“He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children. Praise the Lord.”
– Psalm 113:9
I could talk for a long time about the impact of this verse specifically in my life and marriage and family. After Heather and I had longed to have children for many years and God was just not answering the way we hoped, and he ended up leading us down a path of adoption, which we had never planned on. But I’m so glad he led us through infertility and down that path. And we ended up adopting our first son into our home from Kazakhstan and then came back and within a couple of weeks found out that Heather was pregnant. And so I remember when we were at the hospital and she was preparing to give birth to our second son and we read Psalm 113:9, “He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children. Praise the Lord.”
Lifting Up Families that Seek Adoption
Today we lift up families who are seeking to adopt and the children who are waiting to be adopted. Lord, we ask that You open the door for children to be brought home.
And I could go on talking about how God formed the rest of our family all the way up to right now. We are praying every day for a child that we’ve been matched with for adoption and we were just a few days away from leaving the country to go and bring into our home when back in early February we were told we couldn’t go because of the spread of this virus around the world.
Our child’s name is J.D., it stands for Jeremiah Daniel. We pray for him every day, all day long, just praying. We were just pleading even last night, just pleading, “God, please open up a door for us to go to him.” So all that to say as I’m looking through all these different prayer requests that people are sending in, in light of this pandemic. I encourage you to continue sending those in radical.net/prayerrequests. Just specific ways we can pray for each other in light of all that’s going on around us in the world.
Psalm 113:9 Praises God for Being the Perfect Father
But Julie Lynn writes, “I’m adopting our first child from Bulgaria. I was getting ready to go pick her up and then everything shut down.” Her child’s name is Lola Ruth and Julie Lynn talks about how she has special needs, particular medical needs. So I want to lead us to pray for Julie Lynn and Lola Ruth. If I could lead us to pray together for J.D. and for a lot of other waiting children and their families who are not able to come together because of this virus right now.
So God, we praise you. You are the father to the fatherless. God, you love orphans, children without a home, far more than we ever could. You call yourself and all your might there father. You make a way for them to be brought into homes. God, we pray for orphans around the world right now who don’t have a mom and dad.
God’s Grace for Children
So God, we pray that you would provide a home for them and God, we pray that you would open the door for waiting children who are ready to be adopted, families who are ready to go and adopt them, whether that’s domestically, internationally. God, we pray you would open the door for these children to be brought into homes.
So we pray specifically for Julie Lynn. We pray for your grace, for your strength, for her, her family, in every way. We pray for Lola Ruth. God, we pray that you would protect her and that you would open the door for her to be brought into a family as soon as possible. God, we pray for J.D. We pray that you would protect him. As we trust in your timing, God, totally trust in your timing, we pray that you would open the door for us to go to him, him to be with us soon.
Psalm 113:9 Prays that All Children Will Find Families
God, I pray for every other waiting child and family that’s waiting to go pick up a child. God, we pray that you would grant patience, that you would grant protection, that you would open the door, God, in your sovereign power, according to your sovereign wisdom, that families and children without families might be united. We pray as soon as possible. We praise you. Psalm 113:9, you give the barren woman a home. You make her the joyous mother of children. Praise the Lord. We praise you, God, as the father to the fatherless. We plead right now together on behalf of waiting children and families in the middle of this pandemic.
And God, I’m compelled even now to pray also for children who don’t have a family coming for them right now. So God, we pray that you would raise up more families who will care for children who don’t have a mom and dad. God, please provide homes for children who need a home. God, I pray that even right now, you might move in people’s hearts who are listening to this. Oh God, I hadn’t planned on praying along these lines. But God, I just pray that your Spirit would lead some to adopt, some to sign up to do foster care. God, we pray that you would lead your church even now as people are listening right now to care for children without a home. We pray this for your glory as father to the fatherless. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
