True Justice: Economics by Amos, pt. 3

Have you ever noticed how many products are sold by the promise of making our everyday lives easier? Whether it’s cooking, gardening, learning a language, or swinging a golf club, marketers know that most people will pay for easy.

Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with this. But what happens if our ease becomes our greatest priority? What happens if our comfort comes at the expense of those around us?

This week, churches around the world will celebrate Orphan Sunday. In the same way, we at Grace will hear some of the stories about how our families have been providing homes for children without. Adoption, fostering, and nearly every other great act of compassion is rarely (never?) easy. But what if God promises something far greater than ease for those who choose–even a great cost–to love?

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Sermon Transcript

Grace Fellowship Church

Jon Stallsmith

Series: True

November 2, 2014

True Justice: Economics by Amos – Part 3

Amos 6

If you’ve been with us these last few weeks, you know we’re journeying through the book of Amos, looking at true justice. We’ve spent some time in the book of Hosea, seeking God’s heart for true love and that relationship, and now we’re seeing in Amos how he’s connecting that relationship with God to how we relate to the world. It’s incredibly significant, important. That link of true justice is absolutely essential.

I don’t know about you, but when we come to the conversation about justice, we often use a lot of heart language. We talk about seeing injustice in the world or poverty or any number of these great crises of humanity, and we talk about, “Oh, my heart is broken for that.” Or maybe we pray that prayer, “God, break my heart for the things that break your heart.” It’s one of the deep prayers, I think, of this congregation through the years. “Lord, break my heart for the stuff that breaks your heart.” We pray, “God, give me a heart for that.”

Or even if we meet or find somebody who seems to be almost over interested in some of these issues (as though you could be), we’ll brand them. We’ll say, “Oh, you’re a bleeding heart.” We have this language of the heart that is really closely connected to this conversation about justice. For me, sometimes I can talk about my heart, but it’s hard to know quite where my heart is. Where is my heart really on this issue? I can have a moment of remorse or I can have a moment of conviction, but long term, day to day, where is my heart really?

It’s interesting because justice… I’ll borrow a basic definition from Gary Haugen. He’s the CEO of International Justice Mission, a really cool, godly organization that tackles problems of injustice. He says basically that justice is the right use of power. As we’ve seen as we’re reading Amos, he connects his cry of justice not so much to issues of the heart but actually to issues of the economy, to resources and money. The majority of Amos’ prophecy is focused on how we invest or use our money.

Now with that, he’s not the only prophet who does it. Amos emphasizes these economic issues, but then on top of that, Amos is not the only prophet to make this connection between justice and resources, treasure, money. Think about Old Testament prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah. They talked about it. Even in the New Testament, John the Baptist you might remember in Luke 3 is preaching the good news of repentance. They come up to him and they ask, “How can we bear the fruit of repentance?”

It seems like a spiritual question, like there’s something that needs to happen inside, internally, or maybe some interaction with God that needs to occur. Maybe you remember John the Baptist’s response. He said, “All right, three things. First, share your clothes and your food with the poor.” “That’s the fruit of repentance?” John says, “Yep, share your clothes. Second, if you’re a tax collector, don’t skim money off of the top. Be an honest tax collector.” “Really?”

And then he says, “Third, if you’re a soldier, be content with your wages and don’t extort money from the people you’re protecting.” They asked John a question. John’s a prophet, and he says, “Yeah, the way to bear the fruit of repentance is to do these things.” But they seem like they’re so connected to money; it doesn’t seem spiritual at all.

At this point, we have to remember what Jesus said. He actually said with these kinds of issues there is a very close link between our money and our hearts. He says, “Wherever your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” If you want to know where your heart is, because sometimes it really is hard to know, “Where is my heart on this?” Jesus says, “Find out where your treasure is.”

But what if I don’t want my heart to be there? Because sometimes that happens. When Jesus talks about the heart, he says, “Your heart is where your treasure is.” He doesn’t say your heart is where your time is. He doesn’t say your heart is where you go to church. He doesn’t even say your heart is where you say it is.

He says your heart is where your treasure is. So that’s the same sort of thing Amos is going after here. He’s saying, “Okay, let’s work on our hearts before God in these issues of justice.” But the way he comes at them is through a decidedly economic perspective. It’s maybe a surprisingly economic perspective.

