December 12
Read: 1 John 3:1–3
Thoughts for Parents:
Today we’re going to think about God’s love again … but this time we’re going to think about His adopting love. A lot of people are adopting children now and that’s such a good thing. Adoption is such a blessing; I understand why people adopt children as my wife and I have adopted two girls. Sometimes it’s because they’re unable to have children of their own. Other times it is because they have been given a vision of what it means to grow up in the foster care system or as an orphan in a poor country and they want to rescue children and give them a chance at life. But the astonishing truth is that we read about today is that God, in His great love, has made us His children; this means that we have all the rights, privileges and inheritances of natural born children, all of the blessings His Son earned.
But the passage tells us that we have more than the possibility of adoption: we are actually His children “now.” What that means is that we will not only share in His blessings but also in the glory that it means to be like Him. In the same way that a child bears a family resemblance, a day is coming when we will finally see the One we’ve been looking for our whole lives and in that moment we will be transformed. Because we have the promise of being part of His family, we can approach Him in confidence and trust that a day is coming when we will bear the family traits: we will have glorified bodies that will never be sick or die, we will be in our nature what He’s made us to be in His sight: sinless and whole and just like our Brother, Jesus.
Thoughts for Children:
You may be adopted or may know someone who was adopted. In our verses today we read that God has adopted us. That probably sounds silly if you are already in a family. If you are in a family, you know that our families are not perfect. Moms and dads sin against children, children disobey their parents, grandparents don’t always love their grandchildren the way they should. Our families aren’t perfect. The only perfect Father is God and He has decided to make you His child.
He makes you His child so that you can have a relationship with Him. It is pretty neat to think that you can have the God who made the whole universe as your dad. Since God is your dad, that makes Jesus your brother! Even though right now you and I are in families that don’t always love the way we should, one day we will go to our forever home. In our forever home we will love and be loved perfectly. In our forever home, Heaven, God’s love will make us so lovely that we will never sin against anybody or be sinned against again. So right now, when you feel like you aren’t loved by your parents, you can know that God loves you completely and fully and one day you will be home with Him.
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