Walk 4 Kids

I mentioned this before, but this is one of my favorite Sundays of the year. It’s so encouraging to see so many new faces, so many returning faces, some out of town faces. I know Scott Martin is in the crowd. I saw him earlier after a long time away. Longtime member, super grateful to have him. I saw some other people. The Morrises, I think, are back there somewhere. It’s really, really, really great to see so many people today. And if you’re visiting, like this is your very first time at the Broward Church, you thought you were coming to a traditional church service. You actually chose the best Sunday to come visit us because this Sunday is really at the heart of our congregation and it’s also at the heart of our faith. Today we celebrate our partnership with an outstanding organization called Four Kids of South Florida. Four Kids. Yeah, we can give a hand to them. Four Kids supports and cares for a population of people that is often overlooked in our society, children in foster care. And because of our partnership, we get a chance to be an illustration to the world of God’s people joining together to love and care for the modern day orphan in our community. That’s what today is. It’s really a celebration of people who love Jesus coming together to celebrate our care for the world. But really, what I hope you know, and what I hope you get out of this short little speech that I tell you this morning before we prepare for our walk, is that caring for the excluded, caring for the outcast, caring for the overlooked, for the person who cannot care for themselves is at the heart of the Christian faith. The Bible tells us this in Hebrews chapter one. It teaches us that Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being. This passage and many others teach us that if we watch Jesus’s life, we learn what God is like. Jesus didn’t just simply teach God’s way, but Jesus lived out the ways of God, and so much so that towards the end of his ministry, Philip, one of the disciples, would ask him a question. He would say this, he says, he would say, Show me the Father. And Jesus would reply to him, don’t you know me, Philip, even after I’ve been with among you such a long time? Then he says this. Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. Seeing me, Jesus says, is seeing God.

So if you want to know what God is like, then you should look at Jesus Christ. And if you want to look at God and try to figure out what he’s like and his characteristics and you should take a close look at the character of Christ. Look, there are loads of elements that we can look at. But today I want to talk about one element of the characteristic of Christ that shows who Jesus is. That is just tremendous. It’s astounding I think it’s so countercultural that it, at the time, turned the world on its head. If you took time to study this topic out, you would be amazed, as I have been. And so as we approach this walk, I want us to just take a couple of minutes to look at a characteristic of Jesus that illustrates a characteristic of God. And it’s this. It’s who Jesus chose to love. I just want to take a second to look at this. This is not what I wanted to do. Who Jesus chose to love, by the way, I’ll just say this, that who Jesus chose to love changed the world forever.

In fact, if you’re a Christian or if you’re not a Christian or you used to be a Christian, or as I mentioned before, if this is your first time here and you were invited to someone you know, someone told you there was going to be food and a walk and you didn’t know you were going to a church service, first off, I want to apologize on behalf of those members for lying to you. But also, I think you chose a good Sunday, because I want to tell you, and I really want you to listen into this idea that who Jesus chose to love changed the world forever. So let’s talk about it for a couple of minutes. You’ve heard it said, God is love, that God loves everyone or everyone matters to God. You hear those things before, but did you know that Jesus really introduced, I would say clarified and amplified that idea to the whole world? Like, before Jesus, the dominant religions of the world were the gods of the Romans and the Greeks, and the gods of the Romans and the Greeks did not care for anyone. They toyed with people. Before Jesus, the gods of the dominant religion didn’t care for people and so consequently, they didn’t require anyone to care for anyone else.

