K-Kings and Queens-Audio adrenaline

I have had the awesome privilege and blessing to visit many countries in my lifetime. A big part of these visits has been teaching and interacting with children. In these visits, I have had the opportunity to love on the kids regardless of language barrier, and show they belong and they are accepted in God’s eyes.

However, the greatest blessing in my trips has been visiting my sponsored child David(pictured above). (If you don’t know what sponsoring is, it involves helping take care of children’s education and their essential needs.) David is on the verge of finishing high school and enjoys soccer as many kids do in Kenya.

To play a small but important role in his life is an honor and a privilege. To play this role, is not to ease my conscience, but to obey Jesus’s call to love the least of these, from wherever they are to Nairobi, Kenya to Edgewood, Maryland.

This call of Jesus to reach out to the least of these goes all back to the Old Testament. Israel was called to help provide for the physical needs of poor. We also get a key part of God’s heart through the prophets too. Jeremiah 22:18, it says of King Jehoiakim, “He defended the cause of the poor and needy and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?” declares the Lord.”

You and I can both see that God has a special place in his heart for the poor. But it takes more than just realizing it, it also involves looking into our hearts when we were children.

“Break our hearts once again

Help us to remember when

We were only children hoping for a friend

Won't you look around

These are the lives that the world has forgotten

Waiting for doors of our hearts and our homes to open”

We all wanted a friend to come and befriend us showing us love and acceptance. A picture of the Father’s unconditional love for us. We all remember those friends, those special people. I didn’t have many friends my own age growing up, but remember mentors who shaped and formed my life. People such as David Robinson, Adam Hawkey, Bob Purnell. All of them have been friends to me and pointed me to Jesus.

In our going back, let us be responsive to the heart of God, not just for the children of the world, but his heart of love that is just waiting to burst in us more fully.

“Boys become kings, girls will be queens

Wrapped in Your majesty

When we love, when we love the least of these

Then they will be brave and free

Shout Your name in victory

When we love, when we love the least of these

When we love the least of these”

We are all royalty in God’s eyes. Each one of us is a child of the son of the living God, we just need to step into that identity more fully. The poor have a hard time seeing they have any worth and value, and many times are just living to survive and not thrive.

When we love the least of these through sponsoring children, adopting children, or loving on kids here in the States, we help kids step into their identity as children of God.

In helping them see they are important and valuable, we play an vital role in them seeing freedom in Jesus and become the child of God they were created to be.

So love, love, on the children around you, whether overseas or the States, but most of all: be Jesus’s hands and feet to a waiting and watching world.