So we’ve seen in Amos 4, he really challenged the people in the area of following their money. Find out where your treasure is. Follow it. Remember the cows of Bashan whose consumption was fueling oppression. They didn’t know that all of their spending was actually creating this really negative side effect over here of trampling the poor.

He said, “In your giving, in your generosity, track your giving.” They’re bringing all these offerings, but they really mean nothing, and their lives are really about themselves. He says, “No, follow your money. Follow how you spend. Follow how you give. This is important.” Then in Amos 5, he sounds that great cry for justice.

As he’s challenging us in these areas of following the money, he says, “Seek God.” What do you do as you start looking at your life, going, “All right, how do I sort this out?” He says, “Seek God. Seek God.” Three times in Amos 5. Seek God. Seek good. Let justice roll down like waters.

Then this week, he talks about a third thing. So if we’re looking at it, he says, “Follow the money, seek God, and then be transformed.” Really this is now in Amos 6. Where we’re about to read is really a window into some of the things in our hearts that need to be transformed as we become more and more people of justice.

Whenever we’re talking about justice (we talked about this last week), it can be kind of overwhelming. The statistics can just almost drown us in despair. So many people are starving. So many people don’t have clean water. So many people don’t have families. So many people are bought and sold as slaves. It’s just totally overwhelming, and our response sometimes is just to say, “Man, I am just one person. What difference can I make?”

Here, as we read Amos, he’s saying, “No, don’t think of yourself as just one person. Become one just person.” With the help of God, let your family become one just family. Your church, your community be a just church, a just community, one whose hearts and resources, lives are aligned to the purposes of God.

In Amos 6, he starts unpacking. He says, “Here are the things that waylay our hearts. Here are some of the attitudes that need to be dealt with.” There are three of them. We’ll take the first one. It’s in the first three verses here of Amos 6. He says, “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, and to those who feel secure on the mountain of Samaria, the notable men of the first of the nations, to whom the house of Israel comes!

Pass over to Calneh, and see, and from there go to Hamath the great; then go down to Gath of the Philistines. Are you better than these kingdoms? Or is their territory greater than your territory, O you who put far away the day of disaster and bring near the seat of violence?” (Amos 6:1-3) Now in Amos 6, he’s addressing the people who are at ease, who feel secure. He’s actually talking to people of the upper crust living in the capital. They have a comfortable life.

If you read this carefully, you see that one of the heart attitudes that has taken root for them is a sense of superiority. In their life of ease and their life of comfort in their little bubble they’ve begun to believe they are better than other people. They feel superior to them, which is why Amos says, “Go over. Look at Calneh. Look at Hamath. Look at Gath.”

These were cities that were similar size and similar security as Samaria in Zion that is addressed here. They were cities that even though they seemed secure, in a short period of time, when God’s judgment came, they were wiped out. They were actually foreign cities. They were not Jewish cities or Israelite cities. They were foreign cities, but they got wiped out just the same.

What Amos is saying is when you start feeling superior or like, “I’m a little bit better than those people,” it’s a dangerous place, and we need to open our eyes and look around and recognize that in the eyes of God, we’re not better. We’re not superior. We’re not a notch above. In fact, when this sense of superiority takes root in the lives of people, it can be incredibly dangerous.

Niall Ferguson wrote a book. He’s a historian, and he wrote a book called The War of the World, and in it, he talked about the twentieth century. Many of you have probably heard how the twentieth century, from 1900-1999, was basically the bloodiest hundred years in human history. There was more slaughter on battlefields, more war, more bloodshed than any other time in human history.

It’s a strange observation, because at the same time so many of the indicators of a health of a society were going in positive directions. So there was much greater wealth by the end of the twentieth century than there was at the beginning. There was a much longer life expectancy at the end of the century than there was at the beginning.

There was more leisure time. People had three times more leisure at the end of the century than they did at the beginning. Even the proliferation of democracies. At the beginning of the twentieth century, about one-fifth of the world’s countries were a democracy. By the end, more than half of the countries in the world were democracies.

