New book: The Spirit of Adoption

Last week I was excited to get an advance copy of a new book written by my friends Randy and Kelsey Bohlender, The Spirit of Adoption: Winning the Battle for the Children.  The book is now in and can be ordered here.  A group study guide is in the works.

Randy and Kelsey have shared the adoption message a couple times in our church and each time they’ve come, people adopt more children, and people give lots of money for others to adopt more children. Kristen and I are delighted to see that they have taken the time to put, in book form, the anointing they walk in so strongly… the Spirit of Adoption.  They make the case that, as the positive alternative to abortion, “adoption is the next frontier for those who call themselves pro-life.” As a couple who has devoted years to contending for the plight of the unborn, the Bohlender’s have noticed… “while the church has been highly vocal in it’s opposition to abortion, it has largely failed to think about what it means if we get our way.”

“If we overturned Roe v. Wade tomorrow, what would happen to those 4500 babies born each day?”

The Bohlender’s are asking, will “the Church step up to the task of caring for the orphan, the cast off ones, the unwanted…. the harder question was would we?”  When Kristen and I first met Randy and Kelsey a few years ago, God did something in my heart… I had to repent of my increasingly frequent empty nest fantasies. (We have two kids lefts at home, a junior and a senior in high school.) Kristen and I enrolled in foster parenting that next fall and took an unwed mom and new baby into our home. I’m sure that’s just the beginning.

Lou Engle’s zeal for LIFE oozes in the foreword he wrote for this book.  He sets the book in the broader context of what God is doing raising up a new army of rescuers. He comments on how the Bohlender’s own adoption story is “off the charts.” That story is woven throughout the book and if you haven’t heard it yet it alone is worth the price of the book.

The Spirit of Adoption is a crash course in one of the central burdens God is laying on the church in this hour. The Bohlender’s make the case Biblically that the nearer we get to the end of the age – wars, earthquakes, and judgments that kill masses of people – “this will lead to a huge number of orphans wandering the face of the earth, looking for a home.”

Equally sobering are the chapters where the Bohlender’s alert us to the others that are vying for the unwanted children of the world – the sex trade and the homosexual community. The mandate of God for the church to step up to the plate comes through loud and clear in these pages. There is an open challenge here for lawyers, social workers, doctors, and others to join forces to make adoptions happen. The reality of the high cost of adoption, and not just the financial cost, is addressed.

And, those of you who still have no true grasp of the fact that YOU are adopted into God’s family will see that matter is settled in this book – the Great Finalization… “for you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.'” (Romans 8:14-15)

Randy blogs here and has a recent post on adoption here.  He and Kelsey founded the Zoe Foundation which promotes adoption as a positive alternative to abortion.  They have seven kids (3 adopted) and are intercessory missionaries at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City.