Part 5: The Question (read the other parts here) As I have tried to demonstrate in parts 3 and 4 in this series, it really is not difficult to recognize the importance of adoption in Paul's thought. It clearly plays a central role in the outworking of the history of redemption. Adoption precedes human history […]

Part 4: Quick Survey of Adoption's Marking Function (read the other parts here) As I noted in part 3, God’s work of adoption has a “marking” function in the grand story of redemption. It plays a leading role from before the beginning of the unfolding story of redemption (before God created the world) all the […]

Part 3: Adoption’s Importance and Recovery (read the other parts here) So how important is the doctrine of adoption and why should it be recovered? Its importance should not be evaluated by considering the number of times the term adoption is actually used in Scripture. One of the other reasons adoption has been neglected in […]

It’s been a long week, with more than the usual adoption issues to deal with and more than the expected number of stares and comments from strangers. I sat down on Tuesday to have the ‘Where Babies Come From,’ discussion with my three oldest kids and realized that even there I have to think through […]

Part 2: The Neglect of Heavenly Adoption (read part 1 here) If adoption is first heavenly (i.e., vertical) before it is earthly (i.e., horizontal), why do we Christians so often think of earthly adoption before we think of heavenly adoption? Why do we think horizontally before we think vertically? I think one reason for this […]

What do you first think of when you hear the word adoption? Most people think of the earthly practice of adoption before they think of heavenly adoption, that is, they think of couples adopting children before they think of God adopting us as His children. Throughout this new series of posts on the importance of […]

Today's interview is with Greg Whiting, a husband, father, pastor, and one of my closest friends in college.  God has given Greg and his wife, Teresa, a beautiful adoption story. When the two of us were in college together, neither one of us had any idea that God would one day grow our future families […]

This morning I read a short post over at Riley Dad's Weblog which reminded me that I've been meaning to post about adoption language issues. One of the first things that struck me when I started working at Carolina Hope in 2005 was the lingo. I was told there were certain things I wasn't allowed […]

Severely disabled, non-responsive, and unknown life expectancy. These are some of the technical words that define children many of my friends have adopted. These are the hard cold facts that fill the endless pages of their medical histories and that would have condemned them to limited lives in hospitals and other such institutions, except that […]

John and Connie met each other at church during their college days at Oklahoma State University. What started out as a very casual and comfortable friendship steadily grew into much more as they spent more and more time together in church/ministry, and hanging out with friends--less than 14 months after they met, they were married! […]