Beautiful Feet

Thank you for listening to an audio resource from Stanwich Church, located in Greenwich in Stanford, Connecticut.

The vision of Stanwich Church is to know Christ and make him known.

The epistle lesson for today is from Romans chapter 10, verses 13 through 15.

Romans 10:13–15

This can be found on page 1125 of your Pew Bible.

Followed by a growing number of disciples, Jesus travels from town to town preaching and teaching about the kingdom of God.

A reading from Romans chapter 10, beginning with the 13th verse.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

For everyone who calls in the name of the Lord will be saved.

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?

And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

And how are they to preach unless they are sent?

As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.

May God add his blessing to the reading of his holy word.

Well, good morning, and welcome to Mission Sunday.

So today we have some beautiful feet amongst us.

And if you're one of our mission partners, would you please stand?

Amen.

So let's get started.

Ian.

Good morning.

When I think about the theme of this morning with Romans 10, I am reminded of why the gospel is called good news.

It is not good news because God just said he loved us, but because he did something to show his love for us.

In Romans 5, Paul said, God showed his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

That's the gospel.

Not that God made it easier for us to save ourselves or made a way for us to save ourselves, but that he came and saved us.

And so when we preach the good news as Christians or imitators of Christ, we do not just share the message verbally, but we show the love of Christ to others.

This idea was central for my family and I when we prayed about going to Costa Rica, and specifically the words of James chapter 1, verse 27, when he said, Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit widows and orphans in their distress and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

James 1:27

You know, we live in a time of tremendous temptation for many people, with the internet, smartphones, social media, and as a husband and a father and just a human being, I ensured that we did all we could to prevent temptations from coming into our home, to keep ourselves unstained.

And that is a good and necessary thing, but that verse convicted me.

Because the command is not just to keep ourselves unstained, but to also look out for those who are vulnerable, the widows and the orphans.

It is not just a defensive command, but an offensive command.

After all, James says, What good is it if we would see our brother in need and do not meet his needs?

We are not called to just say we love one another, but to demonstrate that love.

After all, faith without works is dead.

Having worked in anti-human trafficking for 16 years, when my family and I first visited Costa Rica on vacation, we instantly saw many vulnerable people, widows, orphans, and lost teenagers caught up in trafficking and exploitation, and they desperately needed God's love.

And so that is what we did.

Now I could not possibly share all of what God did while we were there and what he is still doing, but I would like to share all of what God did, uh at least one thing that God did when we first uh moved down there.

When we first arrived, we prayed about ways to invest in children in this community, literally across the street from our house.

It was a high-risk community called the Parsellus.

And there were drugs, teenage homicides, trafficking, and tons of children at high risk.

And we we didn't know anybody that lived there.

And so we prayed and said, God, how can we possibly connect with this community and get some of these kids into our own home where we could provide Bible studies, English classes, and opportunities for them.

And for two weeks we prayed, and then all of a sudden, I got a phone call from a lady at the church that we were attending who I had not yet met, and she had said we had heard that we'd moved into the community in the same church, and she was actually currently having about 30 kids from that same neighborhood meeting in her house for English and Bible classes, but unfortunately, she had to go back to the States for an extended period and was wondering if by any possible chance we could bring these kids into our home.

And we said, absolutely.

We ended up hosting 15 to 20 girls every Saturday in our home.

We had seven to ten boys on Sundays, and both of those times we were teaching English and Bible classes.

We went on to build discipleship programs.

We raised up one young leader out of that group to continue leading the boys, and now those students are actually plugged into the church where they were not plugged in before, and the church actually sends a bus and picks them up every Sunday and Wednesday for church and youth group.

The reality is we didn't do anything.

We made ourselves available and prayed, and God did it.

And that's how the entire year and a half mission worked.

Ultimately, guys, through your prayers and generous gifts, we were not only able to invest into these children, but we also started and trained up leaders and volunteers for a program we called Hockey Nightlight, where we reached out to women who were actively caught up in trafficking and exploitation, providing ways out, providing aftercare and other resources.

And we were also able to invest into a couple of safe houses, specifically into one girl named Catherine, who we had known for a few years and were able to get guardianship of.

And she became our daughter.

We gave her a home to live in, a family, a private school she attended, English classes, a church to volunteer in.

And at first, when we first met her, she wanted to be an actress, and now she is attending college or starting college where she is going to study criminal justice and work in anti-human trafficking.

And she is actively serving.

We are going down three more times this year and multiple times next year to continue helping her get it settled into college.

And we thank you so much.

Thank you.

Not only do you praise the Lord in a very um expressive way, we love to praise and worship, but also a mission-minded church that is committed to see that the word of God goes beyond these walls and beyond this community.

Imagine this scenario with me.

Busy Saturday morning.

You have tons of things to do.

