Trinity Community Church

In Christ - Chosen for Adoption

Derrick Overholt

What if your entire view of God shifted from seeing Him as a distant benefactor to knowing Him as your Father? In Chosen for Adoption, part of the In Christ series, Pastor Derrick Overholt shares a deeply personal journey that led him to rediscover one of Scripture’s most life-changing truths. After decades of faithfully serving God, he realized he had been relating to Him like a good boss—present, generous, and trustworthy, but still far away. Then Ephesians 1:3–6 broke through: in Christ, we have been predestined for adoption. Not hired. Not tolerated. Adopted.

Derrick opens with a powerful picture of how adoption changes everything through the story of Steve Jobs, then turns to the biblical word for adoption—huiothesia, “placing as a son.” He explains how this single word would have landed on both Jewish and Roman ears with the full weight of covenant and legal standing. From there, he traces the thread from Genesis to Revelation: we were uniquely made in God’s image “to be like us,” crafted for family relationship, not merely created for service. Jesus confirms the same reality—teaching us to say “Abba,” calling us brothers and sisters, and giving us His own Spirit. Adoption means a new name, a new home, and a full inheritance as co-heirs with Christ.

This message presses into identity before activity. At Jesus’ baptism, the Father’s voice declared, “This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased,” before a single miracle was performed. In the same way, our identity in Christ is settled before our performance ever begins. Derrick also shows how the enemy always attacks identity first—“If you are the Son of God…”—because confusion there keeps us from living in our authority, freedom, and purpose.

Along the way, Derrick invites you to visualize the Father’s face: is He frowning or beaming with joy? If we see disappointment, we may still be living like orphans. The good news is that in Christ we are welcomed into God’s household, indwelt by the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, and invited to grow into the family resemblance. We live holy not to earn a place at the table, but because we already belong there.

Listen and let this truth move from your head to your heart: you are chosen, loved, and adopted—fully and forever—in Christ.

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Derrick Overholt:

It's always a privilege to be here. As you heard, my name is Derek. I'm one of the pastors. It's been actually almost a year since I have spoke to you from stage. I know that's wild, isn't it?

Derrick Overholt:

But I wanted to start out this morning with just a little bit, just a few moments of what brought me to this sermon. And it began really the beginning of last year, and some of our youth have heard part of this sermon because the Lord led me to give some of this at summer camp in the beginning. Summer camp it's such a great time, but throughout this year God has been dealing with me. You guys knew that I was on sabbatical for a few months and thank you guys so much for the ability to do that. It was a great time of refreshment to my heart and my mind. It allowed me to slow down enough to hear what the Lord was speaking, and it took me quite some time. I actually didn't even hear this part of it until after the sabbatical was over and I began to hear what the Lord was trying to say to me the whole time. I believe this is probably one of the big reasons why, back in December, I kind of had a nervous breakdown, and this is something that for all of us, if we don't truly grasp the reality of this, we all can end up in the exact same location. Reality of this we all can end up in the exact same location. So I wanted to quickly tell you about how I viewed God up until this point. Now I have been a Christian my entire life and gosh. I remember there was a time at seven years old where I confessed that I was going to follow Jesus. But I remember at 12 years old I gave my life to him. I had a waterbed and I woke up feeling like I was never going to go to heaven and that was really scary. So I bowed down beside my bed and I prayed and I asked God into my life, right there. And so my whole life has really just been around God, but my view of God was much like this. I was trying to think of the best way to explain this, but I finally came up with.

Derrick Overholt:

One Years ago I worked for a company that was an incredible company, really good to me and my wife and I had a boss and her name was Donna. She was the president of our company, rather large company. They have, I think over 10,000 apartment units in America and I was blessed to be there. It was one of those jobs that you just love to have, and I remember, through one of the hardest times in our life, donna was there and she took care of it. But now the way that I viewed God was much like I viewed Donna. She was great. I only saw her about 20 times a year. I knew that she was going to make sure my paycheck got paid and I knew that she cared about me. Okay, but that was the extent of it.

Derrick Overholt:

So Eli died and we were in a really bad place and we were going to rent out our home because we just couldn't be in the home that our little boy was in because there was no way to get away from his room. It was right in the center of the house. So we just asked if we could rent an apartment to get out of our home. And she took it a step further and bought us a home and gave it to us rent-free the entire time that I finished working there. Again, it was such a beautiful thing to take care of us, but again, I barely ever saw her. I just knew that she cared about me right.

