THIRTY YEARS AGO TODAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1986, MY LIFE CHANGED FOREVER: Devotional From Lorilyn’s Adoption Memoir “Children of Dreams”

It was thirty years ago today, September 4, 1986, that my life changed forever. I thought I would never be happy again. I couldn't imagine I would find joy or be able to move beyond my pain. 

While I hoped God would be sufficient to help me thrive after my failed marriage, I wasn't sure He would. I wasn't even sure God could heal my broken heart. Yet, when we trust God, there is hope, and despite my devastation and loss, I clung to that hope, the kind of hope referred to in Hebrews 11:1: Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.

My life has been full of blessings since that dreadful day when I walked out of the courthouse with a big "D" on my forehead. I can't imagine the blessings I would have missed had I stayed married. Marriage to a godless man is no substitute for God. God is my husband, my provider, my sustainer, my healer, my everything. 

If only I had known thirty years ago all the wonderful things God had planned for me. But without the pain of a failed marriage, without surrender to The One Who loved me enough to die for me, I don't believe I would have appreciated the cost. 

If you are going through a tough time, don't lose heart. Nothing is impossible with God, and all things, if we let go, He will use in a way we can't even imagine. If not completely in this world, He will use in the world to come. God can mold you and me into the person He longs for us to become. And what greater opportunity to serve Him is there than being His child?  

All the fame we amass, all the riches we accumulate, all the knowledge we learn, all the experiences we rack up, and all the prestige we earn, none of it comes close to what it means to be a child of God. 

The following is an excerpt from my memoir, Children of Dreams. Enjoy.

…the children of the promise

Romans 9:8

“I took away her dreams,” my husband told the judge on September 4, 1986. Humanly speaking, he might have thought so. In John 8:44, God describes Satan as the “Father of lies.” He desired to destroy me, to make me doubt God’s love and goodness. In my pain, I believed a lie, much like the children believed Aslan was dead in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

However, a higher law governs the universe, a law that supersedes every human sin and evil that attempts to corrupt God’s perfection. Our heavenly Father, who is full of grace and mercy, works out His purposes despite the evil that lurks in the shadows. No human being has the power to thwart God’s ultimate plan.

He works in spite of the prince of this world and uses everything for His glory. God wastes nothing, whether it is a disease, affliction, corruption, greed, lies, or betrayal. Jesus is our ultimate example of being perfect and commanded us in Matthew 5:48: “Be perfect, even as your heavenly Father in heaven is perfect.”

God’s incredible love for us is even more astounding when one considers He was under no obligation to adopt us. He could have treated us as angels, making us spiritually alive through regeneration, and justifying us under the law through His death and resurrection (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1994, 738-739) To adopt us and call us His children, to call Himself our Father, displays an intimacy in our relationship that defies, in my limited understanding, all logic. Why would the Creator of the universe want to be our Father? Even Albert Einstein, for all his genius, could not understand God as a personal God (Hugh Ross, Ph.D., The Creator and the Cosmos, Colorado Springs, Col: Navpress, 2001, 75.)

Just as I signed a contract and made a down payment to adopt my children before I left for Nepal and Vietnam, God has given us “His Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” (2 Corinthians 1:22).

On July 26, 2000, we made a memorable trip to the Alachua County Courthouse to finalize Joy’s adoption. A few years earlier, I had taken Manisha to the same place to finalize hers. Both of my children’s adoption decrees are now sealed and kept safe, just as God sealed my adoption and yours in heaven.

I renamed my children Hope and Joy, and God promises to give us a new name, “…known only to him who receives it.” (Rev 2:17). The adoption of my children represents a foreshadowing of what God has in store for all of us.

Much of the meaning of being a child of God has yet to be revealed. It is hard to comprehend the King giving me heavenly possessions that will never break, become outdated, cost too much, get lost, or that I don’t have to return because they are defective.

In my limited understanding, I have tried to imagine a world where there will be “no more death or mourning or crying or pain.” (Rev 21:4). Where the “dwelling of God will be among us, and He will wipe away every tear.” (Rev 21:4). Where every kind of “precious stone forms the foundation of the heavenly city that is paved in gold.”(Rev 21:19).

How can we envision perfection when all we have known is imperfection? God longs to be our Father, to share His inheritance with us, just as I longed to be an orphan’s mother. God planned us to be part of His family from the foundations of the world. He made us for His glory and “set eternity in the hearts of men.” (Ecc 3:11). He will give us new bodies that will never grow old or die but will be raised imperishable (I Cor 15:42).

I am sure if I told my children, “You can go back to Vietnam or Nepal and live your former way of life before I adopted you,” they would turn it down. Why would they want to go back to depravity, worms, and hunger? In our heavenly home, the old order of things will have passed away (Rev 21:4) and the former things will not be remembered (Isaiah 65:17).

