It's November now and it is also National Adoption Month! The goal of National Adoption Month is to increase national awareness and bring attention to the need for permanent families for children and youths in the U.S. foster care system. Each year there is a focus on a particular adoption related theme. This year the focus is on teens and how securing lifelong family connections for teenagers is a critical component to their future well being on so many levels.  

Adoption has become a profoundly important topic for me ever since we started the process and eventually adopted our fourth child, who is from China, 16 years ago. Lately I have been giving a lot of though to the biblical concept of adoption; the concept of the admission of a believer into the family of God, with all the rights and responsibilities that go with that status. Pastor John Piper said it well when he taught, “The gospel is not a picture of adoption, adoption is a picture of the gospel.” I see this so clearly! 

Adoption was planned from the beginning. We were predestined for adoption before the creation of the world. God loves and pursues each of us even when we are wretched, angry, and broken beings. Despite our sorry state, we are loved and invited to partake of the transformational step: becoming God’s child. He hopes to give you life and have relationship with you. He has gone through all the legal proceedings of the cross in order to free you from the penalty and power of sin and to bring you in as a beloved child. God chose us, gave us his name and an eternal inheritance and even invites us to call him “Father”. 

When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” (Galatians 4:4-6)

Many Christians have never considered the rich implications of their adoption into God's family. After He adopts us, God does not leave us on the outside, looking in. He doesn't leave us feeling unaccepted and unloved. Many of us have not had the benefit of a good and loving relationship with our earthly father. God wants very much to fill those holes in our hearts with the tender, biblical message of a Father's Love. He pours his Spirit into our hearts to give us the experience of being embraced in the family. Many of us have never known such things in our earthly family. It can be a powerful experience! 

Whenever I look at my beautiful children and my heart is so full of love for them; it reminds me of how beautiful and loved we are in the eyes of our Heavenly Father. Becoming a parent has definitely opened my eyes to a fuller understanding of the verses in the bible that talk about God’s love for us.

Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them. How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! Psalm 139:16-17