The Life-Changing Generosity of Adoption & Foster Care with John & Megan Cortines | FaithFi
November 13, 2026
The Life-Changing Generosity of Adoption & Foster Care with John & Megan Cortines
Faith & Finance with Rob West
Sometimes becoming more generous means giving away less money.
That may sound contradictory, especially when we often measure generosity by how much we give. But biblical generosity is about far more than a percentage on a spreadsheet. It involves surrendering everything God has entrusted to us—including our money, time, homes, relationships, and even our plans for the future.
For John and Megan Cortines, that lesson became deeply personal when their journey of financial generosity led them somewhere unexpected: foster care and adoption.
Their story reminds us that generosity isn't simply about what we're willing to give away. It's about what we're willing to surrender to God.
Sometimes becoming more generous means giving away less money.
That may sound contradictory, especially when we often measure generosity by how much we give. But biblical generosity is about far more than a percentage on a spreadsheet. It involves surrendering everything God has entrusted to us—including our money, time, homes, relationships, and even our plans for the future.
For John and Megan Cortines, that lesson became deeply personal when their journey of financial generosity led them somewhere unexpected: foster care and adoption.
Their story reminds us that generosity isn't simply about what we're willing to give away. It's about what we're willing to surrender to God.
From Financial Stewardship to Financial Surrender
Early in their marriage, John and Megan considered themselves faithful stewards. They lived frugally, saved diligently, and gave approximately 10% of their income to their church and other ministries.
Both had grown up in Christian homes where responsible financial stewardship was modeled well. But their understanding of generosity began to deepen during John's time at Harvard Business School.
Facing the possibility of earning a significant income, they began asking important questions about what it meant to follow Christ with their finances.
They came to recognize that Christ's generosity toward them should shape their generosity toward others. Giving was no longer simply an obligation to fulfill. It became an opportunity to experience the joy of participating in God's work.
As their perspective changed, so did their giving.
Eventually, John and Megan were giving 23% of their gross income. Rather than feeling burdened by their generosity, they found it increasingly exciting. Their willingness to surrender financially was strengthening their trust in God's provision. But they soon discovered that surrendering their money was preparing them for something much greater.
When God Opened the Door to a Different Kind of Generosity
Over the next five years, something surprising happened: John and Megan's financial giving rate dropped from 23% to 12%. On paper, it might have appeared that they were becoming less generous. In reality, their lives were becoming increasingly shaped by sacrificial love.
Already parents to three biological children, they began wrestling with whether God was inviting them to expand their family through foster care or adoption. Scripture played an important role in that decision.
Job 29:16 says, "I was a father to the needy, and I searched out the cause of him whom I did not know." Isaiah 58:7 also describes faithful care for vulnerable people, including the call to "bring the homeless poor into your house."
John and Megan began considering how their own experience of being welcomed into God's family through Christ might shape their willingness to welcome a child into theirs.
They didn't describe their decision as a unique calling that exempted other Christians from involvement. Instead, they believed Scripture calls all believers to care for vulnerable children, even though that responsibility may look different from one family to another.
Eventually, they welcomed premature newborn twins into their home through foster care. The babies arrived from the neonatal intensive care unit weighing approximately five pounds each.
What began as a foster placement became a two-and-a-half-year journey toward permanent adoption. And along the way, their understanding of generosity changed forever.
The Sacrifices That Don't Appear on a Giving Statement
Welcoming two medically vulnerable infants into a family of five brought tremendous joy, but it also required significant sacrifice. There were sleepless nights, medical appointments, court dates, meetings with caseworkers, and the emotional uncertainty of navigating the foster care system.
Their grocery, diaper, and childcare expenses increased dramatically. John took on additional work to support their growing family, and eventually they sold their three-bedroom home to purchase a five-bedroom house.
With John earning a ministry salary at the time, their finances became increasingly stretched. Their church provided meaningful help with the practical demands of caring for their growing family, but the journey still required enormous amounts of time, energy, patience, and trust.
As Megan reflected, giving money away had begun to seem relatively easy compared with giving their lives away. For John, however, the declining giving percentage created an unexpected internal struggle.
As a Christian author who had written extensively about stewardship and generosity, he had taken pride in giving more than 20% of his income. Now, with his giving rate down to 12%, he wondered whether he could still consider himself a generous giver.
The financial pressure was real, and the uncertainty sometimes kept him awake at night. But during a time of prayer, John experienced a profound change in perspective.
