The Adoption of a Father

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"When God Seems Silent"

"Daddy's Little Girl, Day 2"

"The Lord's Prayer, Day 4"

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Dannah Gresh: Did you know that prayer is a privilege? Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth explains.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: The entire basis for our approaching God and making these requests is our relationship with Him as His children.

Dannah: Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend! I’m Dannah Gresh.

So, you know Father’s Day is this weekend, right? (If you forgot, this is your reminder!) Well, today we’re going to talk about something that might not seem like it’s related to Father’s Day, but it is: adoption. And here’s a trick question: do you know anyone who’s been adopted?

Maybe someone in your church comes to mind, maybe a couple who’s adopted either from the U.S. or internationally. That’s great! I hope you know someone who’s done that, or maybe you did it. I’ll tell you later in the program why I call it a trick question.

Our first guests today have an adoption story. Randall and Rachel Payleitner had always been interested in adoption, and when it became clear that they weren’t going to have biological children, they were even more eager to adopt. Here’s the quick version of their story.

Rachel Payleitner: We had talked about adoption even before we got married as something we might want to do.

Randall Payleitner: We decided to go the international route.

Rachel: It took about two years from start to finish, from our introductory meeting to bringing our son home.

We named him Judah Si (his middle name), and we decided on Judah, which means praise, give thanks.

Nancy: So you flew to China . . .

Randall: We did. They brought him to us at the hotel.

Rachel: They brought him to us, to our hotel, in a van. They passed him out the door, put him right in my arms, and he looked right in my eyes. It was wonderful. Amazing.

Randall: Our lives have never been the same.

Rachel: Never the same.

Randall: It’s been wonderful.

Dannah: After they brought Judah home, Randall and Rachel started the adoption process again. Two years later, they brought home their second son.

Rachel: His name’s Gideon, “a mighty warrior.”

Dannah: The process was very similar to their first adoption . . . but there was one major difference.

Randall: It was like, “Here you go!” And we’re like, “Oh, I guess this is it!” And, at that point, we had been parents for two years, so as with most parents who have been parents for two years, we were like, “We got this!” We received Gideon, and it was pretty clear pretty quickly that he was our son!

Nancy: Did you just know?

Randall: I imagine it’s the same as when you’re in a hospital and they hand you your kid. You say, “I will do anything for you!—and I’ve met you four seconds ago!” Same idea, absolutely; no question about it, he was our son!

Nancy: Rachel, did you feel that as a mother?

Rachel: Yes. And it’s something that only God can do that to our hearts. This screaming, crying, very large child was put in my arms. And I’m like, “Oh, my goodness! He hates me!” 

But we did not put him down.

Dannah: Isn’t that a great picture? A frightened, screaming baby in the arms of his new parents who love him so much they will do everything they can to help him and keep him safe!

That brings us back to the question I asked earlier: do you know anyone who’s been adopted? I hope your immediate answer was, “Yes!”

You see, the adoption of children, like what the Payleitners did, reminds us of something even more meaningful. And that is how Christians are adopted by God to be a part of His family. So really, anyone who is a believer has been adopted!

Randall and Rachel love that picture.

Randall: Of course, we know God’s our Father in heaven. He loves us. He cares for us. He wants what’s best for us. All you need to do is turn your Bible to pretty much any page, and you can see God’s hand on our stories, God’s hand on our lives, and His obvious love and care for us.

But very specifically, you can read in Romans 8 . . . I don’t know if I’m allowed to have a favorite chapter in the Bible, but I do, and that’s it.

Nancy: That’d be a great one.

Randall: You’ve got it. And there you read right there that God has adopted us as sons.

Rachel: Co-heirs with Christ.

Randall: Co-heirs with Christ. And the Holy Spirit is there certifying that it’s good. Whew! Amen!

So not only did this little boy, our son, and our second son, change our lives to become parents here on earth, we recognize the exact nature of their sonship to us. They are our children. They are our sons. We love them. We’d do anything for them.

