Do you believe that we're all children of God?
I remember having this debate a few years ago with one of my kids and they
presented very strongly that we had to all be considered children of God because
we've all been made in his image. We know that from Genesis and we've been
fearfully and wonderfully made which Psalm 13914 says and yes indeed that's
true and it sounds like when you first hear it you're like oh yeah right we're
all children of God but the Bible also teaches that it is only through adoption,
spiritual adoption that we become children of God. Alright today we're just
going to break down a little bit of what it means like how that came about and
then what it means for our own lives and then I'm going to pray for you and I
can't wait for you to get ahold of this a little bit more because when I did it
completely changed the way I live and I'm excited for you to grab ahold of this
as well. So did you know that only about 2% of the global population has been
adopted and perhaps you're in that 2% you probably know somebody well let me
tell you our family is intimately familiar with adoption check out this
list. My grandmother was adopted by her stepfather when her mom remarried. That
stepfather just happened to be a descendant of Aaron Burr which I'm not sure how cool that is but
Aaron Burr's grandfather was John Edwards who was a revivalist and preacher at the
first great awakening. That's pretty cool. My father was adopted by his adopted father
but he didn't know it until a few years ago. My mom was adopted by her mom's best
friends after her mom tried to die from an ectopic pregnancy and her father was
still living. Yeah that's another crazy story. My husband was adopted at six months
old, six months of age, out of a foster home because his mom, his biological mom
realized that she just wasn't going to be able to care for him and then that same husband and myself
actually adopted the last two of our five children internationally from Ethiopia.
Very possibly the best decision that we ever made except of course also the other
three kids that we birthed. The bottom line is adoption is God's idea not ours.
It's the way that God chose to put together his family. Isn't that something
that wasn't through natural birth? He did it through adoption and just like you
know when we adopted our our last two kids we had to really plan it out right.
We had to plan out. It was pretty involved and not yeah it was just a
little bit costly and for God it was incredibly costly because it meant that
he sent his one and only son. He did have a son there was only one by natural
birth and that was Jesus and he sent him to live a perfect life here on earth
and then to die a criminal's death in our place the death that we deserved. But
then he was resurrected to new life and that is our inheritance as children of
God. That is amazing. Galatians 4, 4, and 5 says this, God sent him to buy
freedom for us who were slaves to sin slaves to the law so that he could
adopt us as his very own children. We typically understand adoption in the
light of bringing a baby home right that's just a common thing although as
in the case of my family there's so many ways that adoption happens but in
Jesus day it was not uncommon for a father to adopt another son into his
family perhaps even get rid of the natural born son that he had if he was
deemed to be unworthy. Can you imagine if we did that today? Kind of a scary
thought. But in that day they could take a young man or even a grown adult who
might be older than the father himself to be considered his son they would pay
off his debts they would give him the full rights of sonship and the
inheritance that came with it he was then entitled and even though you were
able to disown your natural born son once you adopted a son it was
irrevocable you couldn't take it back. Well so similar to that is when God
adopted adults each of us we are given the full rights of sonship being a son
or daughter of his with those full rights of inheritance and he doesn't take
it back. What a privilege that we have when I began as I mentioned at the
beginning when I began to realize what this meant in my own life that I was a
daughter of the King a daughter of the creator of the world that he chose me to
be his child and that I had full rights of inheritance not just some day in the
future far away in heaven but right here on earth I've got access to so many of
those rights well it changed the way I looked at my circumstances it changed
the way that I looked at my life and I realized all those voices that had told
me I wasn't worthy and and I wasn't you know maybe I was rejected whatever it
was that I didn't have to pay attention to those because I knew the truth and
that's what I want you to be able to grab ahold of as well so you're gonna
want to stick around at the end just a couple minutes when this video is over
you're gonna want to listen and engage with the worship meditation because we
are crafting we're writing worship meditations that go along with the
devotionals so we don't just hear the truth but we get them into our system
they can go deeper and they can begin to change the way we think the way we feel
and then the way we act because here's the wonderful truth research has shown
that when we meditate on a good God for at least 12 minutes at a time well it
begins to form new healthy neural pathways in our brain that's new ways of
thinking that align with the one that we're meditating on so in this case when
we meditate on our inheritance from God and the very God who gave that to us and
what it means for our lives we begin to understand more we begin to have a greater
revelation of what it means that we're adopted as a son and as a daughter of
God and so you want to engage with that and you want to do it more than once
because the deeper it goes the more we understand it the more our behavior
reflects that truth and that reality so before I pray for you I just want to say
thank you for those who have subscribed if you haven't done so yet please do so
so you're notified thanks for sharing this with other people and for liking and
if you've got a prayer request we would love to be able to pray for you put it
in the comments and we will lift you up before the Lord so father we just thank
you that you have given us the opportunity to be called the children of
God we thank you that you have given us the opportunity to receive full rights
of inheritance as your children to be considered heirs of God co heirs with
Christ adopted into your family as Romans 8 17 talks about father for every voice
that would come against your children we just rebuke right now in the very
strong name of Jesus and we say be quiet and may the truth come to light that we
are your children we are worthy just simply because of you we can run forward
into going after what you've called us to do because we are your children we
thank you that your well never runs dry that you have given us wellsprings of
life and we run to you our Abba father we love you so much thank you Jesus