"Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out “Abba Father”"
TO PONDER
Then in verse 7 it goes a little further telling us … “so you are no longer a slave, but God’s child”
Most of us are so blessed if we’ve had a father who treasured, loved, listened to our inane crazy ideas as we were growing up through different periods of our lives, walked alongside of us, encouraged us, and set us on the right path. With these fathers we didn’t have to strive to earn their favour because they loved and cherished us, just like Jesus does. But then there are those bearing the same title, dad, daddy, Papa, etc only because they had a child. Some didn’t earn that title; hence their children weren’t confident calling them by any of these names. Remember, you no longer have to be a “slave” to that fear. You have already been accepted into God’s (our Abba Father’s) family because we are already sons and daughters of God.
Who do you say you are and why? A few things for us to contemplate. We are no longer ‘slaves’ of the past. It’s important to know who we are. We are a child of God who is a loving, forgiving Abba Father. Another thought is – He first chose us.
PRAYER
Heavenly Father thank you that you chose those just like me, to be adopted into your family, for standing in and taking the place of a loving father, our Abba Father, to those who have not known the love and guidance of a father. Lord I pray that hearts that have be hardened, and eyes that have been blinded by the past, minds that have been shut off, will be opened for those who have been living in a life of “slavery”, that they come to hear and accept that they are no longer a ‘slave’, but a child of God. All things are possible through you.
AMEN
Today's Devotion Written by Noeline Brock, LifeWay Online
"The spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children"
TO PONDER:
Looking back at Verse 15 we see … the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship, and by Him we cry “Abba Father.” How simple is that?
Have you ever thought about adoption and all the hurdles you’d have to jump over to even get to first base. There may be a few of you who have been through the process having to fill out reams of paperwork, or answering some convoluted questions asked in so many different ways. You could have thought, this may not be the right thing for us to be doing. You started questioning things i.e. when the doubt creeps in over what you thought you’d ‘heard’ and you feel it is too overwhelming.
Maybe some of you have gone through the long process of adoption and finally come to an end where things have worked out for you and your ‘special chosen’ child who has fitted into your family. This too I believe has the hand of God woven through the process.
Or there are those who don’t have the opportunity to be adopted or taken into a loving family. A couple of Devotionals back I mentioned Phu My Orphanage, the children there were never put up for adoption into loving homes. They came from homes where they weren’t accepted, not only through shame, but the parents believed they were being punished for their former sins. Whilst some just could not afford to keep their children. Even now as I think of those children, I still believe that they were specially chosen and were accepted and adopted into God’s family. I think about how Jesus looks at others and how He thinks … He doesn’t see the brokenness as we sometimes do, He sees them as whole, loved and cared for.
We as Christians are so blessed. We haven’t had to strive to be part of a spiritual family. We have been chosen. We don’t have to strive for approval or acceptance, because we are already sons and daughters of God. We have the endurance, encouragement and unity with each other through Him.
With His word we have confirmation that we are God’s children, chosen and adopted into His Sonship. We do have an Abba Father who we can call on, and we have the Holy Spirit.
Remember, he first chose us and we need to know, this is who we are.
PRAYER:
Heavenly father, as I’ve walked through this journey, I give you all the praise and glory for the times you have put me in a situation where your light has been able to shine. For the doors you’ve opened and those you’ve closed, for the opportunities where you’ve first stepped and where I have been able to follow. Thank you for adopting me into you ‘family’ and taking your place as my Abba Father. Help me Lord to keep walking with an open heart, where you lead and to be open and willing to do the tasks you have planned for me. To you Lord all praise and glory.
AMEN
Today's Devotion Written by Noeline Brock, LifeWay Online
"But you are a chosen people, a royal priest hood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light."
TO PONDER:
Scripture indicates that with this verse we have a new identity based on grace, not society, background, merit, or origin, or the journey we’ve been through before. It encourages us to come out of darkness into light to live out and declare God’s praises. It’s the transition from ignorance and sin, into the knowledge and life of God. We all have a direct access to God.
