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Have You Considered Adoption?


child adoption.

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My wife and I have been interested in adoption since before we even met. If the Lord sees fit, we would love to be able to adopt sometime down the road, either domestically or internationally. What a wonderful depiction of the Love of God. Just think of how many Bible verses describe His relationship with us in adoption terms:

  • “A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation. God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains:” Psalm 68:5-6
  • “Thou art the helper of the fatherless. LORD, thou hast heard the desire of the humble: thou wilt prepare their heart, thou wilt cause thine ear to hear: To judge the fatherless and the oppressed, that the man of the earth may no more oppress.” Psalm 10:14,17-18
  • “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:” Romans 8:14-16
  • “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” James 1:27

Here’s an article from the popular Colombian newspaper EL TIEMPO that relates the need for adoption in Colombia. There are more and more children being abandoned by their families in not just this country but around the world! They need a family. Will you be their family?

 

In the last 10 years, children placed for adoption from Boyacá has increased by 60%. In 2000, only 53 children from the department were placed for adoption. In 2009, there were 85, the majority of whom were placed with adoptive parents in or from Colombia.

According to Gloria Esperanza Medina Alba, Defensora de Familia (Family Advocate) for ICBF in Boyacá, the increase in the necessity for adoption has caused a great deal of worry for officials at ICBF. She stated, “The majority of children that have entered ICBF custody have done so on repeated occasions because of intrafamilial violence. Others enter the process because their parents are arrested, die, or simply cannot offer what is required for the children to grow in an adequate environment, which often occurs in the case of sex workers. ”

She continued, “We work with the parents who mistreat their children so that they can changes their ways, but often they return to their old ways, which is why the ICBF will make the decision to remove the children and declare them in a situation of adoptability.”

To date this year, 49 children (22 female, 25 male) have been placed for adoption — 28 to Colombian families and 19 to foreign families.

Medina also mentioned, “Right now, we have 25 children who already have an adoptive family assigned, but they are awaiting for the official placement or the official acceptance of the potential adoptive parents.” Additionally, Ms. Medina stated that at the moment there are 25 more healthy children that will be entering the Adoption phase of the process shortly.

In Boyacá, the statistics show that more adoptive families request girls, as well as children younger than age 7. In addition, the predominant age range of adoptive parents is 43-51 years of age.

From 1960-2000, 80% of adoptive parents were from foreign countries. In 2005, the law changed and now Colombian families receive priority. Now, it is more like 70% are Colombian and 30% foreign.

Most adoptive children in Boyacá come from the cities of Tunja, Sogamoso, Duitama and Chiquinquirá, with foreign adoptive families most frequently coming from Spain, Italy, France, the United States, Norway and Germany.

http://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/boyaca/ARTICULO-WEB-NEW_NOTA_INTERIOR-8281940.html

 

He Cares About Them


2 Peter 3:9

“For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord GOD wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye.”   Ezekiel 18:32

I think we misunderstand God.

We might say he’s a loving God, but somewhere inside i think many seem to think he likes it when the unjust receive their punishment. That he finds some joy when someone “gets what they had coming” as they are cast into a devil’s hell.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Check out the following verses. Ponder them. Let them break you. Let them bring a tear to your eye. Let them show you the God that hurts for the hurting. The one who died to set them free and to save them eternally.

“But thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion, and gracious, long suffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth.”   Psalm 86:15

“But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.” Matthew 9:36

“The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”   2 Peter 3:9

“For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men.” Titus 2:11

And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.”   Revelation 20:10-15

As one man said, we should never speak about Hell without a tear in our eye!


