"You were bought with a price..."

Finally!!! The one word running through our minds the night we finished our online training!  All references, statements, and required paperwork have been received by our agency for Home Study and now we can have our caseworker assigned! (although we still have one all day training at UAB to attend in June.)  The last couple of months to me have seemed an endless process, more requirements to meet on top of what I already feel to be an abundant but also busy life!  And though we know that there is more work to complete, financial obligation, lots of preparations to be made (both logistically in our home and schedules, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually), Andrew and I both felt we had conquered at least one huge mountain that is now behind us.  
       But in the midst of this extra load in our lives, one short verse has consistently been coming to my mind "you were bought with a price..." 1 Corinthians 6:20.  I am reminded of the expensive price that was paid for me-for all of us- the son of God  left paradise, to come to a fallen and decaying world, who was dismissed, ridiculed, hated, beaten, and crucified-by CHOICE- in order to purchase for Himself, for His pleasure-sinners to become God's very own children, and heirs with God's only begotten son, Jesus.  Though we have in no way come close to being able to imagine the cost Jesus paid in order to cleanse our sin and allow the very spirit of God to live within us, this process so far has served as a reminder that any one of us who loves and follows Christ has been adopted, and the price of that adoption was more costly than we can ever imagine.

Ephesians 1:4-6 ...even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.  In love  he predestined us  for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.


And why did Jesus go through all of that for us?


For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.   Hebrews 12:2
Amy

Praying for Discernment

One significant item Amy and I are praying through and desperately need God’s guidance on right now is WHEN to adopt the second little girl. We still are convinced to adopt two, but we are struggling as to when to adopt the second. There are pros and cons to both scenarios of adopting them at the same time or adopting one then going back to get the second 6 months, a year, or even two years later. The real struggle in this decision has to do with the ability (really the lack there of) of the child to bond to us. Some of the issues that parents and families face when adopting a child internationally is hard for many to even imagine. One of the biggest and most crucial elements to face early on after the child comes home is teaching the child to bond with the family. For example, one family who adopted a little girl from an orphanage in China when she was 12 months old shared their story with us, and told us that one of the adjustments they had to teach her was how and when to cry! That is hard to even imagine that a child does not know how and why to cry! I cannot imagine my sons being hungry, scared, or just wanting someone to love and cuddle them and crying so much and so long until they just give up.  In short, they learned at a very young age in the orphanage that when they are crying in the bed, no one is going to respond, so they give up. The simple interactions we have with our children, the laughing, playing, disciplining, etc. that goes on every day throughout the day are essential to our children’s development and in doing all this, we develop that inseparable bond with them. In stark contrast, these children in these orphanages have completely missed out on those critical bonding experiences and therefore this alters their ability to ever develop those bonds in what we would consider to be a normal sense. Many of these children, as a result, are never able to develop these deep, intimate bonds with anyone for the rest of their lives.

Those challenges in mind, we want to be absolutely sure we do all we can to promote that bond development and it is possible that if we adopt them together it could hinder the development of that bond between them and us. We do NOT want to make this decision based on what makes the most sense or what we think will work best. We want to KNOW HIS WILL and follow Him. I pray that "the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guards our hearts and minds," (Phil 4:7) so we can clearly discern His will in this.


In Christ

Andrew

Does the same thing that drove Christ to the Cross drive us to follow Him?

One of the biggest questions we will ever ask when it comes to Christ, what He did, and what He is doing, “WHY?” Why was He willing to leave the inconceivably wonderful residence in Heaven enjoying unhindered, perfect, eternal fellowship with the Father to be born as a little, helpless, baby boy? Not only born as a man, but born in the most poor of conditions to an extremely poor family. Then, to be rejected by those He came to save, suffer horribly, die an excruciating death, and then have His perfect, unhindered fellowship with the Father BROKEN for the first time in all eternity! WHY? WHAT DROVE Him to do all this? And not only to do all this, but to do it knowing since the beginning that all of those things were going to take place! In order to follow Him, we must know what drove Him!

