishes his love on us. Do you know what the word lavish means? It pretty important to what God is trying to tell us. I had an idea, but I thought it would be good to look it up. Webster’s dictionary says lavish means to expend or bestow with profusion. And when I got done looking up all those words, I figured out what it meant.
I picture like if you were wandering, thirsty through the desert and some one showed up with a truck load of water just for you. They open up the tap on the hose and you would drink without worry about how much of it ran down you chin and your cheeks. You’d soak your hair with it. You’d be refreshed. They would lavish you with the water. Almost to the point of being wasteful, they would let it keep on coming faster than you could drink.
God lavishes his love that way. God tells us that he is lavishing us with his love making us his children. There’s a story Christ tells the lost son. This son basically tells his dad off wishes him dead and leaves with the portion of his inheritance. Then when he has wasted all of his money, has no friends, no food, when he is ready to sit down and eat some pig food instead, he goes back home. And you know how the dad responds? He lavishes his love on him. Hugs him puts nice clothes on him. Slaughters his most precious animal for a feast. He goes over the top with love.
GEMS, God loves you that much all the time. God loves you so much that when you are feeling unloved and lonely, just remember that God lavishes his love on you. God’s love is deeper and longer lasting than any affection from a boy or any flowers or material things. God loves you without holding back. You are wrapped tight in the love of God through Jesus Christ.
Let that be part of your identity. You are loveable. You are loved deeply by God. He makes you his child.
Some girls when they are little dream of becoming a princess. God’s love is a dream come true. You are a princess of God. You are the daughter of the King of the entire world. You are the most loved daughter of the God in heaven. He loves you girls so much that he would even take his son and send him to die on the cross. Jesus died so that you could become princesses, adopted daughters of the only true King.
Through the love of God, you are his beautiful daughters, princesses of the king.
That is true for us all ladies, you are the princess of God. You are a daughter of the king.
Sometimes even at older ages we let our identity be driven by our relationships. I am just a single lady. I am just a wife. I am just a mom. I am just a lonely widow. But could you let God`s word help define your identity? You are a princess of the king. You in your 80`s are a princess of the king. You belong to God and are cherished by him in ways no person ever could.
Claiming your identity as a princess of God won`t be easy. We constantly see roadblocks standing in the way of claiming our true identity.
Satan for one stands in the way. He is the prince of loneliness. He is the one who would like you to think that no one loves you. He`s the one that wants you to create an image for yourself that includes words like worthless, loser, lonely, dumb, hopeless.
He`s also the one who messes up the fathers of this world. Some people go through life believing that no father can love because their own father did not love them. But that`s the power of evil the tool of the devil. He puts that kind of road block in our way so that we won`t believe that even a heavenly king would be our loving daddy.
But Jesus cried out to God saying, Abba. He called him daddy. We can too.
Romans 8:15 says, 15For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” We don`t need to fear the devil and what he does through our sinful nature. We can call out princes and princess to our Abba, Father in heaven.
Our own Pride is another roadblock in the way of us taking hold of our real identity. The world says we should figure out our personal value by doing math like this. How good you look+ how good you do+ how much people like you. You do well at all those and win an Emmy award some day, ladies you`ve got it going on.
God`s way of adding up your self worth is much better. Some places the Bible says you are chosen. God chose you to be dearly loved and holy. It says we are made complete in Christ. It says we have been made separate from the wicked patterns of this world by God`s work. It says we belong to God in heaven. We don`t belong to ourselves or to other people. Forget the praise of others. Our worth is determined by God who lavished us with his love. We are worth more than we could fathom to our Abba.
Do you know anyone who would give up one of their children because they wanted to love you so badly? God did it. That’s how badly he wanted you to belong completely to him. That’s how much he wanted you to be one of the princesses of his kingdom.
GEMS, I am going to challenge you now. Any time we open up God’s word it ought to challenge us to be better than we were before we opened it up. But I am going to challenge you now. The biggest thing standing in the way of truly claiming that new identity is what we chose to do each and every day. We choose to live the raggedy nasty lifestyle instead the life of a princess of God. Living that way is the biggest thing standing in the way. I want to challenge you to find one area of your life that you know is holding you back. I a want you to ask the Holy Spirit to help you get rid of it so that you can be even more sure of God’s love for you.
Our lives need to scream out ABBA I BELONG TO YOU. When people see the way you do kind things for other people, it should be “Woah, someone must really love her.” When you look out for that person in your GEMS group or your class at school or on your summer soccer team that is always by themselves, it will say to other people. “She must be a part of some group or something.” Yeah something like the eternal kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of love and purity. Something like being the beloved daughter of the king of all things. Yeah you could say we are loved by someone.
Who stands in the way of us feeling like we belong? We stand in the way. It is us, believing that other people of this world have some sort of say in the value of our soul.
So go out today. Think about these things dwell on them believe them. God has overflowed his love to you so that you will never feel like you don’t belong. You are his child that makes you the the princesses of the everlasting kingdom of God.
As we end I want the GEMS to start us off with saying the theme. ABBA I BELONG TO YOU. Say it with me. ABBA I BELONG TO YOU. Again. ABBA I BELONG TO YOU. One more time. ABBA I BELONG TO YOU. And now congregation, join us too. Ready. ABBA I BELONG TO YOU. Again louder.