Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that one day I would adopt an eight year old boy China. In fact, if you had told me three years ago that I would now have a nine year old son, I probably would have laughed. Isn’t it beautiful how God works, changing and molding us into the vessel He intends us to be when we open our hearts to him.
When God first revealed to us His plan, I was honestly absolutely terrified at the thought initially, but God whispered in my heart, “Trust Me, dear one” and I settled under the secure wings of my Almighty Father and let Him lead. Adopting an older child is not an easy path, but God didn’t promise that the road would be easy, did He? But has it been rewarding and amazing? Absolutely!
For Anthony’s one year anniversary as our son, we purchased a Bible with his name imprinted on it. I had been waiting for the right time to start showing him how God speaks to us through the Bible and provides us with everything we need to follow Him. I didn’t want to rush things but Holy Spirit has been working in his heart one from the very day he entered our lives.
As we were setting down for our evening routine of a devotional reading, he said, “My heart believes in God, but my sometimes my brain doesn’t understand.” I could feel the prompting of the Holy Spirit to seize this very moment!
I said, “Yes, our brains try to understand, but we will never understand everything about God because He is God and our brain is too small in comparison to Him. Let’s look at verse in Isaiah that talks about this very thing. We can look it up in your new bible!”
So I picked up his new Bible and turned to Is. 55:8-9:
“‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your
ways my ways,’
declares the Lord.
‘As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways
higher than your ways
and my thoughts
than your thoughts.'” (NIV)
As Anthony read the verse aloud to me, his eyes grew big and he looked at me and exclaimed rather loudly,
“That is exactly what I was thinking! The Bible is amazing!! I am so happy! I love God with all my heart! My heart is different now.”
Heart pounding . . . tears of joy welling up . . . silent praise to God. This boy, one year ago, had not even heard the name of God!
“Anthony, I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that you understand how God speaks to us from His word. He also tells us that we are new creations because of Christ and have a new heart.”
“Are there verses that tell us that?”
“Oh, yes! Let me show you!”
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor. 5:17, NIV)
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ez. 36:26, NIV)
God is working in the heart of my boy who only just heard about God one year ago. Just think, if we hadn’t listened to God’s call, we would have missed out on the amazing work God is doing in his life.
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After struggling with infertility for 5 years, God led Suzanne and her husband, Adam, to His Plan A for their lives—adoption! Their daughter, Grace Lihua, came into their lives May 2011 on Mother’s Day from Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, China. And, their son, Anthony Jianyou, joined their family in January 2013 from Shanghai. After a career in politics, Suzanne now works as a part time Pilates instructor while home schooling their children, writing and working as a part of the Sparrow Fund Blog leadership team. You can follow their adoption journey and life on her blog, Surpassing
Greatness.