More than you might think...

We are really looking forward to hosting a Together for Adoption conference here in South Africa.Sometimes though when we talk about this conference people seem to think it is only for people who are about to adopt or who are in a place where they are able to adopt. What we hope to express is that the conference is really about something even bigger than that.I recently read this explanation over at Together for Adoption's web-site that I think gives great insight into part of our motivation behind this conference."Adoption’s recovery would enable us to express the forensic character of the Gospel (i.e. we are declared righteous through faith in Christ) without neglecting its familial character (i.e. we are loved by the Father in the Beloved Son). In Adoption the forensic and familial elements of the Gospel ‘live and move and have [their] being’ together.Adoption showcases both what we have been saved from and what we saved to. Once we were “sons of disobedience” and “children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:1-3), but now we are sons by Adoption (Ephesians 1:4-5). Although we were once the lost sons of Adam and under the just wrath of God, we are now in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:6) with a future as marvelous and as sure as the incarnate Son’s (Romans 8:12-30). Scripture’s teaching on Adoption enables us to better articulate both what we were in Adam and what we are now in Christ. The more we embrace and proclaim what the theology of Adoption teaches about what we were and what we are now as sons in the Son, the more our experience of the gospel will be revolutionized within our churches.We also believe that nothing can mobilize churches to carry out the practice of true religion (“visit orphans and widows in their affliction” – James 1:27) like a robust understanding of our Adoption through Christ. Scripture’s story of Adoption is the story of God visiting us in our affliction (Romans 8:3-4, 18-23)—like He visited His son Israel in his affliction (Exodus 4:31)—in order to deliver us from it. Therefore, ultimately, we visit orphans and widows in their affliction because God first visited us in ours. If any group of people should be passionate about visiting orphans in their affliction, it should be the children of God. There is no other group of people that should be more easily mobilized to care for orphans. Period. Visiting orphans in their distress mirrors what God has done for us in ours."For more information check out adoptionconference.co.za!