“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16
I never could have predicted it—not in a million years.
If you had told the rebellious, guarded, suspicious teenage girl I once was that one day she and her adoptive father would sit side by side in front of microphones, sharing the saving grace of Jesus with the world, she would have rolled her eyes and walked away. And yet, here we are. My dad, John McLarty, and I co-host the podcast “Truth in Love.” We talk about God’s faithfulness, His salvation, and His relentless love for broken people. And every single time I look back over my broken road, I am overwhelmed with thankfulness for my dad.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
When I was around 8 years old, John McLarty entered my life. Before that, I had never known any man I remember being comfortable calling “dad.” After he married my mother, he committed himself completely to being our father—so much so that he adopted myself and my two siblings. My parents had almost nothing financially, but a retiring attorney took on their case for just $100 per child. My dad was all in from the very beginning.
I was not.
I was rebellious. Suspicious. Sneaky. Deep down, I was braced for the day he would decide I wasn’t worth it and walk away—because that had been my experience with people. But he didn’t walk away. Through my stormy, defiant teenage years, he spent hundreds of hours guiding me, counseling me, and—I would only learn this later—praying for me. Praying with the kind of persistent, unhurried, unshakeable faith that refuses to let go of a child, no matter what that child is doing.
I mostly ignored him. I told myself I didn’t need a dad. I had survived my formative years without one, hadn’t I? Yet he stayed. He loved. He gave. He was faithful to God.
What my dad was modeling—without either of us fully understanding it at the time—was the heart of the Heavenly Father toward every single one of us.
And I want to be clear about something, because there is a distorted teaching that has sullied the image of the Heavenly Father. Some have been told that God predetermined certain people for heaven and others for hell. In other words, they have been told that God chose to create some people just to condemn them to hell.
This is not our God.
Look again at John 3:16. God so loved the world. He gave His Son for WHOEVER believes. There is no asterisk, qualifying or limiting this to His top-secret list. The door of adoption stands wide open, and God Himself is the one holding it open—urgently, tenderly, and persistently inviting anyone who will come. John makes this beautifully plain:
“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” John 1:12–13
As many as received Him. Every single person who opens his or her heart to Jesus receives the same extraordinary gift: the legal, permanent, irrevocable right to be called a child of God. Here is what makes this adoption so incredible. When God chose to bring you into His family, He did not do it with incomplete information. He knew every way you would resist Him. He saw every season of wandering and every rebellion, and He signed the adoption papers anyway. Paul captures the sheer audacity of this love:
“For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:7–8
He didn’t wait for us to get ourselves together. He moved toward us at our worst, our most unlovable, our most resistant—and He paid the full price of adoption with the blood of His own Son. That is not the behavior of a God who is indifferent to us. That is the behavior of a Father who is fiercely, relentlessly, and irrevocably for us.
So what does it mean to be an heir of God?
Adoption in the ancient world was no small legal transaction. When a Roman father adopted a child, that child received a completely new identity. All old debts were canceled. All former status was gone. The adopted child stood in the eyes of the law as a full, legitimate heir—no distinction, no second-class standing. Paul wrote:
“For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs — heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.” Romans 8:15–17
Joint heirs with Christ. Let that soak in. Everything that belongs to the Son belongs to every born again believer as well. It is not because we earned it, but because the Father gave it freely. Jesus Himself confirmed this in His prayer to the Father:
“And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one…and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.” John 17:22–23
The Father loves you as He loves Jesus. This is a declaration from the mouth of the Son of God. Look, I get it. I wandered for years. I made choices that broke my father’s heart—both my earthly father’s and my Heavenly Father’s. But my dad never stopped loving me and praying for me. He prayed with the steady, faithful, immovable conviction of a man who had placed his rebellious daughter into God’s hands and trusted Him to bring her home.
And God did exactly that.
What I didn’t understand in those years of wandering was that the faithfulness of my parents living out God’s Word and their consistent prayers for me were working beneath the surface of my chaotic choices. But this should be no surprise because God’s Word says it:
“So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55:11
God’s Word does not return void. A prayer soaked in God’s Word, offered in faith, does not evaporate into the ceiling. It goes to work. It accomplishes something—even when we cannot see it, even when the child we are praying for seems to be moving in the exact opposite direction. The work is happening beneath the surface, in our souls, where only God can reach. I am living proof of this truth.
If you are reading this today and your heart is heavy with worry over a child—biological or adopted, young or fully grown—I want to speak directly to you. Do not stop praying. Stay faithful. I know how exhausting this is when you have a loved one who shows no sign of changing. I know how discouraging it feels to watch the years pass and wonder if your prayers are working. But hear this: My parents prayed for me through years that looked completely hopeless. And not only did God bring me back—He brought me back so completely, so thoroughly, that my father and I now spend our days together telling the world about His great gift of salvation!
God did not just return His prodigal daughter. He redeemed the years. He restored the relationship. He took a story that looked like permanent damage and turned it into a platform for His glory. That is the kind of God we serve. Claim this promise and hold it:
“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6
And pray to our Heavenly Father with the unstoppable persistence Jesus described:
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” Matthew 7:7–11
Our Heavenly Father loves our children more than we do. He has not forgotten them. He has not given up on them. And our prayers—offered in faith, grounded in His Word, and guided by His Spirit—are the most powerful force at work in our children’s lives right now!
Prayer:
Father, I am undone by Your faithfulness. You saw every year of my wandering, and You never once withdrew Your hand. You honored the prayers of a faithful father, and You brought me home to a life richer and more purposeful than anything I could have imagined. Thank You. Lord, thank You, that Your Word does not return void. Lord, may I never get over Your love. Allow the wonder of my adoption to stay fresh, so that I live every ordinary day with the joy and boldness of knowing exactly Who I belong to. I am Yours. Redeemed, restored, and adopted. Thank You, Heavenly Father, for Your amazing love. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
