What is God Doing? Does He have something in mind? Is all of this a grand soap opera and God is nothing but a spectator. What is He doing? What does He have in mind? Of all of the doctrines that I learned, when I started paying attention to doctrine, one of them stands out above them all. It is in fact pivotal in many ways to all the rest, and in fact, without this particular concept, none of the rest of it really makes much sense at all.

When you become aware of the reaction about this doctrine, you would almost think that we are the only people in the world that believe it, because the reaction to this doctrine is often quite negative, but you would be wrong if you thought that, because there is a very broad spectrum of Christian thinkers who have held and still hold this doctrine. It is in fact one of the oldest doctrines of the Christian Church, as such, and there has been from the earliest generations of the church, a major division among those who believe it and those who do not, all though, people don’t talk about this as being the point of division.

The fact is, I think that if we were the only people who believe this doctrine, I don’t think anyone would care very much. I do not think that there would be that much reaction against it, I don’t think that there would be people who all of a sudden bristle and wonder what are you driving at. But when we stand up and say that we believe this, what we are doing is taking sides in a very old argument, and we pose a threat to those who do not believe it.

I don’t know if you know what doctrine I am talking about, it is not the Sabbath, it is not the Holy Days, it is the doctrine that Man Can Become God!

Most people, and I dare say that most of you, the first time you heard that doctrine, reacted negatively. The first time I heard it, I thought, this is blasphemy. I have heard many others express similar feelings when they heard it.

One of my good friends said that when he first read it, he wanted to take the booklet out of his house because he was afraid that lightning might strike the booklet and he did not want to be near it. You have to realize that if he picked it up and carried it out of his house, it might get him right there.

Why do people react that way to this doctrine? The problem is mainly semantics. I will give you an illustration of what I am talking about.

What is the Third Commandment? The commandment is "Thou shall not take the name of the Lord Thy God in vain." We all from that assume that when a person lets the epithet out of his mouth, and God followed by some other word, that he has taken the name of the Lord his God in vain. Well, the problem with that is, that God is not the name. Now, we all know that don’t we? If you just take a little closer look at the original language, it says "you shall not carry the name of Jehovah, your God in vain." In other words, who is your God and what is His name? His name is Yahweh, Jehovah, whatever the combination of the Hebrew letters works out to be in the English language, you shall not carry that name in vain. The name is not God, it is His name not Him.

It simply identifies Him, but that name, Jehovah, is your God, and if you know simple English, and do simple English sentences, you will realize that ‘God’ is the descriptor of the kind of being that Jehovah is. He is, in relation to you, your God, and that is not quite the same thing. People who worry a lot, will put G_D in their writing because they don’t want to use the name in that way, or they see some problem with it and that is not what this particular commandment is all about.

‘God’ is not His name. What does the word ‘God’ mean? I could ask you to give your own definition of what you think ‘God’ means and I would dare say that we would get a lot of different definitions.

The fact is, that most of the time, when people speak of God, and they say that God created the heavens and the earth, God is in heaven and man is on the earth, all of the ways that we use ‘God’, what we mean by that is, the supreme being who is above all others, that is what people mean when they use the word ‘God’.

If that is what the word means, and only what it means, then man could never become God, but there are other consequences.

Jesus Christ, then cannot be God, can never have been and can never become God, never was, isn’t and will never be, because there is only one that can be supreme. By definition, we have ruled out any possibility of anybody else ever being that. Man cannot become God, Jesus cannot become God.

Now the problem with all of this is, if you take that definition and you take it to the Bible and start reading the Bible, you will come to certain places that all of a sudden you are faced with a rather large difficulty. One of these is the first chapter of Hebrews and I want to take you there right now and kind of underline what I want to tell you.

"God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, {2} Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds" (Heb 1:1-2 KJV.)

Now what he has done here, with his choice of words, he has said that the God that he is talking about, is a Father. Why would I conclude that? Because he has a son. Anybody who has a son is a father, that goes with our language and our system of logic, since God gave us our system of logic, I think we are safe in following that same system of logic to its conclusion. If you have a son, then you are a father, so ‘God’ as it is used in this verse speaks of the Father, and that is the way most of us, most of the time, when we use the term ‘God’ use it.

He hath in these last days spoken to us by His Son: "Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high" (Heb 1:3 KJV.)

The impression you have of ‘the majesty on high’ is He is sitting, and at His right hand, the Son sits down.