You've got that list: dry cleaners, grocery store, uh, clean out, clean the windows, the list goes on the things that you must do around the house, children's games and things, the lists out of this world.

And you're walking down the street, there's a person coming towards you, and you miraculously hear a voice that tells you this person's not a believer, and if you stop everything that you have to do today and spend your entire day with this person, I guarantee you that they will be saved and commit their life to the Lord.

Would you do it?

My name is Mark Chapman.

I'm the assistant principal at Manhattan Christian Academy.

My wife, Tony, is here with me, and we were posed with a similar question.

We are both from Jacksonville, Florida.

We were near the end.

Amen, Florida.

We were both near the end of our careers in education.

We had that suburban life, all the comforts of a cul-de-sac life.

We were near retirement, as I said.

Both of our kids had graduated college and we lived 15 minutes from the beach.

Lovely.

But we received a similar miraculous phone call from a friend who left our church in Jacksonville to come to New York City to plant a church and um to supplement the ministry, he started working part-time as a Bible teacher at Manhattan Christian Academy.

And we got that miraculous call that said, What are you and Tony doing the next few years?

She and I have spent uh, we were in the phase of landing the plane, if you will.

How do we finish this out?

And somehow, um Joey explained, Joey Gonzalez, the pastor of uh um um Grace Bible Church, Manhattan, um, explained how this school taught the gospel.

They were committed to making private Christian school accessible, and and the impact that it was having was massive.

The school had been around for 49 years, and since COVID, it had been struggling and looked like it may not go any further, and they needed us.

This is Romans 10:13 through 15 in action.

Romans 10:13–15

We were receiving a call and an opportunity to drop what we were doing, to make a sacrifice, and go and share the gospel, go and teach, if you will.

Verse 14, uh, the latter part of verse 14 in Romans 10 says, And how are they to believe in him who they have never heard?

And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

And how are they to preach unless they are sent?

In God's sovereign creative order, he has always arrested the hearts of missionaries to go forth and share the gospel.

There was Paul, who wrote this very letter, there was Moses, Jonah, you, and me.

God calls us to go forward many times in our reluctance, the reluctant missionary sometimes, as me and my wife were.

But consider the canon of scripture, if you will, with me.

Through centuries, God's word has overcome governments, plagues, dictators, all out attacks on the truth, and we still have God's word.

He preserved it and he protected it.

How crazy would it be that he would preserve his truth and not prepare people who will take this truth forward and preach it?

It's almost like having a five-star meal prepared at a Michelin star restaurant.

It's prepared, it's in the kitchen, and there's no servers to take it out to the people.

Or the other way around, where there's servers prepared, ready to take the food out, and there's no food in the kitchen.

The Lord has preserved his truth.

The world needs this truth, and praise God that he moves in the heart to send and prepare and call people to go and send.

Some of the great things that God has done at uh MCA Manhattan Christian Academy.

The last time we were here two years ago, we faced possible closing.

Um, our we were we had a sweetheart of a deal where our rent was$14,000 a month, and that that sweetheart of a deal ended, and we were had to take on a new rent of$45,000 a month, roughly.

There's always a staff shortage that we struggle with, and that shortage goes across all education across the country, that there's a shortage of teachers.

But imagine a shortage of teachers who love Christ and can teach the gospel.

When we interview teachers, the first question we ask them, not about their degrees, not about their certification, the first thing we ask them is how would you share the gospel with a child?

Because that's the most important thing of what we do besides teaching.

Right now we operate with an enrollment lower than 120, and our budget really calls for about 140 students.

And somehow God makes a way every year, mostly through people like you who support.

We have a commitment, it would be very easy to just take our tuition and jack it up.

We have a very small tuition because we're committed to making a private Christian school in Manhattan accessible to those who could never afford a Christian school.

We feel like we are the biggest secret in Manhattan.

Think about this.

I'm sure you get this a lot if you're anywhere around New York City.

My friends and people all around the country are concerned about our mayor and they're concerned about our liberal agenda and all the things crazy going on in New York City.

And if they knew there was a place like MCA that was sharing the gospel and planting truth in the hearts of the next generation of New York City children, they would go in all the way.

One of the other great things that have happened, um, we were having trouble.

By the way, we are preschool, three-year-old to 12th grade.

And so we have the full gamut of impact we can have in our children's life, and we notice the issue, our students, we we don't have enough resources to provide sports, and a lot of times we don't have enough resources to really provide that high school social experience that kids want, that teenagers want, and need.

And so our students were getting up to eighth grade and then they were leaving.

And so God has blessed us this year that we were able to retain every single eighth grade except for one.

Every single eighth grader came up to high school.

God faithfully provides for ministries like ours and all the other ministries that have taught uh spoken today and all the ministries that you support.

And I finished what my little speech today with the same thing I asked before when I started.

If you knew that a sacrifice of your time and your resources, of your prayer would directly lead to the salvation of someone, would you make that sacrifice?

