DAILY DEVOTIONAL – February 18, 2020
“Eternal Reunion”
Prayer: Our Heavenly Father, Your faithfulness to us is perfect and Your love for us is undying. We know this only because Your Son Jesus has left death undone through His death and resurrection from the dead. Thank You for rescuing us. Thank You for redeeming us. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Scripture: John 3:1-6
Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Devotional – “Eternal Reunion”
Twenty-four year old Nejdra Nance grew up in Bridgeport, CT. Nejdra was miserable growing up as she was raised by two abusive drug addicts. Although watching the depravity of her parents and suffering at their hands made her feel distanced from them (to say the least), there was a much deeper conviction she had since she could remember that troubled her and that made her believe she didn’t belong. Nejdra told Fox News when this story first broke that she had long suspected she was not her mother’s real daughter. One instance in particular convinced Nejdra that she was in the wrong family. When she became pregnant at 16, Nejdra asked her mother for a birth certificate so she could get prenatal care. Her mother was unable to provide one.
After giving birth to her daughter, Nejdra decided to move out on her own. Unable to shake the conviction that her real mother was still somewhere out there, Nejdra asked the Center for Missing and Exploited Children for help. Through the Center, Nejdra learned that back in 1987 a couple by the name of Joy and Tyson White took their 19-day-old baby named Carlina to the hospital because of a fever. While at the hospital, their baby Carlina was kidnapped, and for 24 years, Joy and Tyson believed they would never see their daughter again.
As Nejdra would come to learn through records and DNA testing, her real parents were in fact that same Joy and Tyson White, and her name was not Nejdra Nance, but Carlina White. After 24 years, in 2011, Carlina and her parents were finally reunited. In her interview with FOX news after the reunion, Carlina said, “I’m so happy. At the same time, it’s a funny feeling because everything is brand new. It’s like being born again.”
This is a wonderful story of reunion isn’t it? As touching as this story is, there is another story even more miraculous and heart warming. It’s the story of our own kidnapping and the story of our own glorious reunion with our Maker and Creator God.
As human beings, we were made for fellowship with God; we were made to be part of His eternal family. The Devil kidnapped us from God, deceiving us and causing us to fall into sin and rebellion against God. Although we were deceived by the Devil, we have all chosen on our own to sin against God. That sin has corrupted our hearts and minds, and if left on our own, we would have never sought out our Heavenly Father. As Romans 3 tells us, “No one is righteous, no not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God.”
What makes our story of reunion most amazing is the fact that it was God who came to find us. While we turned our backs on God He has remained perfectly faithful. Out of His immeasurable love and grace, and in order to redeem us back to Himself, God not only came to find us, but He destroyed the sin and death that held us captive by giving His One and only Son Jesus to die in our place and rise again from the dead; crushing the head of the Devil, burying our sins and raising us up with Himself to new life.
In the waters of baptism God gives to us the forgiveness Christ earned on the cross, puts faith into our hearts, marks us as a child of God, drowns the old sinful Adam and washes us clean. As Jesus told Nicodemus in our text for today, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” In baptism, God restores the relationship we were intended to have with Him for all of eternity.
Until we are restored into a relationship with Him by grace through faith, we sense in our spirits a nagging feeling that something isn’t quite right. Some may suppress those feelings, but if we are honest with ourselves, we know that we do not belong in this sinful world. Apart from a relationship with God, there is no life but only death. The Good News of Jesus is that God has defeated death and has provided salvation for all who would believe and be baptized in Jesus, the Son of God.
Thanks for joining me today for another time of devotion, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
