Through Him!

We have seen lots of news reports about various celebrities adopting children from other countries.  They hope to draw attention to the orphaned children abroad who are in great need of care.  Yet these adoptions have also made people question why they are not adopting from the large number of children in the United States who are in need.  Adoption is a complicated subject and a complicated process.  There is no easy answer or easy way to do it.  It means opening up your heart to love someone you don’t know that may have come from a different background than your own with a special set of problems.  One of my favorite movies stars Cary Grant and is called Room for One More.  It is a story about a kind couple who have several children already of their own who bring foster children in to their family.  Each child they bring home has issues that they must work through.  As a result of the parents love, the troubled children become loving and productive members of the family.  Even though many of us may have not been orphaned, we still all need to be adopted.  We need to be adopted by God, a perfect loving Father.  Without that adoption process taking place in our lives, we too would be left to struggle through this world as a person with problems.  With God as our Father and showering us with love and blessings we become like the two orphaned kids in the Cary Grant movie.  Read Ephesians 1: 3-6.

³ Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens. ⁴ For He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love ⁵ He predestined us to be adopted through Jesus Christ for Himself, according to His favor and will, ⁶ to the praise of His glorious grace that He favored us with in the Beloved.

It is through Him (Jesus Christ) that we are adopted in to God’s family.  We don’t have to be like the kids in Room for One More.  We don’t have to set around some orphanage waiting for a loving family to come along and take us home.  We don’t have to face rejection when that family shows up at the orphanage and chooses another kid.  We don’t have to wait for our adopting parents to save up money for the adoption process or take care of piles of paperwork and background checks.  We simply need to go through Him (Jesus Christ) to be adopted by God the Father.  It is just common sense to recognize that if God put forth this plan of adoption for us, that He loves us and wants us.  What prospective parent would ever go through the process of adoption and then not want the child?  We need to feel and know that we are secure as God’s child once we accept what Jesus did for us on the cross.

What is cool about being a part of God’s family is that there is always room for one more.  So as you start this new year, think about how blessed you are to have been adopted in to God’s family and share that blessing with others you meet or know.  Let them partake in the blessing of becoming an adopted child of God.  Don’t be one of those kids that keeps all the goodies for themselves.  Learn to share.  If you want to take God’s love even further consider the ministry of foster parenting or adoption.  Who better to help those without parents, then Christians who can demonstrate God’s love to them.  Organizations like “All God’s Children” are Christian organizations that can help you through the process.

To Catch a Thief

There is a great moral lesson scene in the old classic movie “To Catch a Thief” with Cary Grant (the cat burglar/jewelry thief) and John Williams (the insurance man hiring him).  They are having a fine dining luncheon at Cary Grant’s villa.  John Williams is about to hand over a list of names of people who have jewelry to Cary Grant.  He is nervous.  John asks Cary, “So why did you steal?”  Cary simply explains that he wanted to have nice things.  John was expecting the answer to go something like Cary had a hard life and needed to steal to survive.  The conversation moves in to Cary explaining that everyone steals.  The insurance man will no doubt charge his company on his expense account for the lunch with Cary even though Cary didn’t charge him.  The insurance man admits he has even taken things from hotel rooms like everyone does. Cary is making the point that it doesn’t matter what or how much we steal, but that we all have the tendency to steal and that it is all wrong.  The size or price of the item you still is not what makes the difference.  It is the action itself.  We all know the basics of the Ten Commandments.  Number 8 is “Do Not Steal”.  Yet, how many of us have taken a few minutes off early from work and charged work for the full time?  How many of us have taken a pen from someone?  The list could go on and on.  We think nothing of it, but to God those things would be breaking the 8^th Commandment.  There is one other time that many Christians steal and don’t think about it.  Read Malachi 3:8-12.

8 “Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. “But you ask, ‘How do we rob you?’ “In tithes and offerings. 9 You are under a curse—the whole nation of you—because you are robbing me. 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. 11 I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit,” says the LORD Almighty. 12 “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the LORD Almighty.

God Almighty, Creator of Everything, Supplier of Life and Provider of all we have feels robbed.  Many of us have stolen from Him.  When Christians do not give their ten percent or tithe to the Lord they are robbing Him.  He expects us to give.  The truth is we do not trust our God, who owns and controls everything in this universe, to provide for our basic needs.  Yet, over and over again in scripture He tells us He loves us and will take care of us.  How could we not trust our omnipotent and omniscient God to provide for us?  He knows what we need better than what we do.  So instead we worry and hold back part or all of our tithes and offerings to try and take care of the financial problems ourselves.  God has even said in this passage that if we obey and give what we owe, He will keep the pests from devouring our crops.  In other words, He will protect us and make sure we have what we need and financial woes may even be held back.  It would appear that wisdom would be to give God what He is due and to stop robbing Him.  Are you a thief that needs to be caught?

Through Him!

We have seen lots of news reports about various celebrities adopting children from other countries.  They hope to draw attention to the orphaned children abroad who are in great need of care.  Yet these adoptions have also made people question why they are not adopting from the large number of children in the United States who are in need.  Adoption is a complicated subject and a complicated process.  There is no easy answer or easy way to do it.  It means opening up your heart to love someone you don’t know that may have come from a different background than your own with a special set of problems.  One of my favorite movies stars Cary Grant and is called Room for One More.  It is a story about a kind couple who have several children already of their own who bring foster children in to their family.  Each child they bring home has issues that they must work through.  As a result of the parents love, the troubled children become loving and productive members of the family.  Even though many of us may have not been orphaned, we still all need to be adopted.  We need to be adopted by God, a perfect loving Father.  Without that adoption process taking place in our lives, we too would be left to struggle through this world as a person with problems.  With God as our Father and showering us with love and blessings we become like the two orphaned kids in the Cary Grant movie.  Read Ephesians 1: 3-6.

³ Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens. ⁴ For He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love ⁵ He predestined us to be adopted through Jesus Christ for Himself, according to His favor and will, ⁶ to the praise of His glorious grace that He favored us with in the Beloved.

It is through Him (Jesus Christ) that we are adopted in to God’s family.  We don’t have to be like the kids in Room for One More.  We don’t have to set around some orphanage waiting for a loving family to come along and take us home.  We don’t have to face rejection when that family shows up at the orphanage and chooses another kid.  We don’t have to wait for our adopting parents to save up money for the adoption process or take care of piles of paperwork and background checks.  We simply need to go through Him (Jesus Christ) to be adopted by God the Father.  It is just common sense to recognize that if God put forth this plan of adoption for us, that He loves us and wants us.  What prospective parent would ever go through the process of adoption and then not want the child?  We need to feel and know that we are secure as God’s child once we accept what Jesus did for us on the cross.

What is cool about being a part of God’s family is that there is always room for one more.  So as you start this new year, think about how blessed you are to have been adopted in to God’s family and share that blessing with others you meet or know.  Let them partake in the blessing of becoming an adopted child of God.  Don’t be one of those kids that keeps all the goodies for themselves.  Learn to share.  If you want to take God’s love even further consider the ministry of foster parenting or adoption.  Who better to help those without parents, then Christians who can demonstrate God’s love to them.  Organizations like “All God’s Children” are Christian organizations that can help you through the process.