Hi, this is Dave Olson. I'm the senior leader of
Heartland Church located in Ankeny, IA.
I hope the following message challenges, encourages and
ultimately changes you. Thanks for joining us.
All right. This morning we have a real
treat. We are going to have Dave and
Ashley Van de Zander sculpt, is that right?
Got it. Affectionately known as Dave and
Ashley V because it's hard to pronounce that name, but they
are elders here and we just love them and they are involved in
foster care. And so I wanted them to talk.
We, you know, usually we do a missions emphasis around this
time of year and we do missions work all over the world.
We send out teams, we support missionaries, support projects
around the world. But one of the most needy
projects in the United States and in this generation is Foster
and adoptive care. You know, my wife and I were
talking the other day, you know, we worked for Teen Challenge for
many years. And she was just, she said it
this way. She said, you know, it's so
often these guys that were coming into Teen Challenge,
they, it was like they were born without one of their legs.
And everybody expected them to keep up with everyone else.
They they were, they started off behind the herd because they
were born into a family that was already struggling.
And there is such a thing as generational sin, iniquity,
generational righteousness, that when kids are born into a home
where there's not that Christian witness, where they're, you
know, a mom or a dad is traumatized and wounded.
And you see that play out generationally.
And it just, it's snowballs. And the kids that are born into
that often they, they, they're lagging behind, they're
struggling. And we need to have tremendous
compassion and realize that we are the answer.
But here's the awesome thing. You know, some of you saw the
podcast I did with my dad recently and my dad, we were,
our family was the poster child of dysfunction and woundedness,
just devastation. But my mom and my dad met Jesus.
My dad as a 15 year old kid got saved, radically saved.
His wild stepmother got on religious kick for a couple of
weeks and said, you're going to Bible school. 15 years old,
dropped him off and it changed the trajectory of our lives.
So it just takes one generation. And my, well, I was interviewing
my dad, My dad, he's 83 years old.
And all of a sudden he cracked up.
He, he, he started to cry because he remembered when he
was about 6 years old, there was a family that was near him out
in the country, up in northern Minnesota that would drive out
of their way in the winter weather to pick up my dad and
his siblings and take him to church.
That family never knew the impact it had on the generations
of my family. I'm the recipient of their
intervention. And the fact is that Psalm,
Psalm 68, it says this God sets the lonely in families.
That's how the NIV says it. The ESV says God settles the
isolated into households that beautiful.
When God does that, he needs a family to volunteer.
And there is such a need in our nation right now for these kids,
these displaced children, even if it's just for a few nights, a
few weeks, a few months to experience what a godly
functional family is like and to be placed in there.
You know, as the pastor, I'll know different times where
there's foster families in the congregation that perhaps they,
you know, there's confidentiality.
Other people don't know. But I'll know that little child
in those arms is a foster child. And I tell you, every time I see
a mom up here or a dad up here worshiping with one of those
little ones, it breaks me. I start boohoo.
And because I know the impact it can make on that child's life,
that they'll never be the same because they encountered
godliness, they encountered love, they encountered healthy
emotional environment. And that's the opportunity that
we have. So I'm going to quit talking and
I'm going to ask Dave and Ashley V to come on up here.
Let's give them a hand. I love these guys.
They are elders in this house and we just love them.
Good morning. All right, the next 40 minutes
we're all going to learn how to say Van de Zandt sculpt
together. We we need more than 40 minutes
for that. Hey, thanks for having us this
morning. Ashley and I are really excited
to be here and just share what God has done in our lives.
You know, First Corinthians talks about order in the church
and there are songs, hymns and songs.
There's times of sharing and this is one of those mornings
where we're going to share. It's going to feel a little bit
unconventional. And so we're excited to share
with you what God has done in our lives.
But before we do that, I joke there's the right pre Trib, post
Trib. There's the pre COVID church and
the post COVID church. We've been coming to Heartland
for a long time. So we started coming here in
20/10/2011 and Ashley and I got married in 2010.
So we've been married 15 years. And so if you, oh, thank you,
thank you. I showed this picture to start
us off because if you're thinking that these guys look so
young up here, this is the definition of babies behind us.
So Ash has got a few more. We didn't get married in high
school. We did get married.
We were 21. So quick story.
