Your Church – God’s Hope for Orphans

You were an orphan once. You may have grown up with a father and a mother. Physically, you may not be an orphan.

But you were a spiritual orphan. You were a spiritual orphan until you were adopted by God. The Bible says in Ephesians 1:5, “God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.” (NLT)

God loves you so much that He adopted you into His family. And He doesn’t do so begrudgingly. He takes great pleasure in doing it.

The Bible also says, “To show that you are his children, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who cries out, Father, my Father. So then, you are no longer a slave but a child. And since you are his child, God will give you all that he has for his children.” (Galatians 4:6-7. GNT)

God gives you all He has because you are now His child. We should show the same generosity toward physical orphans – those without parents – on our planet.

All throughout Scripture, God tells us that He’ll be a father to the fatherless. In the book of Proverbs, God tells us that we’re to speak up for those who have no voice.

God cares about orphans in a very special way. And so should we.

Many people in your community wonder what true religion really is. The Bible leaves no doubt. James 1:27 says, “Pure, unstained religion, according to God our Father, is to take care of orphans and widows when they suffer and to remain uncorrupted by this world.” (GWT)

Once we become believers in Jesus, we walk in our faith by caring for widows and orphans and keeping ourselves unstained by the world around us. James summarizes the Christian life as being about private purity and public charity. Jesus gives basically the same summary in the Great Commandment, Matthew 22:37-40.

Once we realize how much God loves us and what He went through to adopt us into His family, we really have only two responses.

• First, it’ll clarify with you how much your life matters.
• Second, it should make us sensitive to the plight of orphans around the world.

How does the Bible say we should take care of orphans?

1. We are to defend their rights. (Psalm 82:3)
2. We are to speak up for them as advocates. (Proverbs 31:8)
3. We’re to feed them. (Matthew 25)
4. We’re to clothe them. (Matthew 25)
5. We’re to protect them from those who mistreat them. (Isaiah 1:17)
6. We’re to ensure justice for them. (Deuteronomy 24:17)
7. We’re to share our resources with them. (Luke 3:11, Romans 12:13)
8. We’re to find families for them. (Psalm 68:5-6)

You and I have preached many sermons on the private purity spoken of in James 1:27. How many sermons have we preached on the public charity of caring for widows and orphans?

At Saddleback orphan care is one of our signature issues. We have a goal of 1,000 families from our church adopting orphans – 500 from overseas and 500 from the United States. We’re already halfway to this goal! Some of those Saddleback families have even adopted two or three kids.

We have more than 163 million orphans in the world. We have 113,000 orphans in America. If just one family from every four churches in America adopted a child, we’d have no more orphans in United States.

You don’t have to be a big church to make a big difference with orphans. Your church can do something for orphans and widows right now

What will it be? How will you help?

If your church will make a commitment to help orphans, let us know about it. E-mail us at [email protected].