Don't Look BackSample

Since my girls were small, when they go running toward my husband, and wrap their arms around him, never once does Nick reject them. Every time, when he sees them coming, he throws open his arms to welcome them. It does my heart so much good to watch him be a father to Catherine and Sophia this way and to see how his whole face lights up. I don’t mean to imply that Nick is perfect, because he can’t be—but he does his best to model for our girls the way our heavenly Father receives us, the way he sees us, knows us, wants us to feel his love, and to feel like we belong to him.

I know this might be hard to imagine if your relationship with your earthly father wasn’t the best, or was undeniably traumatic, but God is a perfect, loving father. It’s impossible for him to be anything but good. He has no dark side, in fact, the Scripture tells us, “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light, and there is absolutely no darkness in him.” And although the enemy of God and our souls will try all he can, as long as he can, to get us to doubt and disbelieve God’s love for us, God—who can never lie—has gone on record with his love: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

You are not a candidate for God’s love. You are the object of God’s love. That is who you are. You are loved by God, and you are pursued by God. And when you, or I, reach out to God who is reaching out to us, by placing our faith in Christ, what happens? We are adopted into God’s family and made his children. “When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a son….”

I love that adoption is the heart of the Gospel—and not because I’m adopted. Well, maybe a little because I’m adopted. But the truth is God could have used any metaphor to explain how he saved us or how we became a part of his family, but he used this intimate metaphor of adoption to show us that he actually chose us.

The King of the universe has adopted us into his family, and that is where our identity lies. We are meant to live securely in the love of God, but the reality is we often outsource the source of our security by making others our authority, by placing their opinions of us above God’s truth about us. If we do this long enough, it can lead us off the course of God’s purposes and on a personal quest to seek our value, worth, and belonging from those who can’t give it to us—be it our boss, our spouse, our friends, our mentors, our followers, or our kids. This is where we often get stuck.

Knowing that I have been adopted into God’s family is the source of my confidence that I am his child. There is nothing more intimate God could have done than to adopt us, and when we are confident that he sees us, knows us, and loves us, we can live our lives unafraid. We can step out in faith and step into the unknown future fully confident that our God is with us, for us, protecting us, and guiding us. We can face the inevitable ups and downs of life with assurance that God is our heavenly Father, and he is willing to help us keep moving forward.