Listen

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born from God. Whoever loves someone who is a parent loves the child born to the parent. This is how we know that we love the children of God: when we love God and keep God’s commandments.

1 John 5:1-2

Think

There have been a good many times when relatives I haven’t seen in decades come near and say something like, “Well, that’s got to be Lenny and Susie’s boy.” Let’s just push past the fact that I am now FIFTY years old, because it still happens. They are right. I’ve got physical attributes that favor my mom, my dad, and both sides of my family. It is inescapable. There is nothing I can do about it.

Not many people have known me and my parents both for long enough to draw comparisons to anything but the physical, but that’s what I would love to hear. If someone said that I had love, helpfulness, work ethic, compassion, generosity, or kindness like my parents, well, then I’d be over the moon.

That is what being a child of God is like. The real resemblance comes when others see the character of the One who shaped up, formed us, knows and grows us, in and through our lives. Yeah, that’s what we’re looking for.

Byron Vance

Pray

O God, I pray that someone would see in me a resemblance of who you are, how you love, and the life you give. Allow me to be known as your child. Amen.

Go

Go into your day knowing that even though God knows all about us, God still chooses to be our friend.

Be a friend of God today.