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.
For every heart that has ever been broken, destroyed by abandonment, rejection and betrayal, and for those that have not, you have been loved with an everlasting love before there was time. These words the Lord spoke to Israel are for all who will call upon His name:
Long ago the Lord said to Israel: “I have loved you, My people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to Myself.
Do you doubt that these words are meant for everyone who will call on His name? Not only did God love Israel with an everlasting love, He also loves ALL of mankind with a love so strong that He was willing to sacrifice His One and Only true Son for the sake of ALL of us.
For this is how God loved the world: He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.
Those who have been broken, abandoned, rejected and betrayed all long for that one thing. Whether you are willing to admit it or not, there is an ache deep within your heart, a longing for love that cannot be quenched. And how do I know this? I know this because I am one of the broken, abandoned, rejected, and betrayed, and my first memories are of a little girl who had a hunger for Someone to love me no matter how bad, or how ugly, or how undesirable and unlovable I was.
When I was very young, my mother and father divorced. After they divorced, I can count on one hand the number of times I saw my birth father again. Now that I’m an adult, I understand that my father’s abandonment was not because I was bad, ugly, undesirable or unlovable. Instead, it was his problem, but as a child, I believed every single one of those things about myself.
When I was around two and a half, my mother married my stepfather, a man that I grew up thinking was my daddy until right before I entered the first grade, and I had to learn how to write my name. You see, up until that time, I thought my name was Cheryl Mitchell, and I already knew how to write that, but now I learned that my real name was Cheryl Payne, and I didn’t really belong to the man I called Daddy. I wondered why God had made someone like me. You see, even then, I knew there was a God, and though I didn’t yet know Him personally, He knew me, for He was the One who had knit me together in my mother’s womb, and He had a plan for my life.
13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 Thank You for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. 15 You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. 16 You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in Your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.
I was one of those children that trouble seems to follow, or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I was the one following trouble. I hated school, from the first day I set foot there. It seemed like I was always in trouble once I was in school. When my parents went to parent/teacher conferences, they were told that I could do better if I would just apply myself. I always dreaded those parent/teacher conferences, which would lead to my parents’ cussing me and telling me how worthless and stupid and lazy I was, as they beat me over and over and over again. I was afraid to go to sleep at night, because they would come into my room over and over again throughout the night, until they went to bed, pulling me out of the bed and beating me yet again.
Cheryl – Grade 6
When I was in the sixth grade, I really did something stupid, You see, if I brought home a bad report card, I would receive several beatings, then be punished for the following nine weeks, until the next report cards were issued. My punishment consisted of being banished to my bedroom to study for those nine weeks. I was not permitted to go outside, receive phone calls, play or watch television during those long weeks. I was only allowed out of my room to use the bathroom, eat dinner, go to school and to go to church. I thank God for the church bus that would pick my sister and me up on Sunday mornings, because that was when I was able to laugh and sing and feel loved.
Anyway, when I was in the sixth grade, I received an “Inc.” (Incomplete) on my report card for not writing my fire prevention essay. Don’t ask me why I didn’t write it, because I honestly couldn’t tell you. I knew the incomplete was coming, but I didn’t worry about it until it was actually there, on my report card. When I saw that grade, I panicked, and then I got this “brilliant” idea. I had learned that if you licked the tip of an eraser, you could erase ink. As soon as I got home from school, before my parents came home, I did just that, and changed my grade from an “Inc.” to a “G” (the equivalent of an “A”). I actually got away with my ruse until nine weeks later, when report cards were once again issued.
In those days, we carried our report cards to each class and the teacher would call you forward and print your grade on the report card. My heart pounded all morning long, and through lunch, until it was time to go to my Language Arts class. By then, I was really worked up. I must have had millions of butterflies in my stomach – so many that I was beginning to feel ill. When my teacher called me, my whole body shook with fear, yet still, I walked forward to her desk. As soon as she took my report card out of the envelope, she looked at me and stated loudly, “You erased this!”
I looked behind me, hoping against hope that my classmates hadn’t heard her, but of course, all eyes were on me. I shook my head emphatically, as I looked her in the eye and whispered, “No I didn’t. You did. Don’t you remember? You accidentally put someone else’s grade on here, and you changed it,” but she wasn’t buying it.
“You erased this report card and I’m calling the principal.” With that said, she stood up and walked over to the intercom to call the principal. I was truly panicked by this time, and I didn’t care that my classmates were all staring at me as I cried and pleaded with her not to call the principal, but to no avail. She stood by the intercom and told the principal what I had done, and he hurried to our classroom, where I was weeping inconsolably, and pleading with her and then him not to call my parents.