Out of darkness into light! Well, we’ve all been through blackouts, I’m sure. Whilst overseas we had them regularly. The area I was in was normally quite well lit, but when the lights went out …. it was dark … totally dark, you couldn’t even see your hand in front of your face. I can relate these dark periods to the times before when I was walking through that time of ‘hard knocks and darkness’. Some days were just so totally “dark” that I didn’t think I would ever see that light at the end of the tunnel that was spoken of. But, just like when the power comes back on and the lights shine through after the blackout, we can see things in a different ‘light’. It takes a change of attitude and willingness to change, with a realisation that we have a purpose for living and giving.
Yes, you and I have a purpose. Just like Christ brought the Israelites out of Egypt, he has brought us out of sin and darkness also into a life of transformation. That purpose is to bring our praises to and worship before the Lord.
God chose you and I first.
PRAYER:
Dear Heavenly Father, on this daily walk with you Lord I pray that your purpose resonates in every step I take. Thank you, Lord, that you put someone in my path that first planted the seed and the many others who have come after and watered and nurtured my journey. Open my mouth Lord to encourage others, in a loving and giving way, to find their purpose in life.
AMEN
Today's Devotion Written by Noeline Brock, LifeWay Online.
"And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit"
TO PONDER:
How many times have you called on the Holy Spirit for help?
Do you remember deciding to follow Christ, to accept Him into your life, to believe and trust in Him and finally coming to a place where things started to fall into place and being filled with the Holy Spirit. Have you ever experienced that peace and serenity, even in the hardest of times?
I’d been brought up in the Anglican church, and oft times I’d go off with my little prayer book to Sunday service, listen to the sermon, read the designated prayers, sing the hymns, do what I was expected too … but I never really felt at home or overly satisfied? Never, were we encouraged to give our life, or to depend on Christ or even get to know there was the Holy Spirit. I searched for years for what was missing.
Salvation comes through the hearing of the truth, believing and trusting in Christ and letting go and letting God, not trying to do it all on our own by human efforts. We don’t need to strive for approval or acceptance. Oh! If only someone had told me earlier in my searching, that I had already been specially chosen, spiritually blessed from Heavenly places, redeemed through His blood and forgiven, and adopted into His sonship/daughtership through Christ and believe I’d been sealed by the Holy Spirit.
PRAYER:
Dear Lord thank you that I heard and accepted the message in your timing. I pray that through every day your words will be instilled in my heart. That your love and acceptance shines through to those whom I encounter. Thank you that you sent the Holy Spirit to be our constant companion as we travel this earth.
AMEN
Today's Devotion Written by Noeline Brock, LifeWay Online
"In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace"
TO PONDER:
So, following on from yesterdays’ devotional, even though we are broken, Scripture shows we can still be used by God. We’re not only chosen, but adopted sons and daughters through Christ, and we’ve also been redeemed and forgiven through his blood.
Jesus redeemed us with his blood, through his sacrifice on the Cross. He has brought us out from under the burdens of sin and death.
While overseas, I volunteered at an orphanage in HCMC - Phu My Handicapped Children’s Orphanage in my spare time. During that time there was close to 390+ severely mentally and physically “broken” children. Each one of them had been abandoned, some at the front gates, physically maimed by their parents so they could beg and make money, then handed in by parents who couldn’t cope and were ashamed. None of these children were ever adopted into the outside world. They thrived on the little love and affection shown to them, and that little bit of attention. Even though many would never grow into adulthood, I believed they were “chosen” and that God loved and “adopted” these broken ones into his kingdom, where they would finally become “whole.” I always think of these children as specially chosen. I count it a privilege to think that He chose me to do the little I could, through Him, whilst visiting these children, to show them and their carers that they were special, accepted and loved.
My question is … what is your reaction when you come across someone who is ‘different’ from us? Just like those people that were chosen in the early days to do His work, remember, even though we are forgiven and cleansed by His blood, we are still all broken, but we are accepted and can be used by God. Everyone deserves a chance. Just remember He first chose you and me.
PRAYER:
Oh! Jesus, I thank you that you put in my heart that searching of something deeper and more meaningful to fill my time. I thank you that you opened the doors and I praise you for the opportunity to spend that time and be part of those ‘broken’ children’s lives. I praise you for the times you showed me the brokenness in that whole country. I thank you for those who never have had the chance of being adopted into a normal family, but Lord I am so grateful that you loved and wrapped them in your arms, and you’ve taken them home to be part of your family, I give my heartfelt thanks. Dear Lord, thank you for the privilege of being chosen, accepted and adopted into your family.
