child of God the Father

I Am A Child Of God

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God actually adopts us into His family as His child when we believe in Christ (Rom. 8:15)! It seems too good to be true but it is. This is our new core identity and we need to remind ourselves of this daily. When we remember who we are we will find strength to become more like Christ. When people adopt a child they often go to great expense and effort. God did the same thing for us: the Son came to earth as a human and endured opposition and execution just so that God could adopt us as His child. And once He adopted us we became one of His heirs (Rom. 8:16). In fact, Scripture says that Jesus is our brother (Mt. 12:49-50 (Mk. 3:34-35); Heb. 2:11, 17) and just as He receives an inheritance from the Father so too we are fellow heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:17). But Continue Reading →

Weekly words of encouragement

Looking Forward To The Tree Of Life – Weekly Words Of Encouragement

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“To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” Rev. 2:7b (ESV). Surely the Christian life is one of conquest: in Christ we conquer the destructive enemies of our life and help others to do the same. Sometimes conquest is hard but he makes us “more than conquerors” (Rom. 8:37) and if we persevere God will reward us with the great privilege of feasting from the tree God created to give true life. In Genesis 3:24 God put an angel at the Garden of Eden to guard against people eating from the tree of life. But in the next age God provides the tree of life again so that we can have the amazing life He originally intended for us. This is the certain hope that we set our hearts on. See The Salvation Of God In Continue Reading →

cross forgiveness

I Am A Forgiven Child Of God

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In my early 30’s I had gone through over a year of excruciating physical and emotional pain. One day I was standing in the yard looking out over the sea and reflecting on what I was feeling and I realized that I was angry at God. This was not welcome news but I accepted it and started to tell God why I was angry at him. Even though I was afraid to express anger at God I pressed on because I trusted his forgiveness. When I was done there was no sense of rejection from him, on the contrary it was a big release and birthed a deeper relationship with God. It was okay to have my bad and tell him all about it. It’s interesting how a forgiveness mindset changes our view of ourselves and others. Without a forgiveness mindset our natural attitude towards our faults is to minimize Continue Reading →

Weekly words of encouragement

Our Incredible Dignity – Weekly Words Of Encouragement

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“[Jesus] has made us a Kingdom of priests for God his Father” Rev. 1:6 (NLT) Way back in Exodus 19:6 God tells the Jews that they “shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (ESV). I Peter 2:9 says believers are “a royal priesthood.” One of the key principles of the Reformation was that all believers were priests, as these Scriptures state. As priests we are all directly serving God in Christ, we have no need of human intermediaries for a direct relationship with God. We are elevated to a high position of dignity, higher than any earthly office, higher than any President or Prime Minister. We are also God’s kingdom, his nation, we belong to him which is a greater honor than belonging to any other nation or group of people. So we are encouraged that we have the highest dignity regardless of our status on Continue Reading →

close friends

Do You Desire Deeper Friendships? – Part Four

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So far in this series we have looked at several ways for developing close spiritual friends. This week we look at accountability and healing. Many of us have a love/hate relationship with accountability. We know that it is good for us but we rarely, if ever, go seeking it out. And if someone tries to hold us accountable without our asking our usual impulse is to resist it. Moreover, the idea of us holding others accountable makes us cringe because we don’t feel qualified or we fear the disturbance in our relationship. But if we want deep spiritual friendships then we will welcome accountability. In the New Testament accountability is mentioned in the form of warning each other. Colossians 3:16 instructs us to be “admonishing one another”. The word for admonish means gently warn or caution. I prefer the word warn because “admonish” is vague to many of us. Warning Continue Reading →