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One of the primary questions I am asked by Christians is, “How do I walk as a son? How do I live in this love?” To answer, let me ask you a question: How does it happen within a family?
Being a son or daughter is real by relationship! You will grow in sonship by experiencing Father loving you—only by experiencing Him loving you. Many people have turned sonship into something that we have to do; or, a correct attitude that we need to adopt. Sonship, however, is living in the experiential love of the Father in an intimate relationship with Him. Father’s love going into your heart will automatically bring you into maturity, into walking as a son appropriate to your Heavenly Father.
Love is “stuff.” Father’s love is nothing less than the substance of God’s life which comes from God’s heart and God’s heart alone. This love is resident in the very heart of God. No human being can give to you the love of God. When God pours this love into your heart, real stuff goes into you. When this substance goes into you, you will experience being loved. It’s not about believing that He loves you; it’s about being loved by Him.
This substance, this stuff, will automatically change your life. It will bring forth the fruit of the Spirit. It will manifest the traits of true Christian character. It will manifest itself to those around you. That stuff will turn you into everything a Christian is meant to be.
In John 1:18, it says about Jesus: No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. Many people try to “declare” God; they preach on Christian things without the experiential knowledge of the Father’s bosom. As the Body of Christ matures, these ministries will become obsolete. Jesus lived in the bosom of the Father, continuously experiencing the Father’s heart of love for Him personally. He did not visit there once or twice or touch His Father’s heart from time to time. He was abiding there – in the bosom of the Father.
The whole point of all Christian ministry is to teach people how to continually experience this substance of the love of the Father coming out of His heart into ours. How do you mature in that? You get more and more filled with the love of the Father. The more that happens the more patient you will be, automatically! The more kind you will be, automatically! You will lay down your life for the sake of others without thought. That love will fill you to the point of overflowing, and then the talents He has given you, the gifts of the Spirit made available to us all, and the ministries of the Spirit given to build the Body of Christ will flow with unprecedented effect and truly glorify our God and Father. As we receive and keep on receiving this love into our hearts it will conform us into the exact likeness of Jesus.
If there is a key to Christianity, if we are to become competent at anything, it is this one thing: Learn to become an expert at receiving the substance of God the Father’s love being poured into your heart. That is what sonship is.
