There is a single value in the holy bible, which stands as the highest value into which our heavenly Father is drawing us. That value is stated in Matthew 5:48:
You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Matthew 5:48.
Such perfection is simply not possible without our engaging the mind of the Father in very direct and visceral ways. There is only one way to know the heavenly Father and that is by being in fact and in title one of his children. Sonship with God and daughtership with God is a spiritual reality that makes itself known in the human consciousness as much as it makes itself known in the mind of God himself. He knows who his children are.
You may well have your salvation in Jesus of Nazareth, with faith like Abraham and a heart for evangelism like Paul. You may have healed the sick, raised the dead, cured the blind, the deaf and the lame. You might have preached on the gospel to millions, baptized thousands, delivered the baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire to half the nations of the world. But, while all these worthy works are well and good for the worker in the kingdom, the other side of the coin concerns your personal growth.
Many a tireless toiler in the kingdom of heaven becomes caught up in the hustle and bustle of the politics and economics of simply making the whole show hang together whilst getting the gospel out to those in need. So often, we overlook the Father’s highest personal goal for us—His own perfection.
Perfection is not so much about ideals as it is about actual outcomes and the means whereby we achieve visible results in our decisions. God our Father sows ideals into our hearts but he seeks our will in a union of wills that is perfect by his own standard.
The perfect doing of the will of the Father has a power to it that is far over and above the delivery of mere salvation; and it is intensely more personal than the most fire-filled giftings of the Holy Spirit. Knowing the Holy Spirit through the giftings of the spirit is one thing, but knowing the Spirit of the Father through the mind of Christ we have been given is something of a different calibre.
Jesus was filled with the mind of the Father. He had the actuality of sonship with God. He is therefore more than qualified to both reveal to us the Father’s Spirit that has come to make his home in us, as well as to lead us to him geographically where he is in the heart of the heaven of heavens.
We receive the actuality of sonship with the Father, through Jesus Christ, in the same way that we receive anything else of grace in our lives:
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. Mark 11:24
Spiritually, we stand on God’s Word concerning what we want to change in our lives, and, materially, we make decisions that are commensurate with our faith and our desired goal.
Perfect sonship with God leads to the graduation of all that can advance us spiritually on the earth. Enoch and Elijah experienced just such a fulfillment and graduation.
This book asks you the reader to view all spiritual experiences, whether born again or not, as mere precursors to that graduation, which is ours once there has matured an inviolable union between the will of God the Father, and our own personal will as his son or daughter. This level of perfection in the human being has in the past resulted in the departure experiences of Enoch and Elijah. It is not the purpose of this book to fully explore such extraordinary events, but it does state that they are firmly based upon the actuality of sonship with God— such as Jesus of Nazareth knew—without which there is no perfection in the doing of the will of God.
For my part, as a minister of the gospel and the author of this book, I am mindful that God asks all of us what we have in the house that he can use in order to glorify himself in our lives for the sake of the body of Christ and indeed the entire Kingdom of heaven.
We see him asking this in 2 Kings 4:1-7,
Now the wife of one of the sons of the prophets cried to Elisha, “Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that your servant feared the Lord, but the creditor has come to take my two children to be his slaves.” And Elisha said to her, “What shall I do for you? Tell me; what have you in the house?” And she said, “Your servant has nothing in the house except a jar of oil.” Then he said, “Go outside, borrow vessels from all your neighbors, empty vessels and not too few. Then go in and shut the door behind yourself and your sons and pour into all these vessels. And when one is full, set it aside.” So she went from him and shut the door behind herself and her sons. And as she poured they brought the vessels to her. When the vessels were full, she said to her son, “Bring me another vessel.” And he said to her, “There is not another.” Then the oil stopped flowing. She came and told the man of God, and he said, “Go, sell the oil and pay your debts, and you and your sons can live on the rest.” 2 Kings 4:1-7
In the New Testament ministry of Jesus we see God asking us the same question about what was available for him to start with that he could then multiply and bring glory to himself and to Jesus and the apostles and so continue his program of laying the foundation for the coming Kingdom on earth:
Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. Now when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” But Jesus said, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” They said to him, “We have only five loaves here and two fish.” And he said, “Bring them here to me.” Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, and taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children. Matthew 14:13-21
When I reviewed what I have to give to my heavenly Father with which he could work multiplication and glorification, I found that my jar of oil and my five loaves and two fishes were these few experiences that he has given me. As humble and wanting as they are in this book, my prayer is that our Father finds his own works in me worthy—as worthy as he found Jesus to be the perfect and acceptable offering for our salvation—so that the body of Christ may through God’s strength push the envelope of its current vision for the normal Christian life and walk in more of what he has always had planned for us both here on earth and in heaven.
Jesus Christ is doing a new work in the world today through the Holy Spirit revelation of open heavens. This new work will sweep the unsaved world into the kingdom of heaven in the ensuing generations as the Church becomes impacted by the vision of the Father’s efforts to put spiritual perfection on the agenda. Sonship with God as it is in heaven is being more fully revealed and made effective here on the earth. The Church has the work of reaching the lost world not only with salvation but also with this call to the Father’s perfection before the Lord’s return.
I am assuming you to be comfortable with the genderless biblical meaning of the term sonship.
Rob Crickett.
Melbourne, Australia. 2005.
Exerpt from the book
SONSHIP WITH GOD: SHARING THE FATHER’S PERFECTION
Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. All other scriptures are identified by the abbreviated form of the translation eg KJV.
Rob Crickett is in full time ministry internationally as an evangelist for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is noted for his gift of imparting to people the means for having deeply intimate contact with God. He is a much respected author, Bible teacher, retreat director and seminar facilitator; addressing the many key issues on living a Spirit-filled life in Christ. His books target people who are often outside the Church and are written in language that new Christians can relate to. Rob has ministered in Australia, Burundi, Canada, China, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Israel, Kenya, Lithuania, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda and in 25 States in the USA.Rob lives with his wife Mary in Melbourne, Australia. Mary is particularly gifted in prophecy, prayer and imparting the will of God to Christians working in the secular environment. They have ministered together in the USA, Italy, France and Australia.For further contact, or to receive Rob’s free monthly newsletter, see www.rcim.org or email rob at rcim.org.