It also changed how we understood God adopting us. He adopted us. He grafted us in. He adopted us as His children. He didn’t have to do that. He loves us so much that He did that for us.

Dannah: That’s Randall Payleitner and his wife Rachel talking with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth about how their adoption of two sons made them more aware of their own adoption by God.

I can testify to that. I’ve mentioned before that my husband Bob and I adopted one of our own daughters from China. And it’s so true! The experience really opened our eyes to the wonderful gifts we have received through adoption in Christ.

If you’re interested in hearing more of the Payleitners’ story, you can find the whole series on our website. Go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and find a link to it in the transcript of today’s program.

This Father’s Day weekend, we’re talking about adoption. 

Blair Linne sees that connection between adoption and the gospel. Blair has spoken at multiple True Woman conferences. She’s an author and a spoken word artist. 

Let’s listen to what she said not too long ago to a group of women attending a workshop she led at True Woman.

Blaire Linne: Adoption comes through our new birth. So for those who have repented of their sin and have placed their trust in Jesus Christ as Savior, they actually can call God their Father, which is amazing. And that's the result of this new birth. We see that in John 3, with Nicodemus coming at night and Jesus speaking about the new birth.

But also in John 1:12–13, it says,

But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

So the beauty of that, in our adoption, it's not just, "Well, my mom was a Christian. My dad was a Christian. So I'm a Christian, too. My mom was adopted. My grandmother was adopted by God through Jesus. So I'm adopted, too."

No, this is we are born of God. Personally making a decision to say, "Jesus, yes, I will serve You. I believe You are the Son of God. I believe that You died for my sins. And I'm willing to forsake my sin and follow You." So it's a specific, personal confession that we all must make.

And the beauty of that is Jesus is the giver of grace. Ephesians 2 says," For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God" (v. 8). What a wonderful gift that we are able to receive by God—freely by God. Because we are all sinners, there's nothing that we can do to earn God's salvation. So God has chosen to stay and to love us even when we were unlovable. The Bible says, "While we were yet sinners"-in our sin, Christ died for the ungodly while in our sin.

And this is the beauty of adoption. The adopted child does not bring anything to the situation but their need. And the same way the hymn writer says, "Nothing in my hands do I bring, but simply to thy cross I cling." And that is all who are trusting in Jesus. We say, "God, my good works are as filthy rags, so I'm just going to sit and receive Your abundant grace. I'm going to receive Your mercy."

I thank the Lord we are broken individuals, but yet God says, "I want to have a relationship with you, in your brokenness, in your weakness. I want to love you." And I think that is a wonderful truth also to meditate on. God doesn't save us so that He would just tolerate us. "Okay, I saved them. Okay, that's it." No. He says, "I want to fellowship with you. I love you. I delight in you."

Do you believe that God delights in you? Do you believe that God delights in you—just you, who you are as a daughter of God?

There's a Scripture that Jesus says, it's in John 15:9. He says, "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love." I think if we meditate on that, just meditating upon that truth . . . He says, "As the Father has loved me"—this eternal love—He says, "So have I loved you." And then He says, "Abide in my love."

I feel like, in my life, I have had to fight to hold fast to the fact that the Lord loves me despite me. The way the Father looks at me, He sees Jesus. He sees Christ. Not that I am Christ, but He lives in me. And as a result, He loves me with an everlasting love.

And we clearly see this love at the cross. We know the Scripture, we may be familiar, John 3:16, maybe a little familiar. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

And Scripture also says "this is how we know what love is, Jesus Christ laid down His life for us." And that's 1 John 3:16. So the very act of laying His life down in our place shows how great His love is for us. And as a daughter of God, we must know that Jesus loves us.

Ephesians 1 says He chose to save you, 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 [or daughters] through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite in him all things, things in heaven and things on earth (vv. 4–10).

So the beauty of God's love is that He sent His Son to taste death for believers so that we do not have to. And we know that this is the guarantee because Jesus resurrected from the grave. So it is finished. He rose with all power. He defeated sin and death and the grave, and we do not have to face that death. We don't have to be bound by our sin. And it's because of Christ.

