Called to adoption

 Trusting God in Adoption

Chapter 1: Submitting to God First

“Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” — Matthew 6:33

When God calls a family to adopt, He is not only inviting a child into a home—He is inviting that home into deeper faith. Adoption is more than an act of love; it’s a surrender. It begins and continues with submission to the One who orchestrates family itself.

Going in to adoption can start many ways.  Although I know I don't need to recount your journey to get here, I want to acknowledge that you've already been through a lot, and no matter which way this child came in to your home, there's likely been stress, prayers, tears, and financial choices that seemed overwhelming.  

• A choice to grow or start your family through private adoption, and being "matched" can be exciting and nerve-wracking as you wait for that call and figure out how to pay for the process.  
• Pursuing an adoption of a child from another country, knowing they will (or may) have medical needs, will need to learn a new language, and will require many adjustments to a new culture is exciting and nerve-wracking.  
• Entering the Foster system and knowing you're taking in "your neighbor", and will likely have the opportunity to meet the child's parents and maybe even encourage them and minister to them is exciting and nerve-wracking.  
• Entering the Foster system to accept a child that may be adoptable is also exciting and nerve-wracking: the process may still be 9 months or more of courts, you might still get to meet the biological parents, and going through the different stages of adjustment for the child and your family while thoughts of, " is this child really going to stay, is another family member going to step up, is the social worker going to agree that we are a good fit for this child, or is this child actually supposed to be in another family?"  
• Maybe you actually are one of the kinship care families- taking in a family member that has become a permanent placement, and you're still connected to their parents because they are family.  This brings a lot of different excitement and nerve-wracking moments, maybe even including arguments and hard feelings within the family.

However you got to this place in your life, in growing your family, you've already been through many trials and tribulations.  Your motives and your faith have been tested.  You've wondered if you really heard God tell you to do this.  You've been faced with raising money or taking out a loan for that private adoption.  You've accepted that check for the foster placement, and become dependent on the extra helps of foster closets, food assistance, and respite care.  Or maybe it all came along really smoothly without all the questions and you are still in wonder, though the reality of "making it work" by the books is beginning to "ground you."

For many adoptive parents, the first “yes” is full of excitement, faith, and maybe a little fear. But once the dust settles—the home visits, the paperwork, the arrival, the final court day—another reality begins to grow: the weight of stewardship. The grocery bill is higher. The laundry multiplies. The time stretches thin. Suddenly, the beautiful calling feels costly.

And it is.

But God never calls us to something He won’t sustain. The same voice that said, “Bring this child home,” also whispers, “I will provide.”

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Surrendering Control

Submitting to God first means remembering who owns everything. The children are His. The home is His. The finances are His. Our role is not to figure out how to do it all, but to faithfully ask Him what's next, fully trusting Him to manage what He’s placed in our hands.

When we start with submission, peace replaces pressure. We stop striving to make ends meet in our own strength and begin to see how He multiplies what we surrender.  We don't get stuck, we mount up with wings like eagles, running without growing weary, walking in our calling without feeling faint (Isaiah 40:31).

Submission doesn’t mean passivity, it's not "waiting for miracles"—it means alignment, listening for His direction, faithfully meeting Him each day and expecting Him to be there for what He tells you to do.  It means saying, “Lord, You lead; we’ll follow,” and realizing that though it may look risky, He's the God of the universe, and of your family.  It's continuing to seek Him for the "how", and taking bigger and bigger steps, growing in faith as you take risks, laying down all of you for all of Him.  No longer looking to the left or right for help or approval, but finding your everything in Him.

It’s trusting that if He called you to this, He has already seen every bill, every need you have and every need your child or children has, every challenge in whatever way it may come, —and has already prepared provision for each one.  He wants you, me, us- to look up and keep trusting Him, not our own power, but by His power overcoming each and every challenge.  The power to be gentle in the face of obstinate children, to wipe the tears when we just wish they would know we love them, or when we don't understand why we don't feel the same towards them as we do our biological children.  The strength to keep going when we don't have all of the answers- yet, when we don't know how, when we wish we could know how the story ends, because surely we'd know better what to do now.... 

In His power we can face each moment of each day, and we can know how the story ends:  He loves me, you, the child, all of us more than anything, and will continue to pursue us with His hands open, with the hands of Christ, pierced for His children to know there is nothing that is too much, with the hands of Holy Spirit, lifting us up out of every pit.  Just look up, and lay down what you're holding on to.  Fear is not of Him, He wants you to have faith.

Lord, as we enter this study, I lift up others who have come with great excitement and open arms to welcome a child into their home.  I pray healing over the hurts that may have incurred over the past months and years and that they would forgive and accept your grace for themselves and all involved.  That they would be able to go forward in this study in freedom from the doubts that may have troubled them.  That they would let go of the hope for things of this world and find their hope in You.  

I pray for discipline that would look like relationship with You; growing grace that overflows, dependence on You increasing, and peace in Your promises becoming the breath in their lungs.  I pray for the chains of poverty broken, mental torment released, arguments, dissension, and division within these families to be cast out, addictions abandoned, and for the beautiful bonding that You desire in these families to ensue.  

I pray the words You bring me would bring healing and hope to many families.  That you would show them 2 Corinthians 6:18, "And I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me," Means You are, and You will never leave them nor the children they have taken in.  I thank You, Heavenly Father, for your healing as I write and as others are encouraged.  Lord, You care for each one, and Your grace is sufficient.  Thank You for the blood of Jesus that covers all of us.  In His precious and Holy Name I pray, Amen.