Who Adopted Whom?

     I have another metaphor that recently came to mind while reading a book called, If GOD Already Knows, Why Pray? by Douglas F. Kelly.  I highly recommend this wonderful book.  It is the second time I'm reading it, and it is basically and expanded dissection of the LORD's Prayer, line by line.  Its very first point is how GOD is our intimate Father, because He is the Intimate Father of Yeshua/Jesus His true and only begotten Son.  We on the other hand are not "related" in such a way to the Father.  We are strangers, orphans on a very large planet called Earth.  This is going to be what seems to be a very basic and primary metaphor and very simple to understand.  Yet the truth of it when truly contemplated is really very deep.  

     Imagine the world as one great big huge orphanage.  GOD is the prospective adoptive parent. He goes to the orphanage, because He desires to adopt some orphaned children.  He did not have to, because He already had a son, but He wanted to expand His family.  Having sought out the orphanage, knowing its full history, because He instituted it, He would know what kind of orphans and counselors (clergy/Bible teachers) are there.  He would know what they are teaching the children. He would know what they are learning, and He would know the heart of each child.  He, therefore, could confidently know who was learning, and who was robotically obeying for rewards.  Some children weren't even interested in rewards, rather they just rebelled against the authorities of those running the orphanage, because they did not like the rules of the road.   

     Having known the heart of each "child" in the orphanage, YHVH GOD Himself would choose which child He would adopt.  He would adopt that child by visiting with him and reaching out to that child. He would introduce Himself and  reveal Himself as their adoptive Father, thus showing that child His intimate and loving nature. That child never even knew that there was an Adoptive Father seeking that child, until the Adoptive Father revealed Himself.  Most times the Father caught him completely off guard.   Because He knew the child, He knew that the child would respond to the Father's revelation of Himself, and come to accept and know Him almost immediately.  Not only would the Father choose and adopt that child, but He would set a standard and rules to live by in order for that child to remain in good graces with Him. Some are just adopted into the family and some of His adopted children were chosen for extraordinary tasks.  They get an extra dose of revelation of Who their Adoptive Father is.  

     Knowing that no child would ever be a perfect child, He arranged for His natural son to be a mediator, a go-between for the sinful child who wanted a Loving Heavenly Father and to be a part of His family.  That child would recognize and gratefully respond in kind to the Son's intervention by doing his very best to live up to the Father's standards and rules.  In other words, the Earth is GOD's house, and if we want to remain living under His "roof," being a part of His family, we have to live by His rules.  Most parents and adult children can understand that rule because I doubt hardly a child who hasn't heard that at least once from his loving parents.  They understand the rules, they respect the rules and they respect the parent who set the rules.  Those who don't understand or respect them leave.  

    The question then remains, and will forever remain, that if the child is officially adopted by the Father, does  the adoption become null and void by the child's own will.  If the child chooses to emancipate himself from the Father, breaking the bond, and seeking out legal and permanent separation from the Father, forgoing the Father's rules and standards, and if he stops respecting Him as the authority and parent, does He get to live with the Father for all eternity?  That is a question that has been debated among Bible Scholars for thousands of years, and I do not intend to answer it.  No one knows who truly is a (permanently)  adopted child of the Father, except the Father.  I suppose the Father takes in some strays out of His hospitality and Grace, but knows ahead of time that they won't stay.  That is His loving nature.  

    He is The Most High, The Almighty, the Creator of all of us, whether we acknowledge that truth or not, but He is Father to those whom He adopts into His personal family.  Let's look at some examples of adopted children. Let's start with the very first one, that would be Noah.  Genesis says that the whole world was bent on doing evil, but Noah found grace in GOD's eyes.  It doesn't say that he was righteous and blameless, as many of us have been falsely taught.  It just said GOD had Grace toward Noah and chose to adopt him and his family.  Nowhere in the Bible does it even imply that Noah or his wife, sons, and daughters-in-law were righteous and deserving in any way of being adopted, it just says that Noah found Grace in GOD.  

     After Noah was Abraham, but the truth of the matter is it was Abraham's father, Terah who was first called, but he only went halfway and stopped.  I think that he would probably be qualified as a stray who chose not to be in the Father's family exclusively.  GOD picked him out of the polytheistic orphanage and gave him the privilege of coming into a true and personally intimate relation to the Father, but he chose not to take it to the level he was called to.   Terah chose not to live and go further on with YHVH GOD, but to stay in Haran and continue with all he knew, which was worship, acknowledgement, reverence, and obedience to many gods.  Everyone then believed in many gods.  Even after Abram was called out and sent forth to the land of Canaan, Abram did not understand that there was only one GOD. It was just that YHVH GOD was the One who called him to follow Him. GOD called him out of Haran and promised to made him a father of a vast family of GOD.  Abraham ended up having many sons by the time his life was over, but Isaac was the only one adopted by GOD to be His very own, and carry His name.  When Isaac became a father, before either of the twins was born, before either had any opportunity to do good or evil, GOD had already picked Jacob to be adopted into His family. (Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated. Romans 9:13)  (“Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the LORD. “Yet Jacob I have (chosen/adopted)  loved, Malachi 1:2b  (my interpretation).  Does this make sense?  

