Move When God Makes It Clear

That song could have gone for like an hour.

I'd have been fine.

That's good.

Man, I'm so glad you guys are here today.

If you just walked in the room, welcome to his hands.

Today today's a really important day.

I'm really excited about today.

You probably got an email.

Sometimes I email all of you.

I hope that's okay.

I just get excited and I have to do something with it.

So I send you an email every once in a while.

If you ever get tired of that, just tell me.

Some of you do, but it's okay.

I'm super excited about today.

We technically wrapped up this series that we've been in for the past two months, last week.

It really is wrapped up for the most part.

We're in this series called Move, and the idea behind it is really simple.

We don't want to live a life that bores us.

We don't want a life that's just full of motion without meaning.

And that is so much of what life offers us, right?

Hey, here's a lot to do.

And by the way, you don't want to do any of it.

None of it is really worth doing.

In fact, I was talking to my amazing wife, Megan, this week.

She was just stressed.

I could tell she was stressed.

She was having a long day.

We have three children now.

And to those of you that have more children than parents, well done.

It is a challenge.

I underestimated it.

I'll just say that.

And I just asked her what's wrong.

And you know, we've been in this series and she stopped and looked at me.

She said, I just feel like my life is all motion right now.

I'm sure a lot of you mothers understand that.

I'm just doing all these things, I'm keeping everything going.

And sometimes, as much as I love my family, none of it feels super fulfilling.

That's not the life that God wants for us to have.

Obviously, there are seasons and there are things we've got to do like that.

There is motion to life, but God wants your life to be a life of movement.

He wants you to know where you're supposed to go in life.

He wants you to be able to do something that adds value and purpose and passion to your life.

We are supposed to love the life that we live.

And so we want to live a life of movement where we're going somewhere with God, where we're part of the movement of Jesus in this world.

The people who live the best adventures are the people who are easily moved by God, the people who say yes to God, just like that song we just sang.

I will follow you.

You lead me and I'll follow.

Holy Spirit, lead me and I will follow wherever, wherever you tell me to go.

Those are the people that live the best adventures.

And I believe that individually we're meant to live that way.

I believe that as a church, we're meant to live that way.

And so this whole series has been really wrapped up.

Last week was about the Holy Spirit.

If you weren't here, listen to the podcast, download our free mobile app, check it out, you can get caught up.

Today is not so much a part of the series, but but actually like a postscript.

You ever have a postscript, someone emails you and they have all this information, and then at the very end they say PS, which really is their way of saying, oh, by the way, just in case you forget everything else that I told you, remember this.

I've had a lot of postscript moments in my life.

I remember the first time I ever spoke in here, I was 23 years old.

I was super nervous.

Um I was 10 years ago almost, and and I came here to work with the youth and the kids, and so I did that every single week and I loved it.

And then eventually I got asked to share in here one day, and so I wrote this message, and I sent it to Steve and Doug, who were my bosses at the time, and they sent it back and said, Nope, try again.

And uh and so I wrote a second message, totally different message, and their response was kind of I think it was like Friday, and they're like, This it's not as bad as the first one, so we can work with this.

And so they gave me some coaching and some tips.

I mean, I I tweaked it and I practiced and I practiced and I practiced, and I was so nervous.

And I was sitting somewhere in the first row, second row, and I was about to go on, and Doug was sitting next to me, Doug Bennel.

I love Doug.

And right before I go up, I'm talking 30 seconds before I come up here to share, he goes, Oh, hey, one more thing.

Don't screw up.

And I'm like, Thank you, Doug.

And so I walked up, and actually it was it was perfect.

He could tell I was nervous, and he could tell I just needed to laugh.

He could tell I needed to let loose.

And and he was also reminding me, hey, you've you put a lot of work into this.

This has been a tough week, so don't leave anything on the table, so to speak.

Don't fall short at the end, just deliver on all the work you've put in.

That was a very important postscript for me that day.

And so today is really a postscript of the move series.

And here's here's what it is.

This is the PS.

If this whole thing was an email or a letter and you're here today at the PS, here's what it is.

When it comes to moving with God, when God makes it clear, when God makes it absolutely clear that you're supposed to do something or you're supposed to move in a certain way, do it.

All this stuff we've been talking about, sometimes we find ourselves in moments where we're trying to figure out, God, is this you telling me to move, or is this my idea?

Is this what I want to do?

Is this what you want to do?

I'm unclear about what to do, but there will be moments in life where God makes it abundantly clear that you're supposed to do something.

And if you're in a situation right now where you're stuck between clarity and confusion, just ask God for clarity.

Pray about that.

One of my favorite Psalms, Psalm 5, has this verse in it.

Verse 8, lead me in the right path, O Lord, or my enemies will conquer me.

We could say enemies, we could say circumstances, we could say challenges, situations.

And then he says this make your way plain for me to follow.

Make your way plain for me to follow.

In other words, God make it clear what I'm supposed to do.

There will be moments in life where God makes it clear.

He tells you, you need to make this move.

And when he does that, move.

Just move.

That's the that's the PS.

Six months ago, God made it very clear to me that as a church, we were supposed to make a certain move.

It's been going on for the last six months.

He made it abundantly clear that we were supposed to get involved with a movement really in this country, in this community, that we were supposed to play a big part in it.

And the timing of God communicating this to me could not have been better because I'd spent the last two years having this search for our identity as a church.

I don't know if you've ever had these moments in life where you're kind of going, Who am I?

Like, who am I really?

Why, why, we it's like the classic questions, who am I, why am I here, what am I supposed to do?

Two years ago, I was asking those questions a lot.

In fact, it's mainly Nathan Fowler's fault.

Nathan's my my good friend.

And Nathan has this way of asking questions that get under my skin.

And like, it's at the end of the day, it's always as I'm leaving work.

And Nathan just goes, Hey, why what's our vision?

What's the all these really deep questions?

