(you all are in for a treat because my sweet hubby is posting today :) I LOVE this profound truth)
God makes comparisons between our relationship with Him and our relationships with those around us. One example of this is our relationship to our family. Jesus talks about God as our Father in heaven (Mat 6, 23). The husband is told to love his wife just as Christ loved the church (Eph 5). And our salvation into God’s family is compared to adoption (Eph 1). I believe that these analogies are useful to help us to better understand our relationship with God.
This last weekend Stacy and I took a class for our adoption. In this class, they described a cycle that children need to learn to go thru in order to become attached to their parents. The cycle was basically this: 1) Need, 2) Signal, 3) Gratification, and 4) Trust. Think of a baby that is hungry. He knows he has a need and so signals this need to those around him by crying. The parent meets the need by feeding him and as this cycle is repeated a trust develops between the child and the parent. When this trust is established, the child is said to be “attached” to the parent.
The problem for a child that has been in an orphanage for most or all of his life is that this cycle has not been completed and the trust is not built between the child and any consistent caregiver. When a child is adopted into a family some effort is needed to overcome the pattern of self-gratification and non-trust that has been established so that the child can attach to his new parents.
Are you attached to God? It’s possible to be a Christian but not to have established a pattern of expressing your needs to God, watching Him meet those needs, and building a proper trust for Him. Pour yourself out to God and build up that relationship and trust with Him that He wants to have with you and experience a depth in your walk that you may have never known you could have.
For some, this may be hard to understand. I think families that have adopted will have an easier time relating to this analogy because they have personally experienced it. I still remember 12 years ago when my son was born the realization of the depth of love that God my Father had for me. There was no way I could have intellectually understood it without experiencing it personally. Love your spouse, love your kids, adopt a child and learn more about the love that God has for you and you will grow in your relationship with Him.
~paul
2 comments:
Wonderful thoughts! As we plan to bring our little girl home next week(hopefully) the attachment issue is the one I am most concerned as we adopted our other daughter as an infant. Thank you for the reminder that my God is the Master of attachment!
Amen, great post! I need to encourage Joel to post. :)
BTW, check out my last post and join in the fun. Free blog design!! I know you want one. teehee :)
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