So when Jesus introduces this idea that God is loved that God so loves the whole world, that he doesn’t just love Jewish people, that he doesn’t just love popular people, that he doesn’t just love rich people, that Jesus loves, the outsider, the sinner, the cripple and the poor. What Jesus showed us in that moment is that the religion of the day had decayed to such a place that, honestly, it wasn’t exactly what God had ever intended. Right? The religious leaders of Jesus days used the law to oppress people. And so if you were a woman or if you were a sinner or if you were a Samaritan or if you were a shepherd or if you were a leper or if you were lame or if you were sick or if you were poor, if you were an orphan or you were a widow, you were constantly gaslit into believing that God didn’t care about you, that God had turned his back on you. In fact, you will remember one interaction with Jesus when someone asked him this question rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parent that he was born blind? This is the way people engaged with the sick, the poor, the death, the lame, the blind. Something must have you must have done something that God punished you in the way that you’re being punished right now. It’s because you’re unrighteous. It’s because you’re unrighteous that you’re sick. It’s because you’re unrighteous that you’re deaf. It’s because you’re unrighteous that you’re blind. It’s because God is punishing you that you’re going through all this turmoil. And the religious leaders before Jesus told people that God favored the powerful, that he favored the wealthy, that he favored those who had something to offer, that he favored above all else, rich, healthy men. And poverty and illness and being born blind and being orphaned in your youth were a sign of God’s disfavor towards you. This was the culture. But then Jesus comes on the scene and he came to show the world what God was really like. And so everywhere Jesus went, he elevated people’s dignity. He taught that compassion was strength, not weakness. That to do something for someone who could never do anything to repay you was actually virtuous, that being meek did not mean that you were a weak person, that to love was actually harder than to condemn, that to show mercy was actually stronger than to give out judgment.

He taught that you were valuable to God not because of what you had to offer, not because of how much money you could give to the temple, or because of the lavish circumstances you were born into. No, he taught that people were valuable to God because they were all made in the likeness of God, and nothing could take that away from them. Nothing. So everywhere Jesus went, Jesus would just stun his audience by raising people’s value. In Luke chapter ten, he makes the Samaritan a person who the culture hated, the hero of the story. Or you might remember Luke chapter 15, the Trilogy of lost Things. Jesus would teach that lost sinners are worth leadership going after. Or how about this? This is Matthew, chapter five, verse 43. You have heard it said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you. Jesus introduces the idea that we are to do good to people, for all people who would never do good to us, that your enemy was worthy of your love. Mark, chapter twelve. One day, Jesus is standing at the temple, and he walks into the temple and he watches this long line of people dropping their money into the offering bins.

And then one of the people who walk up is a small, poor, elderly, bent over woman, and she drops in two small copper coins, almost nothing, into the place where the offerings are collected. And as she walks away, Jesus looks at his disciples and looks at the crowd and goes, she not the rich, she gave more than anyone else. She is rich in the Kingdom of God. This woman Jesus, just elevates the dignity of the poor. See, the teachings of Jesus were completely countercultural. But Jesus didn’t just teach it. He also lived it out. Man everywhere he went, he elevated the marginalized. He went to the people the rest of the world tried to avoid. John, chapter four. He stops and has a conversation with a Samaritan woman. Jewish men, the Bible says, did not speak to Samaritan woman, but he sat with her. He answered her questions, and she’s the very first person that he reveals that he’s the Messiah to. And in that work, he changes her life forever. Jesus healed the sick, but he didn’t just heal them. He touched them. In a day and age when the religious leaders did not want to have anything to do with sick people.

Jesus because they believed they were cursed by God. Jesus bent over, touched their wounds, touch their eyes, kissed them, love them, showing the world that the kingdom of God had come to all people. Jesus would visit people the culture hated. In Matthew chapter nine, Jesus hangs out with a tax collector. Tax collectors are basically traitors, and Jesus makes that guy a disciple, and then he goes into his house and shares a meal, spends time with tax collectors and sinners. One time Jesus said, you know what? The prostitutes will enter the kingdom of heaven before you do. Talking to the religious people. Jesus hung out with the tax collectors, with the sinners, with the sick, with the demon. Possess basically anyone that society ostracized, anyone that society blackballed, anyone that society excluded or pushed away, those are the people Jesus flocked to. So can I just say this to you if you’re feeling like an outcast? You’re the type of person Jesus loves to hang with. Jesus loved the complicated, man. He loved the messes. He loved the messed up. And so it’s no coincidence that after Jesus’s resurrection, when the Church is established, the disciples who had watched Jesus’s ministry, who had listened to him speak, they launched a new movement of compassion and mercy.

