My wife and I are looking forward so much to having our entire family home with us this week.  Our oldest daughter and her husband Mike and Letitia Yoder and their four children Hannah, Joshua, Cedric, and Alecia arrived from Berlin, Germany, this past Sunday evening (coming home from church planting there for Mike to finish his PhD at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, IL).  This evening our son and wife Jonathan and Kim Wiley will be arriving from Columbus, Ohio (newlyweds as of this past November and on pastoral staff at our Columbus GBC).  And then tomorrow evening our daughter and husband Cort and Katrina Walker will be arriving from Virginia Beach, Virginia, with their two children Janelle and Ethan (where Cort is ready to begin his third year in law school at Regent University there - hoping to defend first amendment issues and Christian liberties).  We will all be together Friday and Saturday before they begin leaving on Sunday.  My dad is also staying with us, so there will be nine adults and six children seven and younger all in our one house (at least the adults outnumber the children!!). 

We have been looking forward to them all coming for so long (of course after all fifteen of us have been together for awhile we may start counting the hours until we return to "normal").  Family is so precious.  And we will savor every moment of our time together.  I can't think of any greater pleasures in all of life than the pleasures of love and marriage and family.  We want to enjoy to the full!! 

No wonder when God chooses terms to describe the relationship He wants to enjoy with us, He calls us family.  God is our Father, and we are His children.  Jesus is our Husband, and we are His wife.  The Holy Spirit is our Teacher/Coach/Helper, and we are His students.  And God wants us to be His family so much that He was willing to send His Son Jesus down to our world to become one of us, so He could die in our place to pay the price of our sins.  That is why God gets so excited and all of heaven celebrates for joy when we accept this gift of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ and become a member of God's family. 

I believe that God's greatest pleasure is when we learn to relax and enjoy life in our new family!! And I believe that is where we find our greatest pleasure as well!! 

So come home to God's Family - and enjoy ultimate pleasure together - now and forever!!