Adopted to Adopt

Welcome to Gateway Churches Podcast.

Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

All right, so the the message is titled Adopted to Adopt.

Now Roe v.

Wade was overturned recently, but our initiatives in this area started before we had any idea that that was about to happen.

Adoption in foster care is something that's been heavy on mine and Hannah's heart for a long time.

There were many times when we were younger that we said we would just love to adopt, but maybe we need to save up a little bit more money.

Maybe we need to wait for a time where we're a little bit less busy.

Maybe we need to wait for just the right moment to do this.

And as the waiting went on and on, it delayed our progress in that we've always stayed a little bit involved in different ministries and things like that.

And Hannah, my wife, works for a ministry called Embrace Grace that came out of Gateway and is an amazing ministry for women who find themselves in unexpected pregnancies and don't have support around them.

This is something that is heavy on our hearts and something that we've uh desired to be a part of for a really long time.

We still may foster at some point.

Um Hannah is uh convinced, even as old as our kids are, that there is gonna be a moment where uh we are gonna find the child in need and that God's gonna orchestrate everything and that we're gonna do that.

And if I'm honest, that part of it terrifies me a little bit.

Um we have a 15 and a 12-year-old, and so they're pretty self-sufficient, and um, but I am so open for whatever God calls us to do.

It's an area that's been really, really strong on our hearts.

And so uh not too long ago, maybe a little over a year ago, we I got an email from um uh a lady named Kristen McCool.

She goes here to Gateway, and she also works for a ministry called Lifeline Adoption Services.

And when we met with Kristen, I was completely blown away by the stories that she was telling us and the amazing work that Lifeline does.

And Lifeline is new to Texas in some way, but has been around for around 40 years.

They're in 18 countries and in 16 states.

Is that correct?

All right, so 18 countries and 16 states, and uh and fairly new to Texas, but uh very um uh familiar with this type of ministry, have been doing it for quite a long time.

And so we got to partner with Lifeline through this connection.

I then took this to the elders and said, hey, um, you know, we we are a church who has pretty clearly said that we believe in life and that we want to sustain life.

We want to do whatever we can to influence that area, and so we we do a lot with a lot of different ministries, but we've really never had a very strong adoption and foster care ministry within the church.

I presented Lifeline and what they had done.

I had been to their gala and Nick Vyucich was there and he was speaking, and we really caught the vision for what they were doing.

And I could not believe that it was resounding support from the elders.

I mean, I can believe it because that is who they are, but it was even more enthusiastic than I ever thought.

So the elders graciously decided to uh donate money to Lifeline to begin a partnership with them, to have them help us build this uh adoption and foster care ministry.

And so um, because of this weekend, at every campus we have booths out in the lobby, and Lifeline has worked really hard to make sure that staff and volunteers, some of them have flown in from all over the place to be at these tables.

So if this is even remotely an interest for you, I want to ask you to stop by those tables and talk to some of those staff.

And also, even um even better than that, more special than that, is that the president of Lifeline, Herbie Newell, and his wife Ashley and their three kids are here.

Will you guys just stand up so that we can acknowledge you?

This is them right here.

Um I absolutely love what this ministry is doing, and I am incredibly happy that we get to be a part of this.

Now, the accusation that is often thrown at the church is that we aren't really pro-life, we are actually pro-birth.

Because the sentiment is that we don't really care what happens to these vulnerable children after they are born.

And it is true that we do need to, as much as we want to go out and vote, as much as we want to make an impact in this area, it is true that the church ought to be leading in this area.

But if you hear that the church isn't doing anything in this area, that really we're just pro-birth but we're not pro-life, this is completely false.

The uh according to ethicsdaily.com, 5% of practicing Christians in the United States have adopted, and that is more than twice the number of all the adults who have adopted.

In addition, a survey showed that 38% of practicing Christians had seriously considered adoption, while only 26% of the rest of adults had.

So Lifeline is an amazing ministry.

This as a church is something that we can be a part of and something that we must do.

Did you know that Planned Parenthood is a$1.3 billion organization?

So if you have wondered why maybe we haven't been able to make as big of an impact, why maybe when a young girl finds herself in an unexpected pregnancy without very much support, there has been so much marketing and energy and and money put behind th things like Planned Parenthood.

So it is time for the church to unite and to start making a difference in this area.

It is time.

That is our goal, and that's what we want to accomplish.

Five million Americans today are adoptees.

Five million people walking around in America are someone who has been adopted.

But the number of adoptions have actually decreased since 1970.

So we are adopting less than what was common at that time.

Now the formal beginnings of adoption in the U.S.

go back to the 1800s, where trains would actually take children from populated areas like New York, and they would be taken out west to be placed with families in more rural environments.

