child of God

by Elizabeth

photo 1 (1)

This picture. I love it. Not because it’s particularly elegant or beautiful, but because of what it means to me. It means so much to me, in fact, that I taped it to our home school wall so I would remember and not forget.

We’d been studying China, and the art materials came from our curriculum’s China Kit. We mixed the ink ourselves, used special brushes on special paper, and stamped our work in red at the bottom.

Now, I’m not particularly artistic, but I thought I could paint some crude mountains. Mountains speak deeply to me about who God is, about His power and love, about His majestic greatness and His vast creativity. And they give me a place to meet God, in much the same way that mountains gave the ancient people of Israel a place to meet God.

The kit provided about a dozen examples of Chinese characters to try our hand at copying. Most of the characters concerned everyday family relationships. Brother, sister, Mother, Father. But when I saw the character for Daughter, I immediately knew it was the one that belonged on my mountain picture.

Of all the characters, it was the one I was drawn to most strongly. Magnetically almost. More than Wife and more than Mother, the way I most strongly identify myself is as a Daughter. Not necessarily as a daughter of my biological parents, though that’s true too, but as a Daughter of God. Most of my daily responsibilities revolve around Wife and Mother, but “Daughter” is, at my core, how I see myself and how I define myself.

Daughter: it’s who God says I am.

And Son or Daughter, if you are in Christ, is who God says you are, too. Your sonship is more important than your career, more important than your ministry, more important than your marriage, and more important than your parenting. It’s more important than any reputation or renown. It is an eternal identity, and valuable beyond measure. You have been born again. You have been adopted into God’s family. You are Sons and Daughters of the King above all Kings.

Remember this.

(Originally shared on Facebook)

by Elizabeth

I love the song “No Longer Slaves” by Jonathan and Melissa Helser. Absolutely love it. I love it because it sings the truth over us about who we are: children of God.

I wept over that song when we sang it in church last Sunday. That’s because in the last year or so I’ve really come to understand that my truest and deepest identity is as a child of God. It’s who I am — because of who HE is — and it’s the truest thing about me.

I know now that being a child of God is what defines me more than anything else. More than being a woman, more than being a wife, more than being a writer, more than being a mom, more than being a TCK.

But here’s the thing: it’s not like I wasn’t taught this. I was searching through my wallet this week for a card that I’d misplaced, and in one section I found a bunch of small cards and family photos that I hadn’t looked at in years. On one of them is this message from my mom:

“Dear Liz, Remember who you are — a child of God! Love, Mom & Dad.”

She wrote that note to me in high school (maybe college), and I’ve kept it in my wallet all these years. Why? I don’t know. But I’m glad I did. Because it shows me that the Truth was there all along, it just hadn’t sunk deep enough into my marrow.

But it has now, and as Melissa Helser practically screams in “No Longer Slaves,” nothing can change the fact that:

I AM A CHILD OF GOD!