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We Belong To the Lord
Board for Evangelism Newsletter: September 2008
Romans 4:7-8 “For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.”
However, the passage for our devotion today encourages us to think of ourselves as first and foremost belonging to the Lord. While in one sense it’s proper to refer to members of the family as “ours,” we should recognize that above all, as children of God, we especially belong to Him.
This truth became very clear to a certain Christian couple whose infant son was born with a rare heart defect. The illness
that he was born with could not be controlled by the child’s parents or by his doctors. His illness was only the Lord’s to control, and whether he lived or died was in the Lord’s hands. This taught his parents that their son really didn’t belong to them, he belonged to the Lord.
Because of sin, we often forget that God is truly the owner of all. We can start to think that certain things belong to us when really they do not. Psalm 24 says: “The earth (and everyone and everything in it) is the Lord’s.”
This passage from Romans chapter four is for our comfort. We should not view it as an attack on our freedom that we belong to the Lord, and we are not to view it as a hindrance that God is our owner.
Rather, our loving God is a wonderful and all-powerful Caretaker, who always has our ultimate good in mind. Belonging to Him reminds us how much He loves us! He is with us every step of our lives. In eternity He engineered a marvelous plan to make us His very own. When the time was right, He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to live a perfect life for us and to die on the cross, to save us from all of our sins.
Any parent rightly introduces their son or daughter as, “my child.” For example, if we are meeting another family for the first time we might say, “Let me introduce you to my daughter Savannah.”
As a child, we might properly recognize that our parents have or have had the responsibility of watching over us and providing for us, and so we might say to a friend, “I have to go help my parents.”
This truth became very clear to a certain Christian couple whose infant son was born with a rare heart defect. The illness
that he was born with could not be controlled by the child’s parents or by his doctors. His illness was only the Lord’s to control, and whether he lived or died was in the Lord’s hands. This taught his parents that their son really didn’t belong to them, he belonged to the Lord.
Because of sin, we often forget that God is truly the owner of all. We can start to think that certain things belong to us when really they do not. Psalm 24 says: “The earth (and everyone and everything in it) is the Lord’s.”
This passage from Romans chapter four is for our comfort. We should not view it as an attack on our freedom that we belong to the Lord, and we are not to view it as a hindrance that God is our owner.
Rather, our loving God is a wonderful and all-powerful Caretaker, who always has our ultimate good in mind. Belonging to Him reminds us how much He loves us! He is with us every step of our lives. In eternity He engineered a marvelous plan to make us His very own. When the time was right, He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to live a perfect life for us and to die on the cross, to save us from all of our sins.
What a great blessing
that we belong to Him!
Last modified
2008-08-15 12:01 AM
2008-08-15 12:01 AM
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