In Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families & Churches, Russell Moore has two things he wants to tell you about adoption:
1) If you're a Christian, you've been adopted into the family of Christ.
2) Because of that, you should be more open to the idea of adopting strangers into your family.
These two themes are weaved together throughout the book as he explores the theology of our adoption in Christ, the biblical mandate to take care of orphans, the changes local churches can and should make in regard to teaching about both, and the actual process and struggles of adoption — told through his own story of adopting two little boys from Russia.
Don't worry that he's going to say you must adopt a child. He doesn't. But he does tell you that you could do it if you really wanted to. He also says it's not as bad as you think. And he gives ways people can help in this area without actually adopting a child themselves.
If you only read the book to get his teaching on our adoption in Christ, it would be well worth your time.
But the world is full of little children who have no hope for the future unless people like you and me decide to love them and make them ours just like God the Father did for us. It is the embodiment of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Give him a chance to convince you.
If you are interested in this book, Christian Audio.com is offering the audiobook for free through the end of February 2011. You can listen to it on the way to work or while you do chores. (Hey, no money commitment, no time commitment, how can you say no?)
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world (James 1:27).
Rating: 4 stars — highly recommended
In my bio it says, "I'm married with 2 kids and no free time — so, of course, I've got a blog."
Lately I've had even less free time. While work has slowed down (maybe too much), home life has picked up. Besides the usual chores and such, my eldest is in first grade and is struggling learning to read, so she's been the focus of every evening for a while. Our lives are chocked full, with few moments to ourselves for our own hobbies or interests.
So we're adopting a couple more kids.
Are we out of our ever-loving minds? Yeah.
Is it going to be hard? Certainly. Isn't everything worthwhile?
And this is certainly worthwhile. In fact, it's probably more worthwhile than you think. The idea of adoption is the core of Christian theology, but it's also the Christian life encapsulated.
Adoption is...
The gospel in miniature — choosing to love someone you have no obligation to.
Loving Jesus by loving "the least of these."
"Pure and faultless" religion.
Spiritual warfare — opposing the prince of this world who desires to see people left in a hopeless state.
Embodying the Kingdom by giving a home to the fatherless and food to the hungry.
Evangelism — What better way to share the gospel with someone than to bring them into your house and life?
And it's taking care of kids who have no one else.
It's also opposing social Darwinism, living out what we believe. As Alexander Sanger put it,
"Adoption is counter-intuitive from an evolutionary vantage point .... Adoption requires a person to devote time and resources to raising a child that is not genetically related."(1)
Exactly. It makes no sense from a materialistic point of view (in either sense of the word), but it makes all kinds of sense from an eternal perspective.
(1) Quoted in Adopted for Life by Russell Moore.
What's your favorite part of a worship service?
I define "worship" as a response to who God is, what He's done, and what He's promised. That makes it include a good deal more than singing. Giving money to support the work of the church (be it salaries, missions, or helping the poor) and listening and learning as someone teaches from the Word can definitely be worship.
For me nothing tops baptism: When someone responds to the gospel by promising to follow Jesus for the rest of their days. (We're obviously credobaptists.)
It's saying, "This is what I believe, and I'm going to be different because of it." And yet I think we all know it's not a one-time thing. It's a commitment, a choice, you have to make every day. Every minute of every day.
But it doesn't hurt to make a big deal of it every now and then.
We don't all need to go back through the baptismal waters, but we can stop and plant our flag and say to our flesh and to our Savior, "I'm going to follow Jesus for as long as I live."
When's the last time you consciously renewed that commitment?
What's wrong with today?
Here's a worthy new year's resolution: Learn to think better.
Amazon is offering the Kindle version of Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life for free at least today. That title's been hanging out on my wishlist for some time.
Again, you don't have to have a Kindle to read Kindle books. They offer pc, mac, and smartphone reader apps for freem, so go ahead and pick up this title. Even if you never get around to reading it, you're not out anything.
'Tis the season when many people start Bible reading plans geared toward covering the whole Bible in a year.
I think that's a worthy goal, but I also think it's too fast to really absorb what you're reading. It's also often too much; many people become discouraged and quit entirely.
That's why I'm excited that someone's put out a structured, year-long Bible reading plan that covers about half of the Bible.
It reads fewer chapters a day than Bible-in-a-year plans. It's reads many chapters repeatedly (good for depth and greater understanding). It skips difficult (aka "boring") sections — for example, no Leviticus (not that I don't love Leviticus). And it's tailor-made with appropriate sections to read before Easter and Christmas.
I think it's a great idea, and if you're thinking about trying a daily Bible reading plan, especially if you've never successfully completed one before, I recommend giving this one a try.
The reading plan can be found at the Grace Evangelical Free Church's website.
An interview with the creator can be found at Scriptorium Daily.
Best of all, the first week repeats the first chapters of John and Genesis, so you're really not even behind if you start soon.
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Related articles:
7 Tips for Reading the Bible in a Year
5 Questions to Help Your Devotions
