A Child of God
A Child of God
(Adapted)
David Wilkerson
Paul the apostle said,
“I belong to a family before.
I thought I was a family of God but I was a child of darkness.”
And he said,
“I saw the light.
Now I’ve been translated into the family of God.
Thank God that He found me.”
I see this other family and the rages of it for years. I preached on the street for many many years on this street around the world, preaching to drug addicts and alcoholics, and saying to them, “You’re in the wrong family.”
I was always and I still do. We did that last night.
There is a family that sleeps at night with peace. There is a family that’s been forgiven all of their sins, their iniquities. There’s a family who no longer slaves to disobedience. They are no longer slaves to their father the devil. They have been adopted. There is a family.
That’s what evangelism is all about saying. There is a family. There’s a place of peace and rest in Jesus Christ.
I’ve seen, when I go out, ravages of that other family.
When you see drug addicts so stoled out of their minds, laying on the ground, banging their heads against the curb until he dree …
See the man and the woman walking the streets babbling like lunatics out of their minds.
You walk up, I mentioned this last night, up to the children shelter where I’ve been a number of years ago I visited there on Christmas time. All those children looking out the windows, all the people and parents with their children and the sadness in their eyes
I was there when they brought 3 year old littl girl. A mother had taken her to busy streets just let her hand go. She did’t want her any more.
There’s no way to find out the parents and this child was absolutely abandoned 3 years old. I never forget the look of terror and hopelessness in the eyes of these children. Many of them are waiting adoption.
Some of you listening to me. You know what that’s all about. You’ve known the terror of sin. You’ve known the emptiness.
You’ve known that feeling of facing the wrath of God. You’re knowing that you were bound by sin and you can’t get out of it.
You’ve tried everything. You’ve made thousand promises yourself. But you’ve been in bondage.
The Bible said,
“A child of disobedience”
(Ephesians 2:2)
And you can’t break that chain by yourself.
But you see the sinner has no right to it, to any good works not through anything that you can do in your own strength
The Bible said,
“When we’re without Christ
we’d no legal rights.”
Jesus came down and took on our form to became our elder brother, so to speak. And He was given the inheritance of the Father. Everything that God has was invested in His son.
Jesus came down
to share our pain,
and to live in our skin,
to live in our flesh,
to sense what you go through and I go through,
and to bear the burden of the sin
He came down so that He could be the messenger of adoption, that you can come into the same family, that He belongs to with the same father and all the rights that He had.
And when you’re adopted everything that Jesus inherited is yours and it’s mine.
That’s what the Scripture says.
He says,
“You are aliens, strangers from the covenants of promise having no hope without God in the world.”
(Ephesians 2:12)
“You were by nature the children of wrath born into sin with no rights.”
(Ephesians 2:3)
God has a lot of adopted sons.
You say
“Well, I came to Jesus because I’ve got sick of sin.
That’s all.
I just got weary and sick of sin.
I decided to one day come to Jesus.”
That’s not what the Bible says.
The Bible says,
“I’ve chosen you.”
(John 15:16)
Jesus said,
“I came to you when you were in darkness.
I’ve found you when you were blood dying in the wilderness.
I came after you.
I chose you not because of any good thing in you not because you’re great nation.
I chose you out of love and nothing else.
I chose you to myself.”
He came to you when you were unworthy, ugly, bound in sin, filthy rags.
The Spirit of God began to make you miserable. The Holy Spirit of God began to talk to you.
You couldn’t sleep at night. You thought the wrath of God breathing down your back. That was all the work of the Holy Ghost preparing you for adoption, trying to get you sin sick, trying to get you’re ready to take the trip from this house to this house.
Why do you think God allow the children of Israel just before deliverance to take on making bricks and the straws? That’s what you’ve been doing. If you’re not why you should be in Christ you’ve been making bricks and the straws.
The Lord has taken away all your comforts. He’s breathing not because He’s mad at you, because He’s after you to adopt you into the Kingdom of God.
You sit here now.
“I’m living in sin.”
You’re living a miserable life. You can put on a front here in church. You can smile at everything. But, when you’re all by yourself, all alone, that’s when it begins to dawn on you. There’s an emptiness.
The Holy Ghost brings that despair. I called it ‘Holy Ghost miserables.’ And He can make you so miserable. The Holy Ghost can make you so miserable. Specially if you try to walk away from Him, all the misery that He causes. But it’s a love misery. It’s a love call.
It’s the Holy Spirit saying,
“Come on.
I want to adopt you.”
So it wasn’t your choosing. It was His choosing.
Heavenly Father, I thank you for that adoption day.
Lord, we should be so thankful this morning, when we’re given a spirit of adoption.
We know that we are in the family of God.
We have all that we need to see it through, until we are home embraced in the Father’s arms.