He came to understand that the money they were spending to care for their adopted children wasn't competing with generosity. It was one of the ways they were practicing generosity.
The groceries, medical expenses, additional bedrooms, and everyday costs of raising their children expressed love for those God had entrusted to their care. Those expenses might never appear on a charitable giving statement, but that didn't make them any less meaningful.
God was concerned with the faithfulness of their entire lives, not merely the numbers on a financial spreadsheet.
Generosity Isn't Always Comfortable
For Megan, the journey also raised difficult questions about suffering, sacrifice, and obedience.
There were seasons when John was away preaching to thousands of people while she was at home caring for five sick children. Sometimes, amid those exhausting days, something else in the house would break.
They believed they were serving God together, but that didn't make the sacrifices easy. Megan found encouragement in Romans 5:3–4:
"Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope."
Their experience taught them that following Jesus doesn't necessarily lead to a more comfortable life. Sometimes faithfulness requires embracing inconvenience, uncertainty, and sacrifice for the sake of others.
Yet even in difficult seasons, God shaped their character and deepened their dependence on Him.
Generosity, they discovered, isn't always measured by how much we give up financially. Sometimes it's revealed in our willingness to inconvenience ourselves for the good of someone else.
Looking Beyond the Giving Percentage
Financial giving remains an important part of biblical stewardship. Percentages can help us evaluate our priorities, practice intentional generosity, and guard against allowing our lifestyles to consume everything we earn. But a giving percentage was never intended to become the complete measure of Christian faithfulness.
John recognized that he and Megan could have continued giving more than 20% of their income while declining the opportunity to welcome vulnerable children into their home.
Their financial giving might have remained impressive, but they would have missed another meaningful expression of generosity.
That realization invites us to consider a larger question: Are we stewarding everything God has entrusted to us for His glory?
Consider the everyday expressions of generosity that rarely appear in financial reports.
Is providing a meal for an adopted child merely a grocery expense, or is it also an act of giving? What about opening your home to a small group, caring for an aging parent, or helping a struggling neighbor?
These activities carry financial costs, but their value extends far beyond those expenses. Faithful stewardship involves our money, certainly, but also our abilities, relationships, health, homes, schedules, and opportunities.
When our lives are surrendered to God, the distinction between spending and giving isn't always as clear as we might imagine.
What Might God Be Asking You to Surrender?
John and Megan are careful to emphasize that their story isn't a formula every family must follow.
Foster care and adoption involve significant responsibilities. Families should prayerfully consider their circumstances, including the health of their marriage, their emotional and spiritual capacity, and their ability to provide a stable, nurturing home.
Not everyone is in a position to foster or adopt. But every Christian can consider how God might be inviting them to participate in caring for vulnerable people. For some, that may mean welcoming a child into their family. For others, it could involve supporting foster and adoptive families, providing practical assistance, offering respite care, or contributing financially to ministries serving children in need.
The invitation isn't to imitate someone else's circumstances. It's to live with open hands before God. And that invitation extends well beyond foster care and adoption.
Perhaps God is inviting you to use your home more hospitably, devote more time to someone who needs encouragement, care for a family member, or redirect some of your resources toward a need you hadn't previously considered.
The question isn't simply, "How much am I giving?" It's also, "How much of my life have I surrendered to the Lord?"
John and Megan's journey reminds us that the most meaningful acts of generosity cannot always be measured in dollars.
Sometimes generosity looks like writing a check. Other times, it looks like preparing another meal, making room at the dinner table, comforting a frightened child, or faithfully loving someone through a difficult season.
Our calling isn't to achieve an impressive giving percentage. It's to recognize that everything we have belongs to God and to use it faithfully for His glory and the good of others.
Because ultimately, generosity isn't merely something we do with our money. It's a way of life that reflects God's goodness and generosity to the world around us.
November is National Adoption Awareness Month. To learn more about supporting children and families through foster care and adoption, visit Bethany Christian Services or connect with a ministry serving vulnerable children in your local church or community.
On Today’s Program, Rob Answers Listener Questions:
We’re about $65,000 short on paying off our home. Should we take a 10- or 15-year mortgage, use cash and a bonus, or tap retirement savings without draining our nest egg? Should I claim Social Security at 62 or wait? My husband’s $300,000 life insurance policy costs $600 a month. As we approach retirement, do we still need that coverage?
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