You think about all these things. People are living longer. They have more leisure. They have more money. They’re presumably, for the most part, in more empowering government systems. Why in the world would we have so much bloodshed? There are various theories about this, but Ferguson (he’s a very sharp historian) writes about it, and he says some of it has to do with the twilight of the colonial empires, and some of it has to do with the volatility of the economic system, but one of the major, major things was ethnic conflict.

The reason there was so much bloodshed was because there was so much ethnic conflict. Ethnic conflict is another way of saying a sense of superiority. “We feel better than those people. Those people don’t matter. Those people aren’t valuable.” You think about the Holocaust and the slaughter of the Jews along with several other ethnicities.

You think about what happened in Russia. You think about what happened in Cambodia. You think about what happened in China, people starving to death in enormous numbers. It comes from this sense of superiority. “I’m in my place. I’m at ease. I’m secure. Those people don’t really matter.” Amos is coming at it so clearly. He says, “No, no, no. Look around. In the eyes of God, everybody is the same value of person. You’re not better than anybody else.”

Jesus put it this way, “Some of those who think they’re first are going to end up last.” That word first shows up here in verse 1. The notable men of the first of the nations. They think they’re the first, the best. They think they’re better. Amos says, “If we’re going to become just people, we must learn to remove, get rid of that sense of superiority that we’re better.” There’s a lot we could dig into there, but we’ll just move onto the second one. In verse 4, we pick up a second heart condition, attitude, that has taken over these people.

He says in verse 4, “Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and stretch themselves out on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall, who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp and like David invent for themselves instruments of music, who drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph! Therefore they shall now be the first of those who go into exile, and the revelry of those who stretch themselves out shall pass away.” (Amos 6:4-7)

There’s that word first coming back. They think they’re first. They think they’re leading everything. Amos says, “Yeah, this lifestyle will actually put you at the front of the line for the exile. You’re going to be the first ones to be judged.” Here what’s going on is that they have become totally infatuated with a life of self-indulgence.

Look at this description. They’re lying on beds of ivory. The word means literally they just kind of sprawl out. And ivory, you think about that. You’re like, “Is the mattress made of ivory?” because that doesn’t seem very comfortable, lying on elephant tusks. It’s not very soft. Didn’t they have foam, springs, at least a comfort top, something?

But what this is talking about is actually engraved furniture, so this is very, very beautiful, very, very expensive furniture. It’s a sign that they are filling their houses with incredibly expensive things. They’re stretching themselves out on their couches. They didn’t really have La-Z-Boys at that time, but they were lying out on their couches. This is a portrait of a life of total leisure, focuses on just satisfying, indulging their present desires.

They’re eating lambs from the flock, calves from the stall. The idea here is they’re taking the young animals that would grow up and be far more productive if they were raised properly, but they’re taking them young because they’re tender and delicious, and they want to eat the tender meat like that. They’re foodies! I don’t know if you use that word very often, but these are epicures to the highest level.

They’re singing idle songs. They’re just trying to amuse themselves with meaningless pursuits, inventing instruments. They’re not really contributing in much, and then they’re drinking wine in bowls. Not goblets. Normally, you would drink wine from a goblet, but these guys are sitting around and are like filling up the bowl of wine. This is, “We’re going to be here for awhile.” I haven’t seen anybody drink wine from a bowl since like college.

The Bible doesn’t say that drinking wine is wrong at all. It says that drinking to excess, drinking to when it begins to control your life, that’s when it’s wicked or when it’s evil. It turns you into a brawler and a mocker. But here what we see is it’s just drinking wine in bowls. Just everything about this portrait is a life of excess. It’s a life of self-indulgence.

What we’re seeing is that all of their senses and their needs and everything else has become so comfortable and so satiated and so satisfied that they have no capacity to recognize and see the oppression, the injustice that is going on right around them. They’re living in this little bubble of privilege. That’s why Amos says, “You’re not grieved over the ruin of Joseph. You no longer see the injustice, the poor on the street as you go to the luxury grocery store.”

This is one of these tendencies. It’s almost a comical portrait here, but if we’re not careful, it’s easy for us to slip into this same kind of lifestyle. The American Dream, we hear that a lot. A lot of different definitions. What is the American Dream? At its very best, the American Dream to me seems to be an environment, a society in which people have the opportunity and encouragement to fully flourish as human beings, to become what God has made them to be. At its very best, that’s the American Dream.