The first time we came to Heartland was around this time
frame. And on entering in the door,
someone invited me to youth group because they thought I
look like I should be in the high school crowd.
So I said, can Ashley come to you?
And then they never asked me that again.
But anyways, we're excited to share with you all so you may
see us around. We helping Kingdom kids and
usher and lots of different things.
If we don't know you, come say hi to us.
We'd love to meet you. So come talk to us afterwards.
But we've got three things that we would love for you to walk
away with this morning. I've got a clicker, so I'm going
to be clicking along here. As Pastor Dave said, October was
missions month when you're a believer, every month's missions
month. So we're going to carry that
forward into November here and talk about unconventional
missions, living missionally through foster care and
adoption. And so the three things that I
would love all of you to walk away with, there we go.
We like to do acronyms and have things organized here.
So the three ES, we'd love for you to be encouraged, educated
and empowered. Thank you, Kara.
I promise I've done this before. Oh, too fast.
We'll just pretend that it's on the right side here.
So there we go. Encourage and educate and
empower. We want you to be encouraged.
So we're going to start with sharing a little bit of our
testimony. We would love for you to be
educated. So part of today is we are going
to share some statistics. What are the needs within the
state of Iowa and across the United States?
And most importantly, we want you to feel empowered.
What is your role and how can the Holy Spirit help you walk
within that? And so to start us off, I
believe some of the most powerful truths in Scripture
start with simplicity of the Kingdom of God.
And so this whole setup for today, I just want to start with
two. And Ashley and I are going to
talk really fast the next 35 minutes, so bear with us, but we
want to dive in, in two passages.
God's mission, Formula 1 + 1. Here God speaks.
We know here in John 1027 that His sheep know His voice.
OK? He knowing his voice implies
that God speaks. Anybody believe that God speaks?
All right, you guys are in the right church this morning, so
we're glad that you're here. But there's another part to play
in that. When God speaks, it's for a
purpose. He wants to bring his Kingdom of
heaven into earth. And so we have John 1415, which
talks about love and obedience. If you love me, you'll obey my
commands. And the Lord doesn't just speak
for things to feel nice, even though his voice is nice, but
it's ultimately to call us into action, into love and obedience.
And so we'll revisit this a little bit throughout the next
several minutes here. But hold on to those truths for
just a second. And Ashley's going to talk about
what God has done in our lives this last six years.
Good morning, heartland. You weren't expecting this duo,
but this is what you get. So blessings.
So I get to share a little bit about our journey of foster care
and adoption. Very strangely, I knew as young
as 10-12 years old that I wanted to adopt.
We didn't have a lot of foster families or stories of adoption
around us, but I just had a knowing.
I kind of had to know when I was going to be a teacher and that
panned out. And so Fast forward, I go to
Iowa State, find me a good Christian boyfriend here.
And I flat out told the boyfriend that I was going to
adopt. And because he was a nice
Christian boy, he said that's nice.
And this is, this is not dating advice.
Don't tell your boyfriend's this.
But you know what, I married him anyway because you need the
mortgage paid for. And so we got married, which you
saw before, I think we met on a mission trip too.
Also, don't date on a mission trip.
This is not advice. So you see us there as babies.
And so we graduated college, worked for three years, and then
we had our first son, River. And then we two years later we
had Raya. And two years later we had
Raleigh. And our Christmas card was
really cute. You know, our whole family.
But I still had in the back of my mind adoption.
And so a couple years go by and Dave comes home from work and he
walks in the door and he said, the Lord told me we were
supposed to adopt. And my jaw dropped and I looked
to Jesus and I'm like, what? You know, like I didn't have to
nag. I didn't have to beg or anything
like that. And we were on the same page.
And so in 2020, keep that in mind, we signed up to take
foster care classes. We had had foster families
around us. We knew that the goal of foster
care is not adoption, but we were OK with loving little ones
for a small season if they were supposed to move back to their
family or somewhere else. And so January through March, we
took classes. It's for 8 weeks, 3 hours, one
night a week. And by March 2020, we had our
foster care license in the mail. Well, what happened in 2020?
COVID, COVID happened. And so my husband's company
furloughed half of their employees, including Dave.
And all of a sudden, we were not financial financially stable
enough to do foster care. And so there was some confusion
with that. Lord, why is this happening?
Meanwhile, we have been praying and the words North Carolina
kept coming up for the last two years.
