By: Joe Mead

Last June, my wife and I received a phone call that changed our lives. It was a call we had been expecting, preparing for, and felt convicted to receive. It was a phone call regarding a 3-year-old little girl who needed a foster family.

Becoming a foster parent was not an easy decision, but it’s a decision we couldn’t ignore any longer. Especially in light of what The Lord has revealed to us about our own adoption into God’s family.

Separated By Sin

All of us have been abandoned at one time—we’ve all been separated from our Father in Heaven by sin. Sin is the crooked nature we inherited by the first man. It was Adam’s failure to obey God’s command that locked humanity out of God’s presence and made us orphans and slaves to rebellion. However, through

Jesus (the second Adam) we are forgiven and adopted back into God’s family.

The Apostle Paul writes:

“But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s [Adam’s] offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many.” (Romans 5:15)

Just like the decision to bring a foster child into our family, Jesus did the same for me! I was just like an orphaned child. I was a mess. I was broken, abandoned, and filled with rebellion and fear. But God, through His great kindness and grace, took me into His family and began to change me with His patience, kindness, love, and grace.

Spirit of Adoption

Paul writes

“For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’” (Romans 8:15)

It was God’s forgiveness that allows me now to call Him, “Father.” And it is His Spirit working in me that continues to free me from all the bondage that my previous orphaned state had brought about.

It is similar to the change we saw in our foster girl. At first she was shy and unsure of our way of life. Her past marked her spirit with all sorts of wounds. The longer she was with us, the more those wounds began to surface. Issues like abandonment, rejection, defiance, anger, fear, and the list goes on. But my wife and I took those issues head on. And through consistency, patience, love, and kindness, that orphaned little girl began to change. She began to trust. She learned to listen. She even learned the rewards of obedience. Oh, how we loved to bless her when she made the right choice!

Paul concludes:

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.” (Ephesians 1:3-6)

When we make Jesus Christ Lord and Savior of our life, we are adopted into God’s family, and that positions us to receive all the benefits that come with being an adopted son or daughter of the King of Kings. The more we put on His nature, through the power of His Spirit in us, the more we will walk in love, blessing, and power. What an amazing privilege you and I have to call Him, “Abba, Father!”