A true welcome - All The Good Seed Daily Devotionals for 2024

Now you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.
Ephesians 2:19.

A true welcome
Steven came to England as a young African refugee. He was a stateless person. He assumed that he had been born in Mozambique, but it could also have been Zimbabwe. He had never known his father, and he had lost his mother early in life. Without an identity card, a passport or a birth certificate Steven entered a police station and asked to be arrested. Imprisonment seemed to him as a homeless person a better fate than having to struggle against the odds with a residence permit.

Before our conversion we, too, were homeless and deprived of any rights regarding our relationship with God. In Ephesians 2:12 the apostle Paul describes us as "strangers having no hope and without God in the world"

Then came the moment when we could surrender to God through His grace. We confessed our wrongs, believing that His Son, Jesus Christ, bore the punishment for them on the cross. With that a great change came about in our life.

We became, and are now, "fellow citizens with the saints". Our relationship with God is in order, so that we can freely stand in His presence. We know God as our Father who loves us.

Today's reading: Judges 17:1-13 · Psalms 74:1-12