Daily Prayer Guide ~ April 27 - Thanking God for making us His Children.
Read:
John 3:5-6
Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit..”
Eph 1:4-5
“In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to sonship n through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will”
John 1:12-13
“12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
Consider:
You and I, by nature have been born into our existence. I know that doesn’t come as any great surprise. But because of that great gift of life, we can live and experience this world. When we were born, we entered into a family. Often there are family traits and features. I remember one day, Diana and I and our three children were going into a store and the clerk said “boy, you can sure tell your all related!” All of our kids carry a common ‘look’. Even to this day, people regularly think that our daughters are twins, even though there is three years between them. Family features run deep.
There are all kinds of families, but every family has a particular kind of culture. There are ways you interact with others in the family, you have family rules, family dynamics, shared memories and traditions. All of these help make a family what it is.
When we begin to trust in Jesus and are born again, we should begin to take on some of the family dynamics of God’s family. We should begin to carry some of the characteristics of Gods family, live by his values and share in his traditions.
There are members in my extended family, and I have friends who have experienced adoption of children into their families. In God’s family, we all enter the family by adoption because of our faith in Jesus. It is not uncommon, particularly by those who have been adopted to ask “Who am I?” in an effort to gain an understanding of their own identity. Often is begins a quest to find their ‘real’ parents only to discover the people who gave them birth are really not their parents but the ones who love them and gave them a home were their actual parents.
By placing our trust in Jesus, God’s Son, You and I are children of God. This truth should always influence the ways you and I live, because we live as God’s son or daughter. One day soon, we hope, we will begin to leave our homes and interact with more people again, and when we emerge from our homes where we have been dwelling with God, let us leave looking and acting like we belong in God’s family. May people say of us ‘you look different than the rest of the world’ because there is a resemblance of Jesus in our lives.
May we seek to bring life and restore relationships because that is what Jesus came to do. May the good that people see in our lives look like the good that God would bring into our world. May the love that drives our lives flow from the love that God demonstrated when he adopted us into his family. May we bring something into the world that we reenter into only because you and I are children of God.
Prayer: Father, Thank you that you made it possible for me to become one of your children. Thank you for all that you bring into my life because I am part of your family.
· Thank God, in your words, for brining you into his family.
· Express to him what it means to you to be his child.
· Ask him to show you how to live today as one of his own children.
· Ask that He would use your life to bless others as our community is continuing to practice social distancing.
· Pray for our church and others, as well as businesses, who are wanting to reopen in this uncertain time.
Father, May we always know that we belong to as your child. May the world see you in us as we begin to emerge into our communities in the coming days. . Amen
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