Derrick Overholt:

Well, I realized that's much of how I have been viewing God, knowing that, no matter what, he was going to be there for me, knowing that he was going to always provide he was always going to take care of me. I've seen him do incredible miracles that some of you here just wish you could see. I've watched dead come to life literally in front of my face. I've watched legs grow that were never long enough to walk, with so many things the blind to see. So, yeah, I knew that God was incredible, he was an awesome God and I had no problem at all serving him. I have all the way to this point, no problem at all, just being called his servant and knowing that I am taken care of by a good God in heaven. But, guys, there's much more to it than that and I have, like I said, I've lived my whole life up to this point just thinking that way.

Derrick Overholt:

And this year, this scripture that we're going to go over today opened my eyes and it led me to another scripture that I'm going to share in just a bit. That further opened my eyes and it actually dug deep into my doctrine and theology, so much so that some of the scripture I'm going to read today, there was pieces of it that I had never filtered in the proper way. I had just looked over those words like they didn't even exist. So much so that when I read the scripture with a clear mind that I go wait, is this heresy? How can the word of God be heresy? And so I have been struggling like deep in my heart, in a good way, you know, those good struggles that we need to have, and no matter what happens in our life, no matter what age you get, we always have to be open to understand that we might just have something in the scripture wrong, and we need to have our heart and mind open to allow the Holy Spirit to show us something that he's wanting to say, because that's one of those great things about the word being alive and we can read it our whole life. I'm 42 now y'all my whole life life. I'm 42 now, y'all my whole life. And I just now got it and it moves. And I'm sure when I'm 72, I'll read it again and go what? How did I not get that for 72 years, right? So today I just wanted to start with a moment of giving you a view of where I have been.

Derrick Overholt:

Our sermon today is Chosen for Adoption. I'm going to start with a quick story. There was a young boy In February 24th 1955, he was born to two college students that knew that they could not raise this child. They had no means, they didn't know what to do and, thank God, they chose adoption. And so they had this family set up. And right as the baby boy was born, this family decided we can't adopt this baby. So now this is the second family that says I don't want this baby. And along came Paul and Clara. Now they didn't have a whole lot, but they were two people that couldn't have children and wanted to have a baby. And the mother said look, I just wanna know, will you make sure that this young boy goes to college? And they said sure, we'll make sure, with everything we got, this young man will go to college. So they adopted him and this boy that once was. He had been looked over two times. He was adopted and adoption changed his life, because this boy grew up to create one of the largest technical powerhouses house, as we know today, is Apple Steve Jobs. Where would Steve Jobs had been if he had never been adopted? His whole life changed with adoption.

Derrick Overholt:

And today, in Ephesians 1, paul tells us a story much like it, except this time it's about all of us, because we were orphans. So we'll start with the scripture, ephesians 1, verse 3 through 6. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord, jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for your word. We thank you for your spirit moving here this morning. We thank you, lord, for who you are and how you made a way for us, god, in a way that is so powerful and really inconceivable of why you would do it. But, god, we thank you, lord, for your words and we pray that this morning you would speak through me, lord, in the name of Jesus, amen.

Derrick Overholt:

So last week Tyler did a wonderful job giving an introduction to Ephesians, and we heard him say that the theme of Ephesians is in Christ and, as a matter of fact, as I'm reading through the book, it's almost in every verse for the first 13 verses. I think there was two verses missing, some form of in Christ. We just read it in these few verses three times. It was in Christ and with Christ, in Christ, in him, those type of things over and over again throughout Ephesians and in these few verses we just heard that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heaven, every one of them, every available blessing in the cosmos. Everything has been given to us as a believer in Christ. The decision was made before the earth was ever even hung in orbit. The father, the son and the Holy spirit made that decision way before they even hung the earth. He did this so that we could be holy and blameless before the father and it was his plan, through adoption, that we would become his very own family. Now, before you guys think that I'm just looking over this scripture, this scripture is very deep. These three verses we could go over for a few weeks, maybe even more.