An Amazing God


“God the Lord, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein” Isaiah 42:5

Missions Quotes


Missions Quotes To Ponder

“Not called!” did you say? “Not heard the call,” I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters, and servants and masters not to come there. And then look Christ in the face, whose mercy you have professed to obey, and tell him  whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish his mercy to the world.
William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army

“I have but one passion – it is He, it is He alone. The world is the field and the field is the world; and henceforth that country shall be my home where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ.”
Count Zinzindorf

“God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supplies.”
J. Hudson Taylor

“He must increase, but I must decrease.”
John the Baptist

“If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.”
C.T. Studd

“The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner.”
William Cameron Townsend

“Prepare for the worst, expect the best, and take what comes.”
Robert E. Speer

“The saddest thing one meets is a nominal Christian. I had not seen it in Japan where missions is younger. The church here is  a “field full of wheat and tares.”
Amy Carmichael

“I used to think that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel it would be truer to give prayer  the first, second and third places and teaching the fourth.”
James O. Fraser

“It is just as proper, maybe even more so, to say Christ’s global cause has a Church as to say Christ’s Church has a global  cause.”
David Bryant

“If you are sick, fast and pray; if the language is hard to learn, fast and pray; if the people will not hear you, fast and  pray, if you have nothing to eat, fast and pray.”
Frederick Franson

“What are we here for, to have a good time with Christians or to save sinners?”
Malla Moe

“I tell you, brethren, if mercies and if judgments do not convert you, God has no other arrows in His quiver.”
Robert Murray M’Cheyne

“It’s amazing what can be accomplished if you don’t worry about who gets the credit.”
Clarence W. Jones

“I have seen, at different times, the smoke of a thousand villages – villages whose people are without Christ, without God, and without hope in the world.”
– Robert Moffat

“The command has been to “go,” but we have stayed – in body, gifts, prayer and influence. He has asked us to be witnesses unto the uttermost parts of the earth…But 99% of Christians have kept puttering around in the homeland.”
– Robert Savage

“While vast continents are shrouded in darkness…the burden of proof lies upon you to show that the circumstances in which God has placed you were meant by God to keep you out of the foreign mission field.”
– Ion Keith-Falconer

“I wasn’t God’s first choice for what I’ve done for China…I don’t know who it was…It must have been a man…a well-educated man. I don’t know what  happened. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he wasn’t willing…and God looked down…and saw Gladys Aylward…And God said – “Well, she’s willing.”
– Gladys Aylward

“Brother, if you would enter that Province, you must go forward on your knees.”
– J. Hudson Taylor

“The man…looking at him with a smile that only half concealed his contempt, inquired, “Now Mr. Morrison do you really expect that you will make an impression on the idolatry of the Chinese Empire?” “No sir,” said Morrison, “but I expect that God will.”
– Robert Morrison

“Here am I. Send me.”
– Isaiah

“And people who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives…and  when the bubble has burst they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted.”
– Nate Saint

“Jehovah Witnesses don’t believe in hell and neither do most Christians”
– Leonard Ravenhill

“Had I cared for the comments of people, I should never have been a missionary.”
– C.T. Studd

“Young man, sit down: when God pleases to convert the heathen, he will do it without your aid or mine.”
– said to a young William Carey

“Oh, that I had a thousand lives, and a thousand bodies! All of them should be devoted to no other employment but to preach Christ to these degraded,  despised, yet beloved mortals.”
– Robert Moffat

“We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God.”
– John Stott

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
– Jim Elliot

“A tiny group of believers who have the gospel keep mumbling it over and over to themselves. Meanwhile, millions who have never heard it once fall into the flames of eternal hell without ever hearing the salvation story.”
– K.P. Yohannan

“I have but one passion – it is He, it is He alone. The world is the field and the field is the world; and henceforth that country shall be my home  where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ.”
– Count Zinzindorf

“God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supplies.”
– J. Hudson Taylor

“He must increase, but I must decrease.”
– John the Baptist

“If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.”
– C.T. Studd

“The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner.”
– William Cameron Townsend

“Prepare for the worst, expect the best, and take what comes.”
– Robert E. Speer

“The saddest thing one meets is a nominal Christian. I had not seen it in Japan where missions is younger. The church here is a “field full of wheat and tares.”
– Amy Carmichael

“I used to think that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel it would be truer to give prayer the first, second and third places and teaching the fourth.”
– James O. Fraser

“It is just as proper, maybe even more so, to say Christ’s global cause has a Church as to say Christ’s Church has a global cause.”
– David Bryant

“If you are sick, fast and pray; if the language is hard to learn, fast and pray; if the people will not hear you, fast and pray, if you have nothing to  eat, fast and pray.”
– Frederick Franson

“What are we here for, to have a good time with Christians or to save sinners?”
– Malla Moe

