Mine part 1
Sometimes my son, Logan, asks me, "Daddy, why do you love me so much?" And I always answer him the same way: "Because you're mine." And I know this kind of flies in the face of the idea that we are supposed to love everybody equally. I once heard a preacher talk about how his family isn't more important than anybody else's family. But I gotta tell you... something rose up in me when I heard that and it said, "WRONG!!!!" Because Logan is LITERALLY bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. He, in a very real way, is me. He was created in my image. No one ever has any doubt about which one is my son and which one is his father. One of his nicknames is mini-me, and he calls me maxi-me. Now don't get me wrong: I DO love everybody. I just plain and simple love Logan DIFFERENT. He's my beloved son, if I can say it that way. And that's where the rubber meets the road when it comes to our relationship with OUR heavenly Father. We are HIS beloved Son in whom He is well pleased! God has a special love for each one of us. The love that can only be given from Father to Son. (And I always like to point out that I'm not trying to disregard or disrespect a mother's love. Momma carried you inside her for the better part of a year. Without her there wouldn't be you. I'm simply taking what I know from experience and trying to share it. And what I know is being a father and loving a son.) Look at Isaiah 48:11 to begin to understand how important this is: "For mine own sake, even for mine own sake, will I do it: for how should my name be polluted? and I will not give my glory unto another." I remember my pastor preaching on this verse and he said he was struggling with it until God told him the secret: "You're not another. You're mine." He gave us His glory, not to MAKE us His... but because we were His all along. He did it for HIS sake. He did it so that His name would not be polluted! God wants people to look at us and see Him. Remember what Jesus said about His disciples? He said, "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another" (John 13:35). People will know who our heavenly Father is when they see Him IN us, coming OUT of us! We were created in His image. And then, on the cross, we were conformed to the image of His Son. He shined the light of the world in order to show us who we really are. So that we could see HIM clearly, and in that way see OURSELVES clearly. See Him as our Father. See ourselves as His Son. See that we are in Him even as He is in us. See that we are His even as He is ours. That's a bond that can't be broken. The bond of love. When we talk about this idea... mine... we're not talking about possession in the sense of control. We're not talking about "I own you so you have to do what I say." We're talking about 1 Peter 2:9, "But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God's very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light." A SPECIAL possession. The apple of God's eye. Shining that very light He shined on us. Letting what's inside come out simply by knowing and believing that it's in there. Why? Because we are His!