AMEN
Today's Devotion Written by Noeline Brock, LifeWay Online
"For he chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight."
TO PONDER:
What a huge hurdle to get our heads around … He chose us before the foundation of the world! Why you, why me?
Some other words for ‘chose/chosen’ are – selected, picked, desired, wanted, preferred and special.
When the doors started to open for me to go overseas to work alongside those in the underground church to help set up and teach in our English Learning Centres, I used to ask, “Why Me”? I don’t have the qualifications, experience, I’m shy, I’m not good enough, I’m not perfect, I’m broken and I need lots of mending and the list just went on and on. At that time, I was blessed to be working alongside my Pastor and Boss, who would walk through the office and fire a question at me, encouraging me to look deeper … finally, realising I was chosen for a reason.
Remembering, that God specifically chose Moses, David, Rehab, Paul, Peter, Gideon, Elijah, Jonah, Samson, Jacob, Noah and Sarah … none of them were perfect, and just like you and me, they were all broken. On reading through the Scriptures, we see that He chose those people who weren’t perfect. The people He chose were broken – and through choosing these people who had willing hearts, filled with His Spiritual blessings, His grace and strength shone through.
The answer to my questions came when I realised, that even though I was broken, I did have a willing heart to go, and I had the spiritual/heavenly blessings in Christ, and I had been chosen.
PRAYER:
Dear heavenly Father thank you for choosing me to do your work through me, to show that broken can be mended and that through that brokenness your strength and grace can shine through. I ask Lord that you heal the broken and show them that they too, can be used for your glory.
AMEN
Today's Devotion Written by Noeline Brock, LIfeWay Online
"Praise be to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ"
TO PONDER
Have you ever wondered what a spiritual blessing is? I know, I have, quite often. I’ve asked what sort of blessing could it be? I’ve even had the audacity to question God as to why I deserve these blessings. Have I earned them? Is it something we can see, touch, feel? Is it an answered prayer for something material, something we can see and show to others. Maybe we oft times think that a windfall of money would be a great blessing, we’d be rich in worldly blessings.
No, it is not material blessings, BUT divine blessings, which come from heavenly places, meaning that it is not from here on earth. These are the spiritual blessings believers possess in Christ. If we only realised how rich we are …. in His spiritual blessings. He first chose us; we didn’t choose Him.
There’s a difference between physical and material blessings, which lose every ounce of their value to us the moment our heart stops. With spiritual blessings given by the Father, He has given us our relationship with Christ which we will continue to enjoy, and to praise God throughout eternity.
PRAYER
Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of these spiritual blessings bestowed upon us freely. I pray Lord that we learn to share these blessings as they are meant. Open our eyes Lord and teach us how to reach out to those less fortunate and show them that they don’t have to strive or work for these blessings, show then that material blessings only last a short time, but your spiritual blessings are for eternity.
AMEN
Today's Devotion Written by Noeline Brock, LifeWay Online
I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.
TO PONDER
Bible passages like this can be a bit hard for us to claim as our own, and probably even harder for those who don’t yet know Jesus, God’s Son, to see these verses as attracting them to become followers of Jesus. But Paul was writing to people who were already committed followers of Jesus. Now, to help us understand what Paul is writing about to the church at Phillipi, we need to go back to verse 7 where Paul is so overcome by what he has already received from his relationship with the Heavenly Family, that anything that he treasured from the life he had before is as attractive to him now as animal dung.
Even though, at this stage in his life, Paul has experienced an awesome time through the work that God has called him to do, he appreciates that there is so much more that he has to learn and experience and he doesn’t want to miss out of any of it, even if it means that there may be difficult times ahead.
When I compare my life with that of Saint Paul, I have to admit I am nowhere near experiencing the life that Paul experienced following his conversion on the road to Damascus. In a way, I sometimes feel that I am only a toddler in terms of the maturity that Paul lived. Yes, I have had some awesome experiences of seeing God at work in my life, but I have to admit that I am nowhere near where Paul was in saying goodbye to his old way of life. Yet I am convinced that God is working in my life towards reaching that goal.