And this became later known as orphan trains.

And this, like many other things, had some flaws.

If you look it up, you'll see some flaws.

Um, but because things are human, um, that's the case with everything.

Look back in history and we'll go, you probably shouldn't have done it that way.

And this is one of those cases where uh sometimes those flaws are accentuated, but for the most part, these were people looking to care for children in vulnerable states, and it was successful for the most part.

Yeah, if the case was that their parents weren't able to care for them, then it probably was best for them to go out west to a rural environment and to be put in that family system.

But one of the criticisms is that some of those kids were taken out of migrant immigrant families simply because of their parents being immigrants.

And so uh actually also one of the other issues was that some people adopted simply for free labor.

But if you look back, the church, ministers, and practitioners within the church were extremely active in this process, and the overall results were positive.

Often placements had been done hastily or without proper investigation.

That's led to the investigation of adoptive families that takes place now.

And sometimes those kids had a hard time being accepted in their new town.

They were actually often called trained children by other kids.

But a 1910 survey concluded that 87% listen to this 87% of those children sent to country homes had done well, while only 8% had returned to New York, and 5% had either died, disappeared, or gotten arrested.

87% is a staggering number of success.

And the overall feeling that presided then and is still the majority sentiment to this day is that vulnerable children are better off when they are put into a family structure instead of an institutionalized structure.

Family is what is needed.

The basis of scripture is that it is all family.

One of the areas, no, I'll tell you that in a minute.

I I don't want to get into that right now.

Um we'll get to that in just a moment.

Uh not every child that is adopted or is in foster care is actually an orphan according to the technical definition of orphan.

Many of them have not actually lost their parents uh due to death.

And so these are parents who may not be able to take care of their children.

There was a study that showed that boys and girls that aged out of the system and were not adopted.

This study was done in Russia and Ukraine, showed that more than half of the girls ended up in prostitution, and more than half of the boys had spent time in jail within just a few years of being out of the foster care system.

On any given day, there are around 424,000 children that are living in the U.S.

foster care system in the US.

And that number has been rising.

Over 122,000 of these children are eligible for adoption, and they will wait on average for four years for an adoptive family.

More than 69,000 youth in the foster care system live in institutions or group homes and other environments instead of with a family.

And each year, about 20,000 kids will age out of foster care without an adoptive family.

So I prayed about it.

And um I said, God, what do you want me to ask of the congregation?

And uh this is what I felt like he told me to ask you.

I want to ask every single person that can hear my voice to adopt.

Every single person.

Um now uh let me finish.

Okay.

I was praying about this, and I felt like that's what God said.

And I go, uh, I'm not gonna do that.

And uh he was like, uh yeah, you are.

And um and I realized then he started to reveal to me what he was talking about.

The Bible calls us to see those that are vulnerable and in need and to adopt their problems as our own.

And so when I ask every single person to adopt, it may or may not mean physically adopting a child, but we as a church can say, this is a need.

424,000 kids in the foster system is not okay with us.

So we can see a need, we can adopt that need, and we can make a difference in that need.

That is what I'm talking about with adoption.

That every single one of us should say, I see this need, God has called me to make a difference, and there is something that I can do to make a difference in this area.

For some, it will be adopting a child, for others, it will be giving just to the ministry itself.

For others, it will be volunteering or doing CASA or fostering or respirate care.

So I want to go over just, I'm gonna do this really quickly.

Here's a couple ways that you could be involved.

First, you could attend an informational meeting.

These will be meetings taking place to learn more about the process of fostering adoption, how to become a respite care provider, whether you feel uh called by God to open your home or not.

You if you want to learn more about how you can support families that are fostering, support families that have adopted, this is the great meeting for you.

You can sign up for uh foster, adoptive, or respite training.

You need to be trained in order to do this.

If you don't know what respite care is, um when when you're fostering a child, you're not able, just say say you're a married couple that's fostering a child, you're not able to just uh go to like findanny.com or whatever and high or like call your friend and be like, come over and babysit.

It must be someone who is certified by the state.

So you could go through the certification, Lifeline provides it, it is state approved.

You could go through the certification, we're gonna host those right here at our campuses, and then commit to just one night a month babysitting for someone who is fostering so that those two parents can get away, spend time with each other, and be restored in their energy.

So there are so many ways that you can be involved.

You can join a rap team at your campus.

Rap team means to wrap your arms around those that are fostering or or or um, and that doesn't require any kind of training if they're doing respite care, fostering, adoption.

You can help with groceries, running errands, regular prayer.

The another way that you can do it is join a foster and adoptive family support group at your campus.