At that point, I was such a wreck, that they sent me to the nurse’s office. The nurse tried to quiet me, and then she began prying into my business, asking why I was so afraid. She asked me if my parents beat me. Did they abuse me? As she questioned me, all of my fear now turned to anger and hatred, not against my parents, but against her. I was already in enough trouble, without her being nosy and trying to make things even worse for me. It wasn’t until nearly thirty years later, that I realized she wasn’t being nosy. She was trying to help me, but I was too blinded by fear and misplaced anger to realize it.
I thought about running away, but I didn’t know where to run to, and I was too afraid to do it. So, I just sat in my bedroom waiting until my mother came home at 6:00 that evening. By then, my fear had grown immensely, and with good reason. Soon, the bedroom door was opened, and there stood my mommy and my stepfather, whom I thought of as my daddy. My mother began shouting at me, and then my daddy began to speak, and the angrier she got, the louder she was, while the softer his voice got, the more I feared him. They told me how stupid and lazy I was. They said that I was worthless and nothing but trouble. And then, my daddy said the words that really crushed me, “I’m ashamed that anyone thinks you’re my daughter.”
Then they each took turns beating me, but as bad as the beatings were, the thing that still hurts, even now, at 53 years of age, were those words spoken by my “daddy,” the man I truly adored. I wasn’t angry at him or my mother, though, because they were right, I thought. I believed every single curse they spoke over me, and it took many years for the Lord to finally set me free from them. All night long, until she finally went to sleep, my mother would sit in the den smoking cigarettes and thinking about what I had done, and the more she thought about it, the angrier she became, again and again. Then, she would burst into my bedroom, snatch me out of bed and begin beating me again and again. I laid in the bed, shaking with fear, and crying, and it seemed like every time I would begin to doze off, my door would slam open, and I would be snatched from the bed and beaten again and again.
I was punished for the following nine weeks until the next report card was issued and my grades were good, but until then, I was berated over and over again. I wasn’t angry with my mommy and daddy though. I was angry with my teacher and myself. I hated her for many years, but I hated myself for many more.
On the church bus every Sunday, we would learn different scriptures, and one of the first ones I learned was John 3:16
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Now, I remember my thoughts when I first heard those words, “For God so loved the world…”
“Yeah,” I thought, “but He doesn’t love me. He knows how bad I am. He knows everything about me, and there’s no way He could ever love me.”
It wasn’t until many years later, on a Saturday as I prepared a Sunday School lesson for children who were the same age that I had been when I first heard those words, “For God so loved the world…”that He revealed to me that those words included me too. While preparing a lesson on Psalm 139, as I read, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” the Lord spoke to my heart and said, “Cheryl, you are fearfully and wonderfully made. It was I who knit you together in your mother’s womb, and I knew every single day of your life before you were born, and I loved you.”
Beloved reader, can you believe that? Those words are not just for me. They’re for you, too. And get this, the very same God who knit each and every man, woman and child in their mother’s womb, decided long before then that He would adopt those of us who wanted Him to be their Daddy.
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.
Isn’t that wonderful? And do you know why He chose to adopt us? He didn’t do it because He pitied us, or because He felt like it was something He should do. No! He adopted us into His own family through Jesus because He wanted to do it! Not only that, it gave Him great pleasureto adopt us!!!
Beloved reader, has your heart ever been broken, abandoned, rejected and betrayed? Have you ever felt unloved and unlovable? Have you ever longed for a Daddy who would lavish His love on you, without feeling like you must earn His love? Do you have a hole in your heart that cries, just as mine did, “Please won’t Somebody love me, even though I don’t deserve it?”
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him.
Beloved reader, my whole life, I felt like I was nothing but a burden to my family, who I loved deeply. But I now have a Daddy who loved me long before He formed the earth, and He chose me to be His adopted daughter, because I bring great pleasure to Him.
I shared all of this with you, not to make you pity me, but so you can rejoice with me. For you see, I was always loved, even when I felt like no one loved me, and I am no better or worse than you. God loves you, just as much as He loves me, and if you want to experience that love, call upon His name. The following prayer that Paul prayed many, many years ago is the prayer that I now pray for every person who reads this post:
14 When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father,15 the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth.16 I pray that from His glorious, unlimited resources He will empower you with inner strength through His Spirit.17 Then Christ will make His home in your hearts as you trust in Him.Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong.18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love is.19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.
20 Now all glory to God, who is able, through His mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.
When I was around two and a half, my mother married my stepfather, a man that I grew up thinking was my daddy until right before I entered the first grade, and I had to learn how to write my name. You see, up until that time, I thought my name was Cheryl Mitchell, and I already knew how to write that, but now I learned that my real name was Cheryl Payne, and I didn’t really belong to the man I called Daddy. I wondered why God had made someone like me. You see, even then, I knew there was a God, and though I didn’t yet know Him personally, He knew me, for He was the One who had knit me together in my mother’s womb, and He had a plan for my life.
Burning Fire Shut Up In My Bones 