Thank God He clearly answers that question. Hebrews 12:2, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who FOR THE JOY set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” This point can be greatly expanded upon and it is awe inspiring if to really soak it in! In short, Jesus knew the JOY He would experience by “finishing the work [God] gave Him to do” (John 17:4). He knew the joy He would experience would FAR outweigh the suffering He was required to endure to get there.

So the real question I must answer for my own life, “do I really believe the “suffering” I experience due to following Christ will be far outweighed by the joy I experience in following Him?” Now I must define what “suffering” is here and how it relates to adoption. I call it “suffering” as opposed to suffering without quotes for a reason. People who don’t know Christ will look at our lives (and I will go so far to say many regular church attendees will also) and say, “why would they spend all that money to adopt two special needs children and give up all those nicer cars, houses, etc they can buy with the money?” or “why would they want to take on all that added burden of raising two more kids and special needs kids at that?” There are many other questions that can come along these lines. The bottom line is, in their eyes, this does not make sense and seems like we are adding an unnecessary burden of suffering to our lives when we could easily be enjoying a much better and easier and more comfortable life.

 So, at the bottom of heart, I must answer what I believe will bring the greatest joy, the American Dream of the comfortable life or a Cross? Based on His Word and the guidance of His Spirit, I truly believe with all my heart that we are not losing anything, but we are GAINING by choosing to follow Him in this adoption! We are GAINING in so many ways, it is hard to describe them all! We are gaining two daughters, a deeper walk with God, a deeper understanding of His love for us, a stronger family, a closer family, and a powerful witness to His goodness and glory just to name a few.

Praise God that He has freed all those who believe in Him from the desires of this world that will only leave us disappointed, empty, and longing for something more and brought us to a place where we can enjoy the One thing that can satisfy the longing of our hearts, Himself! “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete,” (John 17:11). He makes our joy complete and nothing else even comes close.

Following Him,

Andrew

What determines how far we are willing to go to follow Him?

In the back of all our minds, we have a limit, most likely an unspoken or even un-pondered limit, of how far we are willing to go to follow Him. A gauge so to speak, gauging tasks as they come up to decide if this is something we can take on. So what is that gauge based on? How do we “size up” the task so to speak?

I know from my own mistakes and heart that too often I take the wrong approach. I size up the task based on my own size. Like the Israelites in Numbers 13 when the spies were sent into the Promised Land to spy it out to see if they could take it. They came back and said “We seemed like grasshoppers in OUR OWN EYES,” (Num 13:33).  They were sizing up the task against themselves and they saw that it was much bigger than they were. Way too often, I size up the task at hand the same way. If this is the approach we take, we will NEVER go very far and retreat to areas of comfort every time. Like the Israelites,  that leaves us to wander in the desert the rest of our lives, with God giving us enough provision to barely survive, but completely missing out on the promises of God as they did! I am convinced that is why so many in the church today have reached a plateau in their walk.

So what is the right approach? Maybe we are comparing the task at hand to the wrong person. We should, as the Israelites should have, size the task up against God and not ourselves. Now the key here is how we picture God! AW Tozer said it best, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Profound! This is HUGE because if we have too small of a picture of God, then we will not be willing to go very far for Him. There is no doubt we all have way too small picture of God because we cannot imagine all that He is. We cannot even get our minds around His creation, so how can we possibly get our minds around the Creator!

For example, here is a picture of a galaxy, called the Whirlpool Galaxy, astronomers call the Emerald of the Sky. It is fairly close in space terms in that it is only 31 million light years away, knowing a light-year is ~5,434,000,000 miles! It has a mere 250 Billion stars in it. Now, the most amazing part about this galaxy is the next picture. They zoomed the Hubble Space telescope in as far as they could to get a picture of the “black hole” at the center that is holding the galaxy together. Here is the picture it returned! NO PHOTOSHOP!

The Cross! Gives all new meaning to Colossians 1!

If that is not enough for us to picture how BIG God really is, check out this video. This gives just a little glimpse into how BIG OUR GOD IS!

HE IS REALLY BIG! HE IS ON OUR SIDE! HE WILL ALWAYS LEAD US IN THE WAY WE SHOULD GO! HE WILL NEVER LEAVE US!

May the God who “spoke” all these stars into existence give us faith and strength to sustain us on this journey!

God Bless

Andrew