Today I went to Worship Harvest church along with our Amani Director, Volunteer Coordinator, a lot of the other volunteers, and the team of 12 that has come to us from Colorado. We started the morning off with a lot of worship songs. It is so normal to see people's hands raised up in the air and tears flowing from eyes just because of how much God is moving in the church and the services there. Today we had a speaker named Rachel, who is from Canada but is living in Entebbe, Uganda right now. The series we have been going through is called 'Relationship Beyond Rules' from the book of Galations. Today we were covering Galations 3:26-4:7. Please read these verses before continuing on. The whole service today was covering something that is very near and dear to our hearts here at Amani..."Adoption". This blog is basically just to talk about the amazing points and quotes that I wrote down because of just how amazing this message was for all of us to hear and I hope you all can get the same out of it.
We talked about what it was like to be slaves in the Roman times and there was a process of getting rid of your own sons/adopting that is beyond comprehensible. Back then they were able to sell their children, completely estrange them, or even put them to the death penalty. If the father sold his son, he could buy him back, but only 3 times. So if a father sold his son and then bought him back the third time, he was his forever. This is just the same as buying/adopting a child into their family. Later they then changed this process into having the father take the soon to be adopted son into a room with 7 witnesses. The father would then state that he would like to adopt the child into his family. The child would then say that he agreed to this and wanted to be in the family.
By faith we enter into the lineage of Abraham and become heirs according to the promise! Promise = heirs of the world. No matter what our race, tribe, sex, religious views, etc..once we are In Christ we become One and heirs of the Same promise. Just as slaves in Roman times lived under fear of punishments, making them lowly in status and inferior to everyone else - so we too lived in fear because of the Law which was our slave driver, which ruled us by fear of punishment if we broke the rules. The spirit of adoption is not one of fear! The Spirit itself is witness to the adoption process - becoming irrefutably sealed. The Roman fathers could estrange their own biological sons, selling them and even issuing the death penalty - this would often trigger the adoption process of a new son or slave to carry on the father's lineage/rule. This is just like how God estranged His own son to inherit us as His own sons and daughters. The process of adoption was called "Adrogation". It consisted of the verbal will from the father asking of the child to be His and the child confessing that he wished it so. Redemption of the purchased possession was accomplished by the act of the heir taking possession. We too received our inheritance by the act of taking possession by faith. The Holy Spirit is our guarantee of our inheritance. Adoption is the highest form of love; you can never be estranged by God once you have been adopted into His kingdom. We are all Chosen, God did not create us and adopt us as His children without first choosing us. We have been bought into God's eternal kingdom. We are untouchably Secure! When we are adopted, we lose all rights to our old family. By losing all rights to our old family we then gain ALL rights as a legitimate son/daughter into a new family with our new Father. The old life is wiped out, ALL debts are paid - we are a new person with no past life. The Holy Spirit witnessed our confession of God asking us to be His and us accepting His offer, so our relationship with Him is irrevocable. We are under a protection. God cannot do to us what He did to Jesus for our sake. We are under a permanent sonship!!
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