7-26-09 Kid’s – What in the world are we going to do with them?

Big Idea: Kid’s are the future of our families, of our neighborhoods, of our churches, of the world, but even though we know that, we often times don’t live as though kids are that important. Sometimes our relational priorities with our kids get out of sync with God’s priorities for our kids. Sometimes our jobs, our need for status, our “to do lists,” and our “Want to” lists trump the priority of creating great relationships with kids. Jesus focuses in the right direction.

How many of you who have done any parenting or if you spend significant amounts of time with kids – how many of you have thrown your hands up in the air at the end of a day and said, “What are we going to do with these kids?” What are we going to do with these kids?

 

That’s not a bad question to ask, is it? Every Dad needs to ask that question. Every mom needs to ask that question. Every grandparent needs to ask the question, every adult in our society needs to ask the question, “What am I going to do with these kids?” But it goes beyond that.

 

Every nation, every culture, needs to ask that question. Every church needs to ask the question, “What are we going to do with these kids,” because kids are the next generation. Kids are the future of our country. These kids, and how they grow up, will be either be a blessing or a curse. They will either be leaders who make significant changes in our country for the better or take it into a tailspin.

 

The greatest commandments in all the Bible are to:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” Mark 12:30-31 (NIV)

Love your neighbor as yourself – literally love those that you find yourself next to – specifically today – love every kid that you find yourself next to. Not just your child, and not just the kids in this church, but also the kids in this community or the kids in the community that you come from and in places like Guatemala like we’ll be talking about next week. The question is “How do you love kids?”

 

You know, it is true today that most kids can expect to grow up in a broken household without one of their parents with them. That was true for me, and it was true for many of you.

 

So we need to ask the question today, “What are we going to do with these kids?” And I know you care. They are the next generation. They are the future of our church and the future of our nation. We have to care. We cannot say that our mission is to love our neighbor as our self and not love our kids well.

 

There are a lot of sources we can turn to for answers on how to love our kids. Right? We can turn to Dr. Phil, Dr. Spock, Dr. Laura, or Dr. Seuss… there are a lot of people who are experts on kids.

 

But, what I want to suggest today is that we look to an expert who is uniquely qualified on this topic, but who often gets overlooked. This person has not just studied childhood, he actually created childhood. Then, he didn’t just kind of sit back and watch it unfold, but instead, he became a child himself.

 

Since Jesus knew so much about childhood, let’s go to him and ask the question, “What should we do about these kids?” The passage is Mark 10:13-16, and it starts like this,

 

People were bringing little children to Jesus for Him to place His hands on them…

 

Now, I want you to just imagine for a second…imagine back to when you were six years old. Okay? Got it? Do you remember what you looked like? You had more enthusiasm, more energy, more idealism…all that stuff. Imagine this…your mom or your dad comes to you and says, “Jesus is down at Kid’s Dream and I’d like to go with me to see him.

 

And you feel this sense of excitement because you’ve been hearing about this Jesus guy – all your friends have been talking about him. You’ve heard of all the miracles that he’s done – walking on water and turning water into wine. So in your six-year-old mind, you begin to wonder what Jesus might do when you see him. What’s He going to do? Is he going to do something amazing?

 

So you have this anticipation. You walk down the road and as you get closer to Kid’s Dream, there’s a large crowd of people all gathered around Jesus, and He is teaching passionately, and people are listening, and your heart just flies!

 

You walk up, and you start to wonder…Will He talk to me? He looks pretty important. Will He have time for me? So you walk up, but something happens. Verse 13 says this, “…but the disciples rebuked them.” So here you have Jesus’ followers… I kind of picture these followers of Jesus and they have formed a perimeter around Him, and they all have secret service sunglasses on, and they’re talking on their wireless mikes, and they are radioing each other…nobody get to Jesus.

 

So here come these little kids, and they hit the guard dogs…”Sorry, too important, too busy, not enough time…you’re just a kid…I’m sorry, move away.” And they stop you, and you’re heartbroken.

