Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

Dave Brannon wrote today's reading, and he titled it No Longer a Foreigner.

You don't belong here.

Those words crushed an eight-year-old girl's heart, and the pain stayed with her.

Her family had emigrated from a refugee camp in a war-torn country to a new country,

and her immigration card had the word alien stamped on it.

She felt like she didn't belong.

As an adult, although she put her faith in Jesus, she still felt alienated, stung by the feeling that she was an unwelcome outsider.

While reading her Bible, she discovered the promises of Ephesians chapter 2.

In verse 12, she saw that old, troubling word, alien.

You were without Christ being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from

the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But as she kept reading,

she saw how Christ's sacrifice had changed her status. She got to verse 19, which told her,

you are no longer a foreigner or alien. She was a

fellow citizen with God's people. Realizing that she was a citizen of heaven, she was overjoyed.

Never again would she be an outsider. God had taken her in and accepted her. Because of our sin, we're alienated from

God, but we don't have to stay that way. Jesus brought peace to all who were far away, making all

who trust him fellow citizens of His eternal kingdom, united as the body of Christ.

The scripture reading for today's devotional is from Ephesians chapter 2, verses 8 through 13,

and also verses 17 through 22.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith,

and this is not from yourselves.

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