Derrick Overholt:

There's a huge word right before adoption, called predestined, and this morning predestined could be a sermon all of its own and I don't have time enough to go through both of them this morning, so I didn't want to just overlook it and just bypass it, give this scripture any disservice. But today I felt like the Lord was really focused on adoption, and so that's where we're going. The adoption word here used is and I'm going to probably butcher this a few different times huiothosia. I believe huiothosia is the word that he used. This word is only used in the Bible three times. Paul used it in three of his letters Ephesians, romans and Galatians. It means placing as a son. He probably used this specific term because he was talking to the Gentiles and the Jews. The Jews would have seen a different view of this and the Gentiles would seen another view of it, so that to the Jew it would recall God's chosen people from the very beginning, the inheritance that was through Abraham, back to that point, into the Gentile enrollment. It would recall the legal adoption, much like we call it today, a change, change of legal status, a full family membership. It would have wrapped everything up in one and it allowed Paul to say God's eternal decision culminates in placing believers in the father's household, a corporate, covenantal refamilying that carries legal standing and inheritance.

Derrick Overholt:

As I said a few moments ago, it has always been God's plan for family, for family, sons and daughters, not just creations sons and daughters that would share his home, share everything he has share, all of his abilities, before the foundations of the world. He made all of this because he didn't want us to just be a creation. He had created plenty before that. We don't know of all of it. He had created angels and different servants, but he had never created a human. And the reason was it's because he wanted to create his family. We were made in his image for this purpose. And here's that other scripture I was telling you about that.

Derrick Overholt:

I went to and I read and I'd never caught four words and I'm going to read them to you. You'll probably catch them and some of you may not, so hopefully this is going to help out this morning. But in Genesis, chapter 1, verses 26 and 27. Then God said let us First notation of Father, son and the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. Let us make human beings in our image to be like us. I had never gotten those four words. They will rain over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on earth, small animals that scurry along the ground.

Derrick Overholt:

So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God. He created them male and female. He created them Three times. We hear that he created them male and female. He created them Three times. We hear that he created them. God did not create us like the animals. He did not create us like any other creature or any other thing. He created us in his image, carrying his traits and his abilities. You love this morning. I love this morning because he loves. We're given the ability to reason because he does. What other creature does that? None other. We're able to be kind because he's kind. We're able to look out and like, take care of something in a just a powerful way, because he does that. All the things that you look at that are so unique to a human, it's because that's like God. We're in his image. So we weren't made just as some random creation. Why would God take time to create something that looked so much like him, that could act like him and all of that? Why would he do that if it wasn't a purpose?

Derrick Overholt:

And if we take it just a little bit further, another scripture that I picked up now we're all the way in Genesis, chapter one. Now let's go all the way to Revelation, chapter three, and it's in the letter to Laodicea, when Jesus is in division. And Jesus said to one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne as I conquered, and sat down with my father on his throne. From the beginning to the end, we see throughout scripture, if we look at it properly, that we were created as family. As family, we were supposed to be always with him in the garden. We were there with him, walking with him. We don't know how long that happened before we made a mistake, but we walked with him and daily he came and he hung out with us and he spent time with us and he would have walked and talked, which meant that we had to be like him so that we'd understand, because this is the family that he was making.

Derrick Overholt:

The human story was always about God creating us to be with him in family, and that's what we see throughout the entire Bible, and we see this adoption word, adoption. Well, what happened? We, of course, failed in the garden because God had him. People ask all the time why did he even allow us to make a decision like that? Well, because if he didn't let you have a decision, if you were going to follow him, if you were going to be obedient, then you were forced to love him. He didn't want that, so we made a bad decision.

Derrick Overholt:

And Jesus, this was God's plan as well. He's going to come and he's going to get us. He's going to ransom his family. He's going to get us all back and bring us back in community with God, now, jesus being the only begotten son begotten there meaning unique, chosen son of God, the one that is godly, that is the son of God, the one that is God, the son. It's just so much that comes from that, because he is the one that made the way for all of this. This is why we continue to hear in Ephesians in Christ, everything that we're talking about is because we're in Christ. None of this is available by us, none of this is available by your doings or my doings. So, knowing all of this, in Christ, we're loved before we did anything, before anything, and we see this because here's the truth.

Derrick Overholt:

If I'm really thinking of this properly, I know that God doesn't treat one child different than another. And he sends Jesus down to the earth and Jesus gets baptized, and what's the first thing that happens? We hear God's voice come from heaven. This is my son. I love him. This is my son, whom I love. With him. I am well pleased.

