{"id":96,"date":"2008-02-06T00:01:08","date_gmt":"2008-02-05T23:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/?p=96"},"modified":"2008-02-06T00:06:54","modified_gmt":"2008-02-05T23:06:54","slug":"lent-devotions-2008-wednesday-6th-february","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/2008\/02\/06\/lent-devotions-2008-wednesday-6th-february\/","title":{"rendered":"Lent Devotions 2008: Wednesday 6th February"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, The Spirit who calls out, &#8220;Abba; Father.&#8221;<\/em> (Galatians 4:6)<\/p>\n<p>Many years ago I was having a look around an open-air market in Jerusalem.\u00a0 All of a sudden, I heard a young child crying out \u201cAbba, Abba\u201d.\u00a0 This youngster, in the midst of all the people, had become separated from his father, and he was crying out in anxious longing to be reunited.\u00a0 He was lost, afraid, and needing the assurance of his father\u2019s care.\u00a0 Fortunately, his father also heard the cry and came running to the child, to comfort and assure him that he was safe.<\/p>\n<p>Today we begin our journey together through Lent.\u00a0 And as we do so, we may feel a bit like this child described above; lost, afraid, not sure where our Heavenly Father is.\u00a0 Sin and doubt may be blinding us to our Father\u2019s presence.\u00a0 However, our Heavenly Father comes to us today in His Word of Life and Comfort to assure us that we are His children, in which His Spirit dwells.\u00a0 We are not lost, but the Good Shepherd has found us and brought us back to God by laying down His life for us.\u00a0 We need not be afraid because, \u201cif God is for us who can be against us?\u201d\u00a0 We need not be shrouded in despair and darkness because Jesus Christ is the Light of the world.\u00a0 We are baptized children of God, sons and daughters of a loving, Heavenly Father, who comes to meet and to welcome home the prodigals with open arms.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Father, we thank You for making us Your Children through Baptism.\u00a0 Give us always the faith to know that You are our \u201cAbba\u201d through Jesus Christ, Amen.<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, The Spirit who calls out, &#8220;Abba; Father.&#8221; (Galatians 4:6) Many years ago I was having a look around an open-air market in Jerusalem.\u00a0 All of a sudden, I heard a young child crying out \u201cAbba, Abba\u201d.\u00a0 This youngster, in the midst [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lent-devotions-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christlutheranchurch.org.uk\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}