So Jesus now is interceding for us as His children. And the resurrection gives us hope. Because Jesus has risen from the dead, we are now able to live in newness of life, the Scripture says.

Romans 4 says, "Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them" (vv. 7–8).

So the beauty is, as we're born again, we're justified. We're declared righteous by God. We're sanctified, and we're Spirit filled. We're new. So once we're truly born again, we receive this new nature as God fills us with His Holy Spirit. And then also we're kept by God. God is faithful to keep His children and care for His children. He will not lose one, the Scripture says.

Revelation 3:5 says, "He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels."

So the bottom line is, God is not like man. The Bible says, "A faithful man, who can find?" The Scripture says, "God, He is faithful." Even when we're faithless, He will never deny Himself. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

So adoption means we have God as our Father. We have God as our Father. Just think about that! God is our Father. He's promised to care for us, to protect us, to provide for us. He will even discipline us in love, the Scripture says in Hebrews 12. And He does this to show that we belong to Him.

Now we have a new head of the house, a new role in the family, a new identity and purpose. Adoption means that we are loved and we are cared for. God saw fit to save us, not because we deserve it, but because of His mercy.

Yes, we have God as our Abba Father, and so now we're "A Daughter Restored."

Dannah: Wow! What a great reminder that I am in God’s family now, and my identity is in Christ.

We just heard from Blair Linne, speaking at a recent True Woman conference. 

I want you to hear one more reminder about God as our Father, this time from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. Nancy taught a series on the Lord’s Prayer, found in Matthew 6. She points out that the opening phrase, “Our Father,” has unique meaning for Christians.

Nancy: I think that Father is one of the most distinctive names that we Christians use for God. I learned while I was doing this study that Muslims have ninety-nine names for God—names like The Powerful, The Irresistible, The All-Compelling Subduer, The Magnificent, The Majestic, The Sublimely Exalted, The Protector, The Benefactor . . . on and on—ninety-nine names that Muslims have for God.

But not one of those names is Father. Only Christians, in the truest sense of the word, can call God “Father.”

Now, the fact that we start this prayer by saying “Our Father” is a beautiful thing, but it’s also an exclusive concept. Not everyone can say, “Our Father.” There are some who cannot pray this prayer.

There are many—there are most—who cannot pray this prayer. Only those who are His children can pray, “Our Father.”

This goes contrary to what a lot of modern theology has taught about the universal fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man. “We are all God’s children, all God’s children,” and we sing about it and talk about it; hopefully not in the church you go to, but in many churches this is the concept.

“All children of God . . . different roads, different faiths, different ways of viewing God, but we’re all God’s children.” Not so, according to God’s Word.

Jesus said to the religious Jews of His day something that also had to be exceedingly shocking for them. He said, “You are of your father the devil” (John 8:44).

Whew! I mean, these were the Jews that had so much respect for God they couldn’t say His name out loud; and Jesus said, “You may have the right language; you may have the right behavior; you might have the right actions, but God is not your Father. You are of your father the devil.”

You say, “That’s because they were hypocrites.” You know what? Every one of us is born into this world a child of the devil. Every human being that has ever been born—apart from the Lord Jesus Himself—we are born, God says, “children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3), “children of the devil” (1 John 3:10), children of this world and the kingdom of this world.

In order to become children of God, we have to be taken out of the realm that we’re born into and transferred to another realm, to another kingdom, to another family—reborn to become children of God.

John 1:11–13 tells us that Jesus “came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”

You see, when you were born physically, you were not born a child of God. We have to become children of God. We have to be given the right to become children of God, and that happens through faith in Jesus Christ.

So those who don’t have that relationship with Him cannot truly pray. They can’t say “Our Father” because our communication with God is that of a family. The entire basis for our approaching God and making these requests is our relationship with Him as His children.