 

I mean, don’t you wish Jesus followers could be like us? You know? With our priorities perfectly in line…right? But then I begin to think of my life. My priorities with my own kids are not always the greatest. Sometimes I let work and what I want to do get in the way of spending time with my kids. Sometimes I think that what I am doing is more important than spending quality times with my kids. I say to myself, “I don’t have time, this is too important – I gotta get this done”.

 

My own priorities are messed up a lot of the time. I start to wonder if maybe…just maybe…the disciples are actually pretty normal. Maybe that is how we would have all responded in here. Maybe how He responds goes against everything people expected.

The story goes on, “When Jesus saw this, He was indignant.” Indignant is a fancy word for he was hopping mad. I love it when Jesus gets mad! The reason I love it is because when someone gets mad, you get to know what’s important to them. You get to see what they really care about. When something is violated that is important to them, they get mad and that’s happened for Jesus.

 

Jesus said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them…” Notice, big emphasis here. This is a double command: Let them come. Do not hinder them. “…for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

 

And you, as a six-year-old, are thrilled, because look what just happened. You

can’t believe it! This huge reversal just went down. You were getting scolded a second ago by the guard dogs, and now Jesus is scolding the ones who were scolding you, and you as a six-year-old love it! Right? Jesus becomes your hero!

 

Then Jesus stops everybody and He makes sure everybody is listening, and He says, “Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God [and He looks at you] like a little child will never enter it.’ And He took the children in His arms, placed His hands on them and blessed them.”

 

So you run to Him, and He grabs you, and Jesus throws you up into the air, and you laugh and you land, and then He takes you and He tickles you, and you laugh, and then you tell Him how smart you are, and He laughs.

 

Now, why is this so amazing? It’s because life was hard in the first century and kids didn’t contribute anything to the culture in terms of living and surviving which is what a lot of the population needed to do. So kids had the bottom rung on the social ladder. They were lower than women on the social ladder in the first century and women were considered mere possessions. Children, we must understand, were lower than that. This is what the disciples were thinking when they turned the children away.

 

Remember what Jesus always does? Whether the person was a prostitute, or a tax collector, or a leper, or now it is a little kid…Jesus says the last will be first. The people on the fringes always got more of God’s attention, because it was those people who didn’t get enough. They didn’t get enough love. No one really cared about those people and it broke God heart, because he created and loved those people too.

 

So what does this have to do with the answer to our question? What will we do with these kids?

 

I think there are three things that Jesus gives, that I would hope that you and I would give – not just to our own kids if we have them, but to all kids wherever we come in contact with them.

 

The first thing that Jesus gave to these kids is his time. This is not easy. None of us would say this is simple. We live maybe in the busiest culture in the world? Sometimes I think “That’s fine, Jesus, but You didn’t have to deal with cell phones, emails, soccer practice, and test scores, and you didn’t have to deal with the job descriptions we have.”

 

But I would argue that Jesus had a pretty important job description too. In three years, Jesus had to reconcile the world to God. He had to show a broken, dark world how to love again. That is a pretty big job description, right? There was no time to lose on that. Yet He stops and He gives His time somehow to these kids.

 

The question for me is “How do you do that?” You and I live in a really busy world. We live busy lives. How do we give more time when we don’t feel like we have enough already? The word that Jesus would use is “Sacrifice”. Jesus was willing to give up everything, including his life for love. Kid’s are people that need to feel loved. They need love more than anything else in the world.

 

Mom’s and Dad’s, they need your time more than they need the latest electronics. They need your time more than they need you make large amounts of money, so that they can have the latest whatever. Kids need your time and love as much as they need food and water. Love is a necessity. Most of the other things in life are not necessities, but love is. Love can only be communicated by time spent with a kid . . . your kid or someone else’s.

 

If you’re like me, you don’t like that word…sacrifice. Right? It’s hard. I don’t like that! It might mean less paycheck, a lesser house, a lesser vacation, or less prestige for you and for me?