     All of GOD's heroes in the Bible were called to and received a special personal, intimate and direct  revelation from the Father Himself. None of them were looking for any kind of heroic work of ADONAI, many did not even know He existed.  (Moses, Gideon, King Saul, King David, Jeremiah, Amos, Elijah, Elisha, all of Jesus's disciples, and Saul/Paul, among many more.) It is GOD the Father who looks down upon our lives before we are even conceived, and it is only He who decides whom He will adopt as His own.  As a church people, whether Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Protestant, or Evangelical, all our lives we have heard that we were either born/baptized into GOD's family as infants, or we asked Jesus into our lives and accepted him as our Lord and Savior.  NOTHING could be further from the truth.  We play no part in being chosen by the Father.  We play no part in our salvation.  We are chosen before we are even born, because the Father is not constricted to time and history.  He knows our nature and our hearts before we are even conceived in the womb, and we are the ones whom GOD chooses, based on His prior knowledge of who we will be.  All of the earth's future is laid out before Him, nothing is hidden from His knowledge, nor out of His total Sovereign control. 

     The next time an evangelical tells you that all you have to do is believe in Jesus, ask him into your heart and life, and make him your personal Savior,  know this, many believed in Jesus while He walked the earth, but to most, he was just a great Tzadik, a holy man, a teacher. Yet, to those whom YHVH GOD had already chosen, He was the mediator, the Messiah, the link between a far-off, out-of-reach, Holy GOD to our  intimate relationship with a yet still Holy and Loving Heavenly Father.  

     If you are reading this and know for sure that you are a part of this intimate family, know this, it was YHVH GOD who adopted you, it was not you who adopted Him.  

 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE SANE AND THE  DELUSIONAL

        I have always had this saying that goes like this:  "The difference between the hopefully sane and the delusional is that the delusional insists that they are sane, and the hopefully sane is convinced they are delusional."  Let me describe what hopefully sane is to clear up any confusion.  The hopefully (Biblically) sane is someone who believes every word of the Whole Counsel of GOD, including every story, every miracle, every act of GOD that He performed for His beloved who appeared to be insane by others and today's standards.  The Biblically and hopefully sane believe that if YHVH GOD could divide the Red sea for nearly three million people, wiping out the strongest and most feared army, well, then He could do the exact some for us who are diligently seeking Him, waiting, counting on Him to fulfill His purpose for bringing us into this world.  

     Let's take Joseph, David, Abraham, Hagar, Sarah, Jacob, Rebekah, Samuel, Joshua, Gideon, Moses..., and the like.  All of these were directly told by GOD that He would perform the impossible for them.  He was going to take the nobodies of the world and make them the beloved heroes we now know and glean hope from two-four thousands years later.  Having studied everything there is about each one, I can assure you, not one of them did not doubt that what they heard from GOD was an error on their part, or downright impossible.  Imagine being 100 years-old, married to an 90-year-old woman and being told by an invisible God that was completely foreign to you that your physical descendants were going to be as numerous as the stars, impossible to count, and yet there still were no children between your wife and you after more than seventy-five years of marriage. One would have to be thought of as completely delusional to believe that promise from an unknown invisible God. 

 Likewise, imagine being a seventeen-year-old who had a dream that the brothers who hated him, along with his father would someday bow down before him, in fear, nonetheless.  Yet, after that dream, he was thrown in a cistern, sold off as a slave, then imprisoned for a crime you did not commit. No less than a decade has past since being given such a seemingly impossible prophetic dream. And  yet still believing in an unfulfilled prophetic dream, as a prisoner, day after devastating day, rotting away in a dungeon in Egypt, would be impossible for anyone to believe, let alone not doubt. One would have to be absolutely delusional to believe that dream he once had as a young teen was real or even possible, let alone probable.  Or can one imagine being the weakest member of the weakest family of the weakest clan of the weakest tribe of an oppressed nation being told that he would defeat 135,000 of the best-trained and equipped army of your oppressor. 

