What Is God's Plan For Me? 7 Invitations To The Life You've Been MissingSample

 Chosen to Belong to a New Family 

God not only chose you to belong to and worship Jesus and to live as His treasured possession, but He also chose you to join a new family—the family of believers spread across the world. If you once felt lonely or excluded, you now know that you have a secure and very precious position in God’s family.

When you became a Christian, you joined what Paul calls “God’s household” (Eph. 2:19). In this family, you receive the unlimited privileges of belonging as a child in a royal family, and you also accept the invitation to bless others within this household. In other words, you’re a child (dependent), but you’re also a sister or brother (encourager) and a mother or father (shepherd). As you grow in your Christian faith, you’ll find God using you more and more—with the special gifts He has given you—to help others mature in their faith “until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13).

You are secure in a new household. No matter what kind of family you come from, you can see yourself as part of a new family. Many of us come from families with addiction, mental health issues, abuse, divorce, or trauma. We sometimes feel trapped in the sin patterns of our family of origin. We also might feel like orphans if our family rejects us or abandons us. Remember this: God redeems you “from the empty way of life handed down to you” (1 Peter 1:18), and He sets you in a new family—the family of God.

Start looking around at church or in your community. See yourself as tethered to the Christians around you. If you need grandparents, you’ll find them. If you need a mother figure in your life, she’s there. If you need a father you never had, he’s there. But also consider how you might serve in those roles to the younger believers around you.

Imagine the perfect household. Imagine how the perfect family acts and the way they love one another.

Now imagine yourself seated at the table with that family in God’s household.