Romans 8:1-27

Heirs!

My good friend Harry lives in Cincinnati. His brother got saved several years ago. Now his brother was raised in a church but he had never had a personal relationship with the Lord and had never really read the Bible for himself. After coming to the lord he started reading the Bible and He got about half way through Romans when he came to Harry and said, “Did you know that we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ!” Harry informed his brother that he did possess that knowledge. His brother replied, “Can you believe it!”

A lot of us possess this knowledge but we have lost the exclamation points. There are a bunch of exclamation points in this chapter.

Paul explains here that any sufferings we may presently endure are not even worth comparing to the glory that we will have. Whether you believe in global warming or not there is no denying that we have made a mess of the earth, and we are compounding the mess daily. The worst mess we made was when we brought sin into the world. But there is an exclamation point here. The creation itself is waiting in eager expectation for us to come into our inheritance! The Great Lakes and Rocky Mountains are excited about you!

Then there is the fact that the Spirit Himself actually prays from inside of us. When we don’t know the right thing to pray, he does. He knows our hearts better than we do and He certainly knows God’s will better than us.

Finally, we have been given the Spirit that causes us to look to God and cry, “Abba, Father.” Basically this means, “Daddy!” I remember Alan Vincent telling of a friend of his who was granted an audience with Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh to present a case for the Duke supporting a certain cause. The Duke was very busy and quite punctual. The man had exactly 15 minutes with the Duke. A couple of minutes into the man’s audience the door burst open and in ran a small child complaining, “Daddy, my toy is broken.” For the next ten minutes the man sat in agony watching the Duke attempt to repair a toy boat. Finally the child was satisfied and with a scant three minutes left the Duke said, “I’m very sorry but I can’t give you anymore time. You have three more minutes.” Such is the power of the word, “Daddy.”

Especially when it is followed by an exclamation point.