1 John 3:1
Sometimes
you can hear a truth so much that it becomes a truism, something that you accept
as true apart from any serious consideration or experience. The danger of an
uncritically accepted or unexperienced truth is that we can become inoculated
against the effects of that very truth, choking out the fruit of joy it
naturally should produce. For example, as a child, I grew up hearing over and
over that God loved me. While the blessing of hearing the message of God's love
throughout your childhood is invaluable, the fact that "Jesus loves
me" was, for many years, just that: a fact that I learned, much like I
learned that 2 + 2 = 4. It wasn't until my sixteenth year (still graciously
early in my life) that I truly experienced in my heart the love of God that I
had previously known only in my head. By God's grace, the love of Jesus made
that long and crucial journey from the head to the heart, and it changed my
life.
The
miracle of becoming an adopted child of God is another truth that perhaps many
have come to accept mentally without a full realization of what being a son or
daughter of God (of God!) means experientially. However, adoption doesn't
change an orphan's life by merely creating a mental category for family. The
orphan's life is beautifully and joyfully changed through the relational and
emotional experiences of belonging to
a family. In the same way, how should our own adoption by God change our lives?
As sons and daughters of God, how can we not only understand what it took to
secure our adoption (see part 1), but also begin to live more intentionally and
more joyfully as the very children of God?
Far from
taking his sonship for granted, the apostle John wrote with exclamatory
language when he spoke of our new relationship to God as His sons and
daughters. "How great," John wrote, "is the love the Father has
lavished upon us that we should be called the children of God! And that is what
we are!" John compels us: Don't lose your wonder at what we are! Reawaken your awe at the
great love of God! Later, the apostle Paul would pray that the believers would
know how wide and how long and how high and how deep is the
love of God in Christ (Eph. 3:18). John describes this all-encompassing love of
God as lavish. God not only has given
us His great love, He has lavished it
upon us! The Biblical writers, being led by the Holy Spirit, could not have
been more emphatic about the love of God toward His children, those He has
redeemed in Christ and adopted into His family.
I wish I
could say that my each of my days are marked by this kind of exclamatory wonder
at my adoption as a child of God through Christ. Instead, many days I let the
truth of what I deserve to be cloud the truth of what I am by grace now made to
be. I forget that God is a much more patient and gracious Father than I am an
obedient and faithful son. But here in my lack of perspective is where the orphan
stands to remind me of my ever-present cause for joy. Tell the orphan who blows
out her first set of birthday candles as a daughter not to have joy. Tell the
orphan who is now kissed goodnight and tucked into his own bed rather than in
an over-crowded orphanage not to have joy. Tell the orphan who had no emotional
category for being wanted not to have joy when his new family uses the word forever.
Joy is
not an act of the will or a decision to be made; joy is the natural response to
being loved and accepted by someone greater than yourself. We cannot produce
our own joy; we can only receive joy in response to a great love and a great
Lover. The love of God is lavish indeed, His acceptance irreversibly complete,
and His greatness beyond infinite. We can only recall that we were orphans
once, orphans whom now have been rescued and redeemed by the fierce and
unfailing love of God the Father. In response to such love, we ourselves can
find ways to joyfully care for orphans, and, perhaps in doing so, we may find
the trail of the truth of the greatness of God's love stretching the expanse
between our head and our heart.
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Coming Soon - Part 3 of 3 - Children of God: What We Will Be
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