Then he leaves, and I'm like, dang it, Nathan, because now I'm going the whole rest of the day, and I can't stop thinking.

And one day, as he was leaving, Nathan just asked this question.

I don't remember what the question was.

And I was supposed to be leaving.

I ended up staying like two hours late and just writing on a whiteboard for hours because Nathan had asked this annoying question that I could not get out of my mind.

And that's kind of what started the whole love people to Jesus and get, grow, give love.

All that came from conversations that we had after that and more questions that we continue to ask.

Because we were in this search, eight years into our church's history, we were in this search for what is our identity?

Who are we supposed to be?

Why are we here, God?

Because there's not, it's not like there's a shortage of churches in Georgia.

There are in the world, but I don't, Georgia, I think, is okay.

So what why us?

Why are we here?

Why do we exist?

And and part of that search for me was asking God, why are we called his hands?

Because it's kind of a weird name for a church.

When I first got hired here, I didn't tell them that because I, you know, I wanted to get the job.

It was 10 years ago.

But I remember hearing it's called His Hands Church, and I was like, His hands?

His hands church.

I've never heard of a church called that before.

And so I was asking God, why are we called His Hands?

Because I often have to tell people our email address when I'm talking on the phone, and they always say, What?

And I have to spell it out for them.

I'll say J McTear at HisHandschurch.com, and they'll be like, excuse me, his hands, H-I-S-H-A-N-D-S.

That's his hands church, and we go through this whole spiel.

I'm like, why is that our name?

Because I could actually think of other names that would have been an easier fit and maybe even made more sense at the time.

Like, we could be called Tree of Life Church.

If you walk up and down the hallways, you'll see these beautiful paintings of the tree of life.

This was a teaching that Steve, who started this church with his wife Susan, a teaching he gave years ago that became foundational for our church, that we're gonna be a tree of life church.

That just means we're not gonna focus on all the man-made stuff, the rules and the regulations, the stuff that becomes red tape to God.

We're gonna live at the tree of life.

It's from the first story in the Bible, the story of Genesis.

The tree of life is where God wanted people to live.

Freedom, love, relationship, those kinds of things.

And so the tree of life became a symbol of our church.

And Marlon Yoder, this great artist, got inspired by that, started painting these paintings of this tree of life.

And I'm thinking, if we were Tree of Life Church, there's the logo.

It's already done.

We can rebrand ourselves or whatever, and it makes sense because this is about life and love.

And as I'm searching and as I'm praying, God just makes it clear that no, no, I named this church.

This is not some marketing tactic.

I named this church, and I named it his hands, and I'm like, why?

Because no offense, God, I don't like the name.

But I do now a lot, actually.

Because God started to remind me of all these moments in Scripture where the hands of God play a crucial role.

And so you look at Jesus and his ministry.

It's amazing how often, in these pivotal moments in the story of Jesus, his hands are hands-on.

So there's this leper one day that needs to be healed.

And leprosy was an unhealable disease, there was no cure for it, and Jesus heals the leper.

But he he heals the leper by reaching out and touching the leper.

And that was a big deal.

Because in that world, if you touched a leper, you were now unclean.

They didn't want leprosy to spread, it was an epidemic, and you were you were then supposed to leave the whole town, leave the whole city because you were spiritually and physically unclean.

Jesus broke the law.

Broke the law to reach out and heal this man by touching him.

Here's the crazy thing: he didn't have to do that.

Jesus healed plenty of people just by saying it, just by saying, Hey, you're healed.

In fact, there was one person that was miles and miles away.

And this friend of his came to Jesus and said, I need you to heal my friend.

And Jesus said, Hey, tell him he's healed.

He's it's done.

Long distance healing.

Jesus did that.

So he didn't need to touch this man, but he did.

Because this man hadn't been touched by another human being for years.

It was illegal to do so.

And Jesus, I think, knew that just as much as this man needed the leprosy to go away, he needed to be reminded that he was a human being.

And so Jesus touched him.

There's his hands.

When Peter walked on water for a very brief period of time, Jesus was there.

And Peter started to sink and he freaked out and he's afraid that he's going to drown.

And what does Jesus do?

Jesus walks over to Peter on the water and he reaches out his hand and he pulls Peter back up onto the water.

And they walk back to the boat.

That's an amazing moment.

And I wonder what it must have looked like from Peter's perspective to be to be drowning and to look up and see the hand of Jesus above him.

And feel the hand of Jesus grab his own hand and pull him out of the water.

You think about the cross.

If there's a pivotal moment in our history, that's it.

That and the resurrection.

I mean, they're they're right up there.

And here on the cross, we have the hands of Jesus pierced.

Jesus allowed his hands to be nailed to a cross.

They did not nail his hands to a cross.

He let that happen.

Make no mistake.

He allowed the hands of God, the same hands that had all the power in the world to heal and make things happen, all that power, he allowed those hands to be pierced for us.

See, the reality is this.

If you look at the story of the Bible, it's the story of a God who is hands-on.

He is a hands-on God.

He's always the one initiating the relationship.

He's always the one coming to people saying, I have a dream for you.

And I'm trying to get you to buy into my dream for you.

It's not the other way around.

It's not God relenting, saying, Final, get involved.

It's God initiated.

The whole concept of Jesus, God coming to earth, living as one of us to save us from ourselves.

This is proof that God wants to be hands-on.

He jumped into our mess to heal us as one of us.

God is a hands-on God.

And so as I'm searching for all these answers about why we're called His hands and all this stuff, God just made it clear you can't be His hands and be hands-off.

That we can't be His hands church and not be hands-on and not be willing to jump into the mess of the world we live in for the purpose of healing it and helping it and restoring it.

That's why we're called His Hands.

And so for the last three years, we as a church have been slowly, and sometimes not so slowly, getting more hands-on in our community.

It started by us sponsoring three local ministries: Papa's Pantry, Cherokee Family Violence Center, and the Hope Center.

