For the past several weeks, I’ve sensed God pressing the word ‘chosen’ into my heart. After taking some time to mull it over, I finally looked up the chosen in the Greek.

I zeroed in on the descriptor ‘select’. I’ve heard about sanctification all my life, being chosen and set aside for a specific purpose, but when I saw ‘favorite’, I stumbled a bit. Favorite? Isn’t it a bit sanctimonious to yourself God’s favorite? Shouldn’t I be thinking about a word like ‘holy’? Something that’s meant to transform my behavior into the image of Jesus?

After meditating on this thought, I came to a realization. When a person is ‘chosen’ for a specific task, hand-picked and called someone’s favorite, it changes the way they behave. They are infused with confidence. Purpose. They make better choices. They live and move and breathe with intention. For followers of Jesus, it means that knowing Who we belong to propels us into the realm of grace, where we choose holiness because it pleases His heart, not because we are filling out a checklist of rules.

During the past week, verse after verse have come to mind.

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” ~John 15:16

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” ~1 Peter 2:9

“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, that we should be holy and blameless before him.” ~Ephesians 1:3-4

My word for 2024 is “chosen”. I’m God’s favorite. And if you know Him, you are too.