I think sometimes we begin to reinterpret that dream, and probably the greater cultural forces and all the rest drive us that way, but we begin to reinterpret it a little bit and start thinking that the American Dream is really all about me getting everything I want. We think the American Dream is about me working hard so I can have my money and my comfort and do whatever I want to do with it. When we start thinking that way, we’re coming dangerously close to the lifestyle of those who lie on beds of ivory and drink wine from bowls.

As we read this, sometimes my feeling is that I just want to get rid of everything I have. It’s like, “Man, I don’t want to live like this. I don’t want my whole life to be blinded by my own pursuit of possessions or whatever else, money, resources, food and drink, the way I spend my time,” especially if you’ve ever been overseas and you’ve been exposed to extreme poverty or a real situation of hardship.

A lot of times you come back and you’re going, “I’m going to get rid of everything,” and you just start looking and you hate that you have six shirts on your rack in your closet. You’re like, “That guy only had one. I could do with two.” Sometimes you can read passages like this and start to despise your possessions, despise what God has given you.

Sometimes in order to be free from this seductive version of materialism, consumerism, and the American Dream, we do need to take radical action. Remember Jesus with the rich young ruler. “What do I need to do to become righteous, to know God, to love God?” Jesus said to that ruler, “Sell everything you have. Give it to the poor,” and the ruler walked away. But Jesus knew, “This guy is so consumed with this lifestyle he needs to take a radical action.”

But for the most part and for most of us, the call of the Scripture is not that we despise what God has given us; it’s that we ask why God has given us what he has. “God, why? Why have I this much?” Whether it’s a lot or it’s a little or it’s somewhere in between, it’s always good to think, “Lord, why have you given this to us? How do you want us to use this?” These things are never ours; they’re always from God. We simply steward them, whether it’s money or it’s even children dedicated to the Lord, or it’s homes or it’s cars or it’s possessions or it’s inheritances.

We tend to think these things, “Oh, it’s mine, mine, mine, mine,” but really it’s God’s and we’re just stewarding it. The right question is to think, “Lord, why have you given this to me? Is it that I might lie luxuriously on a bed of ivory or is there something else you’re calling me into? Is there a way of justice? Is there a way of generosity you have for me?”

Then we get over to the third thing, and this is down at verse 11. Amos continues summarizing this whole picture of the chapter. He says, “For behold, the Lord commands, and the great house shall be struck down into fragments, and the little house into bits.” You lose the big house and the vacation house. Both of them are going away. Verse 12: “Do horses run on rocks? Does one plow there with oxen? But you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood…” (Amos 6:11-12)

He continues, but the key phrase here is in verse 12, “Do horses run on rocks?” I’m reading from the ESV, and it translates that second line, “Does one plow there with oxen?” and down at the bottom there’s a little footnote that says, “Does one plow in the sea with oxen?” It’s an interesting idea, and as I’ve studied this week and seen what other really smart people have said about this passage, it does seem like that phrase in the sea is a good way to translate this line.

What Amos is saying is that this kind of life that is caught up in self-indulgence and superiority is a total waste. It’s a folly. It’s absurd. It’s meaningless. Running your horse on rocks. That’s a bad idea. It’s like taking your horse and ruining his hooves and giving him a great chance to break his legs. When you run your horse on rocks you ruin your horse. That’s what Amos is saying.

Then the second one. Plowing the sea. Just think about oxen and a plow that’s made to divide up the earth so you can plant in the furrow, and taking that out into the ocean, and you’re running it through the water, and as soon as it passes, there’s just no trace that it was ever there at all. Amos is saying this kind of life of self-indulgence and superiority is a folly! It’s a farce. It’s meaningless.

Jesus talks about this. He has so much to say about all of this. We won’t have time to unpack all of the passages on your sheet, but for each of these three heart attitudes, Jesus really teaches the true way to be healed. Not superiority, but humility. Not self-indulgence, but generosity. Not folly, but shrewdness, wisdom.

Remember what Jesus says about possessions even. He says don’t store them up here on earth where they can rust, get stolen, or eaten by moths, but put your treasure in heaven. Invest even your resources because that’s where your heart goes. Invest your resources into stuff that will last.