Three ministries doing amazing work.

And we couldn't do what they do as well as they do it, so we just wanted to come alongside them and help them.

And so over the last three years, we've given over a quarter of a million dollars to those three ministries.

Isn't that awesome?

You know what I love about that?

We need a new roof on our building.

And it costs right at a quarter of a million dollars.

I love that.

Because while there is, yes, a tiny part of me, and some days not as tiny, that goes, hey, we could have kind of used that.

It's the same way it is with all of us when it comes to generosity, right?

There's always a need we have.

But we need to be reminded that our needs are not the only needs.

And so I love the fact that that's what we've been able to give to those so far, but it didn't stop there.

It didn't stop there.

We actually had this team for a while called the Love Squad.

And uh Juan Reyes, a good friend of mine, headed this team up and we started doing some renovation projects for needy families in the community.

Really cool stuff.

We've done a few of those over the last few years where we've come in and just made their lives better at no cost to them.

We'd find out about hard situations through the school system and families that needed a lot of help.

So we'd say, hey, let's come in and let's improve your life, your living conditions, let's help you out.

And the Love Squad was this awesome way for us to be hands-on in the community, but then we started partnering with this organization called One Need that we came in contact with.

And honestly, One Need did what we were trying to do better than we could do it.

And so we started to support OneNeed and get personally involved with OneNeed.

And now we have a team of people here at our church, and it's everything from you know HVAC to car repair, these great people that when we find out about needs in our community, people in our church, people in the area that have needs that come to us, we we help them out financially, but we also send amazing people to them to make their life better, to be hands-on.

We've had incredible stories, incredible stories of people who have been blown away that their church or a church in the community would care enough to get hands-on in their life.

Not just to say, hey, we're praying for you, to actually get hands-on.

We have these amazing events we do called Canvas that started a couple years ago when people in our church have a need and there's maybe a big financial part of it.

You know, they're sick, they're gonna have hospital bills, stuff like that.

We throw in these big fundraisers, and we did one three months ago, raised$12,000 for a woman with cancer whose husband had passed away from cancer six months before.

You know, awesome things like that.

And I'll be honest with you, it's super inconvenient to have to do all this stuff.

But our vision is to love people to Jesus, and here's what love is you inconvenience yourself to make someone else's life better.

That's love.

And that's that's why we exist.

And so, suffice it to say, his hands will remain our name because we are meant to be hands-on.

We're meant to be hands-on, we're meant to take care of people.

And just as a side note, that's how we grow as a church.

That's how we're gonna grow, by the way.

There's a lot of different ways to grow as a church.

We can market, we could have like a cool image, and we could get that out there, and there's nothing wrong with doing it that way.

But but God's made it clear that that's not gonna be how we grow.

Here's how we grow as a church.

This is like the secret.

We take care of people, we take care of the people we have, and God will look at us and say, hey, they're ready for more.

They're taking care of who they have, and they're ready for more.

I'm not gonna pray and ask God to send us more people if we're not taking care of the people we have.

And I love that about our church.

I'm so proud of our church.

I'm so proud of all of you about that.

In fact, this is another thing.

A couple weeks ago, we started a special needs class in our nursery.

And you know why we started it?

Because there was one child, one child in this church that could not have an experience in the nursery unless we had a special needs class.

And this one couple that's been part of our church for a long time that was not going to have the ability to just come to church and rest and grow and worship, they weren't gonna be able to do that unless we had a special needs class for the child.

One child.

And so Ashley, who leads our nursery, does an amazing job.

She took it upon herself to recruit like seven or eight volunteers to dedicate an entire room during our 11 o'clock service for this, put a whole team together, do all this work, rewrite our curriculum so it works for a special needs class for one child.

Because that child belongs to us.

And that's that's awesome.

So we're a hands-on church.

If you're new this morning, please understand that we're a hands-on church and we love you.

And if you have a need, let us know, and we'll do everything we can.

We'll do everything we can.

Six months ago, like I said, God made it clear to me that there was another hands-on movement that we needed to become part of.

And it honestly is a story that I get to tell you guys today that I've been wanting to tell for months, because in one day, God made it, A, really clear to me that we got to get involved in this.

Couldn't have been clearer, and B, my faith grew more in 24 hours that day than it had ever grown in a day before.

Here's what happened.

Found out that we had a family here going through a major crisis.

Situation where the the father had done some things that required him being moved out of that home and put in jail.

And they had six kids.

And he was the sole income, and because of some other situations, he was the one that really did a lot of the work around the house, but he did need to be taken out of that home, absolutely.

And so this family was in a crisis.

This mom now has six children, she has to deal with all these legal issues now.

All this stuff's going on.

It's crazy, it's hard.

So hard that any of us would would feel like we would collapse under the pressure.

Any of us, the strongest of us.

One of her friends came to the church one day and just said, Hey, I just want to make sure you guys really understand the situation.

This is what's happening.

And we'd only heard a few things.

And I was actually leaving town that day to go to North Carolina with my son Liam.

We take a little daddy trip every year.

Uh, we go to this Duke kickoff event.

I'm a big Duke basketball fan.

If you don't like Duke, so what?

Forgive me.

Um if you're a North Carolina fan, my heart breaks for you.

But not really.

So um it's part of the rivalry.

So we're going to this Duke thing, and I'm so excited, and we we're excited about it.

And this conversation happened right as we were about to leave.

And so obviously, it's on my mind, it's on my brain, and and I'm praying as we're going up there.

I'm going, God, are we supposed to get involved with this?

Are we supposed to be hands-on in this situation with this family from our church?

And God, I this was like God talking to me and punching me at the same time.

He does that.

And he said, What do you what do you mean?

Are you supposed to get involved?

You already are involved.

You have told these six children every single Sunday for the last seven years that God is real, that God loves them, that God is there for them, that if they're in trouble, that God will help them.

You have made them promises, and now when you as a church have an opportunity to back those promises up, you're asking me if you're supposed to be involved.

