Read Part 1:
Chosen First
I wasn’t partying because I was hung up on finding my orphans. Where
were they, God? All I wanted was to hold your precious children here in
Tanzania, to show them love and tell them about your love.
Then yesterday, after we had our last church service, and were saying
good-bye to our friends and the kids who had used us as jungle gyms, I realized
something.
We are all orphans without Jesus. Yes, we may have earthly mothers
and fathers, who may have been amazing or abusive or anywhere in between, but
without Jesus, we do not have our perfect heavenly Father who loves us dearly.
So I had been asking God for the orphans, when in reality, they were
all around me all month. All the little children whose parents are caught up in
animism or Islam-they were orphans. The sick inmates at the hospital who didn’t
have a relationship with the Lord-they were orphans. The people at the crusade
suffering with demons were orphans, in desperate need of their Father.
Each day when we preached and prayed and people chose whether or not
to accept Christ, they were choosing whether or not to be adopted. Each day
when someone did take a step of faith and choose a relationship with Christ,
they were being adopted in the family of God. They were shedding their orphaned
state and being swept up in their Father’s arms.
In Africa, children who were orphans on the street are no longer
orphans when they come into a Christian children’s home. They believe in Jesus,
and so are no longer orphans, separated from their Father, but adopted,
beloved, and chosen. They don’t even call them orphanages, because there are no
orphans there, just children who have been adopted by their heavenly Father.
This month, I realized we all need saving. We all need to be adopted
into the family of God. Orphans were all around me, and God finally released
this understanding to me. The orphans I had been praying for surrounded me, and
God had given me an opportunity to share His love, and pray that they would be
adopted too.
Romans 8:15-16 states, that upon believing the Gospel, “You
did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received
the Spirit of sonship. And by him, we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself
testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”
We are God’s children. The Almighty creator of the universe CHOSE us, ADOPTED us, and NAMED us as his children, as co-heirs with Christ,
as the most precious commodity in the world, worth
dying for.
That is good news! And the orphans in the world need to hear it.
This video features friends from this month, some of whom are adopted
and others whom I hope will join the family. We all need saving and we all need
to be adopted into the family of God.
