Author: Jacob Cielecki

Have you ever received something that you really didn’t deserve? An inheritance is where you acquire something because it was passed onto you; somebody in your life decided to grant you a sum of money or materials solely because it was passed down to you. What I am trying to get at is that you don’t do anything specific to get this gift, it is a gift that is just given to you?

Personally, I received an inheritance when my grandmother passed away. My grandmother cared for us deeply and always provided for us. She never let us leave without making sure that we had more than enough to eat! When my Grandma passed away, we all missed her deeply and mourned her. I still think about her often to this day. She left an imprint on this world. One of the strangest parts of her passing away was that my parents and brothers received an allotted amount of money. I was about eighteen at the time, so I knew the concept of an inheritance, but it seemed very strange to me.  There was nothing specifically I did that was a reason for me to receive this money, except for my Grandma wanting to provide for her family even after passing away. The gift meant a lot not because of the monetary value, but because I knew that she still was providing for me after her death.

Much like the gift that my Grandma gave to me, God gives an inheritance to all of us who believe in Him. His gift is similar to the one that I described above, we do absolutely nothing to deserve it. The passage of scripture that guides us to what our inheritance is in Ezekiel 44:28:

“This shall be their inheritance: I am their inheritance: and you shall give them no possession in Israel; I am their possession”.

In this short exert in Ezekiel, God tells us what our inheritance will be…to be with Him. The gift we are getting is to be with God. Why is that significant? Isn’t God always with us?

God’s original plan was to not only create us and then leave us forever on our own. He intended to always be with us every day. We broke that plan through our relatives, Adam and Eve. God promised Adam and Eve to be with them forever, as long as they didn’t eat of the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:17). However, in Genesis chapter 3, we see that man committed the first sin, and ate of the tree that God told Adam and Eve not to. That is how sin entered the world and separated us from God.

We are all born with a sinful nature. We don’t seek good but seek evil. In the Old Testament, there are multiple ways that the chosen people of God, Israel, try to redeem themselves after every time they give up on God, sin against God, and/or leave Him. The only way for them to be redeemed was through an animal sacrifice. God intended to be with His people, but time after time, they always sinned against Him. However, God still provided through the miracles, prophets, kings, judges, etc. Yet there still wasn’t a way for God’s people to be fully connected with God without having to sacrifice something.

As seen in Ezekiel, we know that God wants His people to be with Him always! That is exactly why there had to be an ultimate sacrifice that would atone for the sins of everyone. I truly do believe that this prophetic word in Ezekiel is pointing to a promise that God upheld through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus. Jesus died on the cross to redeem us all. Through Jesus we are able to be with God. 1 John 4:9-10, is a passage that describes how much this inheritance is all because of the love God has for us and the desire to be with us always.

“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sings”.

Jesus died on the cross so that we can be with Him always. He paid the price for ALL of our sins, so that way we can be him forever. For without Christ we are still separated from God and His inheritance. In Romans 8: 12-17 Paul says,

“So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, the heirs-heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him”.

Paul is saying that we are heirs with Christ through his sacrifice. In Christ we have an inheritance! There is nothing besides our faith in Him, that we receive this inheritance from God.

Therefore, our inheritance is to be with God eternally. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”. Praise God for his great inheritance that we get to be with Him forever!

 

Mankind wants to be understood, known, and seen. I believe each person is wired with a sense of longing to be known by other people. Most people want to be recognized for something. What if someone has already recognized you? What if someone already sees you and recognizes you as the person you were created to be?

The story that we have in front of us today needs a bit of background. This story in particular is one that takes us back to the first book of the Bible, Genesis, where Abram and his wife Sarai are about to put their “destiny” in their own hands. In Genesis 15, God makes a covenant (a promise) with Abram. God promised that even in Abram and Sarai’s old age, their descendants would be vast (Genesis 15: 4-6). God made a promise that Abram’s family would be God’s chosen people and given a land that was not currently theirs (Genesis 15: 13-16). God, the creator of the entire universe made a promise with his creation.

Abram’s whole life changed in one chapter. At his age, he was told by the creator of the universe that somehow, he would have descendants that would reach beyond the numbers of the stars. Being in that position, it would be difficult to understand how that is going to play out. Genesis 16 starts shows how as humans, we want to take things in our own hands and not trust someone else.

Abram and his wife Sarai saw an opportunity to make sure that God’s promise came true. They had a plan to have Abram lay with their servant Hagar so that they can have a child. Hagar was a bondservant from the land of Egypt and served the household of Abram and Sarai. Once Abram had lain with his wife’s servant, Sarai was immediately jealous and treated his servant with harshness (Genesis 16: 5-6). Once Hagar saw an opportunity she fled away from her master! All through this Hagar has been mistreated, used, and uprooted from her homeland. She is most likely confused about the direction of her life and is tired of being mistreated for a plan that she didn’t want to be a part of.

Then…an angel of the Lord shows up and challenges Hagar to go back to her master and submit to her. Soon after that the angel then says in Genesis 16:10, “The angel of the LORD also said to her, ‘I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude’”. Hagar has to be thinking that she is out of her mind. She is being challenged to listed to an angle of the Lord, that is not of her home religion, and then believe that she will be with child. Also, the child that she is going to have will bring about many decedents. After first glance, I am thinking that she will surely run back to Egypt or go somewhere else. Why would she listen and return to her harsh master Sarai? What benefit does it have for her? How can she trust God during this time?

