Friday, April 19, 2013

Yard Sale!

Come one, come all to the Oster Family Adoption Fundraiser. It will be at our place in Oak Tree on Saturday, May 4th starting bright and early. Also, let me know if you have anything you'd be willing to dontate!

Friday, April 12, 2013

Beautiful message from Unveiled faces

I was reading through the blogs I follow, and I came upon an entry from an amazing family. An amazing adoptive family. An amazing transracial family....with 7 kids. The blogger puts a refreshing perspective on trials and racism and reminds us what our God endured. See the post below.

http://ourunveiledfaces.blogspot.com/2013/04/and-yet-so-far-to-go-on-racism-and-jesus.html

And Yet So Far to Go: on Racism and Jesus



You are all sons of God, through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized in Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Galatians 3:26-29

Our family is filled with color
by irreversible choice. in love. through adoption.
There was a time in our country when a family like ours would not have been received with enthusiasm.

God, in His sovereignty, with the sacrifices of generations of bold saints who have gone before us, changed all that.

What He did not change is the inclination of human hearts to remain ignorant of the GRACE that HE poured out on the cross available
to every person
of every color
of every nation
who are image bearers of HIMSELF.

To be ignorant is to ignore the revealed TRUTH of JESUS.
God does not excuse ignorance.
ever.

In a world of highly evolved social conscience, we might be led to believe that racism is something that was put to rest.
I can testify that is NOT the case.

As the one who has absorbed all the trauma that my children have been through, this trauma is one that my love and perseverance can heal through His power, but cannot erase.
Even though it was absorbed by our LORD JESUS on the cross at Calvary, the sting of hatred and prejudice continues to rule in the hearts of the ignorant.
And it is NOT tolerated or ignored by Him.
It will not be tolerated or ignored by our family, either.
Because racism is not like any other sin against our Holy God.
As each soul He creates bears His image,
racism is HATING the very image of God.

"If we believe in the sovereign grace of God, the redemptive restoration of God-- then we are never afraid of the Truth.
And maybe our deafening silence is just this:
Truth necessitates confrontation-- and a whole lot of us are more chicken than Christian. We'd rather save our own skin, than the skin of the bruised and battered and beaten.
We're more in love with self-preservation than with Savior glorification.
We'd rather make pain invisible than say injustice is intolerable--
so the injustice continues." Ann Voscamp, A Holy Experience


It is better, if it is God's will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison...1 Peter 3:17-19

So this message is to those in prison.
Either the prison of hatred
or the prison of cowardice.
While Jesus' body lay in the tomb, His Spirit was working.
Jesus was into confrontation.
No evil deed remains covered in the light of His LOVE.

He came to set the captives free in more ways than we- or the evil one can even imagine.

That same ugly spirit that God knew would cause Jesus to suffer and die,
is the same ugly spirit that causes hatred through racism to remain alive today.
Why did they hate Him so?
Why did they want Him out of the way?

Knowing the answer to this, I asked my son the same question.
Why did they hate HIM so?
Was it because He was different?
My son's answer---
"It was because He was better."




God isn't looking for players who "have the guts to fight back."
He is looking for players who "have the guts not to fight back."

Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the LORD Almighty. Zechariah 4:6

Because in the end......He wants none of us to perish-- But gives everyone an equal playing field to be part of His --
irreversible choice, in love, through adoption.

Not to choose, is to choose.
There is no middle lane on the narrow road.