Are We Raising Our Children With a Spirit of Adoption?

Are we raising our children to have a spirit of adoption or are we raising them with an orphaned spirit?

That question came to me one morning during my devotion time with my youngest daughter, Rebecca. We have been reading Compelled By Love by Heidi Baker. In the book Heidi describes an orphan spirit as one "that causes people to shrink back, peer around corners, and not believe that there is room on their Father God's lap." How many of us felt that way when we first came to Christ? Perhaps you still feel this way. We felt like we had to behave a certain way in order for Him to bless us. Where did we get that idea?

The Bible says in Ephesians 1:4-5 "for He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will." As adults so many of us who grew up out of the church, and even some who grew up in the church, associate God with how our parents were. We may not have known loving parents and even if we did, we were surrounded by the ideology of the world.

In my last blog I wrote about expectations; do you think God has expectations for us? I believe He doesn't. He only desires for us to love Him. "Yet while we were still sinners, God demonstrated His love for us" -Romans 5:8.

"Orphans compete with each other, always comparing and worrying that there is not enough, worrying that as God blesses someone else, that we will miss out. Sons and daughters of God who are pure in heart give preference to each other, knowing that there is always enough in the Father's house" -Compelled By Love

How do your children behave, or better yet how do you behave? Do you see the comparing and worrying in your life and the lives of your children or do we approach things as if God has an open kitchen?

When my girls bring friends home, I tell them to help themselves to the pantry if they are hungry. God wants us to come to Him that way. Everything in His house is ours, we are "adopted into sonship"; we have an inheritance. If parents have so much influence in how people view God, do your children understand that they have access to you? Are you available to your kids? When they are struggling with hurts, sins, anger, etc., can they approach you without fear? Are they able to come to you with anything, knowing that you will not judge and condemn them? If we call on the name of Jesus then we represent Him to those around us, including our children. Are we loving them and guiding them the way that God loves and guides us? Are you quick to forgive them when they fall and to forget the past transgressions? Are you gently leading them in the right direction, lovingly pursuing them when they run away, and waiting anxiously for their return when they become a prodigal? There is nothing that we as parents go through that God himself has not gone through with His children. Just look at Moses and His insecurities, the Israelites and their rebelliousness, David and his strong will, Peter, and his impulsiveness, and the disciples and their lack of faith. It's all in His word.

God never gave up on His children so why do we give up on ours? We either lower our standards and say, "that's just the way they are" or we place such high expectations on them they could never hope to please us. I choose to "train them in the way THEY should go". Teaching them to love who God created them to be, encouraging them in their God given gifts, and  speaking life into them and blessings over them. My children have confidence in who they are to me and who they are in God. They know that nothing they do can ever separate them from either God or myself.

 I'm going to end with this passage from Heidi's book.
"After fourteen years of ministering to children in the streets and villages of Mozambique, I am beginning to understand more about the spirit of adoption. God is looking for spiritual mothers and fathers who know who they are in Him, who will go into the darkness, look for lost children (spiritual orphans) of all ages, and bring them home to the Father's house. Our attempts to minister to others may be feeble to some, but they are precious to God. We may minister like a three - year - old drawing their first picture, but we try as hard as we can, and with great joy we scribble our picture for God. We may mess up or rip the page. But when God our Father looks at what we have done for Him, He says, 'It's amazing, it's fabulous!' If God had a fridge in heaven our pictures would be on it"