Some of you might remember a number of years ago, Buddy Hoffman, who planted this church and is leading up at New Hope… We were going through some of these same passages, some of these same issues. Buddy was so moved by this whole thing that he found a book called Money, Possessions, and Eternity by Randy Alcorn. It’s a really great book.

It talks really specifically about what the Bible says about tithing, about giving, about how we use our resources, about business and how money works in the church and multi-level marketing within a church environment. It’s just really a great book. A really helpful, biblical book. Buddy really loved this book, so he bought like 5,000 of them with his own money, and he gave them away. Some of you probably still have on your shelf that Money, Possessions, and Eternity just sitting there.

But one of the things Alcorn talks about… He wrote a much shorter version that if you’re not into reading like 600 exhaustive pages on money, possessions, and eternity, you could just read The Treasure Principle. It’s like 40 pages and it’s small. As he’s writing about this, he’s talking about this, and he says when Jesus is talking about your possessions, storing them up on earth, he’s not saying that possessions on earth are bad, he’s just saying they’re temporary. They could be stolen. They can rust. You lose them at some point. Maybe it’s your death.

There’s a famous story about John D. Rockefeller, one of the most wealthy magnates in the history of the United States. After he died, someone came to his accountant and said, “How much did John D. leave behind.” The accountant famously said, “All of it,” which is true. The stuff we have on earth here is temporary. We have it for a time and then we lose it by one way or another.

This is what Alcorn writes about this whole idea. He says, “Investment experts known as market timers read signs that the stock market is about to take a downward turn and then recommend switching funds immediately into more dependable vehicles such as money markets, treasury bills, or certificates of deposit.

Jesus functions here as the foremost market timer. He tells us to once and for all switch investment vehicles. He instructs us to transfer our funds from earth (which is volatile and ready to take a permanent dive) to heaven (which is totally dependable, insured by God himself, and is coming soon to forever replace earth’s economy).”

He says, according to Jesus, storing up earthly treasures isn’t simply wrong; it’s just plain stupid, which is very close to what Amos says here. He says it’s like running your horse on rocks. It’s like tilling the ocean. It’s folly. It’s folly. Instead, learn to be shrewd. Learn to invest wisely. Learn to direct our hearts and our lives toward justice, to becoming just people.

Now it’s an interesting morning because all across the country, and really around the world, churches are remembering orphans. It’s Orphan Sunday. So hundreds of churches, thousands probably, are talking about orphans. We know that the issue of orphans, children who are vulnerable and not raised in a safe environment with parents is a serious issue of justice in the world.

In fact, Buddy would always say the measure of a church is disciples. How do you know if a church is doing the things God is calling it to do? Well, making disciples. But the measure of a society according to Scripture is the condition of the poor, the widows, the aliens, the immigrants, and orphans. If you want to know about the overall condition of a society, how does that society treat the poor, the immigrants, the widows, and the orphans? This is God’s heart for the powerless, for the people who are in a position to be abused by power.

So this morning what I want to do is just share with you actually a little bit of the story of Danny and Kelly, because we could talk about a bunch of statistics about orphans, but really one of the ways that in this community the issue of protecting children who are in very vulnerable situations has come through is the foster care initiative. It’s not just our church. There are a number of churches who are doing this.

But you might remember in August 2013 we really started to notice in our county there is a dire need for good foster homes. In fact, currently there are about a little bit more than 500 children in the foster care system, but there are only 57 foster families. So obviously, we can’t put all those children into those homes. On a much larger level, in the state of Georgia, we have more than 8,000 foster children waiting to be placed, and there are 10,000 churches in Georgia.

So the people we partner with, their name is 111ProjectGA (29:23). The idea is if every church could get one family to take one child for one purpose…that’s the 111…then we would eliminate the need. Just if every church had one family that did foster care. Of course, at Grace, we’re overachievers. So we started talking about that, and when we began this journey we had one family we knew of that was already fostering, but since that time we’ve brought seven more families through the process. Yeah, amen. It’s good news.

Yeah, seven more families have come through the process. We have three more who are in the pipeline. We have eight care communities, which are people who say, “We’re not in a place where we can fully foster, but we can come alongside those who are fostering, support them, help them.” So we have eight of those. We have three more that are in formation, but the need is still pretty great.

