Conia [00:00:23]:
Mark Twain is credited with saying, the two most important days of your life are the day you’re born and the day you figure out why. As we come into this new year and we’ve got plans and we’re making our strategy and we’re figuring out what we want to do, you’re getting out your quarterly planner, and you’re making sure you filled all the dates in and everything that’s coming up, you might want to consider your why. And as I was thinking about that, and we’re considering our why, I thought we really should know what is God’s why? Who are we that God created us, and why did he create us, and what does he have us here for? So I got to thinking about that and relating to God and figuring out what it is discerning we really don’t have to figure out. He’ll tell us if we ask him discerning what it is about us that made us so special and so important that God wanted to create us. We know there are angelic beings. We know that God had at his very hands millions of angelic beings to do whatever he needed them to do. So it wasn’t that he was completely alone, and it wasn’t that he didn’t have anybody to do his bidding, because he did. Why then did he create humans? What is that all about? Why on earth.
Conia [00:01:59]:
Ha ha ha. Did he create earth and humans? And we want to study some of this out so that we can know what that’s about. The first verse that I have on this is Genesis 1:26 and 27. God said, Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God. He created them, male and female. He created them. He created them.
Conia [00:02:50]:
Isaiah 43:7 says, Everyone who is called by My name, whom I am created for my glory, I formed and made. He made us for his glory. And you have to go back and you have to think about the fact that we have free will because the angelic beings didn’t have that. They are at the bid and call of the Father of the Creator. We have free will. God created us in his image, but he gave us free will so that we would have the opportunity to choose Him. Because God is love. And if he’s making us in his image, he’s making us that love.
Conia [00:03:36]:
And there’s no Love where you’re forced, right? It’s not love if you’re forced. There can be respect if you’re forced, but it’s not love. It’s not a true love if you have no choice. It’s only when you have a choice and you choose to love that it is true love. He created us to have a relationship with him. And this is really the crux of what I want to talk about today is our relationship with God. Deuteronomy 6:5 Love the Lord your God, with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength. That was a command.
Conia [00:04:16]:
You need to Love God. Micah 6:8 he has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. He didn’t put us down here to make us do things. He didn’t put us down here to do his bidding. He put us down here to steward something that he created and to be like him in that stone, stewarding over what he’s given us and to do all of it in love. Revelation 4:11 says, you are worthy our Lord and God to receive glory and honor and power. For you created all things, and by your will they are created and have their being.
Conia [00:05:18]:
God wants a relationship with us. I remember I was about 14 years old and our church youth group went down to the inner city to build some playgrounds, to paint some houses and mow some yards and we were excited and you know, middle class, American white bred kids and we go down to the places where I just don’t think kids probably should even be raised. But we did and they were existing there. And we found out that a lot of them were ostracized if they weren’t doing all the dirty deeds that the older kids were doing. And then when you talked to some of the young girls, they would say that they wanted to have a baby. And you’re like, well, do you want to get married? And it was like, no, they didn’t want to get married. That wasn’t their focus. And then the question was, well, why do you want to have a baby? And I’ll never forget the answer that I got to that question.
Conia [00:06:21]:
And it was so I can have somebody to love and who will love me. That was all she wanted, was somebody to love and somebody to love her. And while that’s tragic, it our earthly existence that she felt so unloved that she wanted to have a baby so she would have something to love and be loved by. It gets down to the core of who we are. And because we are created like God, God created us to love us. He created us so he would have someone to love him, that he would have relationship with. So just like those young girls that were wanting to have babies so that they would have somebody to love and that somebody would love them. That’s why God created us.
Conia [00:07:17]:
So in a very real sense, she was just walking out her godly desires wasn’t the best way to do it, but that was at the core of her being. At the core of God’s being is that he wants to love us and he wants us to love Him. That’s what we’re here for. Everything else that we do is an expression or should be an expression of our love for Him. Once we discover that he is the creator of all things, that he is our Father, God and wants us to to call Him Abba Father, then we know why we’re here. And everything else really becomes simple. If we are here to love and to be loved, everything that we do will yield better relationship with God. We’re here for relationship.
Conia [00:08:24]:
We’re here for relationship with one another, with these children that we have, with the people that God puts in front of us, to be our friends, to be our relatives, to be our inner circle. We’re here to love them and be loved by them. But we are doing that in God’s image. And that brings me to a conversation that I was having not too long ago. And we were talking about people who refer to God as Daddy. There was a movie a while back called the Shack. It’s a great movie. It’s a hard topic, but it’s a great movie about God and his love for us.
Conia [00:09:06]:
And the opening of it. The man whose point of view is narrating the whole thing, he talks about how his wife referred to God Papa. And he just didn’t quite get that. He didn’t understand that. And I could so relate. And I was discussing the idea of God as Daddy with somebody the other day and it was very off putting to them. And I said, I completely get that because we here in the earth have created this idea that God is way out here and that we’re way down here and that we’ve got this huge separation between us and that he’s all powerful and all knowing and we can respect Him. But to call him Daddy or to call him Papa or it just seems off until you get close enough to him to be able to do that.