      The Bible never says that Joseph doubted, but that doesn't mean that he didn't. It would be unrealistic to believe that he never did think that he was a bit delusional.  The Bible speaks of Gideon's constant testing of GOD, known as "fleecing,"  to have GOD prove Himself with miracles impossible in the natural.  It even tells of David, hiding out with the hated, dreaded enemy of Israel, killing innocent men, women, and children for profit for himself, leaving no one alive who could rat him out to this Philistine king. He did this because he had lost all hope for the prophecy and anointing from the last of the greatest of judges and priests, Samuel.  How low can one man sink and still be called "A man after GOD's own heart."  He killed innocent men, women, and children (1 Samuel 27:11), which is no different than when King Saul had murdered an entire priestly clan, including men, women, and children, for the "crime" of aiding and abetting his arch-enemy, young David, whom YHVH GOD had declared as the next in line for the throne King Saul occupied.  The Bible says that King Saul wiped out the entire city of Nob, including innocent men, women, children, and infants, and even all their livestock.  (1 Samuel 22:18-19) King Saul was condemned, and David was rewarded with the crown, and called a man after GOD's own heart.  Both murdered innocent families, one out of rage, the other for profit.  The Bible is filled with stories such as these that most people take for granted, not truly delving into the horrific details of the men of GOD.  

      All of these men at some point had to doubt what they heard from GOD, assuming themselves to be delusional.  That is where I am today  and have been for several years, now.  I've been at this crossroads for several years, believing that I must be delusional to believe that I had heard from the Almighty, that He had a work for me to do, and that it is a mighty big work.  To my offspring, I am delusional. To my husband, who left me because of my devotion to YHVH GOD, I am delusional.  I wouldn't even dream of mentioning this to my unbelieving siblings.  I am delusional to strangers. I have even been called, with a colorful adjective, "F'n crazy" by one I loved with all my heart, believing he was a man like David, a man after God's own heart.  I think that was the nail in the the coffin, burying my confidence in who I am. 

     Some of them do not know that I question my sanity on a daily basis, convinced I heard the wrong thing, or made it all up in my head.  Many days I choose to live in utter despair, forbidding myself to hope, rather to continue to be seen as delusional by those whom I loved with every fiber of my being.  Yet, I stare up a the miraculous work that only GOD could have accomplished, wondering, how could I doubt when it's a plain as the nose on my face.  

     The year was 2014, I had discovered a tumor in my head, knowing for sure it was malignant, even though everyone else told me that I was wrong, facing facial surgery that could paralyze my face on one side for the rest of my life, and at the same time, saying goodbye to my number two son, who was heading off to boot camp, knowing I would not see him, again for no less than six months.  It was a really bad day to say the least.   

     At the time, I was working on an epic story that I was sure GOD had given me, because it played out like a movie in my head, and there was no way I was talented or creative enough to invent such a deeply poignant story on my own. My husband had just recovered from prostate cancer, and now I was facing a rare cancer of my own.  During my cancer treatments, my husband of twenty-nine years, to whom I gave EIGHT children, told me, "After your treatments are over, I'm going to file for divorce, but I'll stay until your treatments are over to help around the house."  This is the husband that "drove" his family to church for twenty-five years, regularly, never missing a Sunday. Yeah, doesn't get much worse than that.  

    After he left,  I met a man I believed was a future hero in the Kingdom, just waiting to be shaped by the Potter. I fell in love with him sight unseen, because I thought I saw a drop dead gorgeous heart.  All I've seen for the past seven years is a very ugly heart.  They both think I'm crazy, they both stomped on my heart.  They both are redeemable, only by the Hand of GOD, but I'm not sure anymore if GOD is going to do it for either.  

  

      I know all of this sounds so incredulous and impossible to believe, maybe even frivolous to most, but to a yet-still nobody, mother of eight with a dream the size of Joseph's, it is that miracle  from Above that continues to speak to me to this day, assuring me that I am not delusional, that these things really did happen, and there is absolutely no way to explain them away, because the the proximity in time that they happened.  I never once ever dreamed of writing an epic fictional story, as I have always hated fiction.  It is the Hand of GOD Who is keeping them hidden still, as well as this one-time fictional author.  

   This despaired author, eight-nine years later, is suffering from the absolute worst case of hope deferred, (Proverbs 13:12), having suffered many more demoralizing events over the years since I started and stopped writing this epic. I  still sit here fearing that I am delusional. Some days, I choose to live in hopelessness, rather than continue with an unbelievable miraculous work of GOD, because of the stigma it has brought to my reputation among my loved ones, plus being the wedge that drove them away.   Every day and night I soak my pillow with tears that appear to go unnoticed, even if the Bible says He keeps record of them on His scroll. 

 (Psalm 56:8 You have taken account of my miseries; Put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not in Your book?)

         Sometimes, I think hope is crueler than despair.  At least with despair, devastating  disappointment doesn't gnaw away at you day after day, lonely tear-soaked night after night.  So, the question I ask today is do I continue in my "delusional faith" in the GOD who performed such miracles in the pages of a book, or the sane reality of these most horrible and difficult days being  like this for the of my life?  

The answer is unequivocally YES!