Yet at the same time, this is one of those areas where we can move toward justice, even in our own lives. This may not be your area, but this is an example. This is one of those issues where as we’re weighing all of these things, “Do I think I’m better than everybody else? Is my life too self-indulgent? Am I just wasting my life on folly that won’t result in anything?” this is one of those areas where we can become a just people, a just church.

I want to invite Danny and Kelly up, and they’re going to share a little bit of their journey. We’ll just interview them a little bit about becoming foster parents and how that has gone for them. As they’re coming up, Danny and Kelly have been around Grace for a long time. They’re really dear friends, and in fact, their children, when I used to teach in the Treehouse, the fourth and fifth graders, I had Christian before he became six-five and an amazing pitcher. He’s in college now.

Then there’s Emma, and Addy is now in KidzLife on Wednesday nights and comes up to me after the lessons still, and we talk. It’s really sweet. They live in Lilburn, just off Five Forks in a really sweet home, though not a mansion by any means. I mean, no offense, but you just have a great, solid home in a neighborhood.

So anyway, we’re talking about justice. We’re talking about Amos. We’re talking about investing our lives, figuring out how our lives intersect with some of the needs in the community. So for you guys, here you have three great kids, godly kids, working, busy life and everything else. Why in the world would you become foster parents?

Kelly: It was a little over a year ago when Denise got up and shared with us what was going on in Gwinnett County. I, at that time, knew there were kids in foster care and knew there were really hard situations but had never encountered anybody. When she shared that there were kids who were having to stay in extended-stay hotels with a court-appointed sitter because there were not enough homes for these kids, it absolutely wrecked me, because I thought, “Here my kids have a decent home. It’s not a mansion, but it’s a decent home. It’s clean.”

Jon: It was very clean. I was there for dinner this week. It was very clean, cleaner than my kitchen.

Kelly: You’ve been there. We have a dog. But here we’re in our bubble, our little Lilburn bubble, and I have kids at Camp Creek and Trickum and Parkview. I have a senior in high school. I’m on the PTA board, all this stuff. “Lord, I’m really busy.” When I heard Denise share that, it was like the Holy Spirit was absolutely going, “You could open your home. You could do that. You could be parents so that these kids wouldn’t have to stay in a hotel,” and it just would not leave me.

Jon: What about from a dad’s perspective, Danny?

Danny: A lot of the same. Just the whole mindset of really opening up my world as a dad. I enjoyed being a dad to my kids. I mean, it just goes without saying, and just really had a hesitancy of opening up myself, I guess, for strange kids coming into my house, but again, that’s just not of my doing.

That’s totally what God takes care of, and so bringing these in and being able to open myself up and love a little bit more, which is perfectly… It was a nonissue. I wouldn’t say it was easy, but God takes care of that, and I have thoroughly enjoyed being a dad to kids who have come through our doors and have stayed for a short amount of time before they move on.

Jon: For you guys, I mean, as you’ve gotten into the process more, how do children end up in the foster care system in the first place? I mean, what kinds of needs do they have? What’s their situation that they’re in foster care?

Danny: Obviously, everybody has their own cases and stuff. For a set we have currently, it was a mom who had passed, and there was a non-family member who was taking care of them. So we ended up taking them, and they have family in California who have been seeking to take these kids back to, I guess, their family, which is understandable. So they just have to go through the court-appointed process of being vetted, being checked before they just send the kids out to California. So they’re just staying with us until that time of being reunified with family out there.

Jon: So there are some situations like that, and then other situations I’m sure of hardship. You hear all sorts of different things. We’re talking about comfort, and now all of a sudden you open up your home. You guys have had five different foster children stay with you. Does this disrupt the comfort of your home?

Kelly: Yes…for a season, and then it’s like everybody gets into a new normal. The kids now, it has been the most seamless transition in that they’ve just come in and they kind of go with the flow, and it’s time to go to a volleyball game, or it’s, “Come on, we’re going,” kind of a thing. There are some challenges.