If someone came to this septuagenarian with the proposal of turning me into an athlete such as Ian Thorpe or Cathy Freeman, I would say they are dreaming. With the state of my body and the amount of time I am expected to live, it would have to be a miracle of Abrahamic proportions for that to happen. We could possibly feel the same about achieving the level of faith that Saint Paul had.
I am not sure God is calling us to that level of faith – remembering that Jesus said that if we had faith the size of a mustard seed, we could move mountains. But what God is calling us to do is give Him full reign in our lives to achieve His purposes.
Also, remember, that Paul had reached this maturity of his relationship with the Heavenly Family through what he had already experienced. It was a growing process of learning, experiencing God at work and growing in his understanding and faith. It is the same with us. God is taking us from where we are at this moment and asking us to go with Him to experience Him at work. Through this process we will learn to trust Him more and to let go of some of our old securities. We will then trust Him more in His leading and follow to see Him do even more in our lives. This trust that grows in us also helps us to not be afraid of difficulties or challenges we find along the way. We have the promise of both Jesus and His Father that they will always be with us where ever they take us.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, I want to grow in my relationship with You and grow in trusting You where ever You take me. Even though I am sometimes reluctant to fully surrender my life to You, I do so now so that You can grow me in living that full trust in You and enabling You to use me to achieve Your purposes in me. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
TO PONDER
Have you ever been in a group discussion where people are discussing the way they would prefer to die. If you have had a close friend or member of your family die a slow, possibly painful, death, you most likely would not like that to be something that you would have to go through. On the other hand, if you had a close friend or member of your family die very suddenly without warning (for example from an accident or a medical incident such as a heart attack, stroke or diabetic coma), you may feel cheated in that you were unable to say good bye or to resolve some important issue with them.
Lots of people have suggested that the best way to die is in your sleep, so that you feel nothing and just wake up in heaven. This is good for you, but it again leaves your loved ones wishing that they had had more precious time with you before you died.
Based on our own experiences of seeing loved ones and other people dying, we may all have different preferences of how we would like to die. But few of us look forward to dying, unless, of course, our living here on earth has become unbearable.
But our dying is also something we don’t like to think about, because we may not have a clear view of what happens to us after our death. (Just think of the number of people who cannot or don’t make a will because the idea of their dying brings unpleasant feelings.) The general view of our society is that we hope we have been good enough that God will accept us into heaven when we die. But that raises the question of whether we have been good enough. What is the pass mark?
Then Jesus comes along and says He has some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that no matter how good you are, even if you were a better person than Saint Mother Teresa, you could not achieve God’s pass mark for getting into heaven. The good news is that Jesus sat the exam for us all and He did achieve God’s pass mark. He is now handing out graduation certificates at no cost to all who request one.
However, there is one little catch; you also have to accept Jesus’s death for you. Just as Jesus passed the exam for you, He also died for you. You now have effectively died, with Him, to the life you lived by your own abilities, and you now live by the power of Holy Spirit living in you to live the new resurrected life Jesus won for you.
Your physical death is no longer something fearful, but just the doorway into a new life forever in the presence of the Heavenly Family.
As we live our new resurrected life on this earth, we grow in learning to trust God’s love for us and live by His promise to be always with us. So that means that we can then be sure that our loving God will be right beside us in our dying with His full support and encouragement. Just as we entrust each moment of each day into the care of our loving God, so we should be able to entrust our dying into His care also. This takes away the fear of how God is going to orchestrate our transferal from this life to life forever with Him. And we can trust God that He will using our dying to fulfil His purposes in touching the lives of others who are there to share in the first part of this Journey.
Can we make a decision to not fear our dying, but every time this fear raises its head, we hand it over to our loving God to deal with it?
Prayer: Heavenly Family, Thank You that Jesus died as a human being for all of humanity and then rose again with a new resurrected human body as a guarantee that all who accept this fee gift will also live with Jesus in eternity as His brothers and sisters. Thank You that we no longer need fear our death, but when we do succumb to fear, please remind us again of all Your promises that You have already accepted us into Your family forever. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping