by Pastor Josh Trojak

 

This lent season is surely a new one for my family. About one month prior to the beginning of lent in 2023, we officially welcomed 3 new members to the Trojak clan. They have been a part of our family and our church family for the past 2.5 years, but it became official through adoption this year. It is one thing to wait and hope for something, and it is a whole other thing to finally see it come to completion. It has been a great, emotional journey that I am not sure I have even fully processed.

 

One of the pieces I have spent time with is what it means to choose someone to join your family. Even though I had some choice in bringing our three biological kids into the world, there is something different about being asked by a judge if I would commit to raising other children as my own. Our lawyer asked if I understood that I was taking responsibility for their future. He even asked if I understood that these children would be included not only in my life, but also in my inheritance when I am no longer here. It is more than just a name, we were welcoming them into our everything.

 

God did the same for us. We were created by God, but we screwed up the relationship with Him. We didn’t earn or deserve His favor, but in the end are given this gift of being adopted into His family.

 

John 1:12-13
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

 

Romans 8:17
Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his
sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

 

Take some time to sit with this truth. If you have chosen to believe in Jesus Christ, you are one of His children who has access to all of the inheritance that comes with being in the family of God. That should cause us to live differently, but at its core we become one of His because of the choice and love of God. That is a truth worth holding onto.