Our first guy who we had, we were awakened at 2:00 in the morning one morning by police officers knocking on the door. Someone had made a phone call to 911…47 times…because someone had borrowed a cell phone that was locked, and they only thing they could do was call 911. So there are those little things.

Jon: Just a little thing…47 calls to 911.

Kelly: Just little things like that…47, yeah.

Danny: He was persistent.

Kelly: Yeah, yeah. But what’s been neat through all this is knowing that the kids who come to you have come from something that’s been broken. Either it’s a parental choice or there’s death or there’s loss. Something is going on, so when you deal with behaviors to know that these kids aren’t acting just because, “I want to be mean” or just because, “I want to call 911.”

There’s a reason. There’s a root issue. Just knowing that and praying and asking God to help you see that and not just see the behavior that’s going on, but to know there’s really something. There’s a need there. So that has been huge for us to get to see, God just working in the lives of our kids.

Danny: And it’s by no fault of their own, all these kids. It really is choices their parents are making or guardians or whatever. They just get put into pretty much an environment where it’s safer for the kid. And that’s what we enjoy about it as well, being a safe place for kids whose parents need to work something out or family members need to work something out before they go back into that situation. So that’s pretty much what we’re doing, just being a safe haven I guess you could say.

Jon: You talked about your kids going to volleyball games and everything. What has been the impact on your children?

Kelly: Emma? Emma is over there. It’s been awesome in that we have seen our kids come out of the “It’s all about me and what I need and what my family needs to be.” They’re emerging. It’s a process we’re all going through, but it’s really neat to see them develop an empathy for these kids.

To know our little girl we have now who… Addy realizes her mom wasn’t there to fix her hair for her, so Addy is super careful with her. Just seeing that kind of thing. Yes, there are frustrations. Just like in any other family there’s going to be a little friction, touching stuff and bothering my things, that kind of a thing, but it’s really been good for them to be part of our mission. It’s been huge.

Jon: And what about y’all? What have you guys learned…Danny?

Danny: What have I learned? Pretty much coming out of a place where I guess you could say we were comfortable in our homes there off of Five Forks in Parkview district, whatever. There was a sense of comfort, and I guess what we’ve learned is we are capable of doing this. This wasn’t like an incredibly huge step for us to take. We were able to just take it one step at a time and realize that we were pretty much capable of taking care of kids who aren’t our own for however long we need to do this. That’s just one of the things I’ve learned. Patience. More patience.

Kelly: One thing that surprised me at first was that my immediate family was not super supportive of our decision. They were kind of the ones that we got the pushback from, like, “Really? You’re going to take strangers into your home?” or, “Where are you going to put them?” because each of our kids at that time had their own bedroom, and, “You’re going to make your girls stay in one room together?” You know, the horror of having to share a bedroom. You know that kind of a thing.

But what has been so cool is seeing how God has given us a team here at Grace of five families, and they have come along beside us, and they bring us meals on Mondays because they know that’s our hairiest day of the week. They’ve all been fingerprinted, so if I need to call and say, “Can you come get these kids real quick?” they’ll take them to the park for a couple of hours or get them off the bus if I’m running late. That kind of thing. So there’s absolutely a support system, so we’re not an island with our foster kids. There are six families involved in this.

Danny: We’ve been blessed by that. Yeah.

Kelly: Yeah.

Jon: Well, when I was at dinner at your house this week chatting with the young man who’s staying with you, I liked him a lot. He has been coming to KidzLife, and so he’s heard me teaching, and he says, “Mr. Jon, you’re a good pastor. You say what needs to be said, but you add your twist.” I liked that moment. I felt good. I was like, “This is great.”

Kelly: I love it. I love it. We have conversations. Like when they first came, he said, “Mrs. Kelly, do you get to choose what kind of animal you get to come back as?” So that was his foundation. He was thinking reincarnation and all this kind of stuff, and I was like, “Oh, bud.” So you know I’m like, “Well…” and so we talked about it. But to see how far he’s come in six weeks. It’s been awesome.

Jon: Yeah, and talk about that for just a moment. Obviously, you’re investing in their lives. You’re opening your homes and time and food and care and all the rest, but what about the component? I mean, what fruit have you seen in their lives?