And so as a Dave is applying all over the country, Colorado,
Texas, some in North Carolina, we kept praying into it and
strange things would happen. Strange as in the Holy Spirit,
I'd be praying about it. And then a country song with
Carolinas would come on. Or I was driving one day and
praying, and right in front of me in Ankeny, IA is a motorcycle
with North Carolina plates. Like, that's weird.
And then I was talking to a stranger about foster care.
And on the phone, she's like, Oh, yeah, we moved here from
North Carolina. And this was happening to Dave
in different ways. I mean, commercials were coming
on that would talk about North Carolina.
So we were sure that God was moving us to North Carolina.
And the only job offer Dave got was from a company in Raleigh,
NC. And so we have this faith, this
surety that we're supposed to move there.
And we thought in our heads, because we're a little fleshly
and want to figure out the why that maybe it was for adoption.
And so we moved in faith and you have to live there six months
because before you start applying to be foster parents or
adoptive parents. We decided to only do adopt
because our support system was all back in Iowa.
We didn't have friends or families.
We, we didn't have a single babysitter for our kid, for our
biological kids in North Carolina.
So we applied to these agencies for adopt only, but the doors
kept shutting. Nope, we only need foster
parents. Nope, Nope, Nope.
So we're like, why are we here? What are we doing?
And so couple months later, Dave got a new job and he could work
anywhere in the US. And so we thought, hey, we're
missing our family, let's move back.
So it felt like the Lord moving back as much as it felt like the
Lord told us to go there, but I have no why for you.
And so things would happen. Like we called the private
school my kids went to in Des Moines and we called in July.
And if you know anything about private schools, they're full by
March. And I said, could you get my
kids in? And they're like, Yep.
And then they called me a week later and said, can you teach?
And I said, ha, my teaching license is expired, can't teach.
But at that time there was a teacher shortage.
And so I called the Iowa Department of Education and they
said, sure, if you show us a contract, you can teach and
we'll give you an extension. So we got 2 new jobs, We got a
school. And then on EU Haul drive back,
the buyer of our North Carolina house backed out.
I was like, God, what are you doing?
Then two weeks later, a week later, I don't know how long it
was, the Lord sold the house for infinitely more than the first
buyer. And I did a lot of repenting at
that moment. And so at the time we lived in
North Carolina, my sister and brother-in-law were taking
foster care classes and had begun their foster care journey.
So it was not uncommon for us to go to holiday parties or
birthday parties. And there's a new little one
there with them. And we just knew to love on them
for as long as they were with us.
So about a year after we moved back to Iowa, my sister walks in
the kitchen with a little little 5 month old.
And I said, how's her case going, What's going to happen?
And she says I don't know. And without any preconceived
thinking out came my mouth. We'll take her.
She looked at me strange and I panicked and I'm like I should
talk to Dave. And so I went to talk to my
husband and my husband very coldly says, give me a week to
pray about it. I don't want you talking to me
about it. And my spirit sank and I'm like,
how do you not know there's a little girl?
She needs a home. We have a home.
Like how can you not know this is over?
In my head, I just lost, lost it all.
A week later, my husband comes back and says, I can't ever
imagine not loving this little girl no matter what happens.
And we move on with becoming foster parents again.
And so the Lord put me in my place.
So because we had previously taken the foster care class, we
just had to do a home study at that time.
So we zoomed through paperwork, had people in our house
interviewed us, and we were licensed foster parents.
Now there are different rules and regulations to become a
foster parent. And so for a couple weeks, they
told us we would not be able to take this little girl due to our
medical status. And I, Pastor David, didn't say
this, but I did hang up on someone in that fight to get
this little girl. I'm not proud of it, but
probably do it again. And so they kept telling us no,
no, no, no. And I kept saying yes, yes, yes.
And I got the opportunity to talk to the head of Health and
Human services, Kelly Garcia. She's doing great things right
now and really supporting churches and Christians
involved. And I got to talk to her about
the struggles that are going on for people becoming licensed as
foster parents. And so anyway, the Lord worked
it all out. And so in November 2023, this
little girl came and lived with us.
And so my daughter, she's back back there.
