You’re Adopted
It’s not surprising that so many of the people involved in efforts to place children in adoptive families are Christians—or that a growing number of Christian parents are seeking to adopt children domestically and internationally. The idea of adoption is built right into our understanding of God as our Father; it’s key to our whole worldview.
Like all of us, teens sometimes have mixed feelings about the idea of adoption. Some carry a clumsy idea that adoption is always and only second best—that it’s the consolation prize for parents who can’t have kids and kids who don’t have parents. We’re pulling our talking points for the week from Romans 8:15-25, which describes our glorious “grand prize” status as God’s adopted children.
It’s worth talking about with your kids from two perspectives. On the one hand, you can help them to understand that human adoption does not make for lesser families. Adopted children are the full children of their parents, with all the rights and privileges of a biological child. And adoptive parents are fully parents in every sense of the word. It’s true that it’s a process often built on loss, but that does not diminish the significance of what is found: real, true family.
It’s an important idea not just for validating those who live in adoptive families, but also because we cannot understand our own relationship with God without fully embracing the authenticity of adoption. We would have no right to call God our Father if He had not adopted us. Because He did, we are His full children, not step-children, not grandchildren, not “second best.”
Adoption is God’s plan for every Christian, and adoptive families are a really cool picture of that. We hope a few of the questions below will generate some productive conversation with your kids.
Talking Points
- How would you define the word “adoption”? How many friends do you have that you know are adopted?
- Do you think adoption makes a child less important in a family than if he or she were a biological child of the parents? Why or why not?
- Do you think an adopted child should feel like he or she is less significant in a family when compared to biological kids? Why or why not?
- Why do you think adopted kids are legally considered as full children of their parents, even though they weren’t born into the family?
- How important is it to you, as a Christian, to be able to call God your Father? Do you usually think of Him as your dad? Why or why not?
- Is there any way to think of being a Christian without understanding that God is your Father?
- Romans 8:15 says that we have been given the “Spirit of adoption” or “Spirit of sonship.” Do you usually think of yourself as an adopted child of God?
- Does God have any “biological” or “begotten” children? [Parent: Just one: Jesus. See John 3:16.]
- Legally, we are God’s heirs. We will inherit His glory when we die or when Jesus returns. What is it worth to be included in God’s will, so to speak, or to be called one of His children?
- Does being God’s child mean that you should never experience any kind of suffering or hard times? Why or why not? [Parent: Jesus suffered as a human being on the earth, and we will, as well.]
- If we still suffer—and if we haven’t yet received our full inheritance from God—when will we receive it? How do you know?
- Romans 8:23 says that we still groan inwardly—just like the rest of creation on this fallen, sinful world. Do you feel like life is still hard, even for Christians, like something is not all the way complete?
- The next verse says that we’re waiting for something, for the completion of our adoptions, for our bodies to be redeemed. Have you ever imagined what it would feel like for an orphan to know that he or she had been selected and all the paperwork completed for an adoption—and that the new parents were on the way to pick him or her up? Do you think waiting to be with our “Abba” in heaven might be kind of like that?
- What does the word “hope” mean to you? When used in the Bible, it means some good thing you are confident will happen. What are Christians hoping in? What do we think will finally be the one thing to make everything else okay?
- Is it hard for you to be patient while waiting for that “one thing” to finally happen?
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