The creator of the whole universe is our Father. We are his children, and Jesus is our brother.
All the riches of heaven now belong to us! They belong to us because they belong to God, and we are his children.
Just think - the sun, the moon, the earth and stars, are ours!
What a wonder!
And this was God's plan from the very beginning of time.
Before he even made the world, God planned to bring us into his family, to be together with his son Jesus.
But there was a problem.
How could we ever be with such a good and perfect God, when we know all the bad things we have done? Worse than that, God can't let bad things go unpunished. That wouldn't be right or fair, and God is perfect in all things.
But God loves us so much, that he planned from the beginning to send Jesus to take the punishment he knew one day we would all deserve.
And so, when the right time came, God took our sins from us, and put them all on Jesus. He accepted Jesus in our place on the cross to pay the price for all the wrong we have ever done, or ever will do, no matter how bad.
All our sins have been paid for by the highest price in all the universe. They have been paid for by the blood of Jesus. Our debt has been settled, now and forever. There is nothing more we could ever do. It is done. We have been set free.
In God's eyes now, we are as fresh and clean and pure as if we never sinned at all.
When God sees you and me, he sees Jesus. He doesn't see all the mistakes we have made, or all the times we have messed up or disappointed him. All of that has been completely washed away.
When God sees us, he sees the pure and perfect light of his son.
Now, because of God's great love for us, we are part of his family forever.
4/24/04