She was 7 at the time. She had been praying for her
sister for about 5 years. The Lord gave her two brothers,
which she was not pleased about. And so she was praying for
praying for her sister. And so the day we got to tell
our three biological children that we were headed on the route
for adoption, I watched my 7 year old girl weep with joy and
deep, heartfelt love that God was answering her prayers.
And it was one of the most beautiful things.
There was some, you know, trial along the road.
I remember that season, we were the sickest we've ever been.
I was sick. I had to have a CAT scan during
that time and just headaches and migraines were coming.
And I, I look back now and think Satan doesn't like adoption.
He doesn't like foster care and he's going to try to throw
everything at you. So Dave and I are deciding on
what to name her. And instantly I'm like, we're
going to name her Rosie. It was just a knowing.
And he's like, I don't know. And so I had remembered this
dream that I had five years before this.
And in the dream I got this word that said biracial.
And you know, at Heartland here, we have pretty words when we get
dreams, you know, like doves and cherubim and and gold.
You know, this was a weird word, like biracial.
So for three days, I couldn't forget this word.
And so finally, because the Holy Spirit was nagging me, I just
wrote it down, wrote down everything I saw in the stream.
So I had remembered this. And so I went downstairs to my
journals to find where I'd written this down.
And when I found it, I screamed Dave thought there was a fire
because in this journal entry it said biracial, one years old.
And Rosie and I hadn't remembered.
She is one. She was one.
We decided to name her Rosie without remembering the stream.
And yes, she is biracial. And it was.
It was a surety in my spirit that come what may, I was going
to fight because this little girl was supposed to be in our
family. And so in June June 1st 2024, we
adopted little Rosie and it has been such a joy.
Let's see if we can find her. Maybe not Clicker.
Clicker's not working today, but that's our little girl.
And Dave's gonna share what the word of God has to say about
foster care and adoption because it's so clear.
So take it away. Yeah.
Praise the Lord, this picture right here when you go go to the
judge for adoption, they basically let you give testimony
and I had written out 2 pages worth of what I wanted to share.
I got the first word out and I bawled for the next 10 minutes
and the judge is just listening to me.
You know, nobody could hear me. But then all my kids were in a
row crying with me and it was like, all right, this is
perfect. So, but we overcome by the blood
of the Lamb and the power of the testimony, right?
And so let this be an encouragement to you as well.
But I do want to shift gears and talk a lot about the heart of
God in this right? There could be needs in the
world, and it's not that every need isn't part of God's heart,
but when we capture his heart, it changes the way we interact
and intercede on behalf of those needs.
And so I want to spend a few minutes, you know, there's a lot
of us that have been in church a long time and you may have
subliminally, you know, heard different Bible verses or things
about children that are just back there, nice truths.
But this morning we want to talk about the power of God in those
truths. And so I want to share a few of
them to set us up. And then I'm we're going to lean
into one of these here for just a few minutes.
I heard the buzz, so I think it's coming.
There it is, all right, catching God's heart as intercessors.
So just read these for a minute. The Bible is so powerful, we
don't have to interpret it right away.
Sometimes we just have to lean into what does it actually say.
So let's read these. Matthew 1914.
Let the little children come to me, for the Kingdom of heaven
belongs to such as these. Mark 936, whoever welcomes one
of these little children in my name welcomes me.
Matthew 1042 Whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup
of cold water, he is a disciple. And then we have Psalm 68.
Pastor Dave was talking about earlier this morning, right?
Talks about the concept of being a father to the fatherless.
So we know these passages, right?
God loves children. But when you read the
second-half of these verses, there's some power packed into
these. When you love little children,
the Kingdom of heaven belongs to them.
When you love them, you are my disciples, right?
That's a powerful statement. When you welcome them, you
welcome me, King Jesus. And so I don't want to rush past
that. Well, we just take a universal
truth that God loves children. Let's park on this a little bit
more. And I want to take us to James
one verse 27 here, James 127 religion that God our Father
accepts as pure and undefiled as this to look after orphans and
widows in their distress. I've read this verse so many
times over the years. And if I'm being honest, that
first word threw me off for so many years, right.
Especially in in a spirit filled church.
We understand this concept of a religious spirit and when we
hear that word religion, sometimes it means something to
us or maybe it means a negative thing.
Religious spirit being traditions and actions and
things that you're doing just for the sake of doing them.
But there's no real connection to a living, breathing God,
right? Just tradition.
