WHAT A FAMILY

I’m still reading, Somewhere Safe with Somebody Good, by Jan Karon.  This morning I read this line, “the common ground of one-God-made-known-through-Jesus Christ”!  That line made my heart soar with the joy of belonging to the family of God. The very family brought into being by the birth, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus!  I’m a part of that family …. It includes my blood-family relatives; my local church-family relatives; and halleluiah, it includes all those I don’t go to the same church with and don’t even know, but we are bound together as Christ-blood relatives!  WHAT A GREAT GOD WE LOVE!   WHAT A GREAT FAMILY WE BELONG TO! (I know, bad grammar, but good words anyway)

I like pictures. Our living room wall is filled with antique pictures of relatives and our bedroom walls are filled with the “rogues gallery” of our more immediate family. I even have a picture on my wall when I looked good in a bathing suit…of course I was only 7 years old!   I like to look at pictures. They are great reminders of what older members of our family were like and they help to remind me of times when our immediate family  enjoys life together.

Our wonderful Heavenly Father also paints a picture for us of what the Family of God looks like – and it is a beautiful picture! 

The Family Portrait: 

John 1:12-13 (NCV)  But to all who did accept him and believe in him he gave the right to become children of God. ¹³ They did not become his children in any human way—by any human parents or human desire. They were born of God.

·        Becoming a child of God is a sovereign act of God, not an achievement by man.

·        Going to church, being good, being raised in the church or getting baptized seven times won’t make you a child of God.

·        Having Christian parents, uncles and aunts, won’t make you a child of God.

·        Belonging to the same church your parents, uncles and aunts attended will not make you a child of God.

·         Being  Baptist, or Methodist, or Evangelical Bible Believers, or…will not make you a member of the Family of God!

You become a child of God by faith, by responding to the fact that God is calling your name.

THE GROUP PHOTO

Galatians 3:26b,28 (NCV)
…This means that you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. ²⁸ In Christ, there is no difference between Jew and Greek, slave and free person, male and female. You are all the same in Christ Jesus.

All one in Christ Jesus what a tremendous birthright! This doesn’t mean that our race, or sex, or even position in society is changed at conversion.  IT DOES MEAN…that these things have no value and are never held against us when it comes to our spiritual relationship to God through Christ.  God grace declares ALL believers to be on the same level…so that He might give mercy to us all.(Read Romans 11:25-32)

THE PORTFOLIO POSE

1 John 3:1 (NCV)
¹ The Father has loved us so much that we are called children of God. And we really are his children. ..

Our family name, children of God,  reveals a solid fact. God's children—that is what we are! God gives his people both the title and the reality. When he calls Christians his children, he makes them to be just that. Great as he is, God has brought believers into the loving, intimate relationship of children with their Father.

Dear ones, let us hold fast to our privileged relationship to each other and to our Father God, being loyal, trustworthy, faithful to our Lord God through our personal relationship with Jesus Christ!

Joyfully,

Yvonne