The Cry of the Adopted!

There is a lot of talk that always happens in churches about being a “mature Christian.” And honestly a lot of it is a bunch of crap! The things that people usually point to as marks of “maturity” quite often have nothing to do with spiritual formation. They usually include some knowledge of the Bible with the ability to quote portions of it, and being able to have a conversation about spiritual things in which you have some new knowledge or insight to share. I hate conversations with people who define maturity this way and I get frustrated with churches that tend to facilitate this idea through their “dispensing of knowledge” approach to doing church. Just come on Sundays and hear what the master of knowledge has to say… and you will be mature! What a joke!

I think a better indication of maturity has a lot to do with how much we see ourselves as orphans adopted by God and how that plays out in this world. It has a lot to do with how we view this world and how we talk to God about it. Maybe the first mark of moving toward maturity is when a person looks at the world around them and is struck with the idea that “this is not right.” Again I want to share with you a portion of the book Adopted For Life by Russell Moore.

“The Spirit drives us to discontentedness with the status quo, and so we call out together for our Father’s attention. The Abba cry just might be the most easily misunderstood aspect of the biblical revelation of our adoption. How many of us have heard Abba described as an infant cooing out the words “Da-da” or “Papa”? This cry though, in the context of the Scriptures, is not an infantile cooing. The Abba is a scream! It’s less the sound of a baby giggling up into his father’s face, and more the sound of a child screaming “Daddy!” as his face is being ripped apart by a rabid bulldog. It is primal scream theology.”

“The Bible tells us “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence” (Hebrews 5:7) Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane is screaming to his Father for deliverance, to the point that the veins in his temples burst into drops of blood (Luke 22:39-44). That’s the Abba cry. It’s the scream of the crucified.”

“For all of the disturbing aspects of the orphanage in which we found our boys, one stands out above all the others in its horror. It was quiet. The place was filled with an eerie silence, quieter than the Library of Congress, despite the fact that there were cribs full of babies in every room. If you listened intently enough, you could hear the sound of gentle rocking – as babies rocked themselves back and forth in their beds. They didn’t cry because no one responded to their cries. So they stopped. That’s dehumanizing in its horror.”
“That’ where the Spirit is leading us, in Christ. The Holy Spirit doesn’t lead us to be the toothy, giddy caricature of a “Spirit filled” Christian. The Spirit leads us to see when we are in enemy-occupied territory, and he teaches us to rage against that machine. We’re frustrated right now when we see images of a python swallowing a pig on a nature program on television, when we see a billboard for a divorce attorney, when we hear of children swept away by a mudslide in the Third World, when we find ourselves gossiping about an acquaintance. The Spirit leads us to cry out with the rest of the universe, “O God, deliver us from this! This is not how it’s supposed to be!”

“It is through this kind of praying that we know we have “received the Spirit of adoption as sons” (Romans 8:15). Through this, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs” (Romans 8:16-17). Sometimes this passage confuses believers because we assume this means there’s an internal prompt, reassuring us that we’re really children of God. We assume this means a kind of peace in our hearts, a tranquility of assurance. It’s actually the opposite.”

“The Abba cry is a groan. Paul tells the church at Rome that because of the curse, “the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.” But it’s not just the creation screaming. Paul writes that “we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:26). When we recognize the groaning of the universe – and groan with it – we are confessing our own part in the curse. We recognize then, all around us, the need for a crucified Christ, and we endure suffering because we know that it is only in his shed blood and pierced flesh that the universe will be restored.”

So when is the last time you cried out to God, because you knew he would hear you and respond as a Father who deeply cares?

Love loud…risk often…hope always,
David

The Terror of Being Adopted

Many times when I am sharing the idea of the gospel with those who have not believed or received it, I use the idea of adoption. It's imagery is so perfect... (maybe that is why it's in the Bible!) But one of the facts of adoption is so profound yet rarely shared in the gospel conversation. It makes sense when we are talking about physical adoption, but we don't want to admit it when it comes to spiritual adoption. The fact is that when a child is first adopted - literally when he or she is transferred into the arms of their new mom and dad, they are usually NOT FEELING WARM AND CUDDLY FEELINGS. In fact they are probably SCARED TO DEATH! Think about it, they barely know their "mom and dad." The experiences are often times so new that all they long for are the "safe" confines of the predictable orphanage - no matter how grotesque the situation was. Reminds me of the people freed from slavery in Egypt only to whine about how they would rather return to that slavery than the face the risk that comes with freedom.

