Grafted- A Story of Grace

Grafting is a horticultural technique where tissues from one plant are inserted into those of another plant so that they may join together.

For Christians, grafting takes another beautiful meaning!

"But when the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.  Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, 'Abba, Father.'  So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir."  (Galatians 4:4-7)

Through spiritual adoption, believers are made to be the sons of God.  We are heirs with Abraham and partake of the covenant which God made with Abraham.  As sons of God, we enjoy the full claim to the inheritance of the kingdom of God.

"Yet to all who believed Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God."  (John 1:12)

Being a child of God is through faith in Jesus Christ by grace through faith.  It is through spiritual adoption through faith in Jesus Christ that we are made children of God!

In his book Knowing God, J.I. Packer writes, "Sonship to God is not, therefore, a universal status into which everyone enters by natural birth, but a supernatural gift which one receives through Jesus Christ..... the gift of sonship to God becomes ours not through being born, but through being born again."

What an awesome honor it is to be called a child of God.  What a beautiful picture of adoption!  In all my mess, my brokenness, my sin, God still looks at me and calls me His child.  When God looks at me, He doesn't see a second class child, a burden, or an unwanted responsibility.  He only sees the blood of His Son covering me.  I am His child with the full rights and benefits of being His child!  Grace!

I love that picture of adoption.  Take a look at it from a natural perspective.  A child left to die.  A child left to starve to death while tied to a tree.  A child beaten to unconsciousness.  Abandoned.  Born to a drug addicted mother.  Neglected.  Unwanted.  A broken mess.  But, redeemed through the gift of adoption.  Given a second chance at life.  Grace!  A child grafted into a family, made their own.  A child adopted into a family forever.  A family to forever call their own.  Grace!

"God sets the lonely in families."  (Psalm 68:6)

My prayer throughout the month of November (National Adoption Month) is for many more families to be open to the idea of adoption.  For many children waiting for a family to call their own to be adopted into a family.  A prayer of grace in the lives that adoption has touched!