Unclaimed Inheritance

A formerly estranged son often told of how he was reunited with his father:

"I got off at the Pennsylvania depot as a vagrant, and for a year I begged on the streets for a living. One day I touched a man on the shoulder and said, "Hey, mister, can you give me a dime?' As soon as I saw his face I was shocked to see that it was my own father. I said, 'Father, Father, do you know me?' Throwing his arms around me and with tears in his eyes, he said, 'Oh my son, at last I've found you! I've found you! You want a dime? Why, everything I have is yours!' Just think of it. I was a vagrant. I stood begging my own father for ten cents, when for 18 years he had been looking for me to give me all that he had."

This man's experiences reflect the way God longs to treat you, if you will only let Him.

You belong to God by right of creation: He created you in His own image (Genesis 1:26-27). He has blessed you with the things that you need to live. "He himself gives all men life and breath and everything else" (Acts 17:25). He created the world to be just the right environment in which you can live. He has not left Himself without evidence of His existence and His loving care for you because He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons. He has provided you with plenty of food and He fills your heart with joy because of His provision (Acts 14:17).

Yet, He wants to give you so much more!

He wants you to become His child: He wants to bless you with spiritual blessings that are far greater than anything this world has to offer. He wants to give you an eternal inheritance "that can never perish, spoil or fade... [that is] reserved in heaven" for His children (1 Peter 1:4).

The process of becoming a child of God [and heir] is called a "new birth" (John 3:1-5) and an "adoption" (Galatians 4:4-7; Romans 8:15-17). Because of what Jesus, God's Son, has done (Galatians 4:4-5) you can be adopted into God's family IF you will place your faith in God (Hebrews 11:6), repent of your sins (2 Corinthians 12:7-9), confess Jesus before men (Romans 10:9-10), and be immersed -- "born of water and of the Spirit" - for the forgiveness of sins. Once you have been born into His family..., He wants you to continue to live faithfully to Him, obeying Him in all things.

So many people are absorbed with and consumed by lonely lives which are lived in the "survival zone" searching and longing for "dimes" while the amazing love of God goes unnoticed and an eternal inheritance goes unclaimed! If they only knew...

God is waiting and watching for you, wanting you to become His child and His heir....

Will you be born into His family?



Archived issues of "Living Water" can be viewed at: www.creekwoodcc.org.