Thank you.

Good morning, Stanwich Church family.

My name is Diana, and I work for Young Life in Europe, and I just celebrated 10 years living in Poland, which is pretty amazing.

And so um apparently my Apple Watch is telling me that I'm very excited to be here because it just alerted me that my heart rate is unusually high for not exercising at the moment, but that's all good.

So there's an African proverb called, if you want to go fast, go alone.

If you want to go far, go together.

And so, as I said, I work for Young Life in Europe, where I direct and develop outreach camps for teens and university students across Europe.

So Poland all the way down to Greece, which is an incredible diverse and historical with a lot of diversity and a lot of history across very short distances.

There are about 15 countries in Central Europe and the Balkans, and they now host uh about two million Ukrainian refugees.

So, for you history buffs out there, many of these populations are Slavic, so uh Russian, Polish, Czech and language, but others like uh Romania, Hungary, Albania, and Greece are radically different in their language roots, their culture, and even their beliefs.

So Poland is about 90% Catholic, while Romania is about 90% Orthodox.

And then in countries like Albania and Kosovo, Islam is the most uh religion majority there.

And about 75% of Czechs identify as non-spiritual and non-believing.

So, with all this diversity pulling in different directions, it's hard to imagine how we can come together even at all.

But Young Life's missing mission and their commitment to introducing teenagers and young people to Jesus Christ and helping them grow in their faith bridges the divides we see both politically and inside and outside of the church.

So, to give you a little idea, uh the Balkan countries have a history of turmoil and tension.

From the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 90s until just as recent as 2018, North Macedonia and Greece have been in major uh geopolitical disputes over the country's name.

So much so that they couldn't even cross borders unless they legally changed the name of the country, which they did.

Currently, there's ongoing disputes between North Macedonia and Bulgaria over language and national identity, which is keeping North Macedonia from entering the European Union.

The European Union provides economic resources, opportunity, education, and a future for young Macedonians.

But essentially, we've discovered that we can go further if we go together.

And that if we work together, we can do just that.

So at Young Life Bulgaria Camp, Macedonian teenagers put their political tensions aside to wash dishes, prepare meals, decorate the dining hall so that Bulgarian high schoolers can have a fun family-style meal together.

And then most notably this summer, we started, uh we began our very first Young Life Montenegro camp.

So Montenegro is an interesting country because of its visa-free entry.

Montenegro hosts many Russian-speaking uh nationals, including Ukrainians and Belarusians.

And while this conflict rages 850 miles away in Kiev, we had Ukrainian young life leaders sharing their lives and the gospel of Jesus with Ukrainian uh with Russian and Belarussian teenagers.

How beautiful are the feet of those leaders who bring good news.

Amen.

Gosh, only God can take war and make peace.

Only He can do that.

So, also a few weeks ago, I checked off one of the most exciting bucket list items.

I got to meet Pope Leo at St.

Peter's Basilica.

It was amazing.

Um, along with colleagues from around the world, uh, we were invited to a private audience with him to share our mission, methods, and values of young life.

Catholic teenagers make up roughly 20% of the global youth population, and many of them drift away from the church and their faith after confirmation.

No matter your background or style of worship that you prefer, one thing is very clear.

Young people everywhere need to hear the good news of Jesus in a way that's personal, relevant, and lasts far beyond the eighth grade into high school, into college, and into adulthood.

Having the private audience with the Pope and receiving his blessing opens huge doors for us to serve with Catholic teenagers worldwide, especially in smaller, tight knit communities and predominantly Catholic countries.

So when Catholic staff from Poland and maybe a team from a congregational church in Greenwich, Connecticut, and a group of young Orthodox priests come together to run a young life camp, our collective witness goes so much further.

Our beautiful feet become steady enough to carry real and true peace.

So finally, the call to bring good news isn't to a lone runner, but to a multi-generational community of believers.

It's a relay race, it's a relay race that is never really won by a single person, but staying together on the track forever.

It's run by passing the baton to younger generations.

We know solo we can go fast, but together we can go far.

This summer, my team and I experienced a heartbreaking loss.

Just a week before camp, our country director from Bulgaria, Rosho, was killed in a car accident along with another student.

Rosho was an absolute force of nature when it came to training leaders and getting kids to camp.

Over the years, he's raised up leaders across many cities in the country, expanding into Capernaum, which is our ministry to teenagers with special needs, and even leading an outreach to local Romani, Roma, or known as gypsy teenagers across Bulgaria.

His sudden loss has been devastating for our ministry.

We have a lot of very young staff who are now holding the baton, and we face a huge leadership gap.

But while Rosho's earthly end race ended, his investment in the younger generations will keep carrying the gospel forward.

How beautiful is are his feet who brought the good news.

Please pray for me and our leadership team across all the surrounding countries as we work together to carry this baton of faith to teenagers who really need it most.

