Chosen!

Being chosen is something we long for all of our lives. As a young kid we want to be chosen to be friends with the people we like. We want to be picked to play on the baseball team, or the lead in the school play. We want to sense we have been chosen by our parents, and we are the apple of their eyes. I think this sense of being chosen is something God has wired into us as human beings. It is similar to our need to belong and be part of something bigger than ourselves.

As Paul starts the letter to the church of Ephesus, one of the really important early churches, he starts off with how we have been chosen by God to receive every spiritual blessing in Christ. Before the beginning of the world, God chose us. In love he predestined us! He adopted us as his kids. God chose us before we chose Him. He chose us even before we were a glint in our parent's eyes. And it was for God's pleasure that He chose us. God didn't choose us begrudgingly, he wanted us to be His own. And He has freely given us all this through Jesus, to the praise of His glorious grace. God loves to show off His grace it is His very nature.

So how does this make you feel? How could this change the way you think about yourself? We hear so much about "self esteem", maybe we should call it "God esteem". What would it mean for us to view ourselves in the light of God's desire to choose us and make us His own? What would it be like if you didn't crave other's approval, because you had God's? I believe Paul starts off with these truths in Ephesians 1, because if we don't get this right, we will have a flawed view from the very start. We will do what we do out of need to loved or approved by God, instead because we already have it.

I hope you needed to hear this, I know I did!

Praise for Spiritual Blessings in Christ
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

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