Conia [00:10:06]:
When we first get to know somebody, when we’re first introduced to them in polite society, you refer to them as Mr. Or Mrs. If they are your elder, until such time as you are given permission to call them something else. And you’re only given permission to call somebody something else when they are in enough relationship with you that that becomes appropriate, that there’s such a closeness now that to call somebody Mr. Or Mrs. No longer feels appropriate. We’re in a relationship now, so I want you to call me somebody would say Auntie, Auntie this or Auntie that, or uncle this or uncle that, or it might be I want you to call me mom, or I want you to call me dad, or I want you to call me by this nickname because we are closer to one another relationally than somebody that would just be referred to by a surname. And then, you know, if we can get permission to call somebody by their first name, right? And then maybe there’s a nickname after that as you proceed into the relationship.
Conia [00:11:18]:
But you don’t start out with a nickname until there’s a connection there that brings you closer. So if somebody calling God daddy is off putting to you, that’s okay until you get close enough to see that he relates to to you as abba father. Abba would be what somebody in the Hebrew, Greek would originally refer to as a newborn baby would start when they first start talking. Not a newborn, but toddlers when they first start talking. And then it’s the consonants, right? And so here in the States, it’s mama, mama, dada, it would be Abba Baba, that would be abba father. And so it talks in the Bible about referring to God and as abba father. We want to have such a close relationship with God that that becomes natural. But that does not happen all at once.
Conia [00:12:23]:
So if you’re not comfortable with Abba or daddy or papa or even father, that’s understandable. When you come closer, when you get closer to God, now you’ve got such a closeness to him that just referring to him by name of a deity doesn’t really work for you anymore. That’s the closeness that you want to have with him, that you’re going to walk that close to Him. So in Matthew 6, 9, it’s our father who art in heaven, right? And so, but then we Talk in Galatians 4, 5 and 6, because you are his sons. And this is where I was talking about earlier. God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts. The spirit who calls out abba father. So you’re no longer a slave, but God’s child.
Conia [00:13:25]:
And since you are his child. God has also made you an heir. You’re that close that you’re now an heir. You’re not just somebody who regards him as this higher being. You’re an heir. You’ve been adopted into sonship. And as you study out adoption in biblical times, someone who was adopted into sonship had more rights conferred upon them than than even a blood relative could. If a father was dissatisfied with his blood relatives, his sons, and he didn’t think that they were capable, and he did not want to honor them with passing on blessing and fortune to them, he would adopt someone who he felt was worthy and confer upon them all the rights of a born, born blood heir.
Conia [00:14:23]:
God has adopted us into sonship and has conferred upon us all of those rights, including the right to call him Father, to call him dad, to call him Papa. Whatever the relationship that you have with God dictates and allow that to mature and to change. You want to have something that denotes for you your blessing that you’ve received from God by calling him that more intimate, close name than you were calling him before. Don’t get twisted up about this. Don’t go, well, I can’t call him Papa and I never will. That’s just weird and I don’t like it. Allow these things to mature. When you first meet a friend, you don’t immediately have a rapport and a closeness with them and a familiarity with them that would allow you to have certain conversations with them or to refer to them by, like we talked about earlier, a nickname.
Conia [00:15:39]:
When you first start talking to God, you’re not going to feel that closeness immediately, and that’s okay. But for some, it comes super fast. And for some, especially if you’ve got a history in the church or a history with father figures, it takes longer for us to root out all the junk that we have in our mind, in our emotions about what a father is and what a father means. And I did a sermon on that a while back about even being able to see God as a father figure to begin with. Allow yourself time in the word. Allow yourself time speaking to God in such a way that you now get familiar with him. And the more time you spend with him, the more familiar you’ll become. Oftentimes, if you start dating somebody, think back to the first.
Conia [00:16:41]:
If you’re married, think back to the first time you dated your spouse and realize that you just wanted to spend all your time with them, getting to know them and how many hours you spent getting to know them. You want to spend hours getting to know God. And only once you’ve spent the time getting to know him, will you be able to relate to him the way he wants you to be able to relate to Him. And when we’re thinking about this, this is really one of the reasons why we want to make sure that kids are in church and in Sunday school early. And often. If you’re an adult that is still a baby Christian, you feel like you’ve missed out on some of that relation, on some of that closeness that you could have had if you had known that God was here to be Father God the whole time. So you want to make sure that you’re getting kids into the Bible, into the Word early so that they know they can have that satisfaction, they can have that confidence God, that He’s going to take care of them always. It’s important to get kids into there.
