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What if your relationship with God needs a fundamental shift—not a tweak, but a reorientation of the heart? In the second message of our In Christ series, Pastor Derrick invited us into that kind of transformation. With moving honesty, he shared how, after forty-two years as a Christian, months of sabbatical, and even a season of personal collapse, he discovered that much of his life with God had been lived from the wrong center. He had always believed God to be good, powerful, and generous—like an attentive CEO who makes sure the checks arrive and the company keeps running, even if you rarely see Him face to face. But in Ephesians 1, he encountered a truth that would not let him go: in Christ we are not merely cared-for servants; we are adopted sons and daughters, full members of God’s household with His name, His Spirit, and His inheritance.

To open our imaginations, Derrick recalled an adoption story many recognize. Steve Jobs was born to college students who couldn’t raise him. The first family lined up to adopt him backed out. Then a modest couple, Paul and Clara, stepped in. With one promise—to give their son a chance at college—they adopted the boy no one else seemed able to receive. That adoption changed everything. The child once passed over twice grew to shape the technological world. Adoption, Derrick said, doesn’t just change circumstances; it changes identity, future, and family. Scripture says the same about us.

Returning to our series anchor in Ephesians 1:3–6, Derrick pointed to Paul’s repeated refrain “in Christ.” In the opening lines alone, Paul can’t stop saying it. Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places is ours in Christ; God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world; in love, He predestined us for adoption to Himself through Jesus Christ. While “predestined” deserves its own sermon, Derrick stayed with the word that changed his life: adoption. Paul uses the Greek term huiothesia, “placing as a son,” only three times in his letters (Ephesians, Romans, Galatians). It carried rich meaning in both Jewish and Roman ears. For Israel, it evoked covenant sonship, inheritance, and belonging. For the Roman world, it meant a decisive legal act—changing a person’s status, name, and rights, placing them permanently within a new family. Put together, Paul’s word announces that God’s eternal purpose culminates in bringing us—corporately and personally—into His household with full standing and shared inheritance in Christ.

This, Derrick emphasized, was not a plan B. Scripture reveals adoption as God’s eternal design. Even in Genesis 1, he admitted, there were four words he had simply skimmed for years: “in our image, to be like us.” Those words pierced him. Humans aren’t like the animals; we bear God’s likeness. We are created on purpose, in His image, with capacities of love, reason, justice, mercy, and creativity that reflect our Maker’s own heart. We were made “to be like us”—not divine by nature as God is, but fashioned for family resemblance and intimate fellowship. From the first chapter of the Bible to the last, the story remains consistent. Derrick pointed to Revelation 3:21, where Jesus promises, “The one who conquers I will grant to sit with me on my throne.” The arc of redemption is a family story—sons and daughters sharing life with the Father, in and through the Son, by the Spirit.

Of course, that’s precisely what sin shattered in the garden. Love without the freedom to choose would not be love; humanity chose wrongly, and estrangement followed. Yet the Father’s purpose never changed. The only begotten Son—the unique, eternal Son—came to ransom the family and bring us home. This is why, in Ephesians, everything is “in Christ.” Adoption is not accomplished by moral effort or spiritual résumé. It is a gift secured by Jesus’ blood, an act as irrevocable as a legal decree: our adoption papers are signed in the life, death, and resurrection of the Son.

If adoption names our status, the Gospels reveal its tone. Before Jesus worked a single miracle or preached a single sermon, the Father’s voice broke over the Jordan: “This is my beloved Son; with him I am well pleased.” Identity preceded activity. Derrick lingered there. If the Father delights in His Son before the work, and if we are in the Son by faith, then the Father’s pleasure rests on us before our performance. We are not first God’s workers; we are His children. Jesus calls believers His brothers and sisters. At Pentecost, the Father sealed this reality by giving us His own Spirit—the very Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead. That is family likeness. That is the empowering presence that makes us resemble our Father in character and our Brother in mission. In Christ, our standing in the unseen realm is not that of fearful slaves but of beloved children with real authority to resist darkness and walk in freedom.