Someone might argue, if you walked into the Throne Room of God and you look up at the Throne, would you see one person or would you see two? He concluded that you would only see one, but when you read Hebrews, the image you are given, I understand that the Bible uses metaphors, it uses figures of speech, it uses imagery and I understand one more thing, that when the time comes for you to be called on the carpet before God for all of your mistakes, I don’t see how He could possibly criticize you and me for thinking of Him on His throne and Jesus Christ on His right hand when this is in the Bible. I think God is much bigger than that, that even if it were a metaphor, it is not relevant to you and I that it is a metaphor. What it is, is a revelation of God, and what He is like and we are allowed to think of Him in those terms that He reveals Himself to us, so it is OK to think of the Father and the Son at His right hand.

What is the relationship between a father and a son? How many of you are dads? All of you dads have sons. What is the relationship? Is it or is it not FAMILY? Of course it is, and so here is a biblical writer, and he is not the only one, who comes to us and presents God to us in family terms, but he is not done.

"For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day I begotten thee? " (Heb 1:5 KJV.)

Well, to none of them! Because they were not in the same category as the Son. "And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?" (Heb 1:5 KJV).

Once again, in every single way, every imaginable way, God is presented to us again, again and again as a father who has a son. It is FAMILY!

Then he goes on to say: "And again, when he brings in the first-begotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him. {7} And of the angels he saith, Who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire" (Heb 1:6-7.)

Here is where the whole thing falls over its own feet, if you follow the line that I was talking about before.

"But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom" (Heb 1:8 KJV)

What are you going to do with that? Of course, we understand, that generally we say that God is the supreme being, now we have to realize that we do not always mean that when we use the word ‘God’. Usually we mean the person who is the ‘Father’, but we do not always mean that, because now, "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets" (Heb 1:1 KJV), God speaking, says now to the Son: "Thy throne, O God." He says to the Son, You also are God. He also says You are "a sceptre of righteousness."

Here is God speaking to one He calls God and who says: "Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows" (Heb 1:9 KJV.)

I think this is fascinating. You are left without any hope of any other conclusion, except to realize that what God is, is a kind of being. Utterly simple, of whom the Father is supreme.

Language does us in more times that we can imagine. We have ways of looking at things, speaking of things and we fall into old habitual language patterns and sometimes we lose track of what it is we are talking about. A lot of really nasty arguments get going and a lot of people get angry with one another. I like to mooch around the Internet on religious forums and it is really fascinating to me how often people get down right angry with one another when the aren’t even talking about the same thing.

It reminds me of sitting around my mother-in-law’s home years gone by when we would have all of the family in there, and I had some brothers-in-law who would see each other from time to time and they would be sitting talking and first brother-in-law would be talking about his car and that his engine had gone bad and he went to the junk yard and he found a car with the same engine in it and he was able to take it out and he tells the whole story to both of us sitting there listening to him, in how got it, brought it home and put it into his car and how much money he saved, and so forth and when he paused to take a breath, the other brother-in-law said, well I had this job last week and I had this house I was working on and we were building over here, and soon what he began to talk about had nothing whatsoever to do with my other brother-in-law’s conversation, and when he took a breath, my fist brother-in-law picked up the story of replacing the engine and starter, and when he took a breath, then we were back to the house and construction building and so forth.

I would sit there like someone watching a tennis match going back and forth. I didn’t bother tossing much into that conversation because I saw no point. My brothers-in-law never got mad at each other.

When I see people who are religious, who get mad at one another, and listen to them talk, it becomes very clear, if you are a careful listener, that they are not using their words to mean the same things, and if you don’t have any common ground that you are standing on, you haven’t got any hope of understanding one another. In this area of the definition of God, of man becoming God, and can’t become God, a man becoming God as God is God and who knows what that means. What does that mean? If you understand one way, it is blasphemy, if you understand in another way, it makes perfect sense. It all depends on what you mean, by what you are saying.

The challenge for those of us who would get up and speak about this subject from time to time is to be very careful that people understand precisely and with clarity what we mean, by the things that we say.

The term ‘God’, as I said before is descriptive of the kind of being of which one is supreme.

What about man?

Let’s turn back to the first chapter of Genesis, and let’s talk about man.

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. {27} So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. {28} And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth" (Gen 1:26-28 KJV.)

