1Think of it this way. If a father dies and leaves an inheritance for his young children, those children are not much better off than slaves until they grow up, even though they actually own everything their father had. 2They have to obey their guardians until they reach whatever age their father set. 3And that’s the way it was with us before Christ came. We were like children; we were slaves to the basic spiritual principlesa of this world.
4But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. 5God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children.b 6And because wec are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, “Abba, Father.”d 7Now you are no longer a slave but God’s own child.e And since you are his child, God has made you his heir.
Children of the most high God, that’s what we are, but what does that mean to you?
Paul speaks of us as being heirs, but again, what does that mean to you?
If you have been blessed with children, this will be easier for you.
The actions, thoughts and words of people around us affect us greatly. They can bring us up or down. They can help us achieve our goals or be roadblocks to our success. Now consider the effects of parents on their children and children on their parents. In both cases the effects are exponentially compounded when it is a parent – child relationship. Parents and children can lift each other so much higher and crush each other so much harder than other people. That is the type of relationship God wants with you. He’ll take the extreme heart-aches to also get the extreme joys.
Now lets think about this hier business. We may or may not want to pass some type of monetary inheritance on to our children, but does anyone really want their children to look at them based on the money they might inherit? NO! We want the relationship we have with our children to be such that the monetary inheritance means very little. We want our children to value our morals, wisdom, and love more than our goods, and we want them to inherit those good things from us because they can last forever. God is no different. He wants to give us his Spirit because we are his children and that is our greatest inheritance.
Dear Father, help me to be a good child and help me to inherit your very best, you Holy Spirit.