“I tell you, brethren, if mercies and if judgments do not convert you, God has no other arrows in His quiver.”
– Robert Murray M’Cheyne

“It’s amazing what can be accomplished if you don’t worry about who gets the credit.”
– Clarence W. Jones

“Two distinguishing marks of the early church were: 1) Poverty 2) Power.”
– T.J. Bach

“Do not think me mad. It is not to make money that I believe a Christian should live. The noblest thing a man can do is, just humbly to receive, and then go amongst others and give.”
– David Livingstone

“From my many years experience I can unhesitatingly say that the cross bears those who bear the cross.”
– Sadhu Sundar Singh

“I pray that no missionary will ever be as lonely as I have been.”
– Lottie Moon

“All my friends are but one, but He is all sufficient.”
– William Carey

“How little chance the Holy Ghost has nowadays. The churches and missionary societies have so bound him in red tape that they practically ask Him to sit in a corner while they do the work themselves.”
– C.T. Studd

“I have always believed that the Good Samaritan went across the road to the wounded man just because he wanted to.”
– Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

“The more obstacles you have, the more opportunities there are for God to do something.”
– Clarence W. Jones

“Expect great things from God. Attempt great thing for God.”
– William Carey

“God’s part is to put forth power; our part is to put forth faith.”
– Andrew A. Bonar

“All the resources of the Godhead are at our disposal!”
– Jonathan Goforth

“The Indian is making an amazing discovery, namely that Christianity and Jesus are not the same – that they may have Jesus without the system that has  been built up around Him in the West.”
– E. Stanley Jones

“This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.”
– Jesus

“All roads lead to the judgment seat of Christ.”
– Keith Green

“Christians don’t tell lies they just go to church and sing them”
– A.W. Tozer

“I will lay my bones by the Ganges that India might know there is one who cares.”
– Alexander Duff

“Today Christians spend more money on dog food then missions”
– Leonard Ravenhill

“It will not do to say that you have no special call to go to China. With these facts before you and with the command of the Lord Jesus to go and preach  the gospel to every creature, you need rather to ascertain whether you have a special call to stay at home.”
– J. Hudson Taylor

“We talk of the second coming, half the world has never heard of the first.”
– Oswald J. Smith

“God cannot lead you on the basis of facts that you do not know.”
– David Bryant

“And thus I aspire to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named so that I would not build on another man’s foundation.”
– Paul

“Why do we insist on building the largest and most impressive structures in our city when people on the other side of town are hungry, jobless and worshipping in storefronts?”
– K.P. Yohannan

“If every Christian is already considered a missionary, then all can stay put where they are, and nobody needs to get up and go anywhere to preach the  gospel. But if our only concern is to witness where we are, how will people in unevangelized areas ever hear the gospel? The present uneven distribution of Christians and opportunities to hear the gospel of Christ  will continue on unchanged.”
– C. Gordon Olson

“I spent twenty years of my life trying to recruit people out of local churches and into missions structures so that they could be involved in  fulfilling God’s global mission. Now I have another idea. Let’s take God’s global mission and put it right in the middle of the local church!”
– George Miley

“Oh dear, I couldn’t say that my church is alive and I wouldn’t want to call it dead. I guess it’s just walking in its sleep!”
– Church member

“When he landed in 1848 there were no Christians here; when he left in 1872 there were no heathen.”
– said of John Geddie

“At the moment I put the bread and wine into those dark hands, once stained with the blood of cannibalism, now stretched out to receive and partake the emblems and seals of the Redeemer’s love, I had a foretaste of the joy of glory that well nigh broke my heart to pieces. I shall never taste a deeper bliss, till I gaze on the glorified face of Jesus himself.”
– John G. Paton

“Save others, snatching them out of the fire.”
– Jude

“The evangelization of the world in this generation.”
– Student Volunteer Movement Motto

“Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring”
– Jesus

“Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t.”
– John Piper

“His authority on earth allows us to dare to go to all the nations. His authority in heaven gives us our only hope of success. And His presence with us  leaves us no other choice.”
– John Stott

“Today five out of six non-Christians in our world have no hope unless missionaries come to them and plant the church among them.”
– David Bryant