God said: "Let’s make man in our image and let’s put him over everything." He said to man: "Be fruitful and multiply, replenish the earth." Whatever for? Why? First place, why make man? Why make man in the image of God, so far as man is able to decide for himself what he will do, about things right and things wrong.

Man can not decide to make something right that is wrong, he can not decide to make something wrong that is right, but he can decide and come to understand and grasp what is right and what is wrong and can decide to do it one way or the other.

People often ask: "Why didn’t God make us so we could not sin?" My answer is: "He did make creatures that cannot sin, they are called cows." Do you want to be a cow? Creatures that are going to have the capacity to love, must also have the capacity to sin.

Sin is missing the mark. Sin is making the wrong choice. Sin is breaking God’s Law, but God’s Law is a revelation of right and wrong. It is not a complicated thing.

Man was made free, man was made with the capacity to choose, and God made him with all that, that he might choose God for his friend, for his father, that he might ultimately be FAMILY with God.

I think it’s a really marvelous story when one really comes to understand it, and we go back to the very beginning that the ‘increase’, as one once put it, that’s what God was doing after he put all these creatures down here and He told them to reproduce after their kind. What God was doing when He came to man is that He was reproducing after His own kind.

Man being made in God’s image is an enormous advantage to us in understanding Him. God has placed in us the desire for FAMILY. The desire for children, the desire that our children love us, the desire that they will be successful, the desire that they will grow up and be healthy and strong, and that they will always stay close to us and that we will always love them and they will always love us and that they will bring along more children into the family, so that we can be surrounded by grandchildren and by great grandchildren, and we can be the patriarch in our own great family reunion some day.

That has been put in us, it is down inside of us, we couldn’t get rid of it if we wanted to, because that’s part of us, and it is a part of God. It is a part of His design, it is a part of what He made of His own image in us, but He made us flesh, because having been made free we also have the capacity to do great wrong. In having done so, we have no reason, nor any right to live beyond a short span of years. Having chosen wrong, it is better for us that we not live. Having chosen wrong it is better for us that we should disappear.

Having chosen right, well, He has something very much in mind for those who make that right choice.

In the second chapter of Genesis verse 18: "And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone." (Gen 2:18 KJV.) How did He know that? Because He made him that way and secondarily He made him in His own image and one might even wonder then, does God feel that it is not good for Him to be alone?

We think of God as being impassable, that God is indestructible, untouchable, that He doesn’t have feelings like we do. Logic forces me to the conclusion that that is wrong.

For if He doesn’t have feelings like we do, He would not have made us with feelings that we have.

James Weldon Johnson’s magnificent poem: "The creation begins by saying: And God stepped out on space and He looked around and said "I am lonely, I’ll make me a world.""

I think in that simple little stanza of that poem He touched upon the point of what this whole thing is all about.

Not that there is a hole in God of loneliness, but that there is a desire in God to share and I am not sure how different those two things are. Loneliness is the absence of someone with whom we might share and might enjoy together and that God did not want to spend eternity at a solitary table enjoying a festival meal all by Himself with nothing around Him but servants.

What He wanted at that table is someone like Him with His kind of powers, the ability to see Him as He is, and with the ability to respond to Him, and to voluntarily love Him, and that I think is a part of what God was doing when He started all of this.

"And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. {19} And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof" (Gen 2:18-19 KJV.)

Adam did not find anything among the beasts of the field and he didn’t expect to find anything that would be a fit companion for him. Why not? Because they didn’t have minds. They weren’t free to choose. They had instinct, that God made in them, to respond to in certain ways.

What man needed was a companion equal with him, a companion who could share with him. A companion who could choose to be faithful to him, choose to honor him, and to receive honor from him.

Now he goes on to say: "And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; {22} And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. {23} And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. {24} Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh" (Gen 2:21-24 KJV.)

God immediately created a family, right off the bat, and this family was to be fruitful and to multiply and then the relationship between mother and father and children would be established and then when the time came for a man to get married, it says he should leave his father and mother, he should move out of their house and he should go and create his own household and he and his new wife would become one flesh, and that family would continue forever, growing, developing, becoming ever larger with more and more relationships that could be established with all of the complexities that go with all of the relationships. Then in His fundamentals, His most basic commandments that He gave to man which we call the Ten Commandments, He gave one commandment in particular to protect the family: "Thou shall not commit adultery."

For the faithfulness of the sexual relationship between a man and his wife is that faithful bond, that trust, that they have between them, is what protects and holds the family together.