It’s no wonder, then, that the enemy always goes for identity first. The pattern is unmistakable in the wilderness. Each of Jesus’ temptations began the same way: “If you are the Son of God…” Turn stones to bread—prove you can provide for yourself. Throw yourself down—prove you are significant enough to be rescued. Bow to me for the kingdoms—seize control without obedience. All of it was an assault on sonship. All of it was a lure to live from performance or power instead of trusted identity. Derrick cautioned that the strategies haven’t changed. The enemy will strain to erode our confidence in what the Father has spoken, fracture what God designed family to be, and sow confusion about what it means to bear His image. When we forget whose children we are, we forget the authority and inheritance we carry.

Derrick also spoke pastorally to the way our earthly experiences can cloud our view of the Father. He shared candidly that his own dad, though kind, was often absent, and that absence had quietly shaped how he imagined God—good, but distant. Many of us, he said, carry father-wounds or disappointments that make intimacy with God feel complicated. But the gospel meets us here with a title on our lips: Abba. Paul says in Romans 8:15 that we have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear, but the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry, “Abba, Father.” It’s the language of nearness—Papa, Daddy—tender, familial, safe. John marvels the same way: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God—and so we are” (1 John 3:1). This isn’t sentiment; it’s our status. And this status, once grasped, reorders everything.

Adoption does what legal proceedings always do: it confers a new name, a new home, and a new future. We carry the family name now, and with it the family inheritance. But adoption also carries the everyday miracle of resemblance. Derrick laughed that you can find his kids in a crowd even if you’ve never met them—his son talks like him, his daughter carries his mannerisms. Live in a home with someone and their ways rub off. So it is with our Father. Time with Him leads to family likeness. Holiness stops feeling like a rulebook and starts sounding like “this is how our family lives.” We love truth because Dad does. We extend mercy because our Father is merciful. We choose integrity because that’s His way. Our obedience flows from belonging, not from fear of being sent out of the house.

To help us test our hearts, Derrick asked us to imagine the Father’s face. If you picture Him looking at you, is He frowning, disappointed, arms folded and unconvinced? Or is He smiling with joy? So often, he said, our mental portrait reveals whether we are living as servants trying to earn our keep or as children secure in love. The beautiful truth of the gospel is that, in Christ, the Father’s face is toward us. He doesn’t ignore sin—He dealt with it decisively at the cross. But He does not relate to His children through a ledger. He sees us clothed in the Beloved, and He is proud to call us His own. Like any good parent, He may not always be proud of every choice we make, but nothing can make Him less proud to name us as His children.

All of this lands us in a profoundly practical place. We do not strive to get close to God; we live holy because we are already in His household. We do not perform to gain approval; we act from the approval already spoken over us in the Son. We do not fear the powers of darkness; we resist them with the confidence of those who carry the Spirit of the Living God. And when accusations or anxieties whisper, “Prove yourself,” we answer with the baptismal voice that has become our own: “Beloved.” That is not wishful thinking; that is the firm center of life In Christ.

Derrick’s own journey makes this more than theology. He testified to decades of faithful service and vivid experiences of God’s power—healings, provision, answered prayer—and still he realized he had been living chiefly as a servant in a well-run organization rather than as a son in a Father’s house. The shift didn’t make God smaller; it brought God nearer. It didn’t lessen awe; it deepened affection. It didn’t remove the call to holiness; it grounded it in family resemblance. In Christ, we are no longer orphans scrambling for scraps at the edge of the table. We are seated with our Brother at the Father’s side, welcomed into a story that began before the world’s foundation and will culminate in a family gathered, secure, and radiant in the Father’s home.

That is the invitation Derrick extended. Let the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead confirm in your spirit that you belong. Let the Father’s smile reframe your days. Let the Son’s finished work settle the question of identity once and for all. You are not forgotten. You are not rejected. You are not “just a worker.” In Christ, you are chosen. You are loved. You are adopted. And from that identity, you will find yourself becoming, day by day, like your Father.