You're already involved.

You have to do something.

And so I'm sitting there going, okay, great.

I have no idea what to do.

This is a situation so far beyond anything I've ever envisioned being a part of.

And I'm kind of freaking out.

I know we've got to do something, but I don't even know what to do.

And so I talked to Megan, and Megan all of a sudden goes, Oh, oh, there's a guy you need to talk to.

He came up to the Connect Desk two weeks ago, just introduced himself to me, said his name was Bill Hancock.

She remembered his name, and she remembered this organization that he had started.

It's an organization called Faith Bridge.

Okay, remember that name, Faith Bridge.

In fact, we'll put up their logo and you're gonna remember this, okay?

This is important.

He started this organization called Faith Bridge, and so I looked at the website and I was like, wow, this is a legit thing.

Yeah, sometimes people tell you they they've started something, and anyone can start something.

But then you actually find out, oh no, this thing is legitimate.

This is this is real, this is a this is the real deal.

And Faith Bridge is a faith-based but state-licensed foster care agency that Bill started years ago, that has grown to be something that is not just all over Georgia, but it's in multiple states, and and it's even becoming a national thing.

Really cool.

And Bill is part of our family.

I just never met Bill before.

And so Megan's like, you need to talk to this guy, Bill Hancock.

And so I said, Okay, he he probably knows what to do in a situation like this.

And so I call Bill on the on the road.

I can't even remember if I was going to North Carolina or coming back.

That whole weekend was like a blur.

I think it was when I was going up there.

I I it is that.

Because I remember Bill saying, Hey, I know exactly what to do.

He said, I've been in this situation before.

You need to understand.

That DFAC is going to get involved in the situation, and if DFAX gets involved, they're going to make sure those kids are safe, but there's no telling where those kids are going to end up.

There's six kids.

There's not a foster family with six open beds in Cherokee County.

And so what's going to happen is one kid's going to go to this home, one kid's going to go to this home, one kid might be two hours away, one kid might be in Savannah.

They'll all have beds and they'll all be in safe environments.

But on top of the trauma they're already dealing with, with their father being out of the house and this traumatic thing that happened, now they're going to have to deal with the trauma of being pulled from their schools, of being pulled away from their siblings, of being taken out of their church and their community.

All the support structure they have, which is what they need right now, will vanish.

So we have to get involved.

We have to do something.

And Bill said, I want to go meet this mom on Sunday after church.

I wasn't even back in town yet, so he took Megan and a few other people.

They went there, they assessed the situation.

And he'll never forget.

Bill told me, here's what I need you to do.

I need you to recruit three families who will become foster families in a very short period of time, get trained, get licensed to become foster families, to take two kids apiece so we can keep these kids together.

Then I want you to find six families who will get trained to become foster families to become what they call respite families, which is a situation where the kids don't live with that family, but one night a week or so they'll take those kids, give the foster family a break, and watch those kids for the foster family.

Then I need you to recruit all these other people to be support families.

And these people aren't gonna actually have the kids live with them, but they're gonna support the foster families and the respite families by doing everything from groceries to taking the kids to school and back so that it's manageable for the foster families.

I need you to recruit these people and I need you to do it fast because DFACS is gonna get involved.

We have to stay ahead of that.

And as someone that works at a church, I have asked people for things.

That's just part of it.

I've asked people to volunteer, I ask you to give.

I don't mind that because I believe in what's happening here.

But I've never called someone and said, hey, do you need more children?

Like, how'd you feel about having, I don't know, two more kids in like three days?

You want to do that?

So here's what happened.

Uh myself, Megan, and Sheila Keith, who leads all of our kids' team.

Sheila's awesome.

If you don't know Sheila, she's amazing.

Yes, she is, Sheila.

So we got together Monday morning, which is my day off, because again, love's all about inconvenience.

Uh and we got together to pray.

We had a very specific prayer.

We needed God to give us a list of people to call.

People I was supposed to call.

And we needed to have this be people that would say yes.

And so we we got together, we prayed, and we prayed, God, you need to give us a list of names, and we prayed something that's very, very uh churchy language, but it's right from Scripture.

We said, God, go ahead of us.

Which means, God, before we make these phone calls, we need you to already sort of be working on them so they're receptive to what we're about to ask, because what we're gonna ask is pretty big.

And so God gave us a list.

And it wasn't very long, and I was really upset because I'm thinking of the odds, and I'm going, well, I'm gonna need to call like 300 people to get people to say yes.

But I have this very specific list.

So I leave and I started making the phone calls in the car that day.

I started by calling uh Monique Whitehead, who did not answer.

And then I called her husband Chris.

I called the the Whiteheads because I knew that they had been going through a foster process for a while.

I think they had stopped short of being finished with it, but there was a season where they were really considering that.

I knew that because we're friends with them.

And so I got a hold of Chris and I said, Hey man, here's the situation.

I went through the whole spiel.

We got these kids, we gotta get them in homes, which means you gotta get trained, all this kind of stuff.

And he said, Okay, well, let me talk to Monique about it.

And they called me back later and said, Well, we'll be there.

We're gonna have a meeting to go over all the details.

They said, We'll be there.

Here's what I didn't know.

This is crazy.

The reason Monique did not pick up the phone when I called is because in that moment she was in a room with the door shut, she was praying.

She was praying about them getting back involved with foster care, and specifically, specifically, she told God, you're gonna have to tell Chris before I do if we're supposed to do this.

And so she comes out of that room and goes to talk to Chris, and he's like, honey, we need to talk.

Um, Justin called me, we need to become foster parents or something, and she's going, What in the world?

Like, this is awesome.

Some of y'all came in today not knowing if God's real, you're gonna know when you leave.

Because that's just the start of it.

I called this other family, family that I didn't even know very well.

They're on our welcome team, they're amazing people.

I started to explain the situation, and this guy cuts me off.

That's gonna be a theme in these conversations.

