The Family Estate

Colossians 1:15-20

Through him [Christ] God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see. . . . Everything was created through him and for him. (Colossians 1:16)

YOU HAVE BEEN ADOPTED into the divine family, and there’s something you need to know. It is the wealthiest family in the universe; your Father owns everything, and your elder brother is the heir of it all. But he has made you a coheir with him. That means you stand to inherit everything; in fact, it’s already yours. You get to live on this royal estate even now. If there’s anything you want to do, any portion of the inheritance you want to spend (in keeping with family purposes, of course), all you need to do is submit a proposal to the Father in the name of the Son. It may take some refining, but it is not an illegitimate request. You have access to the family fortune.

When you learn to pray from that perspective—not as an outsider trying to pull blessings down from heaven, but as a son or daughter already written into the family’s inheritance—your prayers begin to take on a different tone. You don’t beg; you ask. You don’t wonder if your unworthiness disqualifies you; you are clothed in Christ, and his worthiness is enough. You don’t ask for selfish purposes; you ask because the family is on a mission and has a plan to flourish and expand. When prayers come from that perspective and take on that tone, they begin to be filled with faith. And faith is what God says will prompt him to respond.

Learn to pray as a son or daughter who already has a share in the inheritance. See the world as your family’s estate, and submit requests that will make right whatever has gone wrong in it. Know the Father’s purposes, and line up with them. His Kingdom came in the Son, it is now coming through his sons and daughters, and it will come in fullness when the Son returns. Live—and ask—as an heir who longs for the restoration of all good things.

{Father, teach me our family’s ways so I can use our inheritance for your purposes. Let me live in its abundance and ask as a child—from a position of privilege. May I bless the world with all you have given. Amen.