Derrick Overholt:

I don't know if you guys knew this, but Jesus had done no miracles at this point. He hadn't walked on water, he hadn't turned, you know, gotten more wine, he hadn't fed the 5,000. He had done nothing at all. But God showed Jesus and everyone around him right then what his identity was. This is my son. Nothing's going to change that and I'm well pleased with him and I believe that the Lord's wanting us to hear that as well today, that before we do anything at all, when we give our lives to Jesus, when we get saved and we're ransomed to the family of God, then we are sons and daughters before we do anything at all. Daughters, before we do anything at all, you're already his son and his daughter. You don't have to earn it, you don't have to do anything. Your identity doesn't come from what you do or what you try to do in a good way. It's not about how much I can do over here and be nice or this, that. No, he loves us, no matter what.

Derrick Overholt:

Immediately, it has been given to us through Jesus Christ, been adopted. It's a gift. Anyone who's adopted into a home it's a gift, because the adopted person doesn't get to say I want that family over there and that family has to do something. It is a gift from the one adopting to the child and that is what God has done for you and I In Christ. We have the ability to be adopted In Jesus' blood, the adoption papers, and it's signed once and forever. So we see that even in Jesus's own words, we want to.

Derrick Overholt:

I was even thinking about this adoption part and because then I was looking at it and I said, well then Jesus is our brother, that's another one of those things that was really hard for me to grasp. I almost couldn't say it for the first month of thinking about this. I've been thinking about this scripture for quite some time. But he said in his own words he called many times. He called us brothers and sisters.

Derrick Overholt:

Jesus did with the disciples, and then God showed us just even more how much that he has adopted us. When the spirit that was inside of Jesus, that walked him through everything and then raised him from the dead on the day of Pentecost, god said now that's yours and he puts it in us. Now, to prove to you guys that you're part of my family, I'm going to give you my very own spirit to dwell inside of you, just like Jesus, because you're made in my image and you were destined to look like us, to be like us. You're destined for that in Christ. It's all in him. Again, none of this is possible without being in Christ. Our standing in this world we were talking earlier and was it Scott or Kelly was talking about we're not going against flesh and blood here, but of principalities and demons and the dark world. We, because of all of this, have a higher standing in the spiritual world than all of them, than all of them, than all of them. God, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, us we're in the same household. That's the adoption we're talking about.

Derrick Overholt:

I was thinking this morning about stories that we hear of you know people getting beat up and things like that, and then big brother comes in and takes care of the problem. That's our family household and it's like I feel like when I pray sometimes it's like devil. You just wait Until my brother hears about this. You just wait until my dad hears about this. Let's see what happens when he comes and takes care of this situation. And all of this was ideas I've never thought about in 42 years, and so my identity. For all of this time has been a servant of the most high God and I've been totally all right with that and I would have died and been completely fine with that. But, man, how much I was missing when I finally got the thought I am that much a son, that Jesus is my big brother, that came and rescued me back to the Father, that God put on me the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead. That identity of an adopted person I had never grasped. And this morning I felt like I'm supposed to share this because I feel like some of us here are in the same boat.

Derrick Overholt:

Here's the thing the devil will always attack our identity first. Why does he do this? Satan was a created being, nothing like God. Mad that he wasn't chosen to be a part of the family. Mad because he couldn't be like God, he couldn't have the Holy Spirit, he couldn't be called sons and daughters, he couldn't, in the end, in Revelation, sit on the throne with God invited up. The devil was so mad when he saw what God was creating this family and what they had been given, what we have been given. So he wants to attack your identity first, because if he can attack our identity as sons and daughters of the most high God. We won't know what power we have. And so here we are and we have family problems. Well, he wants to destroy the family, because that's how God created it all to be Mother, father, children.

Derrick Overholt:

All of it was a plan that God made to give the perfect picture of what it's going to be like forever. Guys, we're not just going to be floating on clouds for eternity. Jesus is going to come back. He's going to get us. We're going to go up, not just going to be floating on clouds for eternity. Jesus is going to come back. He's going to get us. We're going to go up. He's going to renew the earth. We're going to come back down and be with him and we're going to live here for eternity with our father, god, forever.

