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Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy
Welcome to Day 859 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.
This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom
God's Mission: Your Adoption – Meditation Monday


Thank you for joining us for our five days per week wisdom and legacy building podcast. This is Day 859 of our Trek, and it is time for Meditation Monday.  Taking time to relax, refocus, and reprioritize our lives is crucial in order to create a living legacy.  For some, it may just be time alone for quiet reflection.  Some may utilize structured meditation practices. In my life meditation includes reading and reflecting on God’s Word, and in prayer.  It is a time to renew my mind, refocus on what is most important, and making sure that I am nurturing my soul, mind, and body.  As you come along with me on our trek each Meditation Monday, it is my hope an prayer that you too will experience a time for reflection and renewing of your mind. 

We are broadcasting from our studio at ‘The Big House’ in Marietta, OH.  The past two weeks we diverged from our regular daily podcast themes due to my schedule where I was away from my home office.  We read through some of the parables of Jesus.  Jesus was a master storyteller, weaving everyday experiences into his teachings.  It certainly is a good model to follow as we share with others.  It is my mission to emulate this style of storytelling as I share each day on our podcast.  Today we want to explore a mission that is much more important as the title of our meditation today is: 
God’s Mission: Your Adoption
When we come to Christ, God not only forgives us, he also adopts us. Through a dramatic series of events, we go from condemned orphans with no hope to adopted children with no fear. Here is how it happens. You come before the judgment seat of God full of rebellion and mistakes. Because of his justice, he cannot dismiss your sin, but because of his love, he cannot dismiss you. So in an act that stunned the heavens, he punished himself on the cross for your sins. God's justice and love are equally honored. And you, God's creation, are forgiven. But the story doesn't end with God's forgiveness.  We read in Romans 8:15-16

So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children.  Now we call him, “Abba, Father.”  For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. 

This is emphasized again in Galatians 4:4-5

But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law.  God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children.It would be enough if God just cleansed your name, but he does more. He gives you his name. It would be enough if God just set you free, but he does more. He takes you home. He takes you home to the Great House of God.

Adoptive parents understand this more than anyone. I certainly don't mean to offend any biological parents – I'm one myself. We biological parents know well the earnest longing to have a child. But in many cases, our cribs were filled easily. We decided to have a child, and a child came. In fact, sometimes the child came with no decision. I've heard of unplanned pregnancies, but I've never heard of an unplanned adoption.

That's why adoptive parents understand God's passion to adopt us. They know what it means to feel an empty space inside. They know what it means to hunt, to set out on a mission, and take responsibility for a child with a spotted past and a dubious future. If anybody understands God's ardor for his children, it's someone who has rescued an orphan from despair, for that is what God has done for us. God has adopted you.

God sought you, found you, signed the papers,