If you already foster and adopt, you could do that.

You could serve with a ministry partner, you can give, you can connect with Lifeline Children's Services to adopt.

And here's the primary way, other than stopping by the booth, if you want to find out more about any of this, you can text simply the word family to 71010.

All right.

Now let's get into the message, which is gonna be about adoption, but I just want to make sure we covered all of that first.

Adoption is so central to the gospel, it is so core to the gospel.

J.I.

Packer has written that adoption is the highest privilege that the gospel offers.

Higher even than justification.

Adoption is higher because of the richer relationship with God that it involves.

Justification is a forensic idea conceived in terms of law and viewing God as judge, but adoption is a family idea conceived in terms of love and viewing God as the father.

This is the language that God used so often.

Sure, we see terms like judge and king, but primarily when God talks about his relationship to us, it is in the context of either adopting him being our father or we being the bride of Christ.

It is all entirely built in family terms.

Family structure is what causes a successful generation to move forward in God's will.

Family structures are so important.

And so uh what I thought we would do is just briefly go over three people in scripture that were adopted that maybe you didn't really quite realize were adopted.

So even though uh we're talking about um orphan care and different things like that, I'm not gonna read to you a single passage that has anything to do with the passages that we already know that say that we should be caring for the widows and orphans.

I'm just gonna tell you about three people that were adopted that maybe you didn't realize were adopted.

The first one, Moses was adopted.

That one's fairly easy.

We remember that, but maybe we don't think about it in those terms.

Let me read to you in Exodus, starting in chapter two, verse one.

It says, Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman.

This is important because uh Moses is uh fully a Levite, all right?

And she became pregnant and gave birth to a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months.

But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch, and then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.

His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.

Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank.

She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it.

She opened it and saw the baby.

He was crying, and she felt sorry for him, and she said, This is one of the Hebrew babies.

Then his sister, being Moses' sister, asked Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?

Yes, go, she answered.

So the girl went and got the baby's mother.

Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.

So the woman took the baby and nursed him, and when the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son.

She named him Moses, saying, I drew him out of the water.

Now, one thing we might not realize is just how much God had to do with this.

So I want you to think about for just a moment.

Uh it says that Pharaoh's daughter, the Pharaoh, is the king over all of Egypt.

He rules everything, he owns all of the land.

I don't know if you've ever been to Egypt, but you've probably seen the pyramids.

Like this was a pretty immaculate place.

They had lots of money, they had lots of wealth, they had lots of uh structures that were pretty incredible.

So for me, the weirdest part about that passage is that it said the Pharaoh's daughter went to the Nile to bathe.

I've been in these structures that were around uh back in those times, and they have elaborate bathhouses.

The Pharaoh's daughter has no reason to leave this immaculate castle that she lives in with an amazing bathhouse to go to the dirty river Nile to bathe with everyone else that lives in that area.

There is no reason for her to do this, but I think God's hand was on all of this situation, and God leads her to this place.

And why does he choose her?

Because she had a heart that was capable of love for someone that she had absolutely no connection with.

She had a heart that was capable to see the need, to see the destitute nature of a child laying there, and to know this is something that she can make a difference in.

And so that is how she steps out.

It should be pointed out that there are parallels between Moses, the child of slaves, adopted into the Egyptian court, and it is very much similar to what international adoptions are for us today.

They are often transracial, transcultural, and transnational adoptees, and that passage between communities with very different levels of power and privilege.

And this is what took place in Moses' life.

The adoption of Moses is perhaps the most similar to these international types of adoption, children whose parents are under circumstances that don't allow them to care for their child.

I often think about in China when the one-child rule was in place, there were babies that were being found in carefully crafted wooden boxes that had been placed in different places to keep them in hiding.

This isn't too dissimilar from what Moses' mother had to do to try to keep him alive.

But a partnership developed between Moses' birth mother and his adopted mother.

And this struck a chord with me because when I was at the Lifeline Gala, I heard so many stories of a very special connection between the birth mother and the adoptive parents.

So an example of one of those is that always there is a risk.

I hear people say, Well, I would love to foster a child, but I'm not sure I can deal with the heartache of then seeing them go away back to their birth uh parents.

And so this would be something that would be really hard for me.

There's a risk.

There's a risk of being hurt.

I will remind you though, that every time you love someone, there is a risk of being hurt.

And so what happens then is that there's a risk attached to this.

And I heard this amazing story of uh adoptive family who was waiting and waiting.

They'd been on a list for years and they'd been trying to adopt.

Finally, they have a birth mother lined up, they're going to adopt the child.

They get to the hospital and uh and the the baby is uh born, and and and this uh Melissa's here, this is one of her cases.

