Romans 8:15 pulls us out of a cramped, frightened way of living and places us in the wide-open reality of belonging. It contrasts the exhausting cycle of trying to earn acceptance with the settled joy of being received, and it invites us to respond to God not as a distant idea but as a Father who welcomes our voice.

Bold Access, Not Borrowed Courage

There’s a kind of “bravery” that’s really just pressure—holding it together so no one sees the worry underneath. But Romans 8:15 describes something better: not the spirit of slavery leading back into fear, but adoption that gives you a new way to speak to God. You’re not talking to heaven through clenched teeth; you’re coming home. And because it’s adoption, access isn’t based on your performance this week—it’s based on God’s choice and Christ’s finished work.

Hebrews echoes that confidence: “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). Notice the order—mercy and grace first, then help. God doesn’t wait for you to stabilize yourself before you come near. The Spirit trains your heart to run toward the Father when you’re shaky, not away from Him.

A New Name for God on Your Lips

The verse doesn’t just say you can call God “Father”; it gives you a deeply personal cry: “Abba.” That word is not casual, but it is intimate—tender without being flippant. It’s what happens when the Holy Spirit moves faith from theory into relationship. You’re not merely agreeing that God is Father; you’re reaching for Him as Father in the moment you actually need Him.

And the Father’s love isn’t tentative. “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1). When shame tries to rename you—failure, disappointment, outsider—God keeps speaking His own name over you: child. You don’t have to negotiate your way back into closeness. You’re invited to speak like you belong, because you do.

Living Like an Heir, Not a Hostage

Fear makes you a hostage to outcomes: What if I lose approval? What if I can’t fix this? What if God is tired of me? But adoption changes the whole atmosphere. “So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, you are also an heir through God” (Galatians 4:7). An heir doesn’t pretend life is easy; an heir knows the Father’s house is secure, and the Father’s heart is for him.

That security doesn’t produce laziness; it produces freedom to obey with love. When you know you’re already received, you can repent quickly, forgive generously, serve quietly, and take risks in faith without constantly protecting your ego. Even suffering and uncertainty can’t cancel your status. “And if we are children, then we are heirs: heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17). Today, choose to act from belonging, not for belonging.

Father, thank You for adopting me and giving me the Spirit who teaches my heart to cry, “Abba.” Help me reject fear today and come to You quickly, trusting Your love and obeying Your voice.

HUMAN LIFE HAS ITS CENTRAL CORE where lie the things men live by. These things are constant. They change not from age to age, but are the same among all races throughout the world always.

Life also has its marginal zones where lie the things that are relatively unimportant. These change from generation to generation and vary from people to people.

It is at the central core that men are one, and it is on the marginal zones that they differ from each other. Yet the marginal things divide the peoples of the world radically and seriously. Most of the enmities of the earth have arisen from differences that did not matter basically; but because the people could not distinguish things men live by from things they live with these enmities arose between them, and often led to persecutions, murders and bloody wars.

Were men everywhere to ignore the things that matter little or not at all and give serious attention to the few really important things, most of the walls that divide men would be thrown down at once and a world of endless sufferings ended.

What does matter after all? What are the great facts that are good all the time everywhere among all men? What are the axiomatic truths upon which all human life may rest with confidence? Fortunately they are not many. Here are the chief ones:

1. Only God is great. Men have sought to place greatness elsewhere, in things, in events, in men; but the human soul is too great to attribute greatness to itself, and certainly too great to believe that things or events can possess true greatness.

The greatness that men seem to have is as the greatness of moonlight, which is but the glory of the sun reflected. Man's glory is borrowed. He shines in the light that never was on land or sea. He reflects God's greatness but has none of his own.

Before Thy ever-blazing throne We ask no luster of our own.*

2. Only God is wise. Man's wisdom has ever been the badge of his superiority and the cause of his most arrogant pride; yet it fails him constantly. He cannot by his wisdom find the answer to the old questions concerning himself: Whence? What? Why? Whither? By it he cannot secure the blessings he wants most: to escape pain, to stay young and to stay alive.

Yet man boasts of his wisdom, God waits, the ages pass, and time and space and matter and motion and life and death join to tell us that only God is wise.