Before I adopted my two beautiful daughters, it was hard to imagine what it would be like to be a mother. I dreamed about little girls and birthday parties, Christmas trees and toys, bear hugs and butterfly kisses, and my name transformed into the magical word “Mommy.” Through prayer and God’s faithfulness, what seemed impossible became real. So it will be someday with our heavenly Father and us.

Hebrews 11:1 says, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” God knows how we are formed and remembers we are dust (Psalm 103:14). Jesus said when we pray, to call God “Our Father.” The Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children (Romans 8:16). God compares Himself to a father having compassion for his children (Psalms 103:13). Our heavenly Father loved us so much that He gave us His only begotten Son (John 3:16), and He has made us heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17).

Even creation itself will be liberated when we are brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God (Romans 8:21). Through adoption, God gave me my Children of Dreams and quenched the desires of my heart (Psalms 37:4). With God, our heavenly Father, before the foundations of the world, made us His Children of Promise (Romans 9:8 and Galatians 4:28).

Revelation 5: 9-10

“You are worthy to take the scroll and break open its seals.

You are worthy because you were put to death.

With your blood, you bought people for God.

They come from every tribe, language, people, and nation.

You have made them members of a royal family.

You have made them priests to serve our God.

They will rule on the earth.”

Children of Dreams was an award winner in the 2016 Readers Favorite Book Awards!

GUEST POST: SPANISH WRITER SEBASTIAN VILAR RODRIGUEZ with comments by Lorilyn Roberts: “What Really Died at Auschwitz?”

The Garden of Gethsemane

The following is a copy of an article written by Spanish writer Sebastian Vilar Rodriguez and published in a Spanish newspaper. It doesn’t take much imagination to extrapolate the message to the rest of Europe - and possibly to the rest of the world. 

“I walked down the streets in Barcelona and suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz . . . We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz, we burned a culture, thought, creativity, and talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.

“The contribution of these people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned.

“And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime, and poverty, due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.

 

“They have blown up our trains and turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime. Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.

“And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition. We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.

“What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe.

“Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it ‘offends’ the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving in to it.

 

Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem

“It is now approximately seventy years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, twenty million Russians, ten million Christians, and nineteen-hundred Catholic priests who were 'murdered, raped, burned, starved, beaten, experimented on and humiliated. Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to be ‘a myth,’ it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.

Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem

“How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center ‘NEVER HAPPENED’ because it offends some Muslims in the United States? If our Judeo-Christian heritage is offensive to Muslims, they should pack up and move to Iran, Iraq, or some other Muslim country."

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One of the things I did (Lorilyn Roberts) when I went to Israel is I visited many of the Holocaust memorials, including Yad Vashem. I also toured the Old City of Jerusalem. The jpegs in this article are mine.

I want to note something that struck me when I went to Israel, something I’ve never written about because I didn’t have an answer: 

When I visited the Muslim Quarters of the Old Historical City, their section of the Old City was filthy. There was no pride in preserving anything. Precious sites mentioned in the Bible appeared to have been deliberately abandoned or polluted, such as the Pool of Siloam. 

Archeological work is hampered throughout Israel because of the political situation. If the Muslims valued knowledge, history, and technology, why don't they let scientists come in and preserve this precious history?

Wilderness of Israel

Throughout history, scientists from different political persuasions have been able to overcome ideological differences and work together for the betterment of mankind. I see the space station as an excellent example of how scientists can share knowledge even when the home countries which sent them have different political and religious views. 

I truly believe much of history has been rewritten to make Islam look good. I have done a lot of reading on the history of Islam in preparation for my next book in the Seventh Dimension Series. That research has shown me as a Christian and as an American, I have been misinformed about the Muslim faith. 

Deliberate or just naivete, I don’t know, but now I'm reading as much as I can to become knowledgeable so I’m part of the solution to peace and not part of the problem.

Books I recommend to understand Islam and its relationship to Jews and Christians are:

• Slavery, Terrorism and Islam, by Peter Hammond. 
• Islam and the Jews, by Mark A. Gabriel, Ph.D. 
• Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity by Nabeel Qureshi

I will leave the reader to ponder this quote from Ephesians 2:12-22 and challenge Christians to become educated on how to reach their Muslim friends, colleagues, and neighbors with the Gospel. Jesus is ONLY way to peace and reconciliation. Jews and Muslims need us to make that reconciliation happen.  

Israel

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“That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world:

¹³ But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.

¹⁴ For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us;

¹⁵ Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace;

¹⁶ And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby:

¹⁷ And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh.

¹⁸ For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.

¹⁹ Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God;

²⁰ And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone ”(Ephesians 2:12-20 KJV).