You can look at the stories in the Book of Acts, and I encourage you to read them, but I’ve shared this so many times because these are my favorite. There’s a book called The Rise of Christianity in the Early Church, and they share stories of the early Church and how extraordinary they were. Let me just share one story. When plagues would ravage villages and towns, like sickness would sweep through a community, most people would leave to keep safe. But history tells us Christians would stay in these plague infested cities in order to take care of people who could not physically or financially leave town. They would stay there wrap their wounds, pray for them. There are stories of them singing hymns to them, encourage them and nurse their wounds. And in many cases, the Christians would die alongside the people they were caring for. This is Jesus. They were showing the world that compassion was actually worth dying for. See, these people, I think the apostles, the early church, they got it. They saw Jesus live. They saw Jesus live with radical compassion, and they followed in the footsteps of their Lord. See, this leads me to a thought about what we’re doing today in our church as a whole.

I’ve often wondered, where do we fit in to Jesus’s amazing legacy of compassion? I believe we should, through our personal beliefs and through our convictions and our compassionate behavior and our corporate behavior, we should show the world that no matter who you are, you are precious in God’s sight. That red and yellow, black and white. Everyone is precious in God’s sight. That the old and the young, that men and women. That the single and the married. That the richest person and the poorest person. That black and and white. That the fatherless and the homeless and the sinful and the broken and the ostracized and the LGBTQ plus and the politically radicalized and the people who we consider conspiracatorial, they are valuable to God. We should show the world through our corporate behavior and through our love that everybody matters to God, even if God doesn’t matter to them. And while you and I may be criticized for what we believe, and the truth of scripture may be radically opposed to the choices of man, we can still be famous for our compassion and famous for our love and famous for the mercy we show.

We can still be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ. We should still give words of comfort. We should still have a life of impact. We can follow the example of our God, the pattern laid out for us by our Savior. We have a chance to live it out. And I know so many of you in this congregation. I’m so proud of this church because there are so many of you who every single week volunteer somewhere. Give your time, serve. I know there are times when sometimes you go away for weeks on end serving people. I can name names, but honestly, I’d go all day long. But here’s the encouraging thing to me. Today is special because we come together corporately to support a population of people who I know Jesus would love to hang out with. I mean, Jesus would love Jesus would love to be with the kids that we’re supporting today, the kids who have been taken from their home because of abuse and neglect. These are the modern day orphans. And this is what the Bible tells us about orphans. Religion that God our father accepts as pure and faultless is this. Religion, you want to be religious? Here’s what’s acceptable to God. Look after orphans and widows in their distress. That’s good religion. That’s right religion. Well, I’m not very religious. Well, obviously, I don’t know. We can do this. We can do this. We can be the hands and feet of Jesus. And today is an illustration of that. Today we’re partnering with an organization that I mentioned before called Four Kids of South Florida. Four Kids exist to bring hope, homes and healings to kids and families in crisis around South Florida. In partnership with local churches, businesses, and government agencies, four Kids is committed to redefining foster care in our communities. And they say, one child at a time. I’m so grateful that we get a chance to do this. The way this whole thing started was six years ago we were sitting at a staff meeting, and we thought, our church is not doing enough to care for people who are in distress. We’re not. What are some great organizations? And someone at the table was like, well, someone in our church has a foster from Four Kids. And I said, okay, great. Do we know anything about them?

I was like, let’s look at their website. Literally, in the staff meeting, we pulled up their website. We said, this is good. This is awesome. I called one of the guys and I said, hey, a guy named Tom Lasadic who has become a friend, I said, hey, Tom, we would like to do a walk for you and just basically raise your money. I was like, you don’t have to do anything. You don’t even have to come. I don’t need anything from you. They’re like, well, maybe I can give you flyers. So I was like, all right, we’ll take your flyers. But we came that first time many of you were here. We raised $10,000. Our first walk. We were so excited about it. Yeah, it was awesome. We gave him a check. We handed him a check for $10,000, and we were like, here we did it. And all of a sudden, Tom and I and I got a chance to sit at some of the meetings in Four Kids and just listen to the tremendous work they do. And I’ve just been absolutely blown away by the work of Four Kids. I am so thankful that we get a chance to support them.

