This is a special follow up episode on "belonging" where I interview Brooke Palmer. Brooke is the Leader Pastor of Belonging Community Church - a church-plant launching in Urbana, MD in the Fall of 2024. Check out the Church and it's happenings here: https://www.belongingcc.com! My favorite quote from the episode: "I think when you have a place where you belong, it looks more like Jesus. It can open your eyes to what God really thinks and feels about you." - Brooke Palmer

When you believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior, God adopts you into His holy family and you become His son or daughter. When you are adopted by God, you belong to Him. And all the legal rights, privileges, power, authority and inheritances that Jesus receives as His firstborn, we receive as His adopted sons and daughters. He doesn’t hold anything back from us. He becomes our Heavenly Father and we belong to His family. We belong to Him. And belonging is one of the best feelings you can experience. Ephesians 1:5 states that "God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure."

It is obvious that we live in a dark world. God is the one who created both physical and spiritual light so that we may have life. When we believe in His Son, Jesus, we become people of the light and our purpose is to shine. We shine so that we reflect God's glory and so that others may see the light and are drawn to it. The more we are refined by God, the more our light shines and we brighten up this dark world.

God is Holy and we are not. God is perfect, pure, righteous, undefiled and uncontaminated by sin at all times. But we are flawed and sinful. There’s not a day that goes by that we don’t mess up, make a mistake or flat-out sin. No one’s perfect! But through Jesus, we have a way to be considered Holy and acceptable in God’s sight. We must become Holy to be in God's Holy Presence. Jesus' permanent, one-time-only blood sacrifice was for the forgiveness of sins and so that we are made clean.

We need to see our future before we can receive it. But we aren't able to see our future if we don't know whose we are and who we are, first. God is all-knowing and we are His workmanship made to bring His will here on earth. He has a plan for our future and has planted that - along with creating us with talents, skills, and passions, in our hearts so that we may accomplish our purpose. To fulfill God's will for our life, we need to partner with Him to visualize our future. By inviting God into the process of visualization and trusting Him, we can see our future and receive it for His Glory!

God's #1 desire is to be known and have a personal relationship with you because He loves you. God has gone - and will continue to go, to great lengths to show His love for you. The truth is that God is love. His love is unlike anything we can possibly experience from one human to another because it is unconditional, steadfast, and never ending. God's love never fails. And God calls you His Beloved, the one He made to be-loved. If God is love and you were made to be loved, then it is true that "neither death, nor life, neither angels or demons, neither present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus." (Romans 8:38-39)

It is God's nature to create beautiful, majestic and fascinating things. God's creativity is expressed in everything He made - from the stars in the sky to the grass we walk on, in all the different types of animals and also us! When we see and understand what has been made, it points back to God and His creativity. Nothing is "happenstance," including you! You were made uniquely. There has never been a "you" and there isn't another "you" living now and there will never be another "you" until the end of time. You were wonderfully made with special intent and heartfelt care.