Why was it God’s will that marriage initially, from the beginning, be one man and one woman for life? Why? Why didn’t He set us up like dogs and cats, and mate whenever we wanted to and whenever we felt like it? Why not? Do you have any idea why it was so?

It is for the sake of the children!

More and more studies are being done these days which are showing finally, that people are waking up and realizing that there is a profound need in a growing child’s life for two people to be in his life, a mother and a father and that they both bring very different personalities, relationships, they bring very different things to their children, and it is not good for children to grow in single families, it is better to grow up in a single family home than not to grow up, but that is not the way it ought to be.

From the beginning it was not so. God made laws that allowed divorce in the sense that when it became unstuck, this is what you have to do, but it is not what He wanted. What He wanted was for people to stick it out. Why? For the children, because the children have, in that sense of the word, the prior obligation over the wants and the desires of a mother and father, as one psychologist put it: "You bring a child into the world, and you have taken on an eighteen year sentence."

You are stuck with them, they are like a ball and chain, they will be with you all that time, and what you would be better off to do is to learn to take that responsibility and enjoy it, learn to love your children and take joy in them because you brought them into the world and you are responsible for them, and I don’t think, if you are going to have a society, as a society, a community, you have to hold parent’s feet to the fire, where their children are concerned. They bring them into the world, they are responsible, so the reason for this protection of the family, the creation of the family, was for the children.

The next question is: Why the children? You didn’t have to have children. Adam and Eve could have just been there. They could have had their relationship and never had any children. Why?

Let’s turn back to Hebrews 2. I want to talk a little further about that. It is amazing how much is in this book of Hebrews if the person has the wit to see it, and the ability to relax and enjoy it and accept it for what is here because of the doctrine and the truth

What is here is truly profound. "Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip" (Heb 2:1 KJV.)

It is awful easy to let the things we hear about God to slip away from us.

"For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward; {3} How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; {4} God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to his own will? {5} For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak" (Heb 2:2-5.)

What? We are talking about a world to come, not the world that’s here. There is a world to come and He says: He has not put that world into subjection to the angels. Really? What has He done?

"But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that you are mindful of him? or the son of man, that you visit him? {7} Thou made him a little lower than the angels; thou crowned him with glory and honor, and did set him over the works of thy hands" (Heb 2:6-7.)

Then comes this profound statement in verse 8: "Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet." Who? Man!

"For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him." (Heb 2:8 KJV).

What he is talking about here is that there is a time, that the world to come, the world that is out ahead of us now, a different world than the one we are in now. At that point everything with be subject to those who we now call man. They aren’t now, not yet, but that was the design, that was the intent, when he made man in His own image, was to give man dominion over everything.

"But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. {10} For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings" (Heb 2:9-10 KJV.)

Notice the phrase "Bring many sons unto glory." Now there are a lot of theological words that get banted around from time to time, and you have probably heard of some of them like: justification, sanctification, and etc.

Have you ever thought about the word ‘glorification’? What in the world does that mean? I have wondered about that from time to time when I hear preachers preach about that, and talk about that, whose idea of salvation for man or glorification for man is that they go to heaven when they die and they are there in the presence of Jesus, they look up into the Master’s face, they dine on milk and honey, and that’s about all I remember hearing about what there is to do when one comes, as it were, to that place.

Glorification. Jesus said to the Father, when He was in His last prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane: "Father, glorify thou me with the glory that I had with you before the world began" (John 17:5.)

Glorify Me, and then He talks about man being brought to glory. What does that mean?

Turn back to Romans 8, we call it the Holy Spirit chapter. "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God" (Rom 8:14 KJV.)

The verb ‘are’ is present tense, now, here, if you are led by the Spirit of God you are now sons of God. What is the relationship if you are a son? Do you have a father? Who is your father? It is God. Which one of Them? (John 1:1-3.) With this particular use of the word, it doesn’t matter very much, but essentially what we are talking about is the Father and we are His sons.

Now, if we have the Holy Spirit, "For you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but you have received the Spirit of sonship, whereby we cry, Abba, Father" (Rom 8:15.)

There is a song out on the Christian stations that goes: "Here we are, singing together like a family." It’s a nice little swingy song and it comes to the place where the lyrics say: "We cry, Abba Father, Holy is Your name", and it takes itself through a series of things, then "We are singing like a family, we glorify Your name, you have saved us, we confess you." It is really a fine piece of music.