That’s the way it feels to me. We have been given the opportunity to raise them money, to raise money for them. That’s the way it feels. Today I’m excited that Scott is here. I saw you over there, Scott. Scott is one of the directors at Four Kids and super grateful that he’s here. So Scott messaged me this week, and he told me this. He said, These last three months average, an average of 40 children from birth to five years old came into care and no homes were waiting for them. In all my years, we’ve never seen this, not even close. It’s been stunning, to say the least. This is a map they use to kind of help us understand the problem. Here’s what here’s what this is. This is solvable. You know, we can’t solve the homelessness epidemic in our country. It’s very, very, very challenging. This is solvable. There are in Broward County my laser doesn’t work. I forgot. In Broward County last year, 666 children were taken from their home. That that look, we could figure that out. There are, like, thousands of churches. I once heard it said if every church just took one kid, this problem would go away.

This is a solvable problem. We can do something to solve it. And I know not everyone here can foster, but everyone here can do something, can participate in it. And so I want to give you three ways that you can do it. First off, three ways you can engage. First is you can give this event it’s $25 per person. That’s $5. If everyone was participating in it, we’d raise something like $14,000. And I know, you know, you can some people are giving more. My my son and daughter raised, like, with Mila raised, like, I don’t know, $700 or something crazy like that. If you want, you can you know, if you want to raise money, you can write a check out to Broward Church, put four kids in the memo, and we’ll give it to them. That’s it. The goal for you, though, is that everyone just participate. You can give you can give if you give $25, we’ll give you a T shirt. How about that? The T shirt’s probably worth $5, but whatever. The second thing you can do is is you can foster. In a moment, I’m going to have Todd and Diana, who are members here, share a little bit about their foster care journey.

And the third thing and we’re going to do this as a congregation at the end is you can pray for this for this amazing organization. So I want to invite Todd and Diana up here. They were married about five years ago, and a few years into their marriage, they applied to four kids to become foster parents. And in February 2020, they became they welcomed a teen girl into their home. And since then, they just told me they have fostered nine children. Today, they welcome two year old Jabari in their home. And for just a few moments, I want Todd to share about his journey. Get the microphone. Can we grab Mike one for them? Let me grab with you.

Testing. Testing. Could you guys hear me okay? Good morning, everybody. We appreciate the opportunity to share about our decision to foster. Initially, Diana was inspired by one of these four kids presentations we had at our church, but it was just a concept tour at the time. It wasn’t until she saw Pat Parnell with two little foster boys that the idea really went from being a concept to being like, an actual solid goal. When I was a young person, I imagined myself someday running an orphanage. Now that I’m an adult, I see that that’s not really probably within my skill set. But I still wanted to help kids. And when I started studying the Bible, there’s tons of scripture about widows and orphan. So when Diana asked me if I wanted to foster, it was like a natural yes. Sorry. So I’m very grateful to have Diana here with me because she has much more skill in parenting than I do.

You don’t really need to have a therapeutic background or have any skill with trauma or anything like that to foster, really, at the end of the day, the kid needs a safe place to stay. They need three square meals, a nice warm bed at night. They need just basic life skills. Sometimes they didn’t learn those in their home. So things like brushing their teeth, not using their shirt as a napkin, but actually using a napkin. Galatians 522 23 says, but the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Against such things, there is no law. So it could very well be that the child you get didn’t receive many of those things, if any at all. If you, as a Christian have any of those things, that even a small measure, you’re far more qualified to foster a child than the group homes that they could potentially go to if there’s no home available for them. For us, Fostering has had some interesting benefits. It’s created more teamwork between Diane and I, for sure. It’s been fun to watch our bio kids, David and Mia, interact with the little people. It’s fun to watch Jabari when Mia comes home and David come home, how excited he is to see them.

