How To Adopt Without Ruining Your FamilySample

Tip #10 - Trust Him to Guard What You Hold Dear

If you’re asking me to promise the fairytale ending you’ve always envisioned can and will become your reality, I cannot. That variety of hopefulness is not reasonable. Taking risks, like adopting the fatherless, is not life wrapped up in a bow-topped box from Tiffany’s.

If you’re hoping for all the pieces to fit together perfectly, I’m sorry. We are dealing with broken individuals from often appalling situations living in a post Eden world. If this Polly Anna–all roads lead to sublimity—lifestyle is what you desire, you are setting your family on the fast course for disaster. This is not how family-building with the fatherless works. In fact, it’s not how family works at all.

It’s not how Christianity works either. Honestly, the hope offered through Jesus Christ is more than everything working out for the good of those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose. It’s much more glorious. Instead, this hope is based in a Person.

My best advice for anyone is to know Jesus—to really know him like Paul professes to know Him. When times were tough, Paul did not trust in information about Jesus. When sufferings came and all human support wavered, Paul did not talk about everything working out. He boasted of the Lord standing with him. Paul knows the person of Jesus in whom he believed. He could completely trust Jesus with everything. Therefore he was confident in the Lord’s ability to guard what had been entrusted to him.

Things aren’t looking good for Paul as he professed his confidence. He is in prison, closing in on death. Was he delusional or is there something to be gleaned from his emphatic reliance and certainty? No, he was not delusional. He’s simply acquired a lifetime of experience of God showing Himself to be trustworthy and unequivocally able.

How does this translate to your family? God is still able. This doesn’t ensure everything turns out the way you want. I honestly don’t know how it will work out. What I can promise is that your God is faithful. When all your hope is in Him, you can commit to Him your family, your life, your fears, your unknowns, your doubts—all that you hold dear. He is able to hold it securely—through eternity.

What do you need to commit to Him today?