Those who don’t know God as Father have no basis on which to make these requests. If your kids want a raise in their allowance, or they want a special certain something for their birthday, who do they ask? They don’t go ask the neighbor’s dad. They ask their own parents.

Jesus is saying, “You want to have these requests answered? You’ve got to have a Father/child relationship with God.”

Now, that’s a huge comfort to those of us who are His children. So as you go to prayer, do you stop and think about that? If not, you may be guilty of vain repetitions. Do you think about the fact that our ability to address God as Father is only possible through His Son, Jesus Christ?

Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6), through Christ. Through Christ and His death on the cross, He has opened up the way for us to have a relationship with God as our Father. It’s an adoptive relationship.

In Romans 8:14–16 we read about that adoptive relationship:

All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom [that is, the Holy Spirit] we cry, “Abba! Father!”

Jesus prayed “Abba, Father.” We can pray “Abba, Father,” that tender, intimate, familiar term, because “the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”

The Spirit adopts us into the family of God as we place our faith in Jesus Christ and His death on the cross; and then it’s the Spirit who assures us of that relationship, because sometimes even as children of God, we get out of fellowship with God, and we start to doubt: “Am I really God’s child?”

There have been times in my own life when I would think, I cannot believe the way I’ve been acting! How can I be a Christian and act that way?

Do you ever have those thoughts? It’s the Spirit who brings conviction. It’s the Spirit who gives us the gift of repentance, restores us to fellowship, and reassures our hearts that we do belong to God.

He goes on to say in Romans 8:17, “If [we are] children, then [we are] heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.” Do you know what that means?

As children, as heirs of God, we have full family rights and privileges. Fellow heirs with Christ—all that is His is ours through our adoption into the family in God. That means we have freedom and boldness to approach Him with our requests, because of that Father/child relationship.

So let me ask you a few questions as we make this all personal:

Is God your Father? I’m not asking, “Do you pray, ‘Our Father who is in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name’?” I’m asking, is He really your Father?

• Have you been adopted into His family? Have you been given the right to be called a child of God because of placing your faith in Christ and Christ alone?
• Are you led by the Spirit of God?
• Does the Spirit bear witness with your spirit that you are a child of God?
• When you pray “Our Father, who art in Heaven,” are you conscious of Who you’re praying to? Do you approach Him as your Abba, Father, or do you approach Him, as I find I so often do in prayer, as someone who is distant, someone who is far off?
• Are you conscious who you’re talking to when you come and say, “Our Father”? Thinking back to that kayaker off the coast of England, when you have a need and you’re capsizing, who do you call?
• Who do you call first? Is it your first instinct to call your Father? Or do you call Him as a last resort, when everything else has failed and the line is busy everywhere else?

You know what? Your boat may have capsized by then. Do you call Him first, or do you look to some other person or some other source to meet your needs? Jesus said, “When you pray, pray like this: ‘Our Father’” (see Matt. 6:9).

Dannah: Amen. I hope you’ll take some time to think about what you’ve heard today.

If you answered Nancy’s questions and realized you can’t call God your Father, would you call out to Him? It’s not too late! If you have more questions about that, find the transcript of today’s program at ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend. We’ll have a link there to a book by Pastor Erwin Lutzer. It’s titled How You Can Be Sure You Will Spend Eternity With God.

Song:

How has the sinner been forgiven
How has the rebel been made clean
Or blinded eyes been made to see
How have the orphans been adopted
Who hated Your love and ran from grace
Despised and rejected all Your ways

How wonderful the Father's love
The Father's love for us
That He would send His only Son
To come and rescue us
He has saved us, called us blameless
Guides us now and will sustain us
Oh how wonderful the Father's love¹

Dannah: Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh. Have a wonderful Father’s Day weekend. I hope you can celebrate with your dad or maybe a spiritual father in your life.

We’ll see you next time for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

¹ "The Father’s Love." Sovereign Grace Music. Sons and Daughters ℗ 2009 Sovereign Grace Music, under exclusive license to DCCI Services.

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