That's not what this this word is saying.
This word religion carries special meaning.
And so in in my pursuit of God, what is this?
I had to look this up, pretend with me that I have a Greek
accent. I think this is going to sound
Russian, but the word religion here, it's pronounced Threscia
and it's literal meaning is to worship, to give glory to God.
And so when we replace that language with what's written up
here, to worship our God and Father is to accept as pure and
undefiled as to look after orphans and widows.
One of the highest forms of stewardship, worship, glorifying
him is taking care of his little ones.
But even in that I'm asking God, why children, why doesn't this
say, you know, to to look after my church, to look after, you
know, to look after my disciples?
He could have said anything here, but he said children and
orphans and so as I'm seeking the Lord on this.
He brought me to Hebrews chapter 4.
So I want to read this one for you as well.
For we do not have a high priest we we worshiped on that this
morning who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but one in who every respect has been tempted as we are yet
without sin. How are these related?
As I was asking God and asking the Holy Spirit God, what is
this? What is this about?
Why orphans, why widows? He reminded me it was King Herod
that sent out a decree to kill all of the male babies in the
Bethlehem area and the surrounding regions.
Jesus experienced what we're talking about here.
We need to love the least of these because Jesus literally
was the least of these. He was in a vulnerable time in
human history is when he entered in and the government was
seeking his life. The truth here is there is no
one that understands what these little babies and children's and
teenagers are going through. There's no one that understands
it better than Jesus. And so he sympathizes with our
weaknesses because he's gone through it and church, he
overcame. And so as we look ahead and
continue to dive into Scripture, right, it's not just that Jesus
has the sympathy, but he also has a victory.
And so we want to talk a little bit more about what are some
practical ways, What does this look like in the state of Iowa?
And so Ashley's going to share some information for what this
looks like on our front doorsteps.
So I share some stats up here about what's happening in our
society. You have alcoholism, drug abuse.
You have 11% of Iowa below the poverty line, about 8000 people
in our prison systems. You have a high divorce rate,
single parents rate. And this causes some brokenness
in our society that makes makes it so kids have to be removed
from the home at times. So when you think about foster
care, most of you assume the number one reason that kids come
into foster care is because of abuse.
And that would be untrue. The number one reason kids come
out of foster care or come into foster care is because of
neglect. You do have some smaller reasons
there. You have drug abuse, physical
abuse, maybe the parent is in jail or they've lost a parent
and don't have family or friends to go to.
But the number one reason is neglect.
And so in many of these cases, I have my notes up here, I'm not
texting well, well-being up here, but so let's go, let's go
to Iowa next. So in Iowa, there's 4000 kids in
foster care and 1000 of those kids are here in Polk County.
Now, if you're really good at math, there is only 200 licensed
foster families in Polk County to these 1000 and thousand kids
in need. So you realize that the gap is
much bigger than what is being fulfilled right now.
The largest need for kids are teens needing placement, large
family, so 3 kids or more. You can imagine that the day
that you're taken from your family is the most traumatic day
of your life. And then to be separated from
your siblings is a secondary trauma.
And then kids with special needs, it's hard to find
placement for them. And I've also shared the largest
demographic of foster kids or foster parents up there who are
stepping up to this call. And then after the journey with
foster care, about 70% of these kids go back to their biological
families. This is really hard for
Christians who are wanting to support this because it's
heartbreaking, it's hard, it's filled with grief.
But I would argue that God's design for this family was that
kids are with their biological parents.
If they are healthy, you know, some of these parents go through
treatment, they go through some parenting classes, get some
help, and children can be reunited.
And it's, it's part of God's restoration of that family.
And then 30% of foster kids are adopted by another family
member, by family friend, or by a foster family.
So the church is kind of answering that call in some
ways. They're three times more likely
to be foster parents and they're two times more likely to adopt.
So there is some positive trending here for how the church
is showing up. But like I said, 200 families
for 1000 kids, There's still a great need here in Iowa
specifically. Thank you, Ashley.
So Ashley shared some of those needs, right?
Right here in the state of Iowa. We're talking about God's heart.
We're talking about the need, putting those things together,
right? All of a sudden we have a call
of action. How can we be involved?
God, what is my role? What do you want me to do in
these situations? And so we're going to have some
word or pictures up here for you, right?