3. Apart from God nothing matters. We think that health matters, that freedom matters, or knowledge or art or civilization. And but for one insistent word they would matter indeed. That word is eternity.

Grant that men possess perpetual being and the preciousness of every earthly treasure is gone instantly. God is to our eternal being what our heart is to our body. The lungs, the liver, the kidneys have value as they relate to the heart. Let the heart stop and the rest of the organs promptly collapse. Apart from God, what is money, fame, education, civilization? Exactly nothing at all, for men must leave all these things behind them and one by one go to eternity. Let God hide His face and nothing thereafter is worth the effort.

4. Only what we do in God will remain to us at last.

Man is made in the image of his Creator and has an urge toward creative activity. When he left the Garden his creative urge did not leave him. He must build, always build; his materials may be brick, paint, musical notes, scientific data, systems of thought; but always he must build, from the boy that builds a toy to the man that builds an empire.

Yet time is against him, for it wears out everything it touches. Its grinding action makes dust of civilizations and cities and men. A lifetime of toil dies with the toiler. But God puts immortality in all our loving efforts for Him and shares His eternity with all who love and trust Him.

5. Human sin is real. Suspicion, hate, envy, power, lust and greed keep the world in a state of continual ferment, while bespectacled men stand unblinking and assure classes of eager students that the whole idea of sin is outmoded and sin itself non-existent.

In spite of all our smooth talk sin continues to ride the race of man. Until its heavy weight is lifted from the soul nothing else has any right to our attention, for sin shuts us out from the presence of the God whose favor alone gives life any satisfactory reason for being.

6. With God there is forgiveness. The Lord God, merciful and gracious . . . keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. So says the Old Testament. *The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, says the New.

God's mercy heads up in the Man Christ Jesus who is God and man by the mystery of the Incarnation. He can and does forgive sin because the sin was committed against Him in the first place. The soul in Christ has found the One that matters. His heaviest problem is solved; his basic philosophy is sound; his eyes are open and he knows the true from the false.

7. Only what God protects is safe. All else perishes with the using or the hoarding. Paul knew this secret. He said, He is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.***

Blessed Treasure. Blessed Keeper. Blessed Day.

* Exodus 34:6 * * Matthew 9: 6 *** 2 Timothy 1:12

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me: Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me. - Psalm 23:4

The " valley of the shadow of death " does not only mean the dark approach to the dark dissolution of soul and body, but any and every gloomy valley of weeping through which we have to pass. Such sunless gorges we have all to pass at some time or other. It is striking that the Psalmist puts the sorrow, which is as certainly characteristic of our lot as the rest or the work, into the future. Looking back, he sees none. Memory has softened down all the past into one uniform tone, as the mellowing distance wraps in one solemn purple the mountains which, when close to them, have many a barren rock and gloomy rift. All behind is good. And, building on this hope, he looks forward with calmness, and feels that no evil shall befall. But it is never given to human heart to meditate of the future without some foreboding. And when "Hope enchanted smiles," with the light of the future in her blue eyes, there is ever something awful in their depths, as if they saw some dark visions behind the beauty. Some evils may come; some will probably come; one, at least, is sure to come. However bright may be the path, somewhere on it, perhaps just round that turning, sits the "shadow feared of man." So there is never pure hope in any heart that wisely considers the future. But to the Christian heart there may be this - the conviction that sorrow, when it comes, will not be evil, because God will be with us; and the conviction that the Hand which guides us into the dark valley will guide us through it and up out of it. Yes, strange as it may sound, the presence of Him who sends the sorrow is the best help to bear it. The assurance that the Hand which strikes is the Hand which binds up, makes the stroke a blessing, sucks the poison out of the wound of sorrow, and turns the rod which smites into the staff to lean on.

The sheep are led by many a way, sometimes through sweet meadows, sometimes limping along sharp flinted dusty highways, sometimes high up over rough rocky mountain passes, sometimes down through deep gorges, with no sunshine in their gloom; but they are ever being led to one place; and when the hot day is over, they are gathered into one fold, and the sinking sun sees them safe, where no wolf can come, nor any robber climb up any more, but all shall rest for ever under the Shepherd’s eye.