Ready or Not for Foster & Adoptive FamiliesSample

 DAY 2: Lay Down Your Life

When we hear the phrase “lay down your life,” we automatically think of Jesus dying on the cross as a ransom for us. That truly is the ultimate sacrifice. But there’s another powerful way to lay down one’s life for friends. Jesus modeled it as well. He left all the comforts of glory to be born in a filthy stable to human parents, grow up as a carpenter’s son, and walk the earth for three years of ministry under scrutiny, persecution, rejection, and betrayal. 

As a foster or adoptive parent, you choose to lay down your life in dedicated service to another. Parenting itself is an act of sacrifice. We lay down our independence—our ability to go here and there, do this or that—to have children. When the sacrifice becomes too much with biological children, it’s easy to keep going because there’s no easy way of escape. With foster/adopted children, it’s much harder because when it gets difficult our thoughts can betray us. After all, they aren’t our children; we aren’t the cause of their behavior. Something happened to them when they were young that we had no control over. We aren’t cut out for this. We should send them back. Those are the moments that laying down your life becomes a reality, a choice you have to make.

Some of the darkest moments with my children have been the brightest moments in my life with Jesus. We aren’t promised an absence of trouble in this life. Truthfully, we’re promised the opposite – especially when we’re pursuing the call of God. But we serve a God who is in the restoration and resurrection business. As we die to our expectations, we open our hearts to God’s bigger plan. Meeting one of my children in the middle of their pain is messy. There have been moments that I’ve felt so totally ill-equipped and lost. At those times, when I’ve turned to Jesus with a deeply broken and insecure heart, He has always led me to grace, understanding and perseverance. Dying to myself allows the work of redemption to take place in its proper time.

When you leave the comforts of life as you know it to enter into life with a child who has been abandoned, rejected, hurt, or abused, you enter into her brokenness. When the child screams at you that you aren’t her parent, what are you going to do? When the child breaks your dishes, writes on your walls, kicks and bites you, runs away or turns up high or pregnant, what are you going to do? Understanding clearly what God has called you to do will give you sustaining power in these moments. Ask Him to burn a supernatural love—a love like Jesus’—into your heart . . . starting now.

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I encourage you to spend time with your spouse (or a trusted friend if you're single) to ask and answer the following questions.

Discussion Questions – Day 2: Lay Down Your Life

1. Talk about a time in your life when you felt overwhelmed by the details because you couldn’t see God’s big picture. What happened? How did that experience change your relationship with God?

2. Read Jeremiah 29:11. Why is it sometimes challenging to believe that God has plans to give us a hope and a future? 

3. How does the idea that God has plans and hopes for each foster or adoptive child change the way you view parents’ responsibilities?

4. What is one thing you can do this week to open your heart and your life to the plans and hopes that God has for you? What can this group do to support you?