When I did my search on “belong” in the bible, I found that we belong to God, to Christ, to the Church, and to each other. Today, I looked more closely at what it means to belong to God. In the culture we live in, we will shout “I don’t belong to anyone.” As a song in the 60’s said, “You don’t own me, I’m not just one of your toys.” Of course there’s some significant truth in this idea in that we don’t “belong” to anyone in the sense of ownership. All men are created equal and have the right to life liberty and to the pursuit of happiness. I read that somewhere. But we do belong to God, even in the sense of ownership. The Psalmist sang about it a lot. You might be familiar with Psalm 100. We used to sing it a lot at our Church 30 years ago. It says, “Know that the LORD, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.”

This is a theme throughout the Bible. Ezekiel 18:4 says, “Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine…” Paul acknowledges the truth of God’s ownership of his life also. In Acts 27, he says, “For this very night there stood before me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship…” To understand what it means to belong to God is to get a grasp on Paul’s quote in this passage.

In that quote from Paul, you might remember that he’s the only calm passenger on a ship that on it’s way to Rome. It encountered a terrible storm and the crew and the officers all struggled with how to save the ship and tried all they could to keep from losing it. Then they gave up with the thought of saving the ship and desperately only wanted to save their own lives. Paul, cool and collected, put them all at peace and explained that they would all be safe and they should just trust in his God. He knew he “belonged” to God and that God had a purpose and a plan for His life. He was safe and secure no matter what storms of life my assault him; because he knew that he belonged to God as a precious possession. God would not let anything happen to him. Isaiah 43:1-2 explains the true significance of what it means for us to belong to God. It reads, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” I think Paul understood what it meant to belong to God. Do you?

Chuck
God says, “Anyone who harms you harms my most precious possession.” Zechariah 2:8