We've got a gap. What does it mean to stand in
the gap on behalf of foster care children and parents or children
in need of adoption? I want to make sure I'm in the
right church again. Has anyone read Reese Howell's
book Intercessor? All right, I thought I was in
the right place. So he has 2 verses that he hangs
his banner on related to intercession.
And I just, again, I want us to just let the word speak for
itself. We're going to meditate on these
for just a second here, standing in the gap, we have Isaiah 5916.
The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no
justice in the land. He saw that there was no man and
wondered that there would be someone to intercede.
You have the exact same concept in Ezekiel 2230.
And I sought for a man among them who should build up the
wall and stand in the breach before me before the land, that
I shouldn't destroy it. But I found none.
This is sobering verses, but I think we can gather from this
God is sovereign in heaven. Romans 828, He's going to find a
way to accomplish his purposes, right?
But his design here is for man. He's seeking men, He's seeking
women. He wants us to fill that gap, us
to intercede and to intervene. That's his original design is to
hand it to us. And we as followers of him are
ultimately the ones who are standing in this gap.
I also want to argue this morning we'll go back to this
first image. There are different size gaps in
society and culture. Now, if this gap was real,
right, maybe a Van de Zandt sculpt skinny child could fit
into that and stand in the gap, right?
But as the gap gets bigger, sometimes it takes more than one
person. And so I want to present this
second image that I believe to be pretty historically accurate.
And so you can kind of see the concept of this castle wall in
the background and when enemies would fight each other, there
was only one entry point in and out.
You can kind of see to scale here these little humans in that
bottom rut there. It would take more than one
person to defend this castle. And I would argue that in this
age in human history, God is looking for a man.
But this particular battle, it's not just one man standing in the
gap. There are church sized gaps
waiting for churches to step into.
You're not meant to do it alone. OK.
And that principle, we could sit on that all day.
That's true for foster care and adoption.
It's true of so many things in the Christian realm.
You're not meant to do it alone. We're meant to be unified and
support each other. Every one out of two families
that enters foster care leaves within their first year because
they don't feel supported. It's so sobering, but Church,
God is awakening us. He is awakening us to answer the
call and to stand in the gap. And so I want us to to get this
verse right. Sometimes this verse is preached
related to to marriage, but it's Ecclesiastes 412.
And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, 2 will
withstand him. But a three fold cord is not
quickly broken. We are stronger when we are
together, right? Amen, Church.
We are in the middle of a cultural war and God is putting
his fingerprints all over this topic of taking care of
children, right? We saw the overturn of Roe
versus Wade. The White House just this week
decreed a new initiative to take care of foster care children in
the teenage years. There's no funding going towards
this. His heart is putting it into
into law. He's putting it into the White
House. And so for us to answer this
call and to stand in the gap as a church, there's some real lies
and challenges that we need to overcome.
And so I want to park on that for just a few minutes here.
We just talked about the first one, fighting alone, right?
You don't have to do it and we shouldn't do it.
As we stand in together, we're going to overcome these things.
Ashley talked about some of the, you know, some of the neglect
and the, the prison system and things that these these parents
are struggling with. The concept of reconciliation,
reunification, restoration, those don't come from the
Department of Human Services or Health and Human Services.
Those are heaven concepts. And us as his children, his sons
and daughters, we are the most equipped to carry those things.
And so if we want to see change in this system, he is calling us
as sons and daughters, the church as a whole, not to fight
alone and to be Jesus in this situation.
We're not meant to do it alone. The second challenge I want to
call out here, fear of attachment and disappointment.
There's a very realness to people that enter into this
battle. I know stories you guys have
maybe experienced or know someone.
There's real hurt involved. There can be, but when we lean
that, that is the expectation. It's counter intuitive to the
the Kingdom, right? God's design is that we carry
that restoration, the reconciliation with us.
We're going into these situations expecting the Kingdom
to come, but he's a God. Even if, even if it doesn't,
even if there's hurt, I'm telling you, God is able to walk
through the grief with you. And one way or another, his
Kingdom will come and we will overcome challenge #3 government
regulations conflicting with personal belief systems.
Is there anybody who has ever had beef with the law that was
established here in the United States or anyone else?
Raise your hand real quick. All right, nobody riot this
morning. Just want to make sure I'm in
the right place. No, there's lots of truths like
this that we like. We don't perfectly agree.
