Families tend to expand.
- your family moped could look like this
You have kids, your kids get married, your kids have kids. Within a few generations, what used to be just you and your wife is now a family of 25. Even beyond that, you may have ridden the whole journey with a few really close friends that essentially become aunts and uncles for your kids.
The family of God — Father, Son, and Spirit — expands, too. This wasn’t always the case, however. The family of God was utterly exclusive because no one was holy enough. But because Jesus, the Son of God, died to erase our sin, the Father adopted us into his family through Jesus (Eph. 1:5).
We illustrate
Just like human families, adoption, birth, and marriage are all means by which God has illustrated how his family grows.
And so, as members of the family of God, it becomes a rhythm to take part in these familial illustrations. That means we get married, have babies, and adopt children into our own earthly families. It also means that when anyone does any of those, we get to celebrate it because it illustrates how we are folded into God’s family!
We participate
As legitimate members of the family of God — with Jesus as our brother, and God as our Father — we seek the expansion of that family, too. We want to see others reconciled to the Father through Jesus. This is done through actively loving everyone with sacrificial, celebratory, sincere, and knowledgable love.
As we do so and others are exposed to the love of God through his children, the family grows. Thanks be to God.
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Include others in the family rhythms!
Eat | Celebrate | Story | Listen | Bless | Expand