Derrick Overholt:

And the devil won't ever get to enjoy any of that. That's why he's attacking your identity. That's why he's attacking your identity. That's why he's attacking your family. That's why he's attacking all of it, because if he can attack that, you are just powerless.

Derrick Overholt:

So he attacks families, and we've seen it, and it's grown so much over the last 80 years. It started in so many different ways, but we have feminism, that kicked in and it showed women that they don't need men, they don't need anything to do with them. And so I don't know if you guys knew, but I did a little research this week and found out that before feminism movement, marriage rates of divorce was 20%. When it kicked in, after 20 years, it was 40% because men were no longer needed. And we see that all the way up to today, where it's grown so much more, where now men aren't even men anymore, man's not even needed in a family. And so families are just getting ripped apart more and more and more, to where now the divorce rate's like 55%. It's just tore apart because the devil knows.

Derrick Overholt:

If he can attack the identity of a family and rip it apart, then they won't realize who they're supposed to be in God. And he's taking it even a step further now with genders, the simplest thing that one could know about oneself. Honestly, to think that I would be confused about the simplest thing in the entire universe, that would really mess up my identity. And if I didn't even know, it's almost like saying well, are you a human or not? And there are now those as well think they're dogs and cats and stuff, then God must have really messed up. So then, if God messed up that bad in my identity, then I really am just a worthless pile of clay sitting here. I'm useless.

Derrick Overholt:

You see what the devil's doing? To destroy the family unit, because he knows that's what God wants, that's his plan. Is that so? When our identity continues to be taken down, it makes us weaker. And we saw that the first thing that the devil did when Jesus just heard from God. God told him this is my son, in whom I'm well pleased.

Derrick Overholt:

Jesus went straight into the desert for 40 days of temptation and the devil came at him and said if you really are the son of God, then you turn these stones into bread. Prove that you can provide for yourself. Do it right now. He's attacking Jesus's identity. If you really are the son of God, then you jump off that temple. You know the angels will grab you. Prove you're important and if you really are the son of God, then you bow down and receive all these kingdoms right now. Take control without following through with obedience.

Derrick Overholt:

He's trying to destroy what Jesus is doing, because if he can attack the family, if he can confuse gender, if he can distort God's plan, then he can continue to whisper to every one of us that we're not enough, that we're not worthy, that God won't take care of you, so why would you follow him? We don't have to prove ourself. We don't have to. The deeds that we do, they're great, but they're not going to get you to heaven. Here's the truth, guys. We do. We want to be holy because our dad's holy, not because there's a rule book that says we should do this, this, this, this and this. No, no, this is what our dad looks like. I want to be like dad. My dad doesn't lie. I'm going to do that. I don't want to lie.

Derrick Overholt:

Tyler talked about it a few weeks ago. He said there's certain things that the lines do, and all the kids know what those things are. If you're a line, this is what you do Well, and all the kids know what those things are. If you're aligned, this is what you do Well. If you're part of the family of God, this is just what we do. We're gonna live a holy life. We're gonna uphold what God says is right. Our dad in heaven created the world to work in a specific way and we don't wanna mess that up. We're gonna work with God. We're gonna work with dad because that's the way he created it, and when we realize that our identity as adopted children to the most high God is that he's dad.

Derrick Overholt:

We see it in the scripture in Romans 8, 15,. That same word adoption. Paul used it again. He said you have not received a spirit. Romans 8, 15,. That same word euthysia, adoption Paul used it again. He said you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God's spirit when he adopted you, that same word as his own children. Now we call him Abba. To us that would be daddy, papa. It's a very intimate word that you would call your father. It means that you have a relationship with that man and he's not just your birth guy, he's got a relationship with you. And so Paul's reminding us over and over, not just there, but all the way through. And Jesus himself kept saying the father, the father, brothers, I'm taking you to the father, brothers, I'm taking you to the father. That's us. Brothers, sisters, we're going to the father who's adopted us. Dad, abba, papa. He loves us, he's there for us, he will guide us.

Derrick Overholt:

Now I know there's so many people in the room that have not had good dads. You don't know what this looks like Me myself. I mean, my dad's a good dad. He just never was around. So I realized this year that I've lived for many years with daddy issues that I didn't recognize until this year because my dad just wasn't around. Wonderful guy, I love him to death, always kind, but he just wasn't around. So I guess that's probably what started to make some of the way my vision was for family that yeah, he's a good dad. He's way off over there, you know.