The Kingdom of the US is not perfectly in line with the
Kingdom of heaven yet. But it doesn't stop missionaries
from going to the Middle East, right?
You show up in the Middle East, they don't stop the call to
prayer because you go, if you go to communist countries, they're
not all of a sudden going to change their laws because you're
there. So we can't use this as an
excuse to not engage. In fact, it's the opposite,
right? We carry the Kingdom, and this
should be the exact reason that we engage even more because you
are God's chosen people to carry that Kingdom into this problem,
this gap in human history. This 4th 1 is our last one here.
Comfort. I got a call, a phone call in
March of 2025, this year and it rocked Ashley and I's world a
little bit. We had adopted Rosie two years
ago and for all intents and purposes, we kind of felt like
that chapter of our journey was closed.
And we got a phone call that morning that there was someone
that we knew who now had a newborn that was in need of
foster care, wasn't thinking about it, wasn't ready for it.
Let me just let a few fleshly thoughts out for a second.
Older, mid 30s, right? I was thinking, I thought I was
going to be an empty nester in, I don't know, eight years, 10
years, whatever that number is. This is going to cost me.
I'm going to have to count the cost.
What's going to go into this? And I had these perspectives of
what comfort looked like. And over the next couple of
months, the Holy Spirit just continued to pull back those
things. And I remember Ashley sent me a
YouTube video one night. I was home alone, sitting in
bed. I pushed play, and it was about
foster care and adoption. I was one second in and I'm
bawling my eyes out. I'm crying.
And I know that instant. I'm like, Lord, you're asking me
to do this. I need to stand in the gap.
I need to lay down my life. I know this call is for me.
And so in June of 2025 here, we invited another little girl into
our home and she's been with us the last five or six months and
it has been absolute joy. Remember those opening verses,
right? Holy Spirit speaks, God speaks,
that's his mission formula. All I needed to do was obey.
And in return that provides worship and love to Him.
Sometimes it's hard to come to the realization of what is it
going to cost me to obey. I'm telling you so far that
every minute of it has been worth it.
And we are so grateful that we said yes to God again.
And so we want to talk a little bit more about what is it
practically look like to get involved here.
You understand God's heart. You understand the need.
True intercession starts in prayer and ends in action.
And So what are those tangible things we can be doing as a
church to fill the gap? All right, so there's a lot of
great things happening, new organizations coming to the Des
Moines metro that are answering this call.
And one of them is the Isaiah 117 House.
If you go to YouTube and search micro and Isaiah 117, there's a
video of him visiting the starting place, which was in
Tennessee. And this is a transitional home.
When kids are taken out of foster care, it might take a lot
of phone calls to find a placement for them, a safe place
for them to go. And so in the past, kids have
come and waited at the Health and Human service office, but
they don't have all the needs for those kids depending on how
long they wait. And so this is a house they're
currently fundraising for Polk County where kids come and stay
while they're waiting for their foster placement.
So they have showers and beds and clothes, and maybe you need
to distract them with a slime kit or whatever it takes, but a
safe, kid friendly place on that worst day of their life.
And so they're currently fundraising to come to Polk
County. And it's just a great
organization that is working with Health and Human Services
to provide this care for kids as they move out of their home and
into foster placement. A couple other organization, you
have Foster Squad, they provide support groups.
You can imagine inviting trauma in your house is going to rattle
a marriage at point or your biological children.
And you might need a support group to talk through how to
handle the different things that you're facing at home.
They also do a lot of legal advocacy down at the court
downtown to make sure the laws are good for foster families and
good for foster kids. We have Beauty Amidst the Ashes
that shares about adoption. They also have adoption grants.
And then we have Wildwood Collective.
They are a newer agency that will come in and do training for
churches so that they create these things called care care
groups for foster families. So you have a team of church
people around you as you journey through foster care.
If you're a foster parent that help you with meals and
babysitting and just teach, teach them how to love on foster
parents and foster kids. Practically here for Heartland,
there are many ways you can give a meal is I'm grateful for a
meal any day, you know, And so whether it's their first
placement, meaning they picked up the kid an hour ago and they
need dinner that night or two months later, you know, there's
a lot of appointments for foster kids.
They might have counseling, some therapies, visits with their
biological parents or court dates.
