I wrote this sermon for our adoption agency, Buckner International Adoption, as part of a package of resources for National Adoption Month last November.
When Love Brings You Home
In his 2001 song inspired by his adopted daughter, When Love Takes You In, Steven Curtis Chapman writes:
I know you've heard the stories
But they all sound too good to be true
You've heard about a place called home
But there doesn't seem to be one for you
So one more night you cry yourself to sleep
And drift off to a distant dream
Where love takes you in and everything changes
A miracle starts with the beat of a heart
When love takes you home and says you belong here
The loneliness ends and a new life begins
When love takes you in.
For children living in an orphanage, the concepts of home and family are only the substance of hopes and dreams. Even in the midst of other children, institutional life always reminds orphans that rejection and abandonment have been driving forces in their lives.
But for adopted children, everything changes in an instant. In one moment they move from rejection to acceptance, from loneliness to being part of a family, from hopelessness to hope, from abandonment to home. Their physical journey is not so different from our own spiritual journey when Jesus Christ saves us. Perhaps that is why James 1:27 says, “…to visit orphans and widows in their distress” is a sign of “pure and undefiled religion.” By caring for those who are least able to take care of themselves, we walk in stride with God.
As a pastor and student of the Bible, I knew these things and believed them in my mind, but when I became the parent of an adopted child I began to see God’s love for me from an entirely new perspective.
The language of adoption is used in the New Testament to describe our own relationship with God. In John 14:2-3, Jesus tells his disciples that although he is going away, “I will prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” In verse 18, Jesus continues, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” In other words, Jesus assures his disciples that they will not be abandoned; they have a home and a family to go with it.
In the fall of 2010 my wife and I completed our second adoption in Russia and prepared to bring our 5-year old son back to the United States. We picked up our son in Krasnodar, Russia and in the evening we boarded a plane for Moscow where we would spend a few days finalizing the documents that would allow him to enter the United State. We were apprehensive about how he would respond to being alone with us, especially since we did not speak much of his language and he spoke none of ours. He had never been on an airplane, and had rarely been outside of the small village where he lived in an orphanage.
Immediately upon arrival in Moscow he started asking about his brother and we had to explain that we would be going to his permanent home in a few days. After arriving at the apartment where we would stay, we put him in bed for the night and started to relax from our long journey. A few minutes later he snuck out of bed and rummaged through his backpack until he pulled out the photo album that we had given him five months earlier. The album contained our pictures along with those of his new sister and brother, the family dog, his new bedroom, school, and other parts of his new life. He looked through the pages reciting the name on each picture in Russian. When we examined the worn pages we realized that this must have been his nightly ritual. He was not satisfied at all with this interim living situation in Moscow. He was ready to be taken home.
That longing for home is a powerful force in both our physical and spiritual lives. For an orphan, coming home means a place of safety free from the fear of abandonment or neglect, much like what God has done for us in Christ.
Adoption not only provides the language of salvation, it also provides a picture for me regarding my ongoing relationship with God. We seem tempted to view our relationship with God as one where we are in the position of “owing” him for rescuing us from sin. Without question, he has rescued us but Scripture teaches that God wants more from our relationship than that. He brings us into his family and offers the rewarding relationship of Father and child.
Romans 8:15-18 says, “For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ…”
When my wife and I adopted our first son in 2004, I quickly realized that I did not want him to grow up feeling as if he owed me for rescuing him from some bleak or hopeless future. He was immediately part of our family, and since that time he has never been less than our own son. The same is true for our second son. They bring joy to our hearts and the relationship that we share enriches my life. They should never feel as though they do not belong, or that they owe me something for rescuing them.
Adopting any child, especially an international child, creates a lot of challenges. Issues of language, behavior, and emotional needs can test the strongest of wills. Children do not automatically shed the baggage that accompanies them, but becoming part of a family allows them to learn to keep the best of who they are and let go of the things that hold them back. When love brings them home they find a place to safely deal with issues of abandonment and neglect, and they discover a family that will not abandon them to the challenges and will also draw them forward to a better future. Every family experiences both victories and disappointments, but adopted children learn that families will not give up on them.
While I believe without question that my relationship with God is the result of him reaching out to me and rescuing me from the consequences of sin, I also believe that he finds joy in something deeper. He adopted me, brought me into his family, and I believe that he finds joy in walking through life with me.
When God’s love brings us home, we do not automatically shed the baggage that weighed us down. The consequences may have been erased but the power remains. We find quickly, however, that God does not abandon us to those struggles. He works within us to bring out the best that he created us to be while removing the baggage that holds us back. Plenty of challenges exist, but God never gives up on us, and I believe that he finds joy and satisfaction in that journey.
Adoption provides both a language and a visual aid to understanding our own salvation in Christ, and we know that to care for orphans is to live in the testimony of that salvation. So, how do we exercise this call to walk in stride with God by reaching out to the hundreds of thousands of orphans in our world who cannot provide for themselves? Here are some ideas:
1. Become an advocate for orphan children. Children become orphans because of choices made by someone else. They need someone to step forward to remind them that they have value and that someone cares for them. Families who advocate for orphans can host children in their homes on holidays or weekends, remember their birthdays, and are a spokesman for these children for potential adopting families. Most of all, advocates will pray for families to open up and receive these children.
For international orphans, advocates participate in programs such as Buckner’s Angels Abroad ministry. Advocates host adoptable Russian children for two weeks and continue to pray for them after they return to Russia.
If adoption is not part of God’s plan for your family, becoming an advocate for orphan children can still allow you to be part of adoption ministry.
2. Minister to some of the thousands of children who may never be adopted. Church groups minister to orphanages, both domestic and international, by improving facilities, providing for physical needs, leading camps and Bible schools, and just giving love to children. Ministry to orphans prepares the way for others to adopt and offers a witness of love and hope to those who have known little of either one.
When my wife and I adopted our first son from Tambov, Russia in 2004, a woman in the church I served at the time asked me how many children were in the baby home where he had lived. I estimated about 100 children. She began making quilts, and six years later we sent off to Russia the 100th quilt made by Laura Chester to a Russian orphanage. That was her own personal, God-given vision to care for those who could not care for themselves and to walk in stride with God.
3. Ask your church to develop a ministry of adoption by creating an environment where more families will consider adoption, answers can be found to their questions, assistance can be provided for the challenging journey through the adoption process, and a church can assist families with the financial cost of adopting. Within the setting of a local church, families can find support before, during, and after the adoption process has been completed.
4. Consider adoption. Quite simply, more families should consider whether God would lead them to welcome an orphan child home. Fewer adoptions exist because fewer people consider adoption a possibility. We tend to maximize the challenges and minimize the rewards. Only God can clearly direct you on whether adoption is the right step for your family, but he cannot direct you unless you are willing to trust him with the possibility. Do you have the means and the opportunity to adopt a child? Can you consider the possibility that God may lead you to a child that needs for love to bring him or her home?
Few things in life can be more challenging or more rewarding than giving hope to a child by bringing him or her into a family. When we do so, we walk in stride with God by imitating his own actions toward us and by providing for those who can least provide for themselves.
Together as advocates, churches on mission, and as adoptive families we can bring children home and help them find the love, acceptance, and nurture that God desires for them.
