Pray today for families who have adopted children from abroad. Early this morning I received and email from friends of ours who are, at this moment en route to a nation on the horn of Africa to bring back to the U.S. two baby girls, sisters. My God’s blessing and favor be with them.

God himself loves adoption. He himself has adopted us! And he loves us as if we were his own flesh and blood. When parents adopt, God gives them the same instinctive love, as a miracle. It’s an amazing thing to behold – how strangers can suddenly bond as parents to new children. God bless today all adoptive parents as they work out their love for children they did not conceive or bear.

It’s not an easy process of course. The failures of some international adoptions are in the news today. Russia has now suspended all adoptions to U.S. families on until the two countries can agree on procedures. This decision came a week after an American woman sent her 7-year-old adopted son back to Russia on a plane by himself, claiming the boy was violent and beyond control. Young children deprived of touch and love during formative years to form bonding barriers. Older adoptive kids do often have bonding challenges. Let’s pray today for a miraculous wave of bonding between parents and children in families across this country.

“God you have initiated adoption. You love us as if we were your own, making us your own, though we have on our own drifted far from you. You love us unconditionally and give to us a love for you. You are our father. You have bonded with us and you give us the gift of loving and bonding with you. We ask that this same miraculous love would flow between adoptive parents and their children. Give mothers and fathers an unexplainable bond. And give the children, many of them wounded by deep rejection, a supernatural capacity to receive love. Bond them close. Create family ties where those ties seem impossible. God, for those families seeking now to adopt, give them courage to persevere. For those governments that make adoption difficult, break through and ease the process. With millions of orphans in the world, Lord, release a wave of new adoptions. Create and expand many families, and with your own parents’ heart give a new capacity to give and receive love. In Jesus, our brother, to the Father we pray this!”