Um, cuts me off.

He says, Hold on, do they happen to go to this certain elementary school?

And I knew what elementary school they were at.

I said, Yeah, how'd you know that?

He said, Well, my wife works at that elementary school.

He said, We were just talking about this yesterday.

And we have two bedrooms, and we had actually been thinking about being foster parents years ago, just had never gone through with the process, but we were specifically saying, Man, if these kids need a place to be, let's let's figure that out, let's take them in.

And then I call these people that I barely know.

Okay, it gets better.

So I called a couple other people, a couple other people, uh, the cranes, love the the cranes, and I called them, not the birds, these are people whose last name is crane.

I called the cranes, and and and they they said, Hey, we've never told you this, but recently we've really been talking about being foster parents.

And so we're gonna be at this meeting because this seems like it's in line with what we're gonna do.

I called some other friends of mine, the Grease Specs, and all these people said they'd come.

And then it got really crazy.

I call my friend Dusty.

I love Dusty because he's a big Duke fan like me, and that's how we bonded, that's how we became friends.

I called Dusty, and this is this is this is the moment where I'm just like, shut up.

This is where God starts showing off, okay?

So I called Dusty, I'm going through my spiel, and by this time I'm really good at the spiel.

Like I've gone through this, I'm like, here's the deal.

It's a lot of information really fast.

And he cuts me off again.

I'm getting cut off left and right.

He goes, Justin, I gotta stop you.

And I know Dusty pretty well.

We just mainly talk about Duke, so we haven't really ventured beyond that into personal things.

So I have no idea what he's about to tell me.

He said, I have to stop, I have to read you a text that my wife just sent me 30 minutes ago.

Sent him at work.

He said, Because we've actually been talking about becoming foster parents, which I had no idea.

And he reads me this text, and his wife had text him 30 minutes ago from home.

She was on the computer looking up some stuff.

She said, Dusty, when you get some time, will you look up an organization called Faith Bridge?

I think we need to get involved with this.

Okay?

Gets better.

A couple days later, we get an email.

I get a lot of emails from people that need me to sign stuff sometimes.

By the way, if your child is gonna go to a private school, they want me to fill out a document saying how great of a kid they are, and I don't know your kid, so I just put like they're really specific questions about their leadership potential at age five and stuff like that.

And so I'm just like, I mean, sure, they're awesome, they're great.

I don't know why that happens.

I get I get those emails a lot, and I'm like, yeah, okay, so I got an email like that.

Hey, hey, we need Justin to sign something.

We need a uh, it's like a pastor reference, which is weird for me to think about.

Um, that my reference would mean, you know, whatever.

And so I'm like, okay, it's one of those situations.

And so I call the call the couple, I recognize their name.

Their son had been in our youth group a couple years before.

This is real, this really happened.

It was this week, and I've never had one of these before.

They say, hey, we're actually, my wife and I are uh beginning a process to be trained as foster parents through an organization called Faith Bridge.

And we need, we need our pastor to be a reference for us so that we can become Faith Bridge foster parents.

And this is like a day before this meeting is gonna happen.

And I'm going, wow, I actually just so happen, now that you mention it, the the CEO and the founder of Faith Bridge is gonna be here at the church in about 16 hours.

Uh, we're looking for our families.

They came.

Okay?

There were other families, I mean, other situations like it was crazy.

In fact, the worst was even a week later, I'm talking to Ken Kington, who's one of our guest speakers here from time to time, and I tell him the story, and he goes, That's amazing.

My wife and I are just going through the Faith Bridge training to become foster parents.

And I'm just like, whatever, just stop.

At this point, I'm going, God, I get it.

I get it.

And so we have this training, and we're trying to go at lightning speed to get everyone trained and certified so that we can get involved with this family before they're removed from the home.

And that night, for the first time, I got to see Bill Hancock, who's part of our family at his hands.

He'd been here for about a year before we ever connected.

I got to hear him share why he started Faith Bridge and what this this is.

And man, did it like stir something inside of me.

God made it so clear in that moment.

He'd already made it clear, like, hey, you kind of need to be involved in this in case you haven't got the hint.

Something y'all need to do.

And so I've actually asked Bill to come up and spent about 10 minutes sharing with all of us his story, what Faith Bridge is, how it works, and then we're gonna wrap up by talking about how we can be involved in this.

Because uh, again, when God makes it clear, move.

And I think he's made it pretty clear that this is something we're supposed to be involved in.

So, Bill, would you mind coming up?

Where there he is.

Come on up, Bill.

Guys, put your hands together for Bill Hancock.

Thank you, Justin.

What a privilege to speak to my church family this morning.

Uh, thank you for this opportunity.

In 1980, I found myself in my mother-in-law's apartment on the east side of Birmingham, Alabama.

I was 21 years old.

I didn't grow up in church.

I, in fact, my family was quite dysfunctional.

By the time I was 11 years old, my mother had been married three times.

My second stepfather, by the time I was 15, he and I began to clash quite frequently.

And the level of intensity began to increase as I began to grow as a male adolescent.

And when I was 15 years old, my father, my stepfather finally said, You can't live here anymore.

You have to leave.

That started a journey for the next five years, six years, that led me from living in different people's homes, from couches to basements, sometimes in cars.

And in 1980, I found myself in my mother-in-law's apartment, depressed, discouraged, defeated.

My wife and my mother-in-law had gone out shopping that night.

I wasn't much for watching TV because living a very transient life through my adolescence.

When I finally got my own apartment, I couldn't afford one.

When I'm sitting there that night watching my mother-in-law's TV, and I'm going through the channels, just sitting on a couch, and this man comes on TV.

And for the first time in my life, I heard the story of a man named Jesus.

I'd never read a Bible.

I'd never been to a church.

And I listened.

I don't really remember anything that was said, but I remember the more he talked, the more I began to feel peace.

At the end of his presentation, he looked right into the TV camera and he said, in just a moment, we're going to pray.

