20 Best Quotes From “Abba: Experience God as Father, and Redeem Your Failure, Hurt, and Pain” by Matthew Stevenson

One of my favorite books of 2022 is also one of my favorite books of 2023. That’s because I read it twice. Few spiritual books have positively impacted me as much as the subject of this article. Indeed, identity is important, and the identity for a believer begins with God. Per the book’s intro: God has an identity. He does not want to be known as a higher power or confined to our limited understanding and judgment of Him. Those who want to know the name of God—and most importantly want to know God as He desires to be known—can discover him as Abba.

Matthew Stevenson II is the senior pastor at All Nations Worship Assembly in Chicago and the overseer of the GATE Network, which has churches all over the world. He enjoys pastoring his church, teaching, traveling, writing, and spending quality time with his children, both natural and spiritual. Stevenson has three children (two daughters and one son): Naila, Micah, and Karis. He has been married to his amazing wife, Dr. Kamilah Stevenson, for thirteen years.

The following is a small sampling of an insightful, provocative, and practically impactful book. For many readers, it will be life-changing. I highly recommend grabbing a copy on Amazon if this is an area you want to grow in.

Your spiritual health depends most of all on what you really believe about WHO GOD IS and how you relate to him.

Dr. Ricky Marroquín

20 Best Quotes From “Abba: Experience God as Father, and Redeem Your Failure, Hurt, and Pain” by Matthew Stevenson

The orphan heart is a heart filled with anxiety about decision-making, fear over the future, and panic about being transparent. The orphan heart is a sentence to a life of condemnation, where those who have it are irrationally hard on themselves because they are anxious and fearful and in constant panic. When we come into relationship with Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, Abba’s love liberates us from the bondages of sin that gave us orphan hearts and transforms us back to our rightful place as sons and daughters with hearts like Jesus’s.

#1

Unfortunately, because most Christians do not believe in the fullness of God’s identity as Abba our Father, they do not pursue Abba’s freedom in sonship and instead continue exhibiting the behaviors of orphan hearts. For those who accept the invitation from the Father to receive Him as Abba, their lifelong pursuit of Abba’s freedom in sonship helps transform their old emotions of anxiety, fear, and panic that were inherent in their orphan hearts to the hearts of sons and daughters filled with peace, boldness, and joy.

#2

Jesus’s benefit as a son was that He had freedom in His thoughts and inner fears because His heart was that of a child of God. Jesus never doubted Abba’s identity, abilities, or capabilities, nor did He ever doubt Himself. The pursuit of sonship in Abba allowed Jesus to be fully secure in His beliefs, motives, and actions. Sons and daughters of Abba today have the ability to access the same peace of mind and heart that Jesus had throughout His lifetime on the earth.

#3

Under Pharaoh the people of Israel were programmed as slaves to live with constant thoughts of hopelessness and fear. They were fearful, fear led, and fear driven. Their inability to live as children of God caused them to have no peace.

#4

When we pursue a relationship of sonship with our Father, we find fortitude of our purpose. Sonship is the strength of our identity.

#5

Remember that those with orphan hearts live with an orphan identity in which they are slaves. They are self-punishing, self-abusing, and pessimistic captives who view themselves, Abba, and others with suspicion and distrust.

#6

Those with orphan hearts also live out of an identity of rebellion, in which they are in pursuit of their own desires and plans for life. Where there are orphan hearts in operation in our identity, there is bound to be disobedience as we pursue our callings, gifts, anointing, purpose, and desires over God’s will. When those with orphan hearts choose to live in disobedience, they choose slavery over their identity of sonship. Those with disobedient orphan hearts are plagued with an identity filled with insecurity. They live in consistent hesitation, anxiety, and fear, and in a panic over what Abba instructs, advises, and admonishes them to accomplish.

#7

Those who do not fully embrace Abba’s identity as a liberating Father and are without His liberating grace often live with cycles of sin, cycles of starting something new, and even cycles of trauma.

#8

As we spend time with Abba, He will cut away places of fear and anxiety, which become idols that demand our worship. Abba challenges us to open our hearts and minds to Him, removing these hindrances so He can minister healing to our past brokenness.

#9

The devil has been fighting to keep us from coming into agreement with God concerning who He is and how He sees us. We are experiencing such a major esteem crisis in the world because many have not come into agreement with how God sees them.

#10

“This pain is who I am and who I am called to be forever.” When pain is our identity, it becomes what we expect from life. We come to expect that everything will lead to the same brokenness or sad memories we experienced in the past. The inclination is to focus on our victimization rather than God. If we do not focus on God, the pain ends up killing our self-image. We see ourselves from the vantage point of what others have done to us and not how God sees us. When our pain is not dealt with, the wounds of the past will over time give way to regret, bitterness, and ultimately our placing blame on God.

#11

When we see ourselves as Abba sees us, every issue in our identity is healed! Jesus prayed, “I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one” (John 17:11, NIV). Jesus was concerned about the vulnerabilities and insecurities that threaten the hearts of Abba’s sons and daughters. Jesus is found here making intercession for us because he knows Satan can use our vulnerabilities and insecurities to cause us to question Abba’s identity and take an alternative position that perverts our faith and positions it against God.

#12

Remember, fear is perverse faith. Faith pointed in the wrong direction is fear; it is contrary faith. Fear will cause stuff to manifest in our lives because we are still using faith, and faith makes things manifest. If God has given everybody a “measure of faith” (Rom. 12:3), then the ability to have faith is not what makes anybody a believer. That is why Jesus told us where to put our faith: “And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God” (Mark 11:22).

#13

Without the fulfillment of God’s promises, people live unfulfilled lives; this is because when they do not see the promises of God, their hearts are broken. I often find that having a broken heart is directly related to a life that has never recovered from a broken promise.

#14

Abba heals broken hearts and fractured identities by giving a superior promise that far exceeds broken promises.

#15

When we are intently determined to believe in Abba as our Father and that His loving presence is consistently with us, then we can have the faith that no matter what Abba is working everything out for our good. Paul wrote, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28).

#16

Orphan hearts cause us to have a spirit of independence and desire for control, which affects our relationship with Father God and skews our vision of God.

#17

When we embrace Abba’s identity as a good Father and choose to fully live in our identity as His sons and daughters, we end up doing good things on the earth that leave legacies of the Father’s goodness upon the earth.

#18

As we seek to live fully in our identity as Abba’s sons and daughters, we must stay focused on Abba’s identity. We must stay focused on His identity as a loving, liberating, inseparable, merciful, protective, trustworthy, involved, consistent, and good Father because it is the framework for how we are to live in our own identity. The pursuit of Abba’s goodness delivers us from distress and breaks the chains of sin that seek to bind us or skew our identity. There is no superior source of deliverance for our identity issues than staying focused on Abba’s identity.

#19

For us Abba’s goodness is our identity. The goodness of God comes naturally for Him as a good Father. When we live fully in our identity as sons and daughters, then goodness will become natural for us as well.

#20