The Growth and Maturation of the Sons of God

Understanding Sonship Today’s Focus: The Growth and Maturation of the Sons of God Scripture: Romans 8:15; Matthew 6:9; Matthew 27:46 Greetings Kingdom Citizens Now after a hard-hitting mini-series on the Law versus sonship now we are going to look at how are sons of God raised and matured and show throughout how the Law suppresses and oppresses this growth in the life of the believer. Some of the questions we will look at over the next couple of messages are: 1. Who raises a son of God? 2. What makes a son of God different from those sons who choose to live under the Law? 3. How is a son of God reared? Now the very first question is one that we need to get answered immediately and the person who rears a son of God is the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:15). This is how, by the Spirit of the Father testifying with our spirit and we will go much more in-depth on this later. But why is that important to know? Before you were saved and adopted into the family of God, you were lead by your soul. You soul governed you and from your soul you reasoned, thought and rationalized about life to yourself. Your soul was all about self preservation and safety. Sounds good but that is not how the Spirit operates and we will see this later. Your soul tries to figure out the future by using past experiences, overlaying them to today’s circumstances and try to figure what the future will entail. With all of this comes a loss of energy, time and life. This is one of the ways the devil kills you by causing you to waste energy and time because he knows that your days are numbered and if he can steer you away from your destiny and sonship then you will never be able to exercise the Kingdom dominion God has for you. So it is the Holy Spirit’s responsibility to rear you in your walk to become a more mature son of God because some of us have been in this for many years and are still babes in Christ. This is only for a couple of reasons: 1. You chose not to know Christ and understand sonship and simply seeked salvation 2. The Eldership that was to watch over your soul did not teach you about sonship. 3. You live under the Law! Now if it is the Holy Spirit’s responsibility to rear you as a son of God, what is the purpose? The purpose is so that you mature to be like God in nature and conduct. Who would not want to be like their Heavenly Father? We learned from past messages that God’s covenant was to have sons. God does not want church members or religious people. The covenant was for sons. This means a family-oriented relationship. How many of us call God, God? How many of us call God, Father? Is there anything wrong with any of those? No! But the point is the more you understand sonship, the more you call God, Abba, or Father. Funny even in the Lord’s Prayer, the very first line is “Our Father.” The only time that I have read that Jesus called God, God, was when He was on the cross in Matthew 27:46. In the next message we will look at Colossians 2 and see how the Law has the opposite effect and why it is inadequate in rearing sons. The more I have studied this the more I realize what is important to God and what to watch out for. I also have seen how far off we have become since Christ in understanding how we are sons of God. I know we have many Kingdom-minded people that have understood this and live this but for the majority, this is lacking in understanding and when we start thinking this way we will walk in the newness of life and be Spirit-lead and not Soul-lead. At Our Father’s Service, Elder Calvin Calhoun, Jr.