P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

THE FEAR OF A FOSTER CHILD

In his book, Who You Are (When No One’s Looking), Pastor Bill Hybels describes a plane trip he took where he got into a conversation with the man next to him. This guy had a job working for a well-known international conglomerate, and as the pair winged their way to Los Angeles, this beleaguered executive told Hybels: “We do our work on a quota basis. If we come through with sales that meet or exceed the quotas, there’s a future for us in the company. So far, for the eleven years I’ve been with the company, I’ve been able to do it. But they upped my quota last quarter, and I don’t think I’m going to make it. That means my job is in jeopardy.”

Do you ever feel like that? Your job security is about as substantial as that little bag of peanuts they give you on the plane. Maybe in your cubicle, where the IN box just keep getting piled higher and higher, you know that a downsizing notice could land in your tired lap at any time. Maybe you’re a schoolteacher, and every year the board and the district are cutting back programs, slicing a salary here, nixing a program there. You survive term by term, never knowing when the ax will fall. Maybe it’s in your marriage; you’re hitched up with someone whose demeanor makes it obvious that they think they can do better Out There; if you don’t please them in the kitchen, in the laundry room, in the bedroom . . . they’ll go shopping for a new mate.

Our topic last week and this is a painfully parallel experience: ELUSIVE ETERNITY. So many believers feel like that man on the airplane. Right now they have a job in heaven’s corporation. But if they don’t meet that Ten Commandment quota, if they don’t get to church at least 75% of the time, if they don’t show character growth figures of at least 4.5% annually, God could cancel the deal He made with them at Calvary.

There ought to be a decisive difference between a foster-parent arrangement and adoption; would you agree? Hybels himself once had a little eight-year-old boy come stay with him and his wife Lynne for a few months. This kid and his little sister had parents who were alcoholics, and so the authorities passed them from home to home, and now the lonely pair were staying at the Hybels Hotel for a brief while. Well, Bill really fell in love with that boy; he played with him, and went so far down the “daddy track” that he got the kid a little model car. The child worked on it for two weeks, and was just putting the finishing touches on when Bill had to gently tell him the bad news. The state agency was moving him along again, transferring him to another temporary home. And the boy, with hot tears in his eyes, whacked right down on the car with both fists, smashing it into a million pieces. And then he screamed at the whole uncertain world: “I feel like a football!”

All through the pages of Scripture, as you balance the hard verses that seem to perhaps say one thing here, and another thing there, the satisfying truth is that God deliberately utilized ADOPTION as His motif of choice. Not foster parenting. Not “you work for My factory and here are your quotas.” No, the Bible describes our connection with God as a permanent, insoluble guarantee.

In his book, Eternal Security, Dr. Charles Stanley takes readers through verse after verse in the New Testament where the apostle Paul deliberately describes our position in the family using this word picture:

“Paul’s reliance on the concept of adoption,” he writes, “is a strong argument for eternal security. To lose one’s salvation, one would have to be UNadopted!”

As Paul writes to his new-believer friends in Corinth, he goes out of his way to make this clear.

“[God] anointed us,” he writes, “set His seal of OWNERSHIP on us, and put His Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, GUARANTEEING what is to come.”

The apostle John, in his first of three epistles, says the same thing:

“We KNOW that we live in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.” Then he adds: “And so we KNOW and RELY on the love God has for us.”

There are a couple of spiritual realities that we ought to face up to, and perhaps you have personally felt these during your moments of doubt and fear. In that book, Eternal Security, the author writes:

“People who believe they can lose their position as children of God” — in other words, get UNadopted — “are set up for a serious case of spiritual insecurity.”

Immediately we think of that eight-year-old boy staying at the Hybels house, but always emotionally living out of a suitcase, waiting for the moving van to come again. I have many times sat across the table from a nervous Christian who said to me, “If I were to die in a plane crash next weekend, I really don’t know if I’d be in heaven.”

But our second concern runs even deeper. This Pastor Stanley expresses it well; listen:

“If there are certain sins that force God to UNadopt His children, our salvation is contingent on our faith AND our willingness not to commit those particular sins (whatever they may be). Furthermore, it means Christ did not take every sin with Him to the cross. As you can see, the very foundations of Christianity begin to crumble once we begin tampering with the eternal security of the believer.”

While we’re speaking plainly here, friend, let me pile on another reality. What does the Bible teach is OUR responsibility if we’re a parent or a spouse? What kinds of promises are we supposed to make? God’s Word is filled with tough talk about how parents are to stay the course, not aggravating their children, not giving up on them, being faithful to our duty. And of course, in the area of marriage, you can quote Mark 10:9 verbatim just like I did, because it’s what we said in our marriage vows!

“What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”

The book of First Corinthians, chapter 7, tells us explicitly that a Christian spouse is obligated to stay with the ship even if their partner is a complete unbeliever, an agnostic or atheist. We’re supposed to remain faithful through good times and bad, through thick and thin, through obedience and disobedience.

How, then, can we believe God Himself would renege on His own promises of adoption if we slip and fall, or if we don’t always have a steady, 100% on-fire faith relationship? That’s putting the Lord of heaven below His own standards, the ones He sets for us fallen humans.

Bill Hybels, sitting on that airplane, and sensing the painful insecurity of that quivering business commuter who never knows if he’ll still be employed when the plane lands, makes this conclusion:

“Eleven years of faithful work for the company and if he falls short of the quota, he’s out! That employee could hardly miss the message — his value is tied to his performance; the performance must always improve and mistakes will not be tolerated.” Then Hybels quietly adds: “Jesus Christ says, ‘I want none of that. I don’t want My people to be terrified slaves. I don’t want them to think I love them because of what they can do for Me. I want them to know I love them for who they are — the adopted sons and daughters of God, My brothers and sisters. And I don’t want them to fear being thrown out on the streets for whatever reason; I want them to know they are in My family forever.”

A page later he adds a note about what all good adoptive parents do. See if you agree:

“I know couples with hearts full of love who yearn to focus that love toward some little ones, but no little one arrives. When these couples find children to adopt, they are absolutely thrilled. They don’t warn the children that they had better come up to expectations if they want to remain with them. They don’t tell them that they are allowed three mistakes, and then it’s back to the agency. They accept them with open arms and joy-filled hearts because they love them, and they take them into their homes forever, give them the family name, and make them legal heirs. That is exactly how God acts when He adopts us into His family.”

Would there be people who might adopt a cute kid on a whim, and then later realize they didn’t want to go through with it? Certainly that can happen, but friend, God does not have whims. Could a human parent adopt, and then get tired and fatigued with the messes and the mistakes? Yes, but God never gets tired. Could a flesh-and-blood parent maybe change their mind when an adopted child brings home bad grades or is picked up by the truant officer? Yes, but God in heaven never changes His mind. Could a human parent face unanticipated challenges, bills they didn’t think would come due, frustrations they never considered, sleepless nights they hadn’t been warned about . . . and wonder if they could back out of the deal? Tragically, yes . . . but our omniscient heavenly Father never meets up with an unanticipated occurrence. He knows the good and the bad of your tomorrow, and in full knowledge of that, decided He wanted to adopt and save you before the foundations of this world were laid.

You know, with a Dad like that, if He ever did run a factory and set quotas . . . you’d be honored to meet them. You’d work your tail off.