Christ Chapel Bible Church, one of our church partners, is filling shoeboxes this Christmas for Operation Christmas Child. They put together this powerful video. The girls in the video have been adopted by a family in the church. At one time they were orphans in Russia – receiving shoeboxes – and now they get to give them.
Throughout the years we have helped a number of military families adopt. These men and women are amazing to me. I can’t imagine being away from my family on tour and all the stress related to being in war and then in the midst of that adopting a child. Some of these families have adopted special needs children. They are true heroes – multiplied!
For those in the military there are some adoption benefits. For instance:
Military service members who adopt a child under 18 years of age may be reimbursed qualified adoption expenses up to $2000 per adoptive child (up to a total of $5000 if more than one child is adopted) per calendar year.
For more information the National Military Family Association has compiled some resources in one place.
While at the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta this past weekend we came across this picture and quote. I agree with King and would like to have the audacity myself to believe that “every child orphaned in the USA, Canada, and the world would have a family to call their own,” and “every unreached people group would have a gospel-proclaiming, disciple-making church established among them” (Matt 24:14)
What do you have the audacity to believe…?
Matt Capps, Associate Pastor for Connections at Calvary Baptist Church, Winston-Salem, N.C. shares a word about the global orphan crisis and the role of the church. I couldn’t agree more. Click below to read his whole post and watch a video their church put together for Orphan Sunday.
As Christians we are adopted as sons and daughters and God uses us as the vehicles by which he demonstrates his love to a lost world. Think about it, the church is the community that gives the world a foretaste of the renewed creation, when all things will be “made new”. We have the responsibility of living now in light of what will one day be. And, who is more fully equipped to address the global orphan crisis than the church is?
We are the people who have been entrusted with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the eternal message of hope. We understand that “one day the very word orphan will be eliminated from the human vocabulary.” But until that day comes we as a church have a responsibility to proclaim the gospel not only in word, but in deed. Remember what James wrote, “religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”
Read the whole post here.
Tags: church, adoption, global, orphancrisis
Stream of Orphan Sunday Event with Steven Curtis Chapman and Friends
If you missed the Orphan Sunday live event held November 8th you can watch it here. Click the photo below to be redirected to the site.
One of our church partners, Desert Springs Church, put together this great video for Orphan Sunday. Love seeing all the families who have adopted and those who have committed to adopting!
This weekend I will be in Atlanta, GA presenting a workshop on Sat morning and preaching Sun morning at Family by Faith Worship Center. Pray for me as I make final preparations as there are already over 50 folks signed up and many of those are unchurched families/couples. Below are the details of the workshop if you are in the area and would like to register:
“Financing Your Adoption in Challenging Times”
The workshop will include ideas, strategies and resources for making adoption
possible and affordable in these difficult financial times.
Featured presenter: Jason Kovacs
Director of Ministry Development for the ABBA Fund
Saturday, November 14, 2009
10:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon
4200 North Point Parkway
Alpharetta, Georgia
CLICK HERE to REGISTER
Presented by:
Family by Faith Worship Center
and
The Abba Fund
FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL 770-355-0437
In preparing to preach in Atlanta, GA this weekend, I have been meditating on the nature of God as “Father of the fatherless” and came across this quote by Charles Spurgeon. It is from his book “Faith’s Checkbook.“
“In God the orphan finds mercy.” (Hosea 14:3)
When a child is left without its natural protector, our God steps in and becomes his guardian: so also when a man has lost every object of dependence, he may cast himself upon the living God and find in Him all that he needs. Orphans are cast upon the fatherhood of God, and He provides for them. No trust is so well warranted by facts, or so sure to be rewarded by results, as trust in the invisible but ever-living God.
Better have God and no other friend than all the patrons on the earth and no God. To be bereaved of the creature is painful, but so long as the Lord remains the fountain of mercy to us, we are not truly orphaned.
Lord, let me find mercy in Thee! The more needy and helpless I am, the more confidently do I appeal to Thy loving heart.
Noel Piper (wife of John Piper) is blogging about their adoption story. It is a great read. Start here and follow the links.
The Bible is full of references to orphans, the fatherless, and adoption. God’s heart and passion for them is clear. Here are just a few references:
God Adopts
For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba, Father!’ (Romans 8:15)
So that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. (Galatians 4:5)
He predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ. (Eph 1:5)
God Commands
Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge. (Deuteronomy 24:17)
Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. (Isaiah 1:17)
God Promises He Knows Them
For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made . . . When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. (Psalm 139:13-15)
He Sees Them
But you, O God, do see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand. The victim commits himself to you: you are the helper of the fatherless. (Psalm 10:14)
The LORD watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. (Psalm 10:14)
He Has Compassion on Them
A father of the fatherless and a judge and protector of the widows is God in His holy habitation. God places the solitary in families and gives the desolate a home in which to dwell. Ps. 68:5-6a.
He Defends Them
Do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more. (Psalm 10:18)
A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. (Psalm 68:5)
He Will Come to Them
I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. (John 14:18)
[HT: Bethlehem Baptist Church]