Um, and so uh the the mother, as happens sometimes, sees the child, holds the child, and says, This is my baby.

I I need to figure out how to do this.

I didn't think I could, but my love for this child is so overwhelming.

And many adoption agencies, I will tell you, would have said, push away that feeling.

You've already decided that you can't do this.

There, there, you realize an adoption agency, if an adoption doesn't go through, that means they don't get paid.

And they have spent months and months of service with these people.

And so instead, Melissa says, if that's what you're feeling, that's what you need to listen to.

And so the mother says, I want to keep this child.

So then she has to go down to the waiting room and have an extremely difficult conversation with those adoptive parents who have been waiting months and months to adopt this child.

And she says, I'm so sorry to tell you, but the birth mother has decided to keep the child.

What they said was, we were in it for the child, not for us.

And whatever's best for the child is best for us.

So they went up and they congratulated the mom on keeping her child.

They prayed with her, they wept with her, they talked to her, and they later became mentors to her that stayed connected to her and in her life after that.

God had a plan, and Lei later adopted another child, but the selflessness that is so evident in what they did is incredibly impactful to me.

So the root.

Of Moses' leadership lay in the complexities of his story, but Moses' life was preserved through adoption, and it became uh and it was because of this that he was able to accomplish so much for God and for our faith, and it and has become the leader that would guide the Israelites into freedom.

We don't know what God has as far as a destiny for a child.

We can't even see that potential, and that's why it's a pool of love that is so strong that says, without knowing who you will be, how you will treat me, what will take place after this, I choose you.

That is an incredibly powerful statement of love and one that Christians ought to say more than anybody else.

All right, here's a second person that was adopted that you might not think of.

Jesus was adopted.

Think about it for a minute.

Jesus' father is God the Father.

Joseph says, What I should do is quietly divorce or annul this marriage that has not yet been consummated in order to protect Mary from the shame of this.

And then the angel comes along and says, No, no, don't do that.

That's not how to respond to this.

So Joseph then still receives Mary as uh his wife, which in turn means that Jesus becomes his son.

This would be more similar to what adoption would look like in a blended family.

If you're a blended family and you need help in this area, there's a great ministry called Blended Kingdom Families.

They've got books and ministry.

It's an amazing uh place to check out.

I'm gonna, guys, I'm gonna skip Matthew 1 and go to Matthew 13.

Let me just show you.

Everyone referred to Jesus as being the son of Joseph because Joseph had taken him into his family as his own.

It says in Matthew chapter 13, verse 54, coming to his hometown, he began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed.

Matthew 13:54

Where did this man get his wisdom and these miraculous powers?

They asked, Isn't this the carpenter's son?

Isn't his mother's name Mary?

And aren't his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas, aren't all his sisters with us?

When then did this man get all these things?

So Jesus, because of extenuating circumstances, quite extenuating circumstances, in fact, Joseph says, I will stand in the place as being your father.

Obviously, he didn't replace God the Father in his life or anything like that, but this often takes place in blended families, where once there is a new marriage, the father, the mother will adopt the children from a previous relationship or marriage, and they stand in that place and say, I will be that father figure or that mother figure in your life.

Jesus was adopted.

Here's the third person that you might not know was adopted.

You.

You were adopted.

You were adopted.

You were an orphan.

You had a father, but he was the father of lies.

You were born into the kingdom of wickedness in a family that was dysfunctional and tried to steal, kill, and destroy everything good in your life.

But you were adopted.

Adoption is actually one of the most central themes of the Bible, and especially the gospels.

Ephesians 1, 4 through 6 says, For he chose us in him before the creation of the world.

Let me just pause there.

Oftentimes when you adopt, you choose the child before they are even created.

This is a symbol of adoption.

Before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight in love, he predestined us for adoption to sonship and daughtership through Jesus Christ.

In accordance with his pleasure and will.

It was his pleasure to be able to adopt us.

It was his joy to be able to adopt you to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves.

Adoption is freely giving grace to someone and choosing them out of love to bring them into the sonship or daughterhood.

Adoption was never God's plan B.

It was always his first option.

From the time of the fall of man, God has destined to adopt you, to take you in, to bring you into a new family.

He planned for adoption before the creation of the world.

The Israelites are God's sons and daughters by birth through Adam and Eve and through the covenant made with Abraham.

And we Gentiles are sons of wrath.

Ephesians 2, 1 through 3 says, And you he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the Spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

Galatians 4, verse 4 says, But when the set time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship, because you are his sons.

Galatians 4:4

God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out Abba, Father.

So you are no longer a slave, but God's child.