Derrick Overholt:

But that's the thing. A lot of the ways that we live and the things that we walk through and deal with in our lives shape how we view our father in heaven. So that's so important, dads, for you to be the dad that you're called to be, to man up when you need to for our children, because when we continually show them a weak dad that's not around, that's never there, then we're showing them when they hear father, as in theology, that he's a far off, distant dad that's never here and close by, and it may take them until they're 42 to get that picture, but our father, our dad in heaven, our Abba, will always be kind. He has always been, he's always present with us. He has never given up on you. He delights in you, and Paul's not the only one who saw it. John saw it in John 1, 3, 1. See how much, see how very much our father loves us, that he calls us his children, because that's what we are. It changes our identity. Adoption changes our identity.

Derrick Overholt:

This morning. Some of you know my daughter, allie, and you know my son, zeke, and if you were to see them in a crowd of people and you knew me but you had never met them I bet you could figure out which ones was mine. Why is that? Because they want to be like dad in some ways and things rub off and them living in my household, things that I do rub off on them and they start doing them. You can hear my son talk and just hear my voice pretty much, because he's just as redneck as I am. You can see actions and movements and all of that from my children. Guys, that's what will happen to us when we go in dad's house. We hang out with dad, we allow dad's traits to move us to start being what we do. We become holy because dad's holy, people in the world start seeing God in us, because we look like God, because we look like dad. People start noticing a difference in us because we're starting to look like our dad. We speak up, we do things because that's what dad wants. Today we are no longer orphans.

Derrick Overholt:

Some of us this morning might be just as I have been for the longest time still seeing myself as just a servant, an orphan that was picked up, been taken care of really good, but he's just an orphan still on the outside. That's not who we are. So today I just want to do a little exercise. If everybody would close your eyes for a moment. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand or nothing, but I just want you to close your eyes and I want you to think about God. If you were to see God's face right now, if you picture his face, you're standing in front of him. It's the end of time. What's his face look like right now? Is he frowning at you? Is he frowning at you? Is there an angry look on his face? Is there disappointment? Do you see him smiling at you? You can open your eyes. If you saw anything other than pure joy on his face.

Derrick Overholt:

You probably still see yourself as an orphan because you don't see yourself the way God sees you Because we are in Christ, covered by the blood of God's amazing son, adopted full adoption in Christ. God sees us through him, so he's pleased with you, he's proud of you, he's proud to call you his child. Now there's sometimes my kids do things that I'm not so proud of their actions. But, guys, there will be nothing ever that Zeke or Allie will do that. I will not be proud to call them my children. Nothing, I won't be proud of their actions, but I'll always be proud to call them my children. That's how much God loves us. That's the same thing. I believe that God gives us children to show us how much he loves us.

Derrick Overholt:

Today, if you have a child and you know just how much you give for them, times that by about a hundred, and that's your God, that's your dad, who's adopted you in to his home With inheritance to all that. He has All, even his very own spirit, placed into you and I. Now we are not forgotten, we're not rejected. We are not forgotten. We're not rejected. We're not just a worker. We're chosen, we're loved, we're adopted Into the kingdom of the most high.

Derrick Overholt:

God. Father, we just thank you so much For the truth found in your word. God, we thank you that you didn't just leave us as orphans. God, there was so many ways that you could have come and rescued us. There was so many ways where you could have saved us and gave us a way to do this, this, this and this to earn it. You could have come and saved us but just kept us outside with the dogs eating slop. But, god, you did much more than we could ever imagine when you adopted us and you signed those adoption papers with the blood of your most holy son and made a way for us to come into your home. And, god, we know that forever we will sit with you in your house as your family. So, god, now we pray that you'd work each and every one of us.

Derrick Overholt:

God, you know I've been praying about this and I need it. I need to understand who I am in your family. It I need to understand who I am in your family and I pray that for each and every person here, lord, that the identity of us being your sons and daughters would get down deep in our soul and change our lives forever, because there's nothing in this world that can come against God and his son, and now we are one of those your son and your daughters. Nothing can come against us. Nothing of this dark world can conquer us. Because we are in Christ and we have victory, because you give us victory and we pray that you'll help us to see. Our identity is in you. In the name of Jesus, amen.

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