We Are Children of God

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God
(John 1:12)

Meditation

Before we accept the gift of salvation, we are children of darkness. Satan is our father and the ruler of darkness. He wants us to think we will find happiness in a bottle, or with drugs, or our next sexual conquest. We are born with a spirit of rebellion and selfishness in our hearts and that’s what Satan exploits. He wants us to think we don’t need God because when we die, that’s it, we’re just gone. He’s content to let us believe there is nothing after this life. If we insist on believing in some kind of afterlife, he switches his lies. He tells us we don’t need Jesus if we’re good enough, if we do enough good things, we’ll go to heaven. After all, God wouldn’t send good people to hell, would he? Satan is a liar and the father of lies.
God doesn’t want anyone to choose hell over heaven. He created hell as a place to punish Satan and his demon angels, not humans. However, that’s where we’ll choose to go if we remain in rebellion against God. Some may not think their lifestyles are a rebellion against God. Maybe they don’t even believe there is a God in heaven so how can they be rebelling against someone who doesn’t exist? Maybe they reject Christ because they’ve witnessed the hypocrisy of so-called Christians and they don’t want anything to do with it. Those are thoughts Satan will nurture and keep pointing out to us. He keeps throwing those ideas in our face to distract us from the truth of God’s love. He encourages our rebellious thoughts and makes us feel justified in believing them.
Jesus died on the cross so that we can be free of Satan’s lies. If we call on the name of Jesus, the most powerful name in the universe, we will be able to see Satan is a deceiver. Our God loves us no matter what we’ve done and wants to save us, but he allows us the freedom to receive his gift of salvation or reject it. Once we receive Jesus as our savior and make him the Lord of our lives, we are afforded the greatest honor in the universe. That’s not just an old-fashioned descriptor of who we become. It should mean everything to us. He adopts us to be his sons and daughters, heirs to the riches of heaven. We become the children of God, the father of light and the author of truth. 




Prayer Time

Father in heaven, we praise and glorify you for the love you show us every day of our lives. You have given us the savior, just as you promised in the Garden. He did all the work of salvation on the cross. We can do nothing on our own to be saved. How wonderful it is for us, that all we have to do is call on his name. We don’t have to somehow clean ourselves before the redeeming love of Christ will wash over us. All we have to do is to repent of our wrongdoing, give Jesus the lordship of our lives, and be washed in baptism. However, it doesn’t end there. It would be your right to leave us in the position of your lowly bond servants or slaves, but you elevated us by making us your sons and daughters. Before we turned our lives over to Jesus, Satan was our father, and we were covered by darkness. Thank you for adopting us and bringing us into your family. You have made us heirs to the glory and beauty of everything in your kingdom. We love you and worship you. In Jesus’ name, Amen!

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