“Tell the students to give up their small ambitions and come eastward to preach the gospel of Christ.”
– Francis Xavier

“Christ for the students of the world, and the students of the world for Christ.”
– Luther Wishard

“We who have Christ’s eternal life need to throw away our own lives.”
– George Verwer

“Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell, I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of Hell.”
– C.T. Studd

“When I get to China, I will have no claim on any one for anything. My claim will be alone in God and I must learn before I leave England to move men through God by prayer alone”
– J. Hudson Taylor

“God has huge plans for the world today! He is not content to merely establish a handful of struggling churches among each tongue, tribe and nation.  Even now He is preparing and empowering His Church to carry the seeds of revival to the uttermost ends of the earth.”
– David Smithers

“The mark of a great church is not its seating capacity, but its sending capacity.”
– Mike Stachura

“Answering a student’s question, ‘Will the heathen who have not heard the Gospel be saved?’ thus, ‘It is more a question with me whether we who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not, can be saved.'”
– C.H. Spurgeon.

I Have To Tell You The Truth…


Cults and new religious movements in literatur...

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But what is truth? Does it exist? Is it the same for me as it is for you? What if I don’t like the truth? Can I choose another ‘truth’ to hold as my own? What if the truth hurts? Is truth absolute or is it relative?

These questions and many more have filled the minds of people around the world for thousands of years. Since the early years, it seems we humans like to reason our way out of obligation, confrontation, guilt, fear, responsibility and accountability by whittling away our idea of truth. If we could only change the truth, we could change the way it directly impacts us, no?

It has been said, “the only absolute is that there are no absolutes.”

I beg to differ.

Truth itself is a very liberating thing. Consider the words of Jesus in John 8:31-36:

“Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered him, We be Abraham‘s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”

We see quite a few major principles in this passage. I’d like to point out two of them.

1. To Know Jesus Is To Know The Truth

There is no other way around it. Jesus said in John 14:6 “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” He is not a truth. He is the truth! As a disciple of Jesus Christ, the truth is not only made known to us, it becomes our only hope. It becomes our life, because Jesus IS truth. What an awesome thought! I hate cliché phrases, but this one applies here: “Know Jesus, Know Truth. No Jesus, No Truth.”

2. To Know The Truth Is To Know Freedom

It is important to see that the truth does not “SET” us free. It “MAKES” us free! What’s the difference? Imagine this senario… A man commits a terrible crime. As he stands before the judge, his penalty is declared to be $1,000,000 or 50 years in prison. This man isn’t a rich man in the least, so his only option is to spend the time in prison. As he is serving his 50 year sentence, suppose someone breaks into the prison, knocks over some wardens, steals the key and lets the man out. He has been set free. Now imagine this same senario in a different light. Suppose the man goes to prison, but now, someone comes to him informing him that he has paid the $1,000,000 fine. Now the man is free. He has been made free. This is a big difference, isn’t it?

That is why it is so important to realize that knowing Jesus is the only way to know truth, and knowing the truth is the only way to know freedom. Oh what a difference it makes!

Do you know Jesus? Seriously. Do you know him? Not just know about him… do you know him?

You see, you have committed a terrible crime against a perfect God. Have you ever heard of the 10 commandments? You have not kept them all. I guarantee it. Neither have I. Neither has anybody. We’ve all done wrong. As much as we try to justify our wrong, wrong is wrong. It’s the truth. God does not change, neither does his law, and his law has already proven us guilty.

Now, the Bible tells us that our sentence for doing this wrong is death. Not just being buried in the ground, there’s something deeper. The book of Revelation tells us that there is a Second Death. This is the Lake of Fire. Our penalty is to be separated from God. It is death.

But, Jesus, in his awesome love, paid our debt. He paid our “fine,” so to speak. That’s what dying on the cross was all about. He was paying our fine. Now, all we must do is accept that outpouring of love. When we do this, God’s word tells us that he actually makes us a new person, gives us a new life, a new hope, a new love, a new purpose. Because now, we know truth. That truth is in Jesus.

So, do you know Him? If not, call upon him today. Repent of your sins. Trust in him for salvation. Give your life to him. Quit running from the truth. Embrace it. Embrace him.