Danny: Well, I guess the change we’ve seen in their lives is when they first came in they were just really kind of sullen. Of course, who wouldn’t be, but they were just kind of sullen, especially the 6-year-old little girl. She just really didn’t smile much. She was very serious. The kid, the 10-year-old, was kind of we call it sassy.

Jon: There’s not a lot of permitted sass in your home.

Danny: Not at all.

Jon: Yeah.

Danny: No. But what we have seen, and we’ve even been told this by their teachers at their school, which is encouraging to us, is that they’re smiling in the hallways at school. They laugh. They’ve actually got really great personalities to themselves, and it’s been cool to watch that unfold and blossom just around the house and just the playing with each other and the jumping around.

Kelly: We did pumpkins Thursday night, and the first thing was we’ve never carved a pumpkin before, and so we made a big deal of it. The whole time, the 6-year-old, who had been so somber and so…it was pitiful…now she’s jumping around going, “I’m happy, happy, happy!” She’s jumping around the pumpkins. So it’s awesome to see them get to be kids again and to have that joy that they’re supposed to have.

Jon: And what about spiritually? Are you allowed to talk to them about God and life?

Kelly: Yes. One thing that’s awesome. We have the KidzLife CD playing in our van all the time, and so they’re just singing along and all that. I said, “Guys, do you realize that by the end, when you’ve memorized this whole CD, you will have memorized 23 Bible verses?” They were like, “What?” It’s a big thing, so just that impact alone. But Danny is awesome about tucking the kids in every night and praying with them, reading the Bible with them, and so he has gotten to see a little bit.

Danny: So there was a night when we were reading a Bible story. This is out of the little kids Bible with illustrations and stuff. I guess it was the 10-year-old boy made a comment, and I forget what the story was about, but the 10-year-old made a comment about going to heaven. I just wanted to make sure he doesn’t assume all people go to heaven. So I’m like, “Well, not everybody gets to go.”

So we talked about sin and just how sin cannot be present in God’s presence, that kind of thing. So we talked about forgiveness of sins and what Jesus did for us. Through the whole course of that conversation, the 6-year-old little girl’s eyes got really big, and she’s like, “I want to do that. I want to ask for forgiveness of my sins.”

I said, “Well, okay. You can do that.” So she pulled up the covers over her head and she got under her pillow at the same time, and I said, “Okay, so you’re not going to do that out loud?” “Nope!” So she got into her little place, and several seconds went by, and she came out with a big ol’ smile on her face, and so I reiterated what she did, and I said, “You need to make sure you ask Mrs. Kelly about it, and you tell her as well in the morning.”

But what I didn’t say was through the course of that week she had problems going to sleep and sleeping through the night. That’s something we kind of like to do as old people. So Kelly would have nights when she would just feel a little… Thankfully, she went to Kelly’s side of the bed, but that’s what she would do. Kelly would wake up to a finger poke. So earlier that week, Kelly had to get her back in the bed, and that night after doing this she slept all the way through the night, woke up refreshed.

Kelly: She came downstairs and she goes, “Mrs. Kelly, did you know that Jesus died on the cross and he took all of my sin?” I was like, “I know that!” So it was awesome.

Jon: Oh, thank you guys, for just sharing a little window into that process. Let’s just thank Danny and Kelly for sharing. Oh man. So some of these issues in the world and in life are complicated, but God’s Word is not super complicated on this stuff. Amos, John the Baptist, Jesus, the apostle Paul over and over in the Word of God say, “Hey, be just people.” Not because we’re saved by our works but because we’re saved for works. God makes us righteous that we might be just. Righteousness and justice going together.

I don’t know what the journey toward becoming more just looks like in your life. Maybe it’s fostering. Maybe it’s adopting. We have so many wonderful families in this church who have adopted. Maybe it’s working with the poor. Maybe it’s being kind and simply noticing some of the hardship around. Maybe it’s dealing with some of these attitudes that creep into our hearts…superiority, self-indulgence, just folly.

I don’t know what it is, but I know the Lord has all of us on this journey. Just like Danny and Kelly were sharing, they have a full life, and yet there was room to go a little bit further, to open up their hearts a little bit more. Not from guilt orientation or because it was something they should do, but because they’re knowing more and more the heart of God. There’s more space to love. There are more ways to engage. There’s more justice to be found.