Grappling With Infertility
Could God be leading you to adoption? Today, Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at Southern Seminary, talks honestly about his family’s struggle with infertility and recalls the precious moment when he opened his heart and mind to the idea of adoption.
Show Notes
About the Host
About the Guest
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Could God be leading you to adoption? Today, Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at Southern Seminary, talks honestly about his family’s struggle with infertility and recalls the precious moment when he opened his heart and mind to the idea of adoption.
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Dave and Ann Wilson
Dave and Ann Wilson are hosts of FamilyLife Today®, FamilyLife’s nationally-syndicated radio program. Dave and Ann have been married for more than 38 years and have spent the last 33 teaching and mentoring couples and parents across the country. They have been featured speakers at FamilyLife’s Weekend to Remember® marriage getaway since 1993 and have also hosted their own marriage conferences across the country. Cofounders of Kensington Church—a national, multicampus church that hosts more than 14,000 visitors every weekend—the Wilsons are the creative force behind DVD teaching series Rock Your Marriage and The Survival Guide To Parenting, as well as authors of the recently released book Vertical Marriage (Zondervan, 2019). Dave is a graduate of the International School of Theology, where he received a Master of Divinity degree. A Ball State University Hall of Fame quarterback, Dave served the Detroit Lions as chaplain for 33 years. Ann attended the University of Kentucky. She has been active alongside Dave in ministry as a speaker, writer, small-group leader, and mentor to countless wives of professional athletes. The Wilsons live in the Detroit area. They have three grown sons, CJ, Austin, and Cody, three daughters-in-law, and a growing number of grandchildren.
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Russell Moore
Russell Moore is President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Prior to his election to this role in 2013, Moore served as provost and dean of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also taught as professor of theology and ethics. A widely-sought cultural commentator, Dr. Moore has been recognized by a number of influential organizations. The Wall Street Journal has called him “vigorous, cheerful, and fiercely articulate” whi...more
Could God be leading you to adoption?
Bob: How long had you been going to the fertility doctor when the issue of adoption first surfaced?
Dr. Moore: Probably about a year.
Bob: Okay. Were there things that you had moved off the table in terms of reproductive options?
Dr. Moore: Yes! We have convictions against in vitro fertilization and those kinds of things, but if we didn’t have so many people around us who knew those things, so that we would be seen as hypocrites if we did them, then we would have been very easily talked into doing all kinds of things.
Dennis: You know what I hear is you’re talking about here the enormous pain of infertility that couples suffer privately that many of us get close to, but probably don’t get close enough; one that we need to probably enter in with a couple, and bear their burdens with them. And pray for them and encourage them and then move them beyond the sense of loss that can come, and does come, for that matter, with infertility. Challenge them to consider adoption as an alternative.
Dr. Moore: Exactly.
Dennis: And then surround couples with godly advisors, perhaps others who have adopted to help them count the cost. This is not an easy thing to adopt another human being and to graft them in to your family, even if God does call you.
Bob: Well, and when you talk to a guy who is working on his PhD in Theology, and his thinking about children and adoption… Is this fair to say? … had been more influenced by the culture than by the Scriptures?
Dr. Moore: Absolutely. Absolutely. And one of the problems too with infertility is that what we typically do in our churches is we cordon off everybody who is infertile, and we put them in a support group somewhere in the basement of the church building.
Dennis: Kind of a quarantine?
Dr. Moore: They are there talking to one another, being led by someone who is coming in talking about the pain of infertility, rather than putting people who are infertile together with people who have children who are also praying with them and with people who have adopted children.
We followed in our church a James 5 pattern of anointing with oil and praying with the elders of the church. This infertility, this aspect of the curse, is being prayed over. If we had had people in our lives that we knew who had adopted children, that would have been such an aspect of hope that we could have really benefitted from at the time.
Bob: I just wonder how many of our listeners…, they’re thinking about children, about adoption, about infertility, just like you were more shaped by what the culture says than by what the Scriptures say. And that is why I appreciate what you have done in the book, Adopted for Life. You are taking us back to a gospel understanding of adoption, understanding the great picture that God has given us in our adoption as sons, and then saying we can mirror God by being adoptive parents. What a great picture that is!
I just want to encourage listeners whether you are thinking about adoption or not, this book by Dr. Russell Moore is an outstanding book. It is called Adopted for Life and we have copies of it in the FamilyLife Today Resource Center. You can go to our website for more information about how you can get a copy.
Again the website is FamilyLifeToday.com. Let me also mention an event that is coming up in Louisville, Kentucky May 12th – 13th. This is the seventh annual Christian Alliance for Orphans Summit that’s being hosted at Southeast Christian Church in Louisville. Again, it’s May 12th and 13th. Dennis, you and I are going to be there. Dr. Moore is going to be speaking there as well.
This is an annual gathering of organization leaders, grassroots advocates, pastors, and really anybody who has a heart and a burden for the needs of orphans all around the world. It happens May 12th and 13th at the Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky, and we’ve got details on our website at FamilyLifeToday.com.
Just go and click on the link and find out how you can attend the Orphans’ Summit being put on by the Christian Alliance for Orphans. Hope to see you there; really looking forward to being at that event.
And you know, I know that many of our FamilyLife Today listeners have a heart in this particular area. And of course, FamilyLife has a whole ministry called Hope for Orphans that is designed to help encourage individuals, churches, organizations to care about the needs of the orphan, to equip them to mobilize and to be active in this area. And I know some of you, because you have a heart for this, as you give to FamilyLife, this is a part of what you’re giving for.
Well, this week if you would like to make a special donation that goes 100 percent toward the Hope for Orphans effort of FamilyLife, you can do that. You can go online at FamilyLifeToday.com and make a donation, and when you make that donation, just type in the key code box on the online donation form, just type the word “ORPHAN,” and whatever donation you make we’ll apply 100 percent of those funds toward our efforts to care for the needs of orphans around the world. So again, go to FamilyLifeToday.com, click on ‘make a donation,’ type the word ‘ORPHAN’ in the key code box, and all of the money you donate will go to Hope for Orphans.
Or, call 1-800-FLTODAY, make a donation by phone, and just mention that you’d like the money to go to Hope for Orphans, and we’ll be happy to allocate it in that direction. We appreciate your support, not only of FamilyLife Today, but your concern and care for the needs of orphans all around the world. Thanks for your partnership with us.
And let me encourage you to be back with us tomorrow. Russell Moore is going to be here again. We’re going to continue talking about this theme of adoption, and I hope you can tune in.
I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host Dennis Rainey, I am Bob Lepine. We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.
FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas.
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