Adopted to Adopt

Adopted to Adopt Josh Morris Roe V. Wade was overturned but our initiative started before we had any idea that this was about to happen Adoption and foster care is something that Hannah and I have always wanted to do We met Kristin McCool, and she introduced us to the adoption agency she works for which is Lifeline. Lifeline is new to Texas but has been around for 40 years. They are now in 18 countries and in 16 states. Herbie Newell is the president of Lifeline and he and his wife Ashley are here today. Please stand up. Lifeline has pulled together staff and volunteers and has worked with our staff to be able to have a booth at every campus in the lobby. When I took this to the elders there was resounding support and I saw that they have a heart for the church to make an impact in this area. They generously donated to Lifeline and have been supporting this as a church- wide initiative and all of this took place before Roe V. Wade was overturned. The accusation that is thrown at the church is that we aren’t really pro-life, we are pro-birth. The sentiment is that we really don’t care about what happens to these vulnerable children after they are born. If you hear this, know that it is not true. According to EthicsDaily.com, 5 percent of practicing Christians in the United States have adopted, which is more than twice the number of all adults who have adopted. In addition, a survey showed that 38 percent of practicing Christians had seriously considered adoption, while only 26 percent of all adults had. 5 million Americans today are adoptees. The numbers of adoptions have actually decreased since 1970 so we are adopting less than what was common at that time. The formal beginnings of adoption in the US go back to the 1800’s where trains would take children from populated areas and they would be taken

out west to be placed with families in more rural environments. This, like many other things had some flaws. Some of the children were not actually orphans. If the case was that their parents weren’t able to care for them, then it was probably best for them to go west but sometimes they were children that were removed from their parents simply because they were immigrants. Some people adopted simply for free labor but the church was extremely active in this process and the overall results of the orphan trains were positive. Often, placements were done hastily and without proper investigation which has led to the type of investigation of the adoptive family that takes place now. Sometimes those kids did have a hard time being accepted in their new town and were often called “Train Children” by other kids. A 1910 survey concluded that 87 percent of the children sent to country homes had "done well," while 8 percent had returned to New York and the other 5 percent had either died, disappeared, or gotten arrested. The overall feeling that presided then and is still the majority sentiment to this day is that vulnerable children are better off when put into a family structure instead of an institutionalized structure. Not every child that is adopted or in foster care is an orphan according to the true definition. A study that studied boys and girls that aged out of the system and were not adopted 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, almost 424,000 children are living in the U.S. foster care system and the number has been rising. Over 122,000 of these children are eligible for adoption and they will wait, on average, four years for an adoptive family. • More than 69,000 youth in U.S. foster care live in institutions, group homes, and other environments, instead of with a family. • In the US alone there are over 400,000 children in foster care and each year about 20,000 kids will age out of foster care without an adoptive family. Here is what I want to ask everyone to do as we embark on this new endeavor. I would like to ask each and every one of you to adopt. Here is what I mean by that. We are called as Christians to see the needs in the world and adopt them as our own. There are so many ways you can adopt this as an issue that the church can make a difference in. For some it will be to adopt a child, for others it will be giving and for others it will be volunteering or doing CASA, Fostering, or Respite care.

Attend an informational meeting. This informational meeting will be the place to learn more about the process of fostering, adoption, and how to become a respite care provider. Whether you feel called by God to open your home, or you want to learn more about how to support those that do, this meeting will answer your questions and provide clear next steps. Sign up for foster, adoptive, and respite training. Lifeline Children’s Services provides holistic, Gospel-centered training to foster, adoptive and respite families to equip them as they enter the mission field of ministry to vulnerable children. Upon completion of these classes, attendees will have met the Texas state requirements for foster care licensure. Join a W.R.A.P. team at your campus. WRAP teams exist to “wrap around” and support foster families by providing meals, respite care, help with groceries, running errands, and regular prayer. Join a foster and adoptive family support group at yourcampus. Foster & Adoptive Family Support groups create a safe space for families to connect, build relationship, and encourage one another throughout the journey of fostering and/or adoption. Serve with a ministry partner. Give toward adoptive and foster care support. Connect with Lifeline Children's Services to adopt. Text FAMILY to 71010 to learn more. J. I. Packer has written, “[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 father” (J. I. Packer, Knowing God, pp. 206