I have never been much for contemporary Christian music but I hear that one every once in a while, and I am really fond of it. What struck me there is the words: "We are singing together like family and we all sing Abba Father." What do we have going on here?

We are in a FAMILY, with whom? With God. Who is it we are calling Dad? It is the Father, the heavenly Father. God is a family! Really!

Because we are a kind of being, the same kind of being as our Father is, with all that that means and with all that that entails.

Paul continues to say: "And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ" (Rom 8:17 KJV.)

Now I don’t know how you take that, but I was an heir of my father. My father didn’t have much. I think I got a pair of cowboy boots and a railroad watch, that was about all that was left for me, but at the same time, when you think of being an heir of God, what does He have? To inherit what He has, He doesn’t have to die, for you to inherit it. You just step into the inheritance of God.

"If so be that we suffer with Him that we may also be glorified together (Rom 8:17 KJV.)

Glorified, you will change from being the kind of thing you are right here which reflects the lights in the ceiling to a being that is a source of light, and remember what Jesus said on the Last Great Day, the great day of the feast, when all of the water festivals were going on all around Him. He said: "In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink" (John 7:37 KJV.)

Jesus was saying: You will become a source of living water, a source of light, not merely reflected light. That folks, sounds like man becoming a God kind of being. I didn’t say you would become God, because of the confusion with the supreme being definition of God. We need to understand what He is saying is that man can also become God.

"For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. {19} For the earnest expectation of the creation waits for the manifestation of the sons of God. {20} For the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope" (Rom 8:18-20.)

God put all this stuff down here, He put it all under vanity, He allowed all of this to go. Why? Because of HOPE. Because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God" (Rom 8:21.)

What Paul is saying is that all of this creation will be brought out of bondage into the glorious liberty that is created by and springs forth from the sons of God.

"For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. {23} And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the sonship, to wit, the redemption of our body. {24} For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? {25} But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. {26} Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we should: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. {27} And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God." (Rom 8:22-27)

This is a powerful statement: "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose" (Rom 8:28 KJV.)

God is doing something, He has a purpose, He really has something in mind.

"For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. {30} Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified" (Rom 8:29-30 KJV.)

Glorified, changed from flesh into glory like God.

"What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?" (Rom 8:31 KJV.)

Now turn back to First John to a scripture which I am sure you are familiar. We will close out this idea that I have been presenting to you here.

"Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not" (1 John 3:1 KJV.)

I am utterly inadequate to explain this, to convey to you what this means. He says: "What manner of love that we should be called the sons of God."

"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." (1 John 3:2 KJV.)

You can’t do that in the flesh. It is not possible, in the flesh, you come into the presence of God and you will die (Judges 13:22.) There is simply to much power there, but when you are like Him, you can see Him as He is.

Now nothing that I am saying should ever be taken that I am teaching that man will become just as good as God is, just as powerful as God, just as big as God, on an equal plane with God. Jesus did not make that claim. That is not the point. What the point is, is that the powers of God will be ours. The power to heal, the power to create, the power to save, the power to do the things that God does, just like you have the same kind of powers that your father had.

He then makes another statement that I think is incredibly important.

"And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure" (1 John 3:3 KJV.)

You know I thought about this so many times that one of the strongest deterrents to bad conduct is a good family. Pride in your family and the unwillingness to shame you family. I don’t want to shame my father, I don’t want to shame his memory, he was not a well-to-do man but He was a good man, a good hearted man, a generous man, and I honor him to this day. I would not to want shame my heavenly Family either. I don’t want to shame my Father, I don’t want to shame my elder Brother Jesus Christ. If we have the hope of being the Family of God, we should purify ourselves. We should clean up our act, we should get ourselves on track of obedience to God and be faithful to Him and of doing His work and pursuing His goals, and His aims, of loving the things that he loves and hating the things He hates.

If we have this hope within us because where this is going is beyond our kin.

There was a day when Jesus’ disciples said: "Lord, teach us to pray." Jesus said "OK," "After this manner therefore pray you: Our Father who art in heaven" (Matthew 6:9.)

He didn’t say anything about the Father’s name, He did not tell them to address Him by name, He didn’t tell them to say "Oh God" and then address Him as God, He said to address Him as "Our Father who art in heaven."

What He acknowledged by that is: I am granting to you the capacity to enter into a family relationship with God. We are FAMILY!