Why Adopt (Part 1)

If you have browsed around our site a bit, you may have noticed the "Why Adopt" page has been saying "Coming Soon" for quite a while.  Well, after listening to our friend, Ben, speak about adoption at church today, God really set it on my heart to finally start writing it.  However, my initial writings have quickly grown out of control, so Darbi suggested I do what she jokingly calls a "guest series with Robert."  So, I'll be posting a series on my thoughts about the "why" behind adoption.  When I'm done, I'll try to shorten it to something that fits in one post.

If you were to walk up to me and ask me why we are adopting, I would simply tell you that we are adopting because it is a chance to love a child by bringing them into our family just like God loved us and brought us into His family.

Of course that is the short answer, but I'd love to give you a complete answer.

Simply put, we are all quite bad people.  Sure, we may not be as bad has Hitler or some other infamous figure from history, but let me assure you, we’ve all done some pretty bad stuff.  We’ve all lied.  We’ve all cheated.  We’ve all had unjust hatred.  Maybe not very often…maybe only every once in a great while (or so we often think), but even just once is enough.

God has a standard.  It’s the standard one must live by in order to be at peace with Him.  The standard is perfection.  Hence, we’re all bad people…we’ve all fallen short of the standard of God.  No one deserves His blessings.  No one deserves His friendship.  No one deserves to even go near Him.  In fact, no one deserves to continue living…because the penalty of falling short is death.

Let me assure you, Darbi and I have certainly fallen very short of perfection.  We deserve only death.

But God, because His has so much mercy, has made a way for us.  God the Father sent His Son to earth to be born as a man…Jesus Christ…both God and man.  He lived perfectly.  He didn’t deserve death.  But death is the penalty we had to pay, so He paid it for us.  The punishment we deserved was carried out on Jesus instead.  Then three days later, He forever broke the power of death when He came back to life.

But God isn’t just merciful.  He also gave us grace.  Grace is giving something undeserved.  His grace is His adoption of us.  Not only did He mercifully take our punishment for us, but then He adopted us into His family.  He made us His children.  Why?  Because He loves us.  In 1 Thessalonians it says, “In love He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ…”

As His children, there is one thing that gives us joy unlike anything else.  Not just happiness, but deep, everlasting, soul saturating joy.  That one thing is pleasing our Father.  Adoption is certainly pleasing to God.  What an amazing way to please God...giving the love of adoption to a child, just as God gave it to us!  That, however, is a topic that must wait until another post.

So why do we adopt?  I couldn’t sum it up better than to quote my friend, Josh Waulk. “We adopt because God first adopted us.”