I find as you talk about adoption with people there are often two kinds of reactions.  There are some people who live in fairy tale land and think about it as all easy and wonderful and then there are other people who only can see the difficulties.  

Both responses are a little bit right and a little bit wrong.

Adoption and orphan care is a whole lot more challenging than you think is.  But if you are a believer, it can be a whole lot more wonderful than you can imagine. You just need to use the resources God’s provided in Christ.

If you look at Ephesians 6:10-20, that’s Paul’s approach.   

He acknowledges there is a battle, gives us hope for victory and shows us that the key is in using the resources God has provided for us in salvation, putting on the armor or God.   Adoptive parents need to wear armor.  It would be worth looking at each piece of armor, but we will look at just one piece, found in the middle of this passage, verse 17, it is very short, and it is the helmet of salvation.

We are going to see why adoptive parents (and really anyone involved in this kind of ministry in any way) need to wear their helmets.

Even though this is short, just one phrase, I don’t feel bad taking some time to look at it, because by picking this particular piece of armor, the helmet, Paul is indicating that this is an important concept because obviously a helmet is a pretty important piece of armor. The helmet is an important piece of armor because it protects a pretty important piece of the soldier’s body.

If you were a soldier you could, perhaps, lose a finger or you could lose a leg in war. You could even lose an arm in war. But you cannot lose a head and survive. A head is an important piece of the soldier’s body. He doesn't want to lose it. And so the helmet is an important piece of armor.  

The helmet protects an important part of the Christian soldier’s body and that is our head and the head obviously represents our thinking, our mind, our way of viewing the world. It is vital for the soldier to protect his head and it is vital for us as Christians to protect our heads. We need to protect our way of thinking, the way we think and it is vital for us to protect our thinking because Satan is constantly attacking our thinking.

In Paul’s day the Roman soldiers had to wear special metal helmets. You have probably seen some of the pictures of the helmet with the nose plate that comes down that they used to put over. They had to wear these metal helmets because in war not only did they need to be protected from arrows. There were also people riding around with broad swords that they would whack on the soldier’s heads in order to knock him down so they would be able to kill him. And so they needed a helmet which would protect their head.

And we as believers are fighting an enemy who is constantly coming after our heads, who is constantly coming after our thinking.  One of the primary ways that he does that is through deception. We need to protect our thinking because we are fighting an enemy who is an amazing liar. Satan is constantly distorting and twisting reality.

We need to take up the helmet of salvation because we are fighting a liar.

If you have ever had a relationship with a habitual liar, you know how important it is for you to keep thinking and analyzing, you can’t stop, and that is certainly true in this war we are fighting, we as adoptive parents and people involved in orphan care are engaged in a spiritual war with someone who is breathing out lies. 

We will look at some of those lies and how to protect ourselves from falling for deception in several posts to follow.