Adoption of God's Family!

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.” – Ephesians 1:3-6 NIV

Some parents may have extremely high hope in their children to fulfil their dreams. This may be because they are too old that they don’t have enough capacity to fulfil them or want their reputation to go and be represented well in the world. This also might be because parents think they are very successful and want what is best for their children. However, I believe all of these have to be the pride of parents. I am glad that my parents are fine for me to fulfil my own dream, which is Christian writing. In fact, my mother told me that my writing is extremely good and that I should think Christian-writing as my career.

God adopts us into His family through faith in Jesus Christ. However, He is not selfish,  even though He commands us what to do through the Spirit of God (John 16:7-15). We know this by Ephesians 1:6 in New Living Translation version as it says, “So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son.” God is the God of Love, so He seeks to draw people to Himself (see Deuteronomy 7:7-9). Since God is the God of the covenant of love, as explained in Deuteronomy 7:9, and the God of Grace, He bestows His blessings on us. One of His blessings is that we get to be children of God (John 1:12-13).

One definition of holiness is to become entirely devoted to God through faith in Jesus Christ so that we can express how loving God He really is. Although He doesn’t need any praises from us, he desires us to praise Him as this leads to His goodness to every one of us. This does not mean that He gets all the glory for Himself. Since God knows everything, even before they happen, Apostle Paul also stated,

We know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself. And having given them right standing, he gave them his glory. (Romans 8:28-30)

Meditate on Matthew 19:14 and ask yourself whether you have a child-like faith before God. 

Holy & Blameless!

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” – Ephesians 1:3-4 NIV

If we are chosen to do a particular task(s) for someone or something, we want to do it well so we could represent them well. I was in the chess team in my high school. One time, Long Bay College chess team was playing against Kingsway College chess team. I won the chess match against one member of the Kingsway team, so I represented Long Bay College well. Nonetheless, representing on behalf of anything or anyone can be a quite difficult task as well. For example, I became a chess team leader at Long Bay College when it was an annual competition event with another school. When I was playing chess against one member of another school in a practice round, I was quite happy as we were evenly matched and heard the team of another school was considered as under top 10 chess team or something. However, when it was competition time, I lost the chess game. My friends in Long Bay College were like “Why did you lose as you are a chess team leader?” or something.

Although the earth has became cursed due to the first human’s disobedience to God (Romans 5:12-14), God has chosen those, who would persevere in faith, to be holy. The meaning behind holiness is the idea of being different from how the world operates, in order to represent Him well. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God shared His holiness with every one of us. Therefore, we ought to be distinct people from unbelievers as holiness means the completeness of God and godliness in all aspects. One example of me being holy is not to play video and computer games as these disorientate my worldview. Before I quit playing games, I repeated downloading and deleting a particular game as I thought I could manage my time with daily tasks and playing the game. The Holy Spirit was prompting me to think whether my true identity is in Christ or in worldly things several times. 1 John 2:15-17 states that loving and pleasing God, instead of loving temporary things on the earth, is the will of Him. Other than playing games, I am currently learning to reduce watching television as much as possible. The reason that people are on the earth is to know Christ more. Apostle Paul knew this very well as he stated that knowing Jesus Christ is most important than everything else and counted everything as rubbish unless it is related to knowing Him (Philippians 3:7-8). Hence, Paul can be my biblical role model.

Meditate on Colossians 1:21-23 and consider holiness in you in God’s sight. Think how you could improve it, even though it naturally comes to believers of Christ and they are being made perfect through Christ’s sacrifice (Hebrews 10:14).

Blessing!

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” – Ephesians 1:3 NIV

Who doesn’t want blessings from our close people? Every one of us desires to have them. It is natural for humans to feel loved, love one another, and cherish each other. This is how God has created us from the beginning.

For example, I cherish my family, mentor and my friends. Although there have not been all good times between me and my family, I could not be where I am right now if it wasn’t for them. My parents have been feeding me when I am hungry, such as making meals for me. They also have paid school fees for me. Other than my family, one of my biggest physical gifts from God is my mentor. She has taught me many things but one of the most impactful things I have got from her is how to have an extrovert heart with the Lord all the time. She is considered as my role-model because I keep learning lots of things from her by observing how she lives. My friends are there to support me every time. They drop me home every time after the evening church service. One friend of mine is one of my proof-markers for my school assignments, so she is willing to mark them and critique me what went wrong on the basis of English grammar. 

Not only we are blessed through the physical realms, such as gifts, people and material things, but we are blessed in the heavenly realms as well through Jesus Christ. For the next several days, I am going to explain what our spiritual blessings are through Him. However, meditate on Ephesians 1:3 and consider what spiritual blessings you may have through and in Him.