Many of you know I am a Personal Finance professor at a University and I also help manage the finances at our church and academy as well. Because both of my “careers” deal with finances and money, I often think of the passages in the Bible like Luke 12 where it says to sell your possessions and give to charity. It says to store up treasures in heaven where moths and rust cannot corrupt. In verse 34 it says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” I would argue, where your heart is, that is where the majority of your money and time is spent. It all boils down to priorities.
Are orphans a priority or are they not? If Christians and Bible believing churches are not consciously making an effort to care for orphans, who is going to do it? One way to care for orphans is financially. Support families who are adopting. Why are there not more families coming forward to adopt? I will answer that question based upon my experience on the subject. Most people do not have the means to pay for an adoption. Why do more families not have means to pay for adoptions? The hearts of Christians are not being moved to compassion the way they should be toward adoption. Those who do not feel called to adopt are not giving sacrificially to those who are called to adopt.
Randy Alcorn recently gave this challenge on his Facebook page: Many who say, “I have nothing to give,” spend large amounts of discretionary income on cars, clothes, coffee, entertainment, phones, computers, and so on. They have nothing to give when they’re done spending, precisely because they’re never done spending.
God commanded over and over in Scripture for Christians to care for the orphans. Sadly, most Christians ignore this commandment. No one acknowledges that it is not God’s plan for orphans to waste away their lives in orphanages. I also do not believe it is God’s plan for Christians to get deep in debt for adoption while other Christians spend their money on luxuries such as thousand dollar purses and designer clothing. That purse and those designer clothes are going to get old, dirty and wear out. Someone may even steal your purse from you while you shop at the mall for your designer clothes. We don't get to take our possessions with us when we die! So is it really wise stewardship of God’s money to spend money like that? We all have this sense of entitlement. “I deserve this. I earned it.” This is because of our sinful, superficial, selfish flesh. If I am even tempted to waste large amounts of money, I remind myself of Christ’s example. The Son of Man often slept on a rock in the wilderness and often went without even basic necessities such as food and water. He busied Himself and spent any earthly resources He had on eternal things. He knew life on earth was a vapor and there was an urgency to accomplish God’s perfect plan with His life. We have all got to stop wasting our earthly resources and start directing those resources to the things of God—eternal things. The needs of orphans are great around the world. We are just caught up in living our entitled American dreams that we can't see the needs.
(I just want to add that there some in our church that have a burden as well and are working hard on behalf of the orphans. They probably feel weary as well about the lack of passion for adoption. I don't know what the answer is. We can't slap passive, superficial people across the face and say "Hey, wake up!!!!!"....Can we? Just kidding. In all seriousness, we can only continue to pray hearts are moved. Christians have got to respond to the Holy Spirit eventually.)
Preach. it. Sister. Nice read, totally agree. We went to church with my folks today, their church, nothing at all, no mention whatsoever, of orphans. None.
ReplyDeleteI am burning out on organized religion myself because it smacks of hypocrisy.
But I continue to burn for Christ. Blessings.
Considering the fact that I am the pastor of the church that failed to remember National Day of Adoption or National Adoption Sunday it seems quite appropriate that I comment.
ReplyDeleteLet me say I didn’t know Nov 6th was the National Adoption Sunday.
I would not want to do or say anything that encourages people to be sick of organized religion as the previous comment suggests. The church was organized by Christ, Himself, so it is obviously important. And it pains me to hear people say they are done with organized religion when they are referring to the body of Christ.
We have a team of volunteers in the church who lead our adoption ministry and we had planned a special Sunday but then the team asked me to push the Sunday to another Sunday so I agreed in support of their objectives. It seems to me that it is quite hard to keep up with all these man-made days. Consider pastor appreciation week or month. In a church of 800+ I have received less than five cards of appreciation. Should I presume that I am not appreciated or that most people didn’t know such a day, week, or month had been established? I will choose to believe the later.
Next, I am confused. According to this website http://www.nationaladoptionday.org/ the National Adoption Day is Nov 19. So do we have a national Sunday and a national day? I don’t know.
What I know is when I became the pastor we were doing nothing for adoption and now we are. I am sure it is not enough. In fact, I don’t know what “enough” with everything is—enough for missions, enough for poverty relief, enough for adoption, enough for etc. etc. No matter what decision we make there is always someone who decides that it is too much or that it is not enough.
The author of this blog is right. If everyone would do their part we could do so much more. But the truth is the depravity of man greatly impacts this giving.
I know Berean can do more and I am sure we will do more in the months and years to come and I am sure for some it will be too much and for others it will still not be enough. But what would be enough?
What I am realizing with everything in the church is finding the balance is nearly impossible.
I think I should clarify that the intent of this blog was not to bash our physical building church, our pastor or organized religion. The purpose of the blog was to challenge Christians (who ARE the body of Christ according to Scripture) to think outside our own little, privileged worlds and to "defend the cause of the fatherless"(Isaiah 1:17).
ReplyDeleteNovember is National Orphan Awareness Month. Orphan Sunday is always the 1st Sunday of November. Orphansunday.org has more information on it.
Those that read my blog as a whole (meaning every post since the beginning) know that I would not bash our church, our pastor or our church's adoption committee, but just to clarify to those who only read this one post.