Conia [00:17:59]:
So we talked about adoption. Ephesians 1:5. He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will. Okay, you’ve been adopted. If you’ve said, jesus, come into my heart, I make you my Lord and Savior, you’re now part of the family. That doesn’t make you instantly comfortable, but it should pave the way for you to get closer to God and really be able to have that close knit relationship with him. John 1, 12, 13. Yet all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
Conia [00:18:45]:
Children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. This is so special, it’s so important. This is where the confidence to do whatever God asks you comes from. It’s getting so close to him and believing so much in what he has for you and as your father, God, that you can do whatever he asks. There’s no question, there’s no hesitation. Not because God said so, but because God is my dad and he takes care of me always. He’s the best kind of father. And getting over any kind of dad issues only happens when you get close enough to God and you see that he is who he says he is.
Conia [00:19:41]:
Draw closer to him. Take time with him. Get to know him. Get to know his dreams and his plans for you. And get to know that those are the best dreams and plans that could ever, ever happen for you. Because he knows you inside and out. Get to know him. Matthew 7, 9, 11 says, which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone, or if he asks for a fish, will Give him a snake.
Conia [00:20:15]:
If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him? Now that’s important. Those who ask him is important. If you’re not asking, you’re not receiving. You have not. Because you ask. Not make sure you’re asking. But it goes back to when your child wants something, when your grandchild wants something, when your niece or your nephew wants something and says, I really like that. I really want to have that.
Conia [00:20:57]:
You want to get it for them. And if you are that good that you want to get them the Happy Meal or the toy or the brand new pair of shoes or whatever it is. Think about God is so much more and so much higher than we are. How much more does he want to give us? What are we missing because we are not connecting with Him. Think about that, too. Think about the people that you love in your life and say you’ve moved. You lived in one city and now you live in another city. The people that were in the old city were your friends and you loved them and you associated with them.
Conia [00:21:43]:
But now you’ve moved to this new city, so you don’t see them near as often as you once did. Did. And so you’re not going to do things with them. You’re not going to do things for them. You’re not going to stop over for a cup of coffee. You’re not going to be available to help them jump their battery if it dies. You’re not going to be connected intimately with these people anymore because you are not in proximity of them anymore. You’ve got new people, new friends that are closer in proximity to you, that now are able to give and take with you.
Conia [00:22:21]:
Does that make sense? The closer in proximity you are to God, the more he can bestow on you. He wants to bestow it all on you. But if you’re not asking, you’re not going to be in proximity to receive. And if you’re not talking to him, you’re not going to be in proximity to receive. He’s not going to be something that you turn to to receive. You’re going to turn to all the things that you know how to do instead of the things that he knows how to do. Turn to God. Get close to him.
Conia [00:22:59]:
We’re going to talk a little more next week on being intimate with God. And that’s a weird word too. And we’ve got to make sure that when we’re talking about words like father and dad. And intimacy that we put God’s definition on them and not the world’s definition on them. It is super, super important. So I want to go back to what we started with. It is your why. Why are you here? And everything that you do this year should be filtered through that why.
Conia [00:23:33]:
And that why is God’s why. And it does not matter what God asks you to do. You can be sure that whatever it is falls in line with his line and purpose for your life. And when we’re looking at our things that we can do in the natural, sometimes the things of the natural can trip you up because they work. We found, oh, I can do this or I can do that. And it worked for me before. So now I’m going to go in, I’m going to do that again. And that wasn’t what God asked you to do.
Conia [00:24:06]:
But. But it worked. So you’re like, oh, I’ll just do that again. You’ve got to get God’s perspective on things so that it’s not just something that might happen to work. It’s his best for you. Because his best for you is probably far greater than that thing that just works. It’s far greater than trading your time for money. It’s when you take your time to get close to God, it is a much better investment of your time than going to work and trading your hours for dollars.
Conia [00:24:40]:
Because what you’re doing is you’re investing in what God has you investing in instead of trading your time for dollars so that maybe you can find five minutes to eke out to spend with God. We get it all backwards. When you’re looking at your calendar, when you’re looking at the things that you think you want to do this year, look and ask God to bless what you’ve got there and to show you where he is and show you where he is not, so that you can change all of that to something that he’s in. We were talking about Moses and. And there’s a point in the Bible where God just. He’s done. He’s done with the Israelites. They’re whining.
Conia [00:25:21]:
We’ve talked about whiny Israelites. They’re whiny. They’re whining again. And. And he has saved them countless times. And he’s feeding them, he’s doing. And they’re still there whining. And, and God’s like, done with you, done.
Conia [00:25:32]:
Just, just, Moses, take them. Go do what you’re going to do. And Moses said, God, if you’re not in it. I don’t want to be there. You need to take your calendar and you need to hold it up for God and say, God, if you’re not in this, I don’t want any of this. I only want what you’re in. Make 2025 the best year you’ve ever had, the closest year that you’ve ever had to God, and it will be a foundation for your eternity in the lap of the Father. Let me pray for you guys.
Conia [00:26:13]:
Father, thank you for this time together. Thank you, Lord, that you are our Father, that you are with us, that you created us because you wanted to love us. Thank you, Father, that all we have to do is step into your realm, Lord, step into your proximity, step into your atmosphere and find out the great things that you have for us each and every day. We love you, Lord. We praise you and we thank you. In Jesus name, amen. David’s going to come with a closing word.
