by Jenna DeMattia Masters

Pride is such an ugly thing.  I don’t know how to talk about our decision to adopt without it sounding like we are doing something out of the kindness of our own hearts; That it is truly ‘our’ idea.  Adoption is God’s idea. Adoption is God’s plan.  We humans, no matter how ‘good’ we think we are, have zero to do with it. ZERO! I feel there is just no way to emphasize accurately the enormity of this truth. It has nothing to do with our goodness, and everything to do with God’s goodness.

You want to know how ‘good’ of a person I am?  I found myself praying through tears on the floor to God that I couldn’t do this, that ‘this will be too hard, I already have 3 kids that I can’t clean up after.  How will I do that much laundry?!’   I was throwing the towel in over this stuff.

God is so patient.

He let me go on and on with questions as to how this would affect  MY life. He was quiet. He let me finish.  Then he whispered firmly, ‘Child, everything you asked was how adopting this child would affect you.  Not one word from your mouth asked how it would affect the child if you didn’t adopt them.’ Smack down.  Seriously. There are times when God speaks so lovingly in his rebuke that it smacks me down on my face in repentance.  This was one of those moments. Yes, there would be more laundry, and more sibling disputes to referee. There would be some sacrifice on my part.  But isn’t sacrificing the cost of redeeming a life?  Jesus endured far more than a few extra socks to wash when he adopted me. This quote by Derek Loux just wrecks me:

“Adoption is redemption.  It is costly, exhausting, expensive and outrageous.  Buying back lives costs so much.  When God set out to redeem us, it killed him.” GOD adopted me. How can I not look at an orphan on this planet and not see a picture of myself without my redeemer? I would be hopeless without him.  I am nothing without my heavenly father.  I was starving, poor, thirsty and without shelter before he bought me with his blood. Is there not a more powerful display of God’s love then the price he paid to call us his child? And that is what we are. We are children of God, he gave us that right. Praise Him! I want our adoption to scream of what He has done for us!

There has been a recent revival in the church to be reckless and passionate over the social injustice of this planet.  We need to answer the call to be obedient and do what Jesus tells us to do. Yes.  But our desire cannot stem from wanting to be obedient or to love others.  It cannot even stem from ‘wanting to be more like Jesus’.   Our desire can only and must only stem from how much we have been loved first. If  we are not aware of what we would be without our own adoption into God’s family; if we do not  feel how radical the Father’s love is for us, we need to be praying for revelation from God through prayer regarding this issue. If the love he has poured down on top of us is not at the root of our fight against social injustice, our fruit will die.

Human love fails.  God’s love never fails. 

If we truly want to love others, we must be drawing from a well that is endless and holy.  If we are not intentional about this, our impact will not be eternal.  If our love only lasts long enough to be buried in the ground with our bones, what did it really matter? What does it matter if we gave an orphan a home, or water to a thirsty stranger, or money to the poor if our eyes are not set on the eternal?

True love would mean nothing if it wasn’t forever.

I would argue that it is dust. We came from dust and our bodies will return back to the dust without the breath of God.  It is the same with love. Without the breath of God in our loving others, our love turns to dust in the end. There are eternal consequences when we think we can do it on our own, in the ‘name of Jesus’, without Jesus.

When we meet the physical and practical needs of others it creates a space for Heaven to punch a hole through the darkness and enter human hearts. Every good deed we do through the power of Christ is a declaration that we were not ‘left behind’ to wait for Jesus…we were ‘left behind’ to pour out Jesus. http://en.support.wordpress.com/blog-subscription-shortcode/