ZEPHANIAH
I’m writing this letter while watching over little Zephaniah lying in an incubator beside my bed here in the hospital. Zephaniah is about 17 days old today and he has been through what most of us my never experience in a lifetime. Zephaniah was born at least two month early with some physical complications and weighing only 1.8 kg. As a result of his problems, his birth parent abandoned him. He was discovered and taken to the local orphanage. He was very sick, his stomach was bloated and he was left to face all this alone. At this point we were notified that a newborn boy was in the orphanage in distress. Our daughter and another sister rushed over to rescue him and another newly abandoned little two-month-old girl we named Katriel. Upon seeing Zephaniah, they thought that he didn’t have long to live, so they took him to the local hospital. At the hospital, the doctors said that they couldn’t help Zephaniah. Little Zephaniah’s body temperature was dropping. It seemed too late to help him. But on the way to the hotel room the girls prayed for him and in the hotel his little body started to get warm again.
The next morning they got on a train with Zephaniah and the little girl Katriel. When they arrived at the door of our big family, we and our staff warmly welcomed them blessing both children in the name of our mighty Lord and Savior Jesus. We took Zephaniah to the provincial children’s hospital and found that he had a blocked intestine. Only six days after his birth, Zephaniah received his first operation. One of the doctors present during the surgery said that he thought Zephaniah wouldn’t make it through the operation. When Zephaniah came out of surgery he looked so much better than when he had gone in! It was revealed during the operation that he has a long undeveloped section of intestine common with premature babies. The blockage was removed. He’s yet to recover fully and he may have some disabilities later, but for now he is gaining weight. In a matter of days he put on one kilogram. Many nurses, staff and patients have been touched by his little life.
Our prayer is that Zephaniah and others like him would someday find themselves adopted for life into a warm, loving Christian families where they might hear about the Savior’s love for fallen sinners. Then he would understand the source of redeeming love...how far God goes in rescuing all of us from sin and death.
IN CHRIST
In reality, I was an orphan too....not in the way you might think. Not abandoned just like Zephaniah. But I was in a very awful situation: I was enslaved to sin, without God in the world, hopeless and under God’s deserved wrath. I was fearfully looking at spending an eternity of punishment for my sins. At that point, God came and opened my heart to the Good News and I understood Jesus sacrificial death was for my sins. God’s Holy Spirit led me in repentance and faith to Jesus Christ.
It was then that I was adopted into God’s family. God became my father! If you are truly a Christian, then you’ve been adopted too. In Galatians 4:4-7 we read, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”
God didn’t just forgive our sins and release us like freed convicts. He brought us in to His family to be His children! He loves us! He has made us His own! This is truly amazing!
I’m not writing this letter asking for funds, help here or even more prayer support. I’m asking you to consider something much more costly. Something very, very much like our Father in Heaven. We are exhorted to be imitators of God...to be like our Daddy in Heaven. As imitators of God, one of the greatest visible expressions of the gospel is for us to adopt needy children—to bring them into our families and love them as our very own.
My appeal is that you would prayerfully consider adopting one of these children. Ps 68:5-6 says that God is the “Father of the fatherless” in heaven and that he places the lonely in families. We often pray that His kingdom would come and His will would be done on earth as well as in heaven. Maybe your home is a safe, loving place for one of these precious children.
If you are interested, please let us know. We’ll be happy to send you a book for free concerning God’s heart for adoption.