 

There are small ways to use time wisely. Some of you have little kids, maybe it is just figuring out a great bedtime routine where you can really pour into your kids and make that a special time.

 

Or maybe it is sacrificing by making sure you and your family has dinner together each night or more nights. That stuff matters.

 

Maybe it’s you. Maybe you’re so tired. You’re driving home from work, and you’re just beat. Maybe you have no energy left. Maybe it’s driving home in that car and saying, “God, by Your Spirit somehow, would you please give me the energy and love I need to pour into my family.” Maybe that’s where it starts.

 

What are we going to do with our kids? Jesus gave His time, but He

didn’t just give His time, He did something else. He could have just talked to them, but He didn’t.

 

He also put His hands on them. He touched them – and I might add in our day and age – he touched them appropriately.

 

Words without actions to back them up are dead. If I say to my kids, “I love you” but then never demonstrate that love with physical touch, my words are dead. Appropriately touching kids by putting a hand on the shoulder or ruffling their hair or tickling them, are ways that show that they are valuable.

 

One day Jesus healed a leper. A leper had skin that basically was rotting off their body. The skin was covered with open infected wounds and stunk as it decayed. In the religious world, a leper was considered unclean. No religious person would touch someone who was unclean, because they themselves would become an outcast.

 

When no one else would even come close to a leper, Jesus reaches out His hands, and he did the one thing that leper needed more than healing itself. He puts His hands on him and touched him. What is He saying by what he did? He’s saying, “You matter. I accept you. You’re important! I love you.” Touch is a powerful thing!

 

When Jesus puts His hands on those kids, He is saying, “I accept you. You’re valuable! You matter!”

 

So my question for us today as a church is…do kids hear that from us? Do kids hear from this church…you matter? I’m not just talking about kids in your house or your family or your church – those kids are certainly very important, but what about at risk kids in our community – those kids are important too.

 

When you give kids your time and your touch, you may get nothing in return except the satisfaction of knowing God is using you to make a difference in the child’s life. People that do that are hero’s in my book. Nationally there are far fewer heroes then there once was. If you’re one of those heroes I just want to say thank you.

 

The last thing Jesus gives…He doesn’t just give His time, doesn’t just give His touch, what does He do? He gives them to God. He prays for them.

 

I’ll say this…I am a clueless parent. I have a fifteen year old and a twelve year old and I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m trying to figure it out day by day? Here is what I will say…I think, somehow, I’ve discovered the secret to parenting, the secret of working with any kid. Are you ready? They are not mine.

 

As much as I want to protect, and provide and love my kids…they have a parent who is much greater than I am, who loves them more than I could ever love them, and I am so thankful! Because ultimately, they don’t just need me, they don’t just need us, they need God in their lives. They need Christ. So Jesus prayed for them.

 

I hope today, you will leave this place thinking…What will we do with these kids? And we’ll answer this question by saying, “We’ll give them our time. We’ll give them our touch. We’ll tell them they matter. And we will give them to God. We’ll pray for them.”

 

I’d like to offer a way for us as a community to help kids in our community. Kid’s Hope is a National mentoring program where one church joins one elementary school to make a difference in kid’s lives. There are more than 200 Kid’s Hope church/school mentoring partnerships in Michigan alone. Take a look.

 

Kid’s Hope Video

 

Chris Rice is the principal of Lawton Elementary School and a this time, he’d like to share his passion and the needs the school has for mentors.

 

Thank you, for sharing with us, Chris.

 

TESTIMONY: Darien has been mentoring at Lawton Elementary School for several years now. He’d like to share with you some of his experiences.

 

What in the world are we going to do with our kid’s?

 

If you will look at the piece of paper that was given to you, there is a little box, and it just says this, “I will pray for __________.” Please don’t leave this room until you write down the name of at least one kid…maybe two or three. I’d also like you to write down to pray about being a mentor for an at risk child in this community. Are you willing to give one hour of the 168 hours that we are given each week 1/168^th of your time and mine to make a difference in a child’s life.

 

Let’s pray