Children of God

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. (1 John 3:1 NIV)


Perhaps to best appreciate this adoption we have, we need to have had some experience and understanding of a truly loving father. If not, I pray the Holy Spirit will heal our heart and transform our understanding of the nature of parenthood as God intends it. None of us had ideal parents. We also need to be delivered from any bitterness we may have built up regarding our natural parents.

There is something about a loved and favoured child which goes beyond them just being the sum total of their attributes. They know that the essence of their being is loved, affirmed, accepted and delighted in. God loves us in this way. Some have only really been accepted conditionally and partially.

Joseph the patriarch was loved by Jacob in an extravagant, favoured way. With God we are not talking about favouritism amongst His children, rather favour for all of them. God has a lavish, extravagant love for each of His children; a special affection for, and knowledge of, each heart. He loves us first, amd will not burden us with requirements which exceed the state of growth of our own love for Him.

By our being attracted to Jesus, and deciding to stay and make our home with Him, and by believing and confessing who he is, we are saved, and we take on a new identity as a citizen of the Kingdom. Our soul is imbued with new life. There is the Holy Spirit empowering our human spirit, which was dying before we came to Jesus. Our life and personality will take on a new shape as a new order is established in our hearts and minds.

Remember, the essence of your being is loved with an everlasting love before you have done anything to deserve it. Even your moral performance is not what God is after. He wants you, the deepest place of your heart. Shall we come aside, be still, and just experience the woder and depth and more than sufficiency of His love?

Those who are born of this extravagant love will baffle the world, which can only offer a manipulative and self centred imitation of true love. Satan has suceeded in convincing most of humanity that there is a true love stemming from man alone, normally in the romantic sphere. However, God's definition of true love is the correct one, and without it our hearts are bankrupt.