And in this stadium, in a few moments, people in the stadium are going to begin to just come out of their seats.

They're going to walk down to this platform and we're going to pray together.

And they're going to respond to an invitation to begin to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

And when they by faith believe that God died for them and rose from the dead, and if they simply believe in him, then they can become a new creature in Christ.

That the old things are dead, and new things are going to begin to happen in their lives.

And for me, it was like, wow, you get a do-over in life.

You get a get out of jail free card or something.

And I kept listening.

And he began to pray.

And I was watching the television, and people began literally, as he said, it was just streaming out of this huge stadium.

It was like that it was as large as the Georgia Dome.

And people were just flooding out of their seats.

And I had this incredible sense of peace that settled in my soul.

In a moment he looked into the TV camera again and he said, When we begin to pray, I want you to pray with us right there where you are.

And on that sofa, for the first time in my 21 years, I prayed with a man named Billy Graham.

And after the prayer, I just I can't describe it.

It was like I just took a deep breath, and for the first time in my life, I exhaled with a full lung capacity.

And the shallow breasts that I'd been breathing all of these years somehow vanished and years later, I learned that it was the ruach of God, the breath of life, that came into me the moment I believed.

God began to move in my life that night.

Clearly.

He said two things that absolutely energized me and gave me a level of enthusiasm that I'd never experienced before in my life.

He looked into the television again and he said, if you prayed with us, here's two things I want you to do.

I want you to write and get this book, What Next?

Write to Billy Graham, Winnipeg, Manitoba.

And then the second thing, attend a Bible-believing church this Sunday.

Well, I didn't understand the difference between a church that believed the Bible and one that didn't believe the Bible.

So I just thought, okay, I get the go-to-church part.

I'm not going to be able to make that decision.

So that seems way over my head.

So I got it.

I addressed an envelope that night.

And I dropped it in the mail.

I walked home.

My wife and I went in, and that night I could barely sleep.

I woke up the next morning.

I wake up early and went to work every morning at 5:30.

And I went to work that morning and I could not wait till Sunday.

I was counting the days.

I'll never forget it was a Thursday night.

And Saturday night.

I felt like a little a little kid playing Little League the night before the opening game.

I wanted to sleep in my uniform.

I couldn't wait to get up and to go.

To church.

So I got up and I put on my best pair of blue jeans.

I put my hair in a ponytail and I put on the eh, I was 21 in 1980.

And my hair was a whole different color.

And I put on my best flannel shirt.

It's a real throwback.

I know it's one of the reasons why I love this church.

I feel so loved.

My family feels so much love here.

And it's, I had to use this word.

It's just cool.

It's comfortable.

I find great peace and rest here.

And so I get up the next morning and I'm ready to go to church for the first time.

And I walk down to this little church that's two blocks from my house, my apartment, that I have passed every day going to work for the last two years living in that apartment.

And I walked down to that church, I walked in the front door.

It was a small church, about 60 people.

There was a four-foot aisle in the center, there was a bank of pews on the left, a bank of pews on the right, there was one aisle going down the middle.

I walked straight down the middle of that church, went to the very front pew, took a seat, and was sitting there on the very front row.

I didn't know any better.

So I just went down there and just took a seat.

And I'm the the pastor was already up on this whole platform.

The church was, it was a 1980s, it was just red carpet everywhere, these big chairs up on there.

And the pastor was sitting up on this big throne, and and I'm sitting there, and he's he pops up after this great groove.

It was a great worship service.

But I tell you, it can't even get close to the worship team here.

This worship band is amazing here.

And it is just, I feel like every Sunday there's such an extravagant gift given to us called worship.

And it is a gift, and we receive it as that.

And so I'm just getting through after they had a pretty good groove.

It was a great organ.

The guy had a World Service double deck with Big Wesley uh uh flipping around, it's great sound, and they were just working all three key levels of that board, and I was I was a musician and I love music, and so I this was so awesome.

But when the pastor started preaching, there's something that gripped me.

It's still hard for me to express it today, your words.

But for the first time in my life, I felt like I belonged there, and that these are my people, and I'm supposed to be there, and there was a level of anticipation in me that I'd never experienced, and what I learned lately later is that God became my father that I always desperately needed, and the church became my family, which I desperately needed.

The service ended, and I'm sitting on the front of the pew, and when it's over, this church had a really interesting tradition.

And at the end of it, they would the pastor would ask everybody to bow their heads and close their eyes.

That was an instruction.

And and he would walk down that center aisle and get to the back of the room, and then he would say amen, and then everybody would stand at attention, get in a line, and walk out the door and shake his hand.

Me being a newcomer and being on the front pew, I was at the end of the receiving line.

And by the time we get out, I'm the last person shaking the hand, he goes, Wow, are you new?

In the community.

I haven't seen you here before.

I said, No, I've lived here for a couple of years.

He goes, What brings you to church this morning?

And I said, Well, I prayed Thursday night with Billy Graham.

And he said, Go to church this Sunday.

Short story, bring it up to today.

That began a movement of God in my life.

That led me over the next two years to go back to school and finish my GED.

I had dropped out of high school when I was in ninth grade because I was homeless and living place to place.

Couldn't go to you can't go to school when you're 15, 16 years old and you have no place to live.

You certainly can't turn in homework.

So I dropped out.

But my church family encouraged me and believed in me and loved me.

And they said, Bill, you need to finish your high school diploma.

So I took a GED and I finished.

And within a year, they said, you know, Bill, you should go to college.

I said, I'm not smart enough to go to college.

They said, Yes, you are.

In fact, we want to encourage you and we will help support you.

And so my wife and I took off to Lakeland, Florida, and became freshmen at Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida.

And there I met my first foster child.

And here's where the story becomes relevant today.

I was looking for a job in the Florida Baptist Children's Home, hired my wife and I to work in an emergency shelter Friday night through Sunday.