It’s been fun for me just working. We’ve worked with middle school to toddlers and babies. It’s been really fun for me working with the toddlers and babies. At one time, we had two toddlers and one baby, and we did that for like, five months, and that’s given me a new appreciation for having free time and how to use it wisely. Diana shared that through Fostering, she has found a special connection to God and a Godly purpose. So when we started Fostering, Diana was excited about it. I was kind of scared. Thankfully, Four Kids provides a lot of useful resources to help you through the process. Before a child is even placed, you receive like 30 to 40 hours of training, which was very useful and well done by four kids. You’re given a four Kids person, a specialist that guides you through every step of the way. You have a representative from Child Net and the child’s guardianal item that check in with you regularly, and they can answer your questions, depending on your child’s needs. They have services like tutoring. All their medical cares are cared for therapy, a lot of services that they could potentially need.

In addition to that, our community group was very supportive, too. Several people have put in the paperwork and babysitted for us. They threw us a baby shower when we moved to babies and gave us a lot of useful stuff. We have people that come by occasionally and just drop off things like food, cookies thank you, Debbie, for that diapers and other necessities. So we didn’t really get into fostering for the purpose of adoption. We just wanted to foster. But as it turned out, two of the children we’ve fostered have come up for adoption recently, and we’ve put in the paperwork to try to make that happen. So it’s in God’s hands. We don’t know what’s going to happen with that, but it’s in God’s hands. So thank you, everybody, and I hope you guys have a great walk today.

Today might seem like just a walk, but it’s not. It’s really an opportunity to remind ourselves that the church exists not for itself. We have a chance today not only to walk for kids, but begin, I think, to show the world in our smallest ways that the vulnerable are valuable to God. And I just want to encourage you again, you can give to this amazing organization. You can foster if you want to foster. We have pamphlets out there. You can grab it, you can call it. It’s a process. They’ll walk you through every single step, and the last thing you can do is pray. In fact, we’re going to take a moment here. We typically, at the end of service, have a moment to pray for communion, but you’re going to do communion in your community groups today. What I want to do is just take three minutes for us to pray about the children in foster care in our culture in Broward County. Just take a moment and just pray for them. Pray for their parents, pray for those little lives that they will be placed in good homes. Pray for the work of four kids.

Just take a moment to ask God to do some amazing things and to solve this problem, this solvable problem in our county. Let’s take three minutes and just pray together.

Father, we ask you that you would do tremendous work in the lives of the children who are removed from their homes. God, I could only imagine what that must be like, having I have three little ones in my home, and just to think about them being placed in a system that can’t care for them like a mom or dad, it’s hard for me to even emotionally grapple with all that. Lord, I ask you, dad, that you would inspire in the lives of Christians in this community to take on the burden of having children in their home. God, I know it’s probably really rough and really challenging and requires loads of sacrifice, but I also know that it’s what you would do, Lord. So I pray that that’s the case, that you compel those who are sitting here to take the next step and those of us or those who are maybe not in the position to do it. God, I pray that we can be a great support, whether through prayer or through encouragement or through partnership with those people. God, I want to say, Lord, the issue isn’t these children. The issue is how much capacity of love we have.

And I pray that you will grow the love of your church, your universal church, God, that you will grow the love that we have so that we won’t be just focused on our own comforts or focused on Christianity being something that just makes our lives better, but will be focused on our faith and our religion being something that gives you honor because it elevates the status of every person. We just want to say thank you, Lord. Thank you for what you do. I pray for four kids. I pray that this year you can give them tremendous victories, help them to find better trained staff or to have whatever they need better money raised so that they can do the work that you call them to do. Lord, thank you for our partnership with them. We just want to say thank you, Lord. We love you. In Jesus name, amen.