Who Do You Belong To?

 

Forty years ago, our church wanted to buy four empty lots at the end of our dead-end street.  But two of the vacant lots were part of a three-lot tract with a house on it.  We bought the house to get the lots, and my family rented the house from the church.  The house was adjacent to a duplex also owned by the church with two other church families in the duplex.  All three families had children, so the back yards of the houses were always alive with kids and kids’ activities.  Often, arguments would bubble up and tempers flare.  I would have to call in my children to reduce tensions.  Sometimes my children would complain that the problems weren’t their fault.  “Why do we have to come in?!” they would say.  I would explain to my children that I had no control over the other children.  I only had control over the children with the last name of “Whitely”.  Fair or not, it was true.  Hey, that’s the way it is with our heavenly Father.  We are called Christians and bear the name of Jesus Christ.  The Lord corrects His own children and watches over us because we belong to Him.  And while other folk get away with evil, God watches over His own children correcting and directing.  David said in Psalm 73:12, “Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches.”  The ungodly will prosper because this world is their only pleasure.  But they will not prosper in the world to come.  God’s children will prosper in the world to come.  Hey, be encouraged when God corrects you, because that correction is proof that you belong to Him!