And I went to work on a Friday afternoon, and children would be brought to our home, dropped off by the local sheriff department or the Department of Family Children's Services, and we would take them into this home, and they would be expected to stay with people they've never met, to go into a 5,600 square foot colonial home that they've never been into before, and to somehow stay with other children they've never met, and to make some way that was supposed to be okay.

And I remember the first phosphor child was ever delivered into my presence, and they came to our door and I signed the paperwork, and they they let little Rosie come into the door, and I signed the paperwork.

It was like receiving a UPS package.

It was so unceremonious.

And after I signed the clipboard and brought her in, I was so overwhelmed with the moment.

My wife was much more in tune with how to process that situation, but I was just overwhelmed by it, and I realized this is no way to treat a child.

This is no way to try to respond to these situations.

And so I spent the weekend, this emergency shelter, my first weekend, and on Monday morning.

I was supposed to be in class at that morning at 7:30.

I found myself in a New Testament survey class, and I'm sitting there in the comforts of this beautiful uh South Florida uh university campus, sitting in a New Testament class, and everything was good, it was safe, it was it was it was nice, and and I've had one driving thought that that child's gonna wake up at that emergency shelter, and I was the only people, my wife and I were the only people adults she's met over the weekend.

She's gonna wake up and I'm not there.

And I just came undone.

And the Holy Spirit moved in me.

I didn't have to ask, I didn't have to pray, it was just very clear.

I've got to go back over there and help transition that morning into this new adult.

It was that week that I learned that in America that there are over 660,000 children in foster care.

And in Georgia, there's over 11,000 children in foster care.

And if you really want to attack a big problem, how do you do it?

Ten years ago, God began to put it into my heart that there were 3,144 counties that make up the 50 states in the U.S.

And that in every one of those counties there were foster kids and there were churches.

But here is the problem.

In the history of the U.S.

response to dealing with foster children, we have never had enough families to care for the number of children who need one every day.

Here in our county, in Cherokee County, alone, there are over 300 children with only 60 families to serve them.

There is a deficit of over 200 families needed in this community.

And the capacity problem has been a consistent problem since the inception of the federal and state system we call foster care.

I want you to know something today.

The Spirit of God is moving through the church across this country, and foster children are becoming his children.

No longer the state's children, but ours.

Thank you.

Ten years ago, God began to put in my heart was, why is the church not energized and engaged in solving the capacity problem?

And here's what I learned.

I talked to pastors and friends of mine, and here's what they told me, Bill, we know that there's a biblical mandate for us to care for widows and orphans.

We know that God's heart is moved by compassion.

And but the foster care system is so complex.

How do we get involved?

And that how question captivated me.

And I realized that the problem with the church is not the fact that we're not called by God, that we're not being stirred by God.

The church doesn't have a plan nor a strategy to navigate the complexities of the federal and state, local, county foster care system.

So God began to put into me an idea called community of care, which is an illustration here that I want you to look at.

And I begin to sketch it out on a napkin.

And a friend of mine who I've had breakfast with for 15 years, every Wednesday morning that I'm in town, who's a mentor of mine, he has spoken into my life many times.

He began to ask me, said, and I was sharing with him, he said, I've worked in child welfare for 32 years, I've pastored churches, but I'm my world of work in child welfare was professional, and then my work in the church was my spiritual, but I was always trying to figure out how to integrate both my world of professional work in child welfare and my spiritual calling of pastor, leader, and ministry trainer in the church.

And I've spent years trying to figure out because the complexity was so great that it was really hard.

The two most complex institutions in our culture, the church and the government.

And God is saying, yeah, we need to work together.

That's impossible.

We even are intentional about separating them.

Are you kidding me?

And God began to say through my friend, if you could do anything without fear of failure, money wasn't an object, and nobody would tell you no, what would you do tomorrow to solve the foster care problem?

I took a napkin at a cracker barrel and I drew this picture.

And I said, The church, everybody would be involved in a local church.

And foster care would be a ministry of the local church.

And those some would foster and others would support those who foster.

And we would identify those who foster, and we'll create an organization that would be a private, biblically based, gospel-informed, spirit-led organization that would be an outreach and an arm of the church.

Some would foster and others would support those who do.

And so we created this organization.

We launched it in 26, 2006.

And since then, we had no money, but we had a vision and a sense that the Holy Spirit was moving in our heart to move in this direction.

And I talked to three of my pastors, friends, and I said, what if we do this together?

At that time I was pastoring a small church of about a hundred people.

And they never showed up at one time.

So it was usually about 35 or 40.

Easter and Christmas, it was pretty exciting.

So I said, guys, we can't do everything.

But we're going to do one thing and we're going to do it with excellence.

We're going to find out where the foster kids are in our zip code here in Cherokee County.

And we're going to go find those kids.

And we're going to invite them to come be part of our family.

And my little church said, we're in.

And I drew this picture and put it up and said, some will foster, everyone else will support those who foster.

And this is the only ministry we're going to do because we don't have the money or resource or time.

We're going to do this one thing.

That little church, within about eight months, had 11 foster kids in it.

Our youth and children's ministry outgrew the church.

And immediately my two pastor friends said, we want to do that here.

So we launched in Mount Bethlehem United Methodist Church and this little church down the road at Johnny Hunt.

And this thing took off.

And here's where I close.

About a year and a half ago, I was down in Brunswick, Georgia, speaking in a small church.

And after I got through preaching, telling the story about the emergency shelter in Lakeland, Florida, when the story, when the message was over, I walked down front, there was a young lady and three children standing on the side, which was not unusual because I talked to people afterwards.

But this was very different.

I could tell she was anxious to see me and talk to me, unlike most times.

So I walked over to her and she was standing there and she was almost trembling.

And she said, I know you.

I know you.

I was a kid in the Florida Baptist Children's Home.

And I was there when you were there.

And I remember you.

And when you told the story about being at the children's home, the emergency shelter, I knew it was you.

