Ephesians 1

I was chosen by God to be one of His children before the foundation of the world. Since God is omnipresent and omniscient, He has known, for all time, the sins that I have committed and will commit. I do not surprise Him. So I think that there is something wrong with the idea of trying to maintain my status as His child. For if He already knew of the worst sin I will ever commit, and yet adopted me, even wants to bless me, then there is no act that I can commit that will result in the loss off my status as a child of God. I was adopted because of the good pleasure of His will. It pleases Him to call me, “daughter.” His grace – an undeserved gift – He has freely given to me through the death of His Beloved – Jesus. He sacrificed His perfect, holy, blameless child so that I could be His daughter. He has lavished His gift upon us. How can I but respond in love? He loves me – not despite my sin, for Jesus has redeemed me, no, I think He loves me because I am His beloved Janine, His darling daughter. He glories in my creation! My Father in heaven thinks me wonderful! He loves me!

He was wise and insightful when He showed me that His will was for me to be in right relationship with Him – and it pleases Him.

Since I am God’s daughter, the child of the master of the universe, I have been given a heavenly heritage. Whatever unpleasant family history and inheritance I thought was mine – is no longer. Instead, my family is God’s, and my siblings are His children – Christ is my Brother. And it does not matter where I fall in the family line, because my Daddy has more than enough to go around!

I became His daughter, and will always be His daughter, because when I heard the Truth of the Good News, I believed in my heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, so I was sealed in Jesus with the Holy Spirit. God pours out His love into my heart by the Holy Spirit. He is patient, kind, not jealous, not bragging or arrogant, does not act unbecomingly, does not seek His own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth, covers all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, never fails.

I pray, along with Paul, that my Father would give me a spirit of wisdom and of revelation of the true knowledge of Him. I want to, and ask to, have the eyes of my heart opened, for I know that I do not fully see the hope that He has called me to as His daughter, the riches of the glory of what He has in store for me as His adopted child, and the power that is so surpassingly great, that He uses for me, His beloved daughter. His might, which He used when He raised Jesus from the dead and placed Him in His proper seat in the kingdom, that same might He will use for me, who He picked out before the creation of the world. I ask that the Holy Spirit will open the eyes of my heart, so that I will fully understand the extent of God’s love for me, and the extent to which He has gone and will go in demonstration of His love – for I am His daughter! He loves me! I am part of the body of Jesus – I make up part of the fullness of my Jesus, who fills in all.