Dan Cruver: Together for Adoption

Dan oversees Together for Adoption and provides thought-leadership on the theology of adoption as a team member of ABBA Fund. Before co-founding and directing Together for Adoption, Dan was a college professor of Bible and Theology. He has also served as a pastor of family ministries. As one who has been adopted by God and has adopted two children, Dan founded Together for Adoption to equip churches and educate Christians theologically about orphan care and horizontal adoption. Dan regularly writes and speaks about the Gospel and its implications for solutions to the global orphan crisis. He is the editor and primary author of Reclaiming Adoption: Missional Living Through the Rediscovery of Abba Father, wrote the foreword to Heirs with Christ: The Puritans on Adoption by Dr. Joel Beeke and is a regular contributor to The Gospel Coalition Blog.

What does God really want from you?

Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Psalm 82:3 Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afﬂicted and the destitute.
Isaiah 1:17 learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.
James 1:26-27 If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. [27] Religion that is pure and undeﬁled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their afﬂiction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Isn’t there something much more fundamental about what He wants from us?

Matthew 22:37 And [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

The question should actually be, who is God? God is the fountain of life.

John 7:37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.”

We can’t live the Christian life well, if we think of God as primarily wanting from us.

To serve the orphan well, we must think of God primarily as a giver.

Psalm 36:1-12 Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart; there is no fear of God before his eyes. [2] For he ﬂatters himself in his own eyes that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated. [3] The words of his mouth are trouble and deceit; he has ceased to act wisely and do good. [4] He plots trouble while on his bed; he sets himself in a way that is not good; he does not reject evil. [5] Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. [6] Your righteousness is like the mountains of God; your judgments are like the great deep; man and beast you save, O LORD.[7] How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.[8] They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.[9] For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.[10] Oh, continue your steadfast love to those who know you, and your righteousness to the upright of heart! [11] Let not the foot of arrogance come upon me, nor the hand of the wicked drive me away. [12] There the evildoers lie fallen; they are thrust down, unable to rise.

Why this Psalm at an orphan care on adoption?

1. There is a strong connection in this Psalm to what Scripture calls sonship.
2. Drinking from the fountain of the Father’s lavish delight in us actually empowers us to live on the razor sharp edge of the world’s profound brokenness.
3. Orphans need Christians who feast on the abundance of God’s house and whom God causes to drink from the river of his delights (Psalm 36:8).
4. Christians who experience God the Giver are much better equipped to love the child who comes from or lives in the hard place.

What orphans need is Christians, who by the grace of God, drink the spirit that is “the Niagara” of Jesus.