THE STORY OF JESUS: Matthew 5:43-48
“That you may be children of your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:45)
I am a child of God – created as God’s child, and restored by Jesus as God’s child.
“When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.” (Genesis 5:3)
To be God’s child is to be “in His own likeness, in His own image” (see Genesis 1:26).
Jesus is “the image of God” (Colossians 1:15), a God-like child of God!
Love, compassion, mercy, kindness, self-sacrifice, servanthood, humility, forgiveness.
To freely share God’s grace, as freely as God shares the rain on ALL humanity.
Jesus came to restore us as sons and daughters of God, children of our Father in heaven.
By His love we are restored, and in His love we are called to live.
This is not something we can do in our own strength, we need His help.
Which is why the Spirit of love, joy, peace, etc. was given to us.
Like Adam and Eve, we’ve been equipped with the Breath of God to live like Him. (Genesis 2:7)
Jesus is NOT telling us what we must do in order to be restored (‘saved’).
Jesus is telling us what we will do BECAUSE we are restored, because we are God’s children.
I want to be a child of God, to live and love “in His own likeness, in His own image!”
This is our calling, this is our purpose, this is why we were saved, this is why we were made!
May the people I am with today sense that they are experiencing God’s kind of love through me.
What do you sense the Lord saying to you?
PRAYER
Lord, our world has plenty of self-serving love and hurtful hate, what it needs is a heavenly downpour of love. Open the sluice gate of your church, that showers of love may flood this world!