photo by Keith Riley-Whittingham

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.  ~James 5:16

Righteous: in the New Testament this refers to God’s proper standards and actions, expressed in the convenants; as a non it refers to a person in accord with God’s standards, in proper relationship with God. (*)

Powerful:  to be strong, powerful, able, can do, takes effect, mighty (*)

Effective:  to be at work in, to produce (*)

Have you ever had a situation in life where you knew that God was at work and you know that He has asked you to join Him in that work?  Have you ever known that something was coming… something way bigger than you and your life, but God has decided to involve you in His plan.  Has your focus, your view on life and situations ever changed so drastically that you can’t quite understand why other people can’t see it or feel it like you can?

Has God ever given you something HUGE to pray about?

It’s exciting and terrifying all at once.  You know that you are climbing on to a roller coaster… only it’s like Space Mountain and it’s dark and you don’t know which way it’s going to twist and turn, so there’s no way to prepare yourself for it.  You just know that you have to climb on.

If you are new here, you might not know this… but my husband and I have 5 children.  And we are currently in the beginning stages of adoption.

We have decided on an agency and a plan.  We are doing a domestic adoption through the African American Infant Program.  And we are very white.  African American children are very difficult to place.  They are “less adoptable”.  According to this Time Magazine article,

Black children are adopted less frequently and more slowly than kids of any other race. Fifteen percent of U.S. children are black, but they account for nearly a third of children in foster care and a third of those awaiting adoption. White children are five times as likely as to be adopted than children from any minority group, and are adopted out of foster care an average of nine months sooner than black children.

While we are aware that this trans-racial adoption is going to be a huge change for our family, I also believe that God has laid it on my heart to pray for our adoption to begin a revolution.  We want to live our adoption out loud in front of our families, in front of our friends, in front of our church and in front of our sphere of influence.  Because of the obvious difference in our skin color, it will be hard to miss.  We want people to see our journey and know that we are not wealthy, we are normal people and we even already have 5 kids… and yet, we are adopting.  So therefore, it might not be such a strange or scary thing for them to consider.

I believe, that God wants a revolution.

You see, adoption is woven throughout the heart of the Bible.  If we are a Christian, we have been adopted into God’s family and we have an equal share in the inheritance of Jesus.  In fact, Jesus himself was an adopted son of Joseph.  God cares for the fatherless.  He cares for the widows.  He calls us as Christians to care for the widows and the orphans.  If you don’t believe me, or if you do believe me and want to understand better God’s heart for adoption, you can go HERE to hear a fabulous sermon about it by John Piper.

I did not set out on this journey so that we could start a revolution.  We started out on this journey because we feel called by God to adopt children into our home.  I think that the revolution part is God’s idea… in fact, the word itself is His and not mine.  I am not big enough, or smart enough, or enough of anything to begin a revolution on my own.

But God is.

And I believe that He has placed this desire for a revolution on my heart because it’s His heart and He has asked me to be a part of it.  What an amazing honor.

I have some ideas for how to begin the revolution.  But I do not know if MY ideas or plans for starting a revolution will work out.  But I was reminded today that in the end, it doesn’t matter.

Because if God wants a revolution, He will get a revolution.

I only need to climb onto the roller coaster.

And hang on.

What prayer roller coaster are you riding?

(*) the Strongest NIV Exhaustive Concordance

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