Family

Have you ever met someone you felt like you already knew? Someone who you’ve had an almost immediate bond with after you have only known them for a short amount of time? It’s almost like they were part of our family before we even met them.

I have had a few people like that in my life. I am sure you have people like that in YOUR life as well. Why are these people so close to us? What makes them stand out about other people we run into in this world? I believe that God has something to do with it - God and His Holy Spirit.

Today my wife and I are in Michigan for our annual family reunion. We will see family members we haven’t seen for a year – some even longer than that. Yet we can sit right down and begin talking as if we’d only been apart for a few days. We’re family. That’s just the way it is.

My wife was the first one of those people I met. She was, and still is, someone who knows me extremely well. She is someone with whom I feel totally at ease and someone I KNEW I loved, practically as soon as we met, becoming engaged to be married after only knowing each other for two months. Sometimes relationships seem as if they were “meant to be.” Do you think God plays a part in our relationships? I do!

God knows no limits regarding time. He was there at the beginning of time when He created the universe. He has already seen our world coming to an end. He was there at our birth and He will be there at our death.

Jesus told us that “no one comes to the Father unless the father draws them” (John 14:6) How do you think He draws us to himself? Do you suppose His Holy Spirit has anything to do with that? I do. Do you think God places us in situations to meet people? People who He wants us to know whose relationships will ultimately bring Him glory? I do. The evidence of that is seen throughout the Bible.

The testimony of my salvation begins with a seemingly random person entering my life. After a short period of time we became very good friends and began sharing stories of things that had happened in our lives. The next thing I knew we were talking about Jesus and within a few months of our meeting I had given my life to Christ. Was that a random chance meeting of two people? I don’t think so. It seems to me like it was more a meeting by design.

God already knew I was going to become one of His children. He knew that before I was even born. He knows us “before the foundation of the world.” And He uses people and His Holy Spirit to accomplish His purpose for us.

When you go to church are there people there you feel really close to? There should be. There should be an incredible closeness to every one of our brothers and sisters at church . . . because they are our brothers and sisters! Sure, there might be some disagreements. There might even be some squabbles now and again, but we are family.

Why do people leave a particular church? I left a church once over doctrine. The Bible says we should do that. But we are not to leave because of relationship problems. We are a family! We should be able to work things out. In reality though, because we are selfish, “I want it my way” humans, we tend to leave relationships that don’t go OUR way. Is that what God wants? I don’t think so. The Bible is all about family, featuring story after story about fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. Families are God’s design!

I have people in my life who aren’t my biological family members but who are family to me, in Christ. They are as much my brothers and sisters as my biological siblings are – dare I say even MORE so. The bond that God creates through our faith in His Son, Jesus, is that of an eternal family. A bond created by God, through the work of His Holy Spirit, to bring glory to His mighty name.

God gave my sister-in-Christ, Gayle, the task of leading me to Himself. My brother-in-Christ Ron and I meet on a semi-regular basis to share with each other how God is working in our lives. The same can be said about my brother Larry and of my sisters-in-Christ Jean and Cheri. We share an incredible bond through our mutual faith in our Heavenly Father. And it is all to bring glory to God and to show the world that “there is just something special about their relationships.”

The reason our relationships are so “special” is because they are all based in faith. It is because we all have the same Father, in heaven. It is because we are all . . . family.

May God bless you with such family members like the ones He has given me. My brothers and sisters in the faith are incredibly close to me and I love each and every one of them. They are precious to me, just as they are to God. Our love for each other and for God testifies to the power, the grace and the love of an incredible Father. Please, come join His family. Love abounds!

"God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure." - Ephesians 1:5