Ron Hutchcraft Ministries - The Very Different Children of the Very Same Father - #5208

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

You know what a busy day is. But here's busy! The scene: the maternity ward in a South Carolina hospital. In one 24-hour stretch recently, they had five sets of twins born! Did you ever see nurses on roller skates? Did you ever see women in a maternity ward taking numbers? One obstetrician actually met himself coming out of the delivery room! It must have been pandemonium! Five moms, 10 deliveries, and five totally bewildered fathers! But sometimes the arrival of just one set of twins can make for an amazing night in the maternity ward. Like the birth of Alicia and Jasmin in a Queensland, Australia, hospital not long ago. Mom is from a Jamaican-English background, and Dad is German. As for the twins: one is black, the other one is white. I'm looking at a picture of them right now. They're calling it a million-to-one medical miracle.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Very Different Children of the Very Same Father."

That's what those twin girls are. As they grow older, people will look at them and notice how different they are. But that difference is literally only skin deep. They are the daughters of the same Father; from the same blood.

And that's who we are, those of us who belong to Jesus Christ, different in some "skin deep" ways, but the children of the same Heavenly Father; born the same way - from the same blood. The blood Jesus shed for us so we could be born into the family of Almighty God. Or, as it says in our word for today from the Word of God, Galatians 3 , beginning with verse 26, "You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus ... There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus" (NLT).

Where we let our differences come between us, our Father is not pleased. Think about your own relationships, your prejudices - the categories you put people in. Look around your school, your community, your church. Are there walls and chasms between some of God's children, all carrying the same spiritual DNA?

It may be that racial differences are separating children of the same Father, or social differences, the money we make, the clothes we wear, the education we have, the way we talk. We can let denominational or doctrinal differences come between people united by the same blood Jesus' blood. Sometimes we spend 90% of our time on the 10% that divides us instead of coming together around the 90% that God's Bible-grounded children agree on.

Meanwhile, our divisions are giving lost people another reason to ignore our Jesus. They look at us and say, "When you guys can get together, come and talk to me." It's time we started to act like what we really are: children of the same Father, born into the same family, sharing the same spiritual DNA, rescued at the same old rugged cross, spending eternity together in the same heaven. Isn't it time we made an effort to try to worship together, to learn from each other's unique perspective, to start praying together for a mighty move of God in our area, to reach out to a community that will sit up and take notice when we work together?

We can do it. We must do it because, as the Bible says, "He Himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier." How? "We have been brought near through the blood of Christ" (Ephesians 2:13-14 ). No, we may not look alike on the outside. But our differences are ultimately skin deep. Our Father looks at His very different kids and says, "You're both My children. You're both My blood." Why don't we treat each other like that?