A warm welcome found - All The Good Seed Daily Devotionals for 2024

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

A warm welcome found
Steven comes to England as a young African refugee. He is stateless. He guesses that he was born in Mozambique, but perhaps it was in Zimbabwe. He never knew his father and lost his mother at an early age. With no identity card and no proof of his birthplace, Steven enters a police station and asks to be arrested. Prison seems better to him than having to struggle along homeless and without a residence permit.

Before our conversion, we were also lawless and homeless in terms of our relationship with God. The apostle Paul describes us in Ephesians 2:12 as strangers who lived without hope and without God in the world.

But then, by grace, the moment came when we surrendered to God. We confessed our wrongs to Him and believed that His Son, Jesus Christ, bore the punishment for them on the cross. With that, the great turning point in our lives occurred:

Now we are "fellow citizens of the saints". We belong to the redeemed, who are bound together by faith in the Lord Jesus. We can fellowship with them.
Furthermore, we have the privilege of being "members of the household of God". Our relationship with Him is now established, so that we are able to freely spend time in His presence. We know God as our Father who loves us.

Today's reading: Numbers 15:22-41 · Matthew 10:32-42