And since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.

An heir.

That means not simply, I will allow you to be in my family, but I will allow you to take in the inheritance that belongs to a birthright son or daughter.

That is how strong the adoption is that he called us into.

When they asked Jesus, Lord, teach us how to pray, he said, I want you to start this way.

Our Father.

What should we pray whenever we address God?

And we could start with ruler of the universe, king over all.

We could start with a whole lot of titles for God.

He has a million titles that Jesus could have chosen from to tell us.

And he goes, you know what?

He wants you to just call him dad.

He'd like it if you just said dad.

And you start your prayer with just saying, hey dad.

I remember when I had no hope in the world.

I remember the days where my family was dysfunctional, where everything, every part of my being and everything in my nature pulled me towards evil and destruction.

It seemed like everything went wrong in my life, and then God, you brought me into your family.

You were adopted, and now God says, you know what?

You're in the family now.

Why don't you just call me dad?

I think sometimes it's sort of hard to put ourselves truly in the mentality of an orphan or someone who doesn't have any relationship with their parents.

I have a friend who had nearly no relationship with his dad, and he would tell me all the time, he would say, I don't even know when I go to the doctor and they ask me if heart disease is in my family history, I don't know.

I don't know who my grandparents were or what they did.

I don't know where my dad is or what he's doing.

I don't know what traits I should be on the lookout for.

I don't know really who I am because part of who I am came from my father.

And there was a there was a part of you when you were born into a sin nature that says, all of my temptations and all these things that I inherited have constantly sent me the wrong direction.

And so a new family came along.

And they said, We'd like to take you in.

And you'll be a son and a daughter in our family.

And just like it is for Moses, it completely reshaped the course of his life.

Always, as was the case with Moses, always, even in adoption, part of what makes it so tough is that they will always wonder where they came from.

They will always go back to be seeking who their parents were or are.

I just read this amazing story of an adoption that had taken place from an American couple adopting from China, and this uh the adopted child, when she got old enough, began to do research and ended up through DNA testing, being able to find out who her parents were, and she was reunited with them, and the adoptive parents were so happy that she got to reunite with her original family.

And what had taken place was that she simply got lost, and in the chaos of everything, no one was able to find her and reconnect her to her family.

She said, I'm so grateful that instead of say staying in that broken system, there was a family who said, We'll treat you like a son or a daughter.

I just heard a testimony of a family who had adopted uh multiple kids, and the oldest child that they had adopted, she became estranged from the family and moved away and didn't have contact with them.

And I saw that mother's heart absolutely breaking for her child.

And I realized she was exactly the right person to adopt that child.

Adoption is not for everyone, but she was exactly the right person to adopt that child because her heart ached and burned as if it was one of her own.

She had exhibited the love of God and brought that child in truly as her own.

And since God did that for each and every one of us, one of the most powerful and amazing ways that we can show who God is to someone else is to be like Him.

And to bring someone into our family to give them all the things that they don't deserve and didn't earn.

And to say, you belong to us now.

I'd like to ask you at every campus to stand up to your feet.

The first time I heard this song, Abba Father, that we just sang earlier, I knew this weekend was coming up.

Pastor Laura Crate said, I think this song is perfect for that weekend.

I just kept listening to this song over and over and over again.

And I was in the mindset that yes, I would love to be used in one day to be able to help with adoption or foster care or whatever that might look like.

I would love to be in that kind of position, but I had never really placed myself in the mind of an orphan myself.

And as I listened to that song, I was able to feel those feelings of knowing I need God the Father.

This is the family I want to be in, it's the family I want to be a part of.

So I think we all would agree with 424,000 kids in the foster care system, something needs to be done.

I think we would all agree that the church needs to lead the way.

So as we go back into this song, I want you to place your mindset into the mentality of someone who needs a family.

I want you to sing Abba Father as someone who is so grateful that he accepted you into his family.

And I pray that as we do, the Spirit quickens away in your heart that you can be involved in this ministry.

There are a million ways that you can do it.

And so I'd like you to just ask, Holy Spirit, what would you have me do?

And then we're gonna pray whenever this song is over.

We got a couple more things to tell you, but as we enter into this song, let's pray, Abba Father, how can I do for someone else what you did for me?

Lord, we give this time to you.

God, we are so thankful that you adopted us into your family.

Lord, we were destitute and without any hope in the world.

And you, Abba Father, you became our Father.

You adopted us into your family, and you have loved us with all the grace in the world.

And for that we are so thankful.

So today we cry out to you, Abba Father, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Let's worship.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you'd like to connect with us, text Connect to 71010 or visit gatewaypeople.com.

We hope you have a great week.