A New Beginning

It started when Li Lijuan took time to help a small orphan girl who was begging by the side of the road and ended up adopting her. Since then, the once-successful businesswoman has adopted over seventy children— many of them abandoned or orphaned. A number of the children have serious medical problems requiring expensive treatments and surgeries. Once a millionaire, Li sacrificed every cent of her accumulated wealth to help her adopted children and provide them with a safe, loving home where many of them found acceptance for the first time in their lives.

The Bible says that when we come to Jesus and give our lives to Him, we are adopted into God’s family. We become His sons and daughters, and the King of the universe becomes our Father. “You did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption” (Romans 8:15).

We can be sure that we are accepted by God because He has promised to wash away all the sins from our past—regardless of how terrible—and cover us with the righteousness of Christ. After making a long list of horrific sins, the apostle Paul wrote, “Such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). Salvation is for every person who will accept it.

When we stand justified by Christ’s grace and mercy, the absence of guilt is healing. As we receive His grace each day and are filled with His love and gradually transformed into His image, we will be living victorious lives that are no longer controlled by sin. Best of all, God promises that if we stay in this relationship with Him, we have eternal life (1 John 5:12).

Apply It:

Say a prayer of thanks to God that He has arranged for your adoption into His wonderful family.

Dig Deeper:

1 John 1:9; Ephesians 1:7; Romans 6:4

Key Bible Texts

But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, (Galatians 4:4 KJV)