James 1:19 Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. 21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
26 If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
James is giving a picture of what true religion looks like. Many of the early church Christians would still have seen the Pharisees as a model for what their religion was to look like. But they were much more hearers and talkers, than doers.
James talks about the tongue and that we should not be quick to speak. He talks about not being angry and that we should receive the Word, not just to receive it and say, "Oh that is nice", or "Yeah, so and so needs to hear that", but receiving it in a way that we hold our own lives up to it and intently examine if we are the type of people the Bible calls us personally to be.
I find it interesting that James boils it all down into 1/2 of a verse. If you want to have pure religion, take care of widows and orphans and keep yourself unstained from the world.
That seems like a very condensed set of "rules" to live by, but maybe there is more to it. Keeping ourselves unstained by the world is pretty much a full time job that we will never complete while here on earth; so that one is tough. What about widows and orphans? Does James really mean that we are all to take care of widows and orphans? I guess he could be saying that we are to all to be sacrificial in a way that could be helpful to the care of widows and orphans, but it really seems he is saying that we are to care for them, personally; to actually take an interest in their well being and then do something about it.
There are many people that would have a difficult time, right now, in caring personally for an orphan or a widow, but there may be ways to facilitate that without actually having them in your home.
Teresa and I went to a fund raiser last night with some people who are going to pick up their second adoptive child in about a month. These people don't have lots of money, they don't drive fancy cars or live in fancy houses, but they are following the directive James gives here by sacrificing much to bring a child into their home that would otherwise have no home.
What can we do? What impact can we make if the time is not right to bring either a widow or an orphan into our homes? Very tangibly we can give money and food to those who are able to care for them. We talked to a lady who has 4 adoptive kids and none of her own; the oldest is around 7, the youngest around 4. She is not only busy with normal things, but the kids all have to go to some kind of extra treatment sessions for many medical issues, speech, or emotion trauma- from living w/o any real connection for the first years of their lives, they have serious detachment issues as they only know what has happened in the past- someone takes them in and then they end up back in an orphanage; those kinds of things.
I guess I am just trying to think electronically through what God is calling us to do. "How will they hear w/o a preacher?" and what if the "preacher" is their new adoptive family? Think about bringing a soul into your home that would probably never hear the Gospel and you get, how ever many years you have with them, to show them the love of Christ that they would not get to see in their former situation.
If we are not in a position to bring one into our home, the cost currently is $20k plus and maybe we should help facilitate an adoption for someone who really can't afford it but is ready and willing to make that happen.
Just some thoughts running through my mind this beautiful Saturday morning. I know there are some adoptive parents who read this blog occasionally and I would love to hear your take on this subject.
6 comments:
Just wanted to put a quick comment in to be first in line if you do decide that you want to help finance an adoption. :) We are ready and waiting for the right opportunity for God to give us one or two more souls to nurture. I was very convicted by that passage a few years ago as well and that is a lot of what has led us into wanting to adopt.
Okay, back to work now. :)
There are lots of special needs, cleft lip, holes in the heart, type of kids there right now that have no home and would love to come and be a Higgins.
We'll talk when you come home, there is some crazy stuff going on right now.
And we couldn't be happier to have them be Higgies. :) We look forward to talking!!!!
The hansons want seconds :)
Hi Chuck,
My ESV study bible says that James 1:17 is saying we are to show mercy and love to to the oppressed particularly because of their helpless state. This could take so many different forms.
Even as a young girl I wanted to adopt a child someday. I was not a Christian at that time. Once I became a Christian adoption became even more precious to me because I was now adopted!
I highly recommend an article by John Piper you can find on his Desiring God website on the 8 reasons how adoption of children parallels God's adoption of us. It's an amazing article and I believe is called "Adoption: The heart of the Gospel." If you googled it I am sure you could find it.
Also, my husband and I are currently reading an incredible book called Adopted For Life by Russell Moore. Reading in that book about how our adoption of our son has pointed in so many ways to our selves being saved, made heirs as children of God and the ability to cry out "Abba Father" is just precious to me beyond words.
Not everyone is called to adopt. But I really believe the bible is saying that if you are a Christian, you need to be involved in some way, in loving these children. The most tangible ways to do that here in America are like you said, if you are not in a position to adopt, support someone who is in anyway you can.
It always makes me a sad when I hear someone say the reason they are not adopting is because of financial reasons. There are special needs children right here in the US who need homes and not only are the costs extremely small but in some cases you are even given aid in adopting them thru the goverment!
And even so, I am a stay at home mom and my husband is a police officer. Police officers do not make much, and we had 4 children at the time and God provided 25K for us to bring our 5th son home! It was amazing to see where we could find that money when we really looked, and our loved ones that pitched in as well to help is bring him home. We don't take trips, we don't have a deck on the house that we initially wanted when we bought it, we don't go out to eat, our kitchen is too small to fit us all around the table now, and many of the house projects we would love to do we didn't do. Because we had our son to bring home.
And now I look out in my backyard and around my house and am thankful for those things I don't see that we once wanted, because we have a beautiful toddler boy running around our house instead calling us Mommy and Papa.
Hi Chuck,
One quick thing I wanted to just bring up about your post was what you said about the woman and her 4 adopted children and you said she had none of "her own". Being a parent who has adopted I have become painfully aware of this adoption lingo that is more important than I realized. Many people, including myself even now, sometimes refer to birth children as children that are a person's own and I think it can imply wrongly that we are saying the adoptive child is not. This is a very innocent mistake, and like I said, one I even make as well at times. But one that I think we need to remind one another about when referring to families with both biological children and adopted children. I knew what you were saying, but an adopted child may be hurt by that and take it the wrong way. I hope I was understandable in my explaining this. I am so appreciative of your writing on this. Thank you!
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