And it can be a hectic schedule. And so providing a meal even
throughout their foster care journey is really helpful.
You can give diapers in formula. There are stipends that are
given to foster parents, but sometimes it doesn't cover the
whole month. In our experience, formula was
covered for about 3 weeks and then we would pay for for the
last, which is totally fine. God, God provides.
But it is a way you could give to families specifically with
little ones because those are who need it for that.
But clothes talk about teens, you know, who are removed from
their home. They might not have a lot.
And it's doubly embarrassing to go to school the next day with
Walmart sweatpants and oversized T-shirt from a free box.
You know what I mean? So providing a, a decent
wardrobe for these kids is a way that you can love, love on these
foster families and love on these foster kids.
And then gas cards, like I said, there's tons of appointments and
it becomes a hectic schedule. And so that's just a practical
way that you can give to foster families.
You can babysit for foster families.
It used to be that you had to be a foster parent to babysit, but
now you can babysit for them and their biological kids to give
those parents a break. You know, there's a lot of
things coming into a marriage if you're a foster parents and to
give them a 2 hour dinner break might be really healing for
them. Friday, Friday we were in court
with our little one and we expected it to be a very clean
cut court hearing and someone came in with no knowledge of the
case and kind of disrupted everything we thought was going
to happen. And if it wasn't for a good
judge on Friday, it could have ended very differently.
We need good judges to take care of these little ones and there
are really good judges and we need to keep voting good ones
in. And so this is the most
practical way that you can support foster families is
because we need good judges and good laws.
So getting to kind of the big kicker, if I was a missionary
peer inviting you all to the Middle East, that would be
unreasonable. We know the Holy Spirit's not
asking all of you to go, but some of you.
He is asking you to invite this mission field into your home.
And so to be a foster parent, you have to take 8 weeks
classes, CPR, first aid, have a home study where they come in
and interview you on different safety checks.
And one of the things you can do if you know someone going
through foster care classes, babysit them while they have
those classes, babysit for their biological kids or their other
kids in their home. And then if you, if you don't
want to be a full time foster parent, you can also take the
classes to do respite. Respite is when you might have a
kid overnight. You know, a family needs a break
and they say, can you take him Friday into Saturday and and you
take him to a movie or do some fun things and then they go back
to their foster family. You can also do respite when
they go on vacation. A lot of times these foster kids
can't leave the state. And so when families go on
vacation, they need safe people to watch them.
And so these are the practical ways that you can help.
Because if we don't step into trauma knowing the healer, who
else is going to do it? We have to be the answer.
We can't be afraid. If we're going to be pro-life,
we're going to be pro kids and pro reunification for these
families. You know one more that relates
to judges. We talk about the Seven Mountain
Mandate. It's not just judges, but your
occupation can impact the Kingdom here.
Maybe you work for one of these organizations.
Maybe you're a social worker and you work for the government, but
that same concept of you carrying the Kingdom, the only
way that this is going to be transformed and his Kingdom will
come is through the church standing in the gap.
So as we close today, you know, Ashley said, we don't expect
everybody to jump up and, and be, you know, foster parents.
But I want to revisit what we talked about at the beginning,
God's plan for missions, His plan of action.
We trust the Holy Spirit this morning to guide you.
That's really the only thing that we want coming away from
this is we should do this every Sunday, right?
You go home and it's Lord, What is my role in this?
What do you want me to do? And you're, you're visiting him
and allowing him to speak. We know that it's going to look
different for all of us. So let me just say, you can't do
everything, OK? We don't have to because we've
got God. But he does offer us a role and
a way to participate. I also think, right, we had Mike
Hutchins in last week. God speaks in waves and the
current wave that we're talking about this morning, right?
Dealing with trauma, but overcoming it through King
Jesus. It's through you and it's
through us as a church where these children are truly going
to feel the love of God. And so I ask that you would
listen to his spirit this morning.
And the only thing that you're required to do it is to love him
to return by obeying whatever he asks you to do.
And so I think we can, we can go home on that.
But we just want to say thank you guys for allowing us to give
this unconventional missions talk this morning.
And if you are interested in helping in any way, come talk to
Ashley and I and we'll help connect you with the church and
how we together as one unit can stand in the gap on behalf of
these children. Amen.
Thanks for listening to our podcast.
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