And she said, I wanted to just come up here and tell you.

These are my three kids.

I left the children's home and they sent me back home, and we fell apart again.

My family disrupted.

And this time I never made it to a foster home.

And she lived a life very much like mine, homeless.

By the time she was 18, 19, she had finished high school, she went off to the military.

And she was standing there today and she said, I want you to know something.

My husband's not at church today, but I married in the military, a great man.

These are our three children.

And I became a Christian when I was 19 years old.

And I have served Jesus every day of my life.

And my children's life is different now.

Because Jesus.

And I want to thank you for what you've done.

God at that moment, it wasn't about what I'd done.

God shared with me in that very moment as I looked into this child who's now a grown woman, served our military, married and raising children, and a follower of Jesus.

As I looked at her, God gave me a short portal into heaven.

That one day I won't see all their faces yet.

I don't know who all the kids are that have been served in the 36 years I've been on this journey to care for the most vulnerable children in our culture.

But one day when I cross over, as I saw that young lady, somehow, I don't understand this theologically, I can't put that together.

But somehow, when I see Jesus, I'm gonna see all those kids that found their way home.

Thank you.

I like that.

When God moves.

Thank you, Bill, very much.

The people who live the best adventures are the ones who say yes to God.

I think Bill's life is a pretty pretty awesome proof of that.

And so so here's here's where we come in.

Bill shared a few things with me that blew me away as we were kind of getting ready for this morning.

Um if every church in America had one foster family, just one, defax would be completely unnecessary.

Completely unnecessary.

There would be enough homes for children that don't have homes.

Okay.

And you know, and here's the thing, we're not the biggest church in the community.

But I I I love this church.

I love how responsive we are.

And in my opinion, this whole 65 families trying to support 300 foster kids, just in our community, because this happens where we live.

I personally don't think there should ever be a reason.

I think it should one day shock defax when there's not a his hands family available to take a kid that needs a home.

I think that should be the way it is one day.

See, we are a church, we're a family, and we're part of this community.

And and in my opinion, that means that we have a very simple question we have to answer to God one day, and that is, did you take care of the people I gave you?

This community, it's our community.

These children in this community shouldn't have to rely on the government to take care of them.

Because honestly, I'm not saying this in some type of anti-establishment, anti-government way.

We're better at this.

Because we have Jesus.

Because we have the love of Jesus in our lives.

So here's the next step.

It's really simple.

Um, and number one, let me just say this really quickly, and we are going to wrap up.

Those of you who support this church, you pray, you serve, you give.

Over the last few years, I just want you to understand that we wouldn't even be able to be in a position as a church to actually start looking at how we can engage this community in a big way if it wasn't for you.

If it wasn't for your faithfulness, if it wasn't for your service, if it wasn't for your generosity, we wouldn't be in this situation right now that we're in that we can say, hey, you know what, we we yeah, we got this stuff covered.

We can go have a huge impact in the community, so thank you for that.

At this desk over by the source on your way out this morning, you're gonna see this image.

This is a new thing we're starting called His Family Foster Care and Support.

And it's based on a verse, Brian Van Dyne, who's our facilities director, but a longtime foster parent himself.

He's he's taken this upon himself and and he is uh he's totally equipped to do this.

I'm so excited that God brought Brian here to run our facility and to fix stuff when it's broken.

But what he's best at is providing a home for broken kids so they can get healed and fixed, right?

And so 2 Corinthians 6.18 says this I'll be your father and you'll be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.

God has been in the foster business for a long, long time.

This is like an old hat to him.

And so it's just our chance as a church to respond, to move.

And you might be in your head going, well, what can I do?

Some of you are like, I, yeah, I got an open bedroom, and my heart says yes.

Just trust God.

Don't worry about the details.

We'll help you with that.

Some of you might go, there's no way I could take a child.

There's no way I could do that.

But but what makes Faith Bridge special and this partnership we have with them is that they support foster families.

In the in the the state-run foster side of things, the average uh span of a foster family is one year.

After one year, they're like, can't do anymore.

And and Faith Bridge families have over a 90% retention rate because they're supported.

Because there's respite families and support families and all these other kinds of things.

And I I believe that most of us in the room could do something.

So we're gonna have two dates where there will be trainings to talk about what it means to be part of Faith Bridge, what it means to be a foster family, a respite family, a support family.

And I just want you to pray and consider signing up to come to those two uh orientation kickoff trainings.

The dates are at the desk on your way out.

Both of those meetings are just gonna be a church-wide meeting where we're gonna talk about here's kind of how we go from here.

But but guys, we are his hands.

And this is his community.

These are his children.

We cannot be his hands and be hands-off.

It does not work.

So I want to ask you to pray.

I want you to do this emotionally, I don't want you to do it out of pressure.

But you'll know in your heart, he'll make it clear.

And if you feel right now that you're supposed to be involved in some capacity, sign up on your way out this morning.

I love you guys.

I'm excited.

I'm just excited for us to be Jesus, the people that need Jesus.

Let's pray together.

Lord, thank you so much for uh thank you for bringing Bill here, number one.

That was awesome.

It's like you know what you're doing or something.

Um Lord, I just want to thank you in advance for the the children's lives that are gonna be changed because the people in this community who know you are gonna take it upon themselves to be you, to people.

And just like your hands, Jesus, have the power to reach out and change someone's life, our hands have the same power when we live in obedience to you and when we move when you tell us to move.

And so we want to open our hearts, we want to open our homes, we want to open our lives to the people in this community that cannot help themselves, and that's children.

And God, I pray that right now you would begin something in this church, that this would be a defining moment that we'd look back on decades from from now and say, hey, it was that day that we said yes to this opportunity that began to dramatically change this community, not just the kids, but the parents of those kids.

And everyone else that that sees what happens when the people of God just say yes to God.

I love you, Jesus.

We pray all this in your name.

Amen.

Love you guys.