Jeremiah 3:19

I. The Creator, the Preserver, the Benefactor, the Lover, of us all must be, in no common sense, the Father of us all. But infinitely nearer are those in whose hearts the grace of God has wrought its wondrous transformation. In them there are two things which make God a Father indeed. (1) The first is that mystic, incommunicable process, by which every believer is become an actual part of the body of Him, the one only Son of God, who alone has any right, by virtue of His own inherent nature, to say those words, "My Father"—and that union is the Christian's living of eternal childhood. (2) That new spirit—the spirit of adoption—every believer has received out of his oneness to the Lord Jesus Christ, by which he can now say, not as a dogma, not as an abstract part; but personally, devoutly, livingly, lovingly, "My Father."

II. The happiness and the strength of the opening year will depend upon the measure of the communion which you are able to sustain with the unseen. I know no way to sustain prayer like that which Christ adopted in His own prayers—the remembrance that it is with a "Father" that you have to do in prayer. There will be times when prayer will want the assurance of that thought. He will not seem near. He will answer you strangely. He will turn His face away from you. The more you try to grasp Him, the more you will lose your hold. And what is your escape? In the fact well laid home to your heart of hearts, "He is my Father." He cannot be indifferent. He cannot deceive. He cannot disappoint us.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 6th series, p. 151.

References: Jeremiah 3:19.—Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Ecclesiastes to Malachi, p. 268; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 349. Jeremiah 4:2.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. xviii., p. 340.