The Children of God - You! - It's Not Your Money

1 John 3:1-3 See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure.

You and I – we are all of us children of God. As children, we are heirs to all of His promises. His greatest promise is eternal life to those who by faith believe in Jesus Christ as His son. How awesome is that?!

What do you imagine eternal life to look and feel like? Whatever that vision is, it needs to be multiplied exponentially. The Bible tells us that we can not truly imagine what heaven will be like. Verse 2 above tells us that what we shall be has not been revealed. (see also 1 Cor 2:9 and 13:12 for more examples) We do know from Revelations 21:4 that, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, [for] the old order has passed away.” In other words, no stress, anxiety, worry, but rather peace, happiness, and contentment. Don’t we all want to live in that kind of place?

By faith in God’s word, we have this hope which makes us pure. How do we respond to this wonderful truth of being God’s child? Fr. Richard Rohr puts it this way, “Immense humility, not arrogance, characterizes someone who lives in this True Self. You simultaneously know you are a child of God, but you also know that you didn’t earn it and you are not worthy of it. You know it’s entirely a gift (see Ephesians 2:8–9 and throughout the Pauline writings). All you can do is thank Somebody Else, occasionally weep with joy, and kneel without any hesitation.”

In all humility, praise God, kneel and weep in overwhelming gratitude, and give alms. As Jesus tells us in Luke 11:41, “But as to what is within, give alms, and behold, everything will be clean for you.”