Transcript
Many years ago, Luella and I were reading a book by Lisa Richette. Lisa was a lawyer for the Child Welfare Department of Philadelphia and the book was called [The] Throwaway Children and it was story after story of terrible things that happened to children as a result of bad adult decisions; and we literally wept our way through this book.
Our Home Was a Resource
And it hit us - it seems kind of dumb to say it now - but it hit us that our home was a resource, that this view that somehow you have your little family life here and ministry over here is just not biblical, that a Christian family is a wonderful resource of help and protection and guidance and rescue.
And we thought if we can rescue one child and bring that child into a home of faith and shower that child with the love of the Lord Jesus Christ and the truth of God's word, if that's all we did with our lives, our lives would have been worth living and so, we did that. And I think that there's no more consistent application of what it means to be part of God's kingdom work than to open your home to someone who desperately needs a family of faith and a family of love.
So it's my belief that the doctrines of scripture, like adoption, don't just define who God is. They also define who you are as God's child and how you are meant to live. And so, let's take adoption. God, the Father, through the sacrifice of Christ, opens the door to us to be His children. God is the most hospitable being in the universe. We don't have to earn that. We don't have to achieve that. We don't have to deserve that. That's His willing grace to us.
Now, here's how that forms lifestyle. It is God's plan that the invisible, adopting grace of God would be made visible by people of grace who live with the same hospitality and give the same grace that they've been given to children who need grace, who can't earn their love, can't achieve their love, can't deserve their love, but don't have a home. If I celebrate the fact that I'm [an] adopted son of God, then how can I not be willing to do for others what God has done for me? It's just the principle that no one gives grace better than a person who realizes the grace that he's been given.
