Page 4 - Microsoft Word - New Believer Devotional (3)

God before knowing Christ (Eph. 2:12). That means that the promise of God being our God and us being
His people were not available because we did not belong to His covenant family by faith. God promised
Abraham that He would build a nation through Him to love and serve Him for all eternity (Gen. 17:7).

But now Christ has come and opened the way for Gentiles, not only Jews, to receive salvation
through His work on the cross. Those who embrace Christ as the lover of their soul as their only hope for
redemption now have the right by God’s grace to be called children of God.
Once we give our hearts and lives to Christ, believing and trusting in Him alone for salvation, God says
we become part of His family—not through the natural process of human conception, but through
adoption. “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit
of sonship [adoption]. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father’” (Romans 8:15). Similarly, bringing a person
into a family by means of adoption is done by choice and out of love. “His unchanging plan has always
been to adopt us into His own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave Him
great pleasure” (Ephesians 1:5). As God adopts those who receive Christ as Savior into His spiritual
family, He is so pleased. God is not an exclusive God – He desires that ALL might be saved and come to
know Him! God’s Word reveals this to us in 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as
some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to
come to repentance.”

We are adopted into God’s family after we have trusted in Christ through faith, at which time we are
justified and counted as His beloved children. We will get into what justification means later – right now,
its important for you to grasp that you are adopted into a huge family with a loving, powerful Father who
loves you with an everlasting love.

“But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,
who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
John 1:12-13

“But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of
God, through faith.”
Gal. 3:25-26

Adoption is membership into God’s family. When a child is adopted, he did not choose when he would
have been adopted or by whom. In the same way, God’s Adoption is totally dependent upon His loving
grace to His people. We are adopted into God’s family when we place our trust in Christ.

The benefits and privileges that accompany adoption into His family are clearly seen - first, in the way
God relates to us, and then also in the way we relate to one another as brothers and sisters in God’s
family.
“Pray then like this: "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be
done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also
have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

Matthew 6:9-13
God gives us an internal witness from the Holy Spirit that causes us instinctively to call God our Father.
When we long for Him inside, when we cry out Him, “Father!”, it is the Spirit himself bearing witness
with our spirit that we are the children of God (See Rom 8:15-16). This foundation as God our Father is