Faithbase

Well good morning everybody. This morning's devotional may be a little bit longer than some of the other ones. The passage I'm going to read from in Romans chapter 8, kind of personal to us as a family, this is Romans 8 verses 15 through 17. He said, For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out Abba Father. The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God and if children heirs also heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified in him. The reason that this passage is so personal to us as a family is because our youngest son is adopted from China. My wife and I had the privilege back in 2017 of traveling to China to adopt our son and it's a it's a long process and and I can't get into the story of what got us into the process of adoption. Not now, eventually we'll get into that, but it takes a while to get through it and we spent almost a month in China. We went to the town where he was born and had to go through all the legal process there. Then we had to go to go to this town called Guangzhou where all the consulates are and had to go through all the legal paperwork there. It is there's so much paperwork and things you have to do from the state of Alabama, from the federal government, then you have to deal with the Chinese government. All these different things you have to go through. It's a long process. It took us about a year and again we spent about a month in China but around the beginning of December 2017 we flew from Guangzhou China to Beijing and then from Beijing we took the long flight to Detroit Michigan and there's something special about what happens in Detroit Michigan because that child that you've adopted from the Chinese government, it's not legally your child until that plane hits the ground in Detroit, but once those wheels of that plane hit the ground in Detroit, Joshua, our son, was legally our child and there was absolutely nothing the Chinese government could do to reverse it. They couldn't change it. His name is now Joshua Weems. He is my son and he is legally my son forever. Going through that adoption process really helped passages like this for me understand what it means to be an adopted child of God. That he purchased us. That he went through all the paperwork. He went through all the suffering. He went through all the hoops that you have to go through. Jesus went through all that stuff on the cross to purchase you and to purchase me as his child and here's the beautiful thing that once he said to Telestai, it is finished, it was done. You are his child and you are his child forever. So I just want to remind you this morning that the freedom that we have in Christ, the identity that we have in Christ, is that we have now been legally and forever adopted into his family. You are heirs to everything that the Father has. Now some of that we'll experience on this earth and everything of it we'll experience in eternity, but if you find yourself having a rough day today, if you find yourself hurting and struggling today, remind yourself who you are. That you are an adopted child of God forever. Listen, God bless. If I can pray for you, if I can do anything for you, just send us a direct message and we would love to be able to pray and interact with you and be able to encourage you every day. So listen, God bless. Have a great day.