We've seen the Lord overcome many, many challenges of war and of conflicts, of unifying faith traditions that doesn't even seem like they belong together, of keeping a ministry going when all seems lost.

The experience of double the fruit comes when all these beautiful feet run together and we can go further than we've ever imagined.

Thank you, Sandwich Church family.

Thank you for running and supporting me in this race.

Your feet are very beautiful.

Please keep taking care of them.

And if your feet happen to find themselves over in Europe or want to come to Europe, we will gladly take care of your feet as they serve with us behind the scenes at CAMS.

We thank you very much.

Amen.

Some beautiful feet there.

And and uh I want to take just a minute and talk about some other beautiful feet, and they're yours.

Um, you know, when I think of the scripture, the very first thing that God said was, let there be light.

And when you look at it in the Hebrew, it's actually light be.

Right?

And then light was.

And uh with the word of God, with what God has done in our lives, he causes us to be witnesses.

And I want to look at a story briefly in the book of Daniel, in the sixth chapter.

The Bible says that Daniel was a man going to do his normal eight to five Monday through Friday, doing a job that was high up.

He was a judge in the uh the uh Persian Empire.

And the Bible says that he had an excellent spirit that was within him, so much so that the king decided that this Daniel should be promoted and he should be lifted up above everyone else.

And so everyone else got envious, much like perhaps what happens on your job when someone is elevated.

And they began to probe and to find weaknesses in Daniel, the Bible says.

They found you know, in to their that there's nothing that they could charge Daniel with, no fault, no fraud, nothing.

This Daniel was faithful.

The only thing they could find wrong with him was the way he served God, that he prayed.

And so, in their next quarterly business review, when they all got together, the three governors and the 120 satraps, they thronged before the king and they convinced this king to make a prayer policy.

That if anybody was to worship anyone except this king, if anyone was to lift up any supplication except to this king that they should be executed for it.

And so Daniel, surprisingly so, didn't say anything.

You ever wonder what that's like?

I mean, you've you've been attacked, you've gone through difficulty on the job.

Daniel didn't say anything.

He went home, and the Bible says he opened his window and he prayed three times that day.

You know, it's not policy or or something that that that God required that he prayed that often.

It was something that perhaps he just was weak.

Perhaps he was just going through, you know, being audited by everybody around him, being searched out constantly, and he just needed God.

And so he prayed.

He believed, and he was silent.

And then the Bible says that these governors and satraps thronged to the king.

They convinced this king that his Daniel was doing something wrong, that he was praying to somebody other than the king himself.

And so the law of the Medes of the Persians couldn't be changed, and the Bible says that they went to throw Daniel in the lion's den.

Now, perhaps Daniel, maybe like you feel, yeah, it's difficult to talk on the job or in your school or where you work.

It's difficult to sometimes open your mouth or to know what to say.

And so maybe Daniel felt that way, maybe he was like that, and so the Lord said, essentially, okay, I'll have the king do it.

And the Bible says that the king brought Daniel to this den.

And one of the things he said to this Daniel was, The God whom you serve continually will be able to keep you from the mouth of the lion.

Now everybody would have thought he was nuts.

Nobody survives the lion's den.

But the leadership standing there, like, what in the world has gotten into this guy?

Then the Bible says that Daniel was put in this lion's den, and all that night he was there, and all that night the king prayed, he didn't eat, didn't sleep.

The Bible says in the morning he went down and he shouted into that lion's den and he said this, he said, Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God been able to keep you from the life mouth of the lions?

And when I looked at that, who told this king that this God was the living God?

Who shared with him that news?

Oh, the witness of Daniel, the quiet one.

And so this Daniel says, for the first time, he speaks.

He said, Oh king, I've done nothing against you.

I'm paraphrasing, I've done no wrong, and God has sent his angel to shut the mouth of the lion.

And so the king brought this Daniel out.

And once again, maybe Daniel wasn't good at writing, he wasn't good at witnessing.

And so the Lord had this king write a message to the world.

You can imagine getting the mail on that day.

One day you're supposed to not do anything except, you know, bring your prayer to the king.

And then this message, he said, for he is the God of Daniel is the living God and steadfast forever.

He delivers and rescues.

He's the one that delivered Daniel from the power of the lions.

So the witness went out to the entire world.

All this man did was be Christian, if you will.

All he did was what was right.

All he did was walk faithfully with his God.

Some people say that our body language says more than our words.

But Christian, as you walk into your workplace, you should know that your belief says more than your body language.

Just you trusting God, believing in God, hoping in God, being Christian.

What a light.

And what beautiful feet you have.

Praise God.

Let's go forward.

Let's bless the world.

Let's be lights in this world.

Amen.

To learn more about the mission and vision of Stanwich Church and how you can get involved, please visit Stanwichchurch.org.