Phobia is the fear of love or being loved. You know, this word sums up my entire life. I've always been terrified of this word. This word for me has always been attached to separation or extreme pain, and I feared letting somebody love me. In fact, I didn't know how to love. So for my entire life, I'd keep enough distance.
So nobody knew the true me. I never wanted to get hurt. This fear of being loved led me really to dark and lonely places, and here's why. I'm not always proud of the decisions that I've made. I've made very poor decisions in my life when trying to feel this hole in my heart that I've had, and it's been poor decision after poor.
And I finally got to the place in my life where I felt like I wasn't worthy to be loved by anyone, really much less God. I'll never forget the night I was done. I was empty. I was broken. I felt like my life was over. I made too many poor decisions and there's no way anything can come, come good outta my life.
So here's what I did. I went outside and I looked up into the stars. And I know this is gonna sound silly, but it was my reality. It was really out of a place of desperation. I wanted to be loved and I wanted to be seen so desperately. And I looked up to the stars and I just looked at a star and said, God, if you're out there and if you love me, and if you see me, would you please give me a shooting star so that I know you hear me and love me?
Sounds crazy, right? Well, I just figured if he really is the God of heavens, if he really is this, I've heard people say that he's a heavenly father, so I thought, if this is true, surely a shooting star would be nothing for him. I sat out there for 30 minutes waiting for God to do something and nothing happened, and I was destroyed because this is what I felt like deep down inside.
I knew that there is a divine power. I knew there was some kind of God out there, and I knew that he chose not to give me a shooting star, and so I thought if. If the universe doesn't love me, I must be unlovable. I went inside, went to my room, closed the door, and I began to plan my suicide attempt. In fact, I attempted suicide that night.
I obviously failed, but it was an extreme wake up call that there's a deep brokenness in me that needed healing. Shortly after that, I remember going to a, a Devo. And I remember hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ, and it was almost as if God took the VE off my eyes and I can see his love clearly. And so my prayer was simple.
I came before God and said, I don't know if you're real, but if you are, here I am. Here I am. I'll let you embrace me and I'll let you love me for who I am. And if you'll take me this way, I'll be forever yours and you'll be forever mine. And I can't tell you that feeling that I've had since then. This, this feeling that I'm not.
That I'm adopted by the creator of the universe. It's an incredible feeling. In this next passage, Paul uses a powerful phrase. He says, this spirit of adoption. Now let me share with you what this meant to this culture. See, in the Roman culture, when a family didn't want a child, they would go into Rome and they would drop off this child like a stray dog, and the family would leave.
So now this child was an orphan trying to figure out how they were gonna fend for themselves, and I'm sure they felt unloved. I'm sure they did whatever they had to do in order to get by day by day. I am sure that they probably did things that they weren't proud of, but they had to do what they had to do, and I'm sure over.
Knowing that their own family dropped them off and didn't want them, I'm sure it did something to them. It tore them apart. I'm sure they probably feared love, but here's a great picture that Paul gives us because in the same context, what Paul gives us, the spirit of adoption, here's what would take place a family, typically a wealthy family would go into the city and they would look for an or.
And they would choose an orphan out of the streets and, and what I love is, is you can imagine this orphan has nothing to offer the family, nothing. They're filled with petty crime. They're probably filled with just filthiness all over their bodies. Yet this family looks at this orphan and this family chooses the orphan.
And the orphan can do nothing for the family. Then the family takes this orphan. Stands before the judge in the courthouse. And, and, and the family would say, I want this orphan to be part of my family. I want this to be official. And here's what would take place. They would have to sign the document that would make this adoption official.
And once that document was signed, here's what it meant. It meant that now the father would take all of the debt that this orphan has on them and all of the future debt that they would occur. So as soon as he signed, the debt was wiped away. The second thing, they had a new last name. Their name completely changed.
Everything was wiped away, and it's as if they had a new fresh start and as if that's not enough. The third thing, you're probably one of the most beautiful pictures that Paul can give us in this spirit of adoption. Now this, this new adopted. Would become an heir or co-heir of their family's possessions.
Can you imagine that? They weren't born into the family yet? The debt is wiped away. They have a new name and they become heirs and co-heirs of the possessions. That is a beautiful picture that Paul gives us. Think about that for a minute. You may feel unworthy of God's love. You may feel like you're too dirty.
You may feel like a spiritual orphan. You may feel like you have nothing good to bring to the table, nothing but dirty rags. Let me just tell you, God will take those dirty rags in this picture of the spirit of adoption when we say yes to. When we become a child of God, when we become adopted into the family of God, our debt is wiped away clear.
We are given a new name and we become co-heirs with Christ. Can you imagine that? We are co-heirs with Christ. We not only see God as judge, but now we get to see him as Father. One of my favorite shows is Undercover Boss, and I love getting to the very end of the. And here's what happens the entire time, uh, the boss goes undercover.
And he began to listen to the stories of his employees. And at the very end of the show, he sits down with the employees. And I never forget one particular show. He sits down with a single mom and he tells the single mom, here's what I'm going to do. I'm gonna buy you a house. And she just starts to cry.
She's like, oh, oh my gosh, you're gonna buy me a house? And she loses it and she gives him a hug and she's crying. She sits back down. He's like, but I'm not done. Here's what else I'm going. Then he, he gives her more money on top of the house, and she's losing it at this point. She's like, oh, the house was enough.
You're gonna gimme money too. So I'm no longer in debt. Oh my goodness. What? I can't believe this is happening. Then she sits back down and he says, well, well, I'm not done. I'm also gonna give you money so that you can set up a college fund for your children. At this point, she has completely lost it, and she's like, A house was enough, a raise was enough.
I can't believe you're doing all of these things. You know, here's what's true. It would've been enough. For Christ to die in the cross and forgive us of our sins, that would've been enough. But he didn't stop there. He, he wiped away our sins and he changed our names. Like, oh God, oh God, you gonna wipe away my sins.
Thank you, that's enough. But he didn't stop there. And the great thing about our God is that he never runs short of resources. He continues to lavish his love on us over and over and over again. So this word's spirit of adoption. Man, when you let God love you, just the way you are, of course his love alone is enough, but he doesn't stop there.
It's the spirit of adoption.