But spiritually this happens as well. When a person believes and receives Jesus Christ as Savior the spiritual adoption is complete and that person is given the "right to become the son of God." Yet this person knows very little about the nature of their new adoptive father. Nor have they experienced any "adventures" of risk and faith that their father loves to take them on. These were my thoughts when I read this portion of Adopted For Life by Russell Moore.

When Maria and I at long last received the call that the legal process was over, and we returned to Russia to pick up our new sons, we found that their transition from orphanage to family was more difficult than we had supposed. We dressed the boys in outfits our parents had bought for them. We nodded out thanks to the orphanage personnel and walked out into the sunlight, to the terror of the two boys.
They'd never seen the sun, and they'd never felt the wind. They had never heard the sound of a car door slamming or felt like they were being carried along a road at 100 miles an hour. I noticed that they were shaking and reaching back to the orphanage in the distance. I whispered to the boys, "That place is a pit! If only you knew what's waiting for you - a home with a mommy and a daddy who love you, grandparents and great-grandparents and cousins and playmates and McDonald's Happy Meals!
But all they knew was the orphanage. It was squalid, but they had no other reference point. It was home.

The fact of the matter is that many new believers are scared to death at what their new adoptive father has planned for them. No matter how bad their life was - it was their life - and it was home. But now there is a journey into the unknown. A journey where you feel your way around "by faith and not by sight." Now there is a relationship that requires trusting someone other than yourself. A thought so scary that you find yourself reaching out with your arms for your past orphanage life. It is terrifying... and yet God sees it as exciting. God knows the good things he has planned for you. He has such great stuff in store, but He requires trust (faith) to experience it. The thing with God is that the new experiences he wants to take us on NEVER END. Each of them require us to let go of our "safe life" and learn in a fresh way to trust and hold on tight. So some of you need to let go of your crappy life regardless of how "safe" it is, some of you need to get over any failures of the past and gear up for another "adventure," and some of you who are already launching way out on a new journey just need to hold on tight to God. HE IS GOOD, not safe, but GOOD. You can trust Him.

Love loud... risk often... hope always.

The Orphan is...

The more you think through the reality of adoption, the more you come face to face with the spiritual realities of God as my adoptive Father and me as the former orphan who is now fully his child. The more we engage in fighting for the sake of the orphan, the more we get a picture of how God fights for us. When I read this part of the book Adopted For Life I was struck with this reality.

"Imagine for a moment that you're adopting a child. As you meet with the social worker in the last stage of the process, you're told that this twelve-year-old has been in and out of psychotherapy since he was three. He persists in burning things and attempting repeatedly to skin kittens alive. He "acts out sexually," the social worker says, although she doesn't really fill you in on what that means. She continues with a little family history. This boy's father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather all had histories of violence, ranging from spousal abuse to serial murder. Each of them ended life the same way, death by suicide - each found hanging from a rope of blankets in his respective prison cell.

Think for a minute. Would you want this child? If you did adopt him, wouldn't you keep your eye on him as he played with your other children? WOuld you watch him nervously as he looks at the butcher knife on the kitchen table? Would you leave the room as he watched a movie on television with your daughter, with the lights out?

Well, he's you. And he's me. That's what the gospel is telling us. Our birth father has fangs. And left to ourselves, we'll show ourselves to be as serpentine as he is." - Russell Moore

Yeah well, when I imagine myself as an orphan, I always think that I would be the good orphan, the one everyone would want. I would be likable and would probably only be in the orphanage due to some tragic set of circumstances that killed both my parents and many of my family members instantly and all that was left was me. And the first family that took me in would love me, because after all, I'm me. A great kid who got a raw deal in life and wound up an orphan. And they would love me, not so much because they are completely full of love, BUT because I am that lovable.