We are going to go over 3 adoptions in scripture that you might not normally think of. All of these adoptions were what is quite common today which is the adoption of someone who was not truly an orphan in the traditional sense because their parents were alive. 1. Moses was adopted. Exodus 2:1 (NIV) Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, Exodus 2:2 (NIV) and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. Exodus 2:3 (NIV) But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. Exodus 2:4 (NIV) His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. Exodus 2:5 (NIV) 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. Exodus 2:6 (NIV) She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said. Exodus 2:7 (NIV) Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?” Exodus 2:8(NIV) “Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. Exodus 2:9 (NIV) 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. Exodus 2:10 (NIV) 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.”

One thing we might not realize is how much God had to do with this. For example, it says that the Pharoah’s daughter went to the Nile to bathe. This is pretty strange because the Pharoah’s daughter would have had access to a bath house that was so much better than bathing in the Nile. God sent the one who had compassion on the Hebrew people and who would adopt the plight of this child as her own. It should be pointed out that there are parallels between Moses, the child of slaves adopted into the Egyptian court, and today’s transracial, transcultural, and transnational adoptees’ passage between communities with very different levels of power and privilege. The adoption of Moses is perhaps most similar to the types of adoptions that we most often see today. Children whose parents are under circumstances that don’t allow them to care for their child. Many times we look at Moses’ mother as someone with great faith who did whatever it took to keep her child safe, even if it meant that he would live in her enemies home. But a partnership developed between Moses’ birth mother and his adopted mother. I heard so many stories similar to this when I was at the Lifeline Banquet. I heard of adopted children who were encouraged by their adoptive parents to continue in relationship with their birth mother. In the end, Moses, the adopted child goes back to his people to help them out of the dire situation they were in. “Reading the story together, we found ourselves asking heart-wrenching questions. Consider the beginning. If you were adopted, would this narrative of a baby left in a basket in the Nile resonate with you personally? We thought especially of children adopted from China, where for many years the one-child policy forced parents to leave over-quota infants – often nestled into boxes – in public places, where they would be found, placed in orphanages, and, if they were “lucky,” adopted by strangers, many from a different country. Conversely, if you were a parent who had placed a child for adoption, would you see yourself in the heart- rending choice the baby’s mother must make?” We might emphasize that Moses’ mother, far from abandoning her newborn baby, kept him as long as she possibly could and then made a well-thought-out plan to keep him safe. Not only did she carefully waterproof the basket in which Moses would be placed, but she chose the safest spot on the river and set his sister Miriam to watch him. The roots of his leadership lay in the complexities of his story but Moses’ life was preserved through adoption and it was because of this that he was able to

accomplish so much for God and for our faith and become the leader that would guide the Israelites into freedom. 2. Jesus was adopted. Matthew 1:18 (NIV) This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Matthew 1:19 (NIV) Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. Matthew 1:20 (NIV) But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” Matthew 13:54 (NIV) Coming to his hometown, he began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed. “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?” they asked. Matthew 13:55 (NIV) “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Matthew 13:56 (NIV) Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” 3. You were adopted. Adoption is one of the most central themes of the Bible and especially the Gospels. In fact, you were adopted. Ephesians 1:4 (NIV) For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love Ephesians 1:5 (NIV) he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—

Ephesians 1:6 (NIV)

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 sonship or daughterhood.

Adoption was never God’s plan B. It was always his plan A. he destined it to be this way. He chose us before we were in existence. God 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.

We gentiles, are sons of wrath.

Ephesians 2:1

And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins,

Ephesians 2:2

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,

Ephesians 2:3

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 4:4 (NIV)

But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,

Galatians 4:5 (NIV)

to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.

Galatians 4:6 (NIV)

Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”

Galatians 4:7 (NIV)

So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.

New International Version (NIV) ©2011 by Biblica, Inc.® New King James Version (NKJV) ©1982 by Thomas Nelson.