In Genesis 16:13, Hagar says in response to the angel of the Lord, “So she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, ‘You are a God of seeing’, for she said, ‘Truly here I have seen him who looks after me’”. After all that Hagar has gone through and the pains that she will continue to bear, she still looks to the LORD and says that God understands, sees her, and will be there for her through it all.

Hagar’s story is much like our own. Hagar wanted to be seen and known. She spent her entire life submitting, being mistreated, and taken advantage of. Hagar wanted her own life without any restrictions, where people would see her differently. However, God had a different plan, one where He told her how He saw her. God showed Hagar that His plan was far greater than hers. Hagar’s experience is much like ours. We want to be known and understood in our own unique way. We all want to be recognized. However, God has already recognized us. He already has a plan and wants us to know how much He cares and loves for us.

We are recognized and seen by the one that created and died for us when we didn’t deserve it. We constantly seek after our own ways. Every single day we mess up, but God picks us back up and calls us chosen and redeemed. God sacrificed His only Son to die on the cross for us so that we know this eternally. Jesus, God in the flesh (John 1:1), came down to this Earth to die a gruesome death, so that way we can be called redeemed and known by God!

To be seen by God is to be known by Him. For those that believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are a chosen people who God sees and recognizes all the days of their life!

Christmas has always been one of my favorite times of the year. I enjoy every single part of it! My family decorates the house, puts up Christmas lights, cooks, cleans, etc. Even now that I am out “adulting”, I still find myself waiting in anticipation to come back to my parents’ house with a home that is decorated and filled with Christmas spirit. Christmas has and most likely will always be the time of the year that I am in awe of. There is something else in this life that I have never been able to truly describe. It may sound simple, but the grace of God and his love has always placed me in a loss for words.

I tend to be extremely hard on myself in all aspects of my life. When it comes to work, I want to try to do the best job possible, and when I find myself failing, I blame myself first. In my relationships with my friends and family, I reflect on how I can always be doing a better job. I look at how I need to be doing better always first, that is no different about my relationship with Jesus either.

However, God gives us a gift that is indescribable, even when we don’t deserve it. When we look back to the Old Testament, God chose a people first and he promised to always be there for them no matter what. In Genesis 17:7, God makes a covenant with Abraham, “And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you”. Abraham was a man that did fear the Lord but was in no way perfect to the standards that were set before him. Immediately after the initial covenant made with Abram, Abram claimed that his wife Sarai was his sister to protect his life while traveling to Egypt (Genesis 12:10-20). God promised Abram that he would be protected, but still Abraham gave into his human desire to follow his own plan. Also, while Israel was enslaved in Egypt, their great leader, Moses, that God called to lead His people out of slavery, still out of anger disobeyed God and broke the stone tablets that God gave him (Exodus 32:15-20). King David, described as a man after God’s own heart, committed the sin of adultery and murder(2 Samuel 11). These three men are just examples of the countless others that the Lord used who gave up, disobeyed, and sinned against the Lord. Even though time after time, the Israelites continued to sin against the Lord, God had a plan to always hold fast to His covenant that He made since the first day of creation.

The only way that God could break this cycle of sin was to provide a redeemer. In Jeremiah 33:14-26, God tells Jeremiah of a “branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely”. Jeremiah is foretelling of a redeemer, a Savior that will bring about a gift that will change everything. The savior that came, Jesus, came humbly to this world to save all of us from our sin and to fulfill all righteousness. Jesus came as an innocent child, from the line of David, and lived as perfectly man/God. He then died a gruesome death on a cross to save us all from physical and eternal death.

In the verse that was presented today, 2 Corinthians 9:15, says “Thanks be to God for inexpressible gift”. Another way I see that is indescribable, unattainable, and unimaginable gift. Jesus died gruesomely on a cross for a people who didn’t deserve it, so that way He could be with us forever. That is exactly what makes His sacrifice an inexpressible gift. There is no exact human way to express how wonderful the saving grace of God is. No matter how much we fail, sin, or give up, Jesus still forgives us of all that. He calls us “a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

I talked about how Christmas was my favorite time of year. It gave me feelings of awe. However, the grace of God and his love are truly inexpressible, nothing like the feelings of awe I get from Christmas.

Psalm 68: 5:

“Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation”.

 

When you think of a father, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Many of us would look at our Earthly fathers to try and describe what we think a father is. We take our own personal connections to try and define what a father may be.

A father is supposed to guide, encourage, challenge, and love their children deeply. They lead their family with integrity and attempt to serve their family every step of the way. However, fathers don’t exist in every single family. Not only that, but there are so many parents in general that aren’t able to care for their children and have to give them up.

When I meditate on the beginning of this verse, I can only think of how different my life would’ve been without my Dad. He worked a lot of hours when I was younger to try and provide for the family. I am fortunate to have a Dad that served our family and who truly does love us. However, there are children that grow up without parents.

As seen in this verse, the Psalmist is expanding on the description of God being a Father to the fatherless and a protector to widows. This verse is only beginning to give us a glimpse of God being an eternal Father to all of us.

Orphans and widows both seem like terms that are used for those that are left behind and forgotten. God promises that He will never leave them and will be a Father and protector. John 14: 18 states, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you”. Countless times in the Old Testament and New, the Word guides all to protect, provide, and comfort the widows.

The lost, fatherless, widows, and hopeless are only saved because of the love of their Father. God will never leave the fatherless and widows without protection. That is exactly why He sent His Son Jesus to die on the cross, for our brokenness. He redeemed us when all of us weren’t worthy. God the FATHER, has made it so that we will eternally be with Him.  No other Father or protector has ever been able to truly be there for all of us like God has and always will.