Yeah well, that is the lie I want to believe to deflect the truth about who I am as a spiritual orphan. The bible says that I was "dead in my sins" and that "while I was helpless... Christ died for me." I wasn't helpless because of all the unfortunate circumstances that "happened to me." I was helpless because of the choices I made. The orphan is me. BUT that's how great God is. He was never phased by my sinful heritage, my sinful choices, my deep brokenness. He moved, at great cost to himself, to secure my adoption.

Adoption Is War!

God is using UCity to lead a movement of compassion for the orphan. There are ten families in our church who have either adopted or are in the process of adopting... and many more to come hopefully. This Summer UCity will send out two of our own families to lead orphan care initiatives in Mexico and Ethiopia. And God has given me a vision of ensuring that every adoptable child in the NC foster care system is adopted. I know God has called us to this task and I look forward to seeing how He accomplishes His work through us as we dive out deep... way in over our heads. The following is a quote from a book that is rocking my world... Adopted For Life. Are you ready to join the WAR?

"Adoption is one the one hand, gospel. In this adoption tells us who we are as children of the Father. Adoption as gospel tells us about our identity, our inheritance and our mission as sons of God. Adoption is also defined as mission. In this, adoption tells us our purpose in this age as the people of Christ. Missional adoption spurs us to join Christ in advocating for the helpless and the abandoned.

As soon as you peer into the truth of the one aspect, you fall headlong into the truth of the other, and vise versa. That's because it's the way the gospel is. Jesus reconciles us to God and to each other. As we love our God, we love our neighbor; as we love our neighbor, we love our God. We believe Jesus in heavenly things - our adoption in Christ; so we follow him in earthly things - the adoption of children. Without the theological aspect, the emphasis on adoption too easily is seen as mere charity. Without the missional aspect, the doctrine of adoption too easily is seen as mere metaphor.

But adoption is contested, both in its cosmic and missional aspects. The Scriptures tell us that there are unseen beings in the air around us who would rather we not think about what it means to be who we are in Christ. These rulers of this age would rather we ignore both the eternal reality and the earthly icon of it. They would rather we find our identity, our inheritance and our mission according to what we can see and verify as ours - according to what the bible calls "the flesh" - rather than according to the veiled rhythms of the Spirit of life. That is why adoption isn't charity - it's war.

The gospel of Jesus Christ means our families and our churches ought to be at the forefront of the adoption of orphans close to home and around the world. As we become more attuned to the gospel, we'll have more of a burden for orphans. As we become more adoption-friendly, we'll be better able to understand the gospel."

All of the above is from the book Adopted For Life by Russell Moore. Many more quotes to come.

Adoption :: Resolve

For several years Mendy and I have talked about (and around) the idea of adopting a child. But most of these conversations had the tone of “one day” or “some day” or “we’ll see what happens.” This tone began to change two years ago when I spent the night on the streets of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with a few orphaned street kids. When one of these boys told me that his mom died when he was five and he just walked to the city where he knew he could survive, something happened deep inside me. It was a resolve to quit talking and start doing.

In January 2007, I led a series of talks at church titled The Monday After Pill, in which I simply focused on taking action on the things we all know God has asked us to do. One of these messages was from James 1 where James tells every Christ follower to DO what the Word says instead of just listening to the Word. He follows that teaching by telling us to care for widows and orphans in their distress. One month after giving this message to our spiritual community, I am face to face all night long with these orphans in Ethiopia. There was a resolve to ACT!

I have always HATED when I hear other pastors say something like, “I just love to preach the Word!” I didn’t know why this phrase bothered me so much until recently I was thinking, “I don’t think I like preaching the Word near as much as I like trying to live the Word.” What good is being more excited about telling others to follow Christ than actually following Christ myself! From this point on there was a resolution in my soul to get active about the pursuit of adoption.

For the next two years, Mendy and I prayed, planned and prepared. January 1, 2009 was our start date. We began the paperwork process, fund-raising process and intensified our search for the kids we would bring into our family.