Why Kids Matter to God

Thank you very much. Always a joy to be here. And when they asked me to do one of these messages on core beliefs and the basics and such, I had no idea exactly which one I was gonna cover. One of the first ones, Whit did, was on steps. That's something that I've always believed in. And I feel like it's one of the most important lessons that we've ever presented at church on the move. But then I started thinking about it as time went on. And I thought, you know, somebody's gotta teach something about kids because there would never have been a church on the move had it not been for children's ministry. And it was one of the primary reasons that we started this church. See, I traveled all over America and I was in everybody's church teaching about kids. And I said, Lord, I don't see anybody anywhere that really has this down the way I think it should be done. And so we started church on the move as a way to show the rest of the country. This is what happens when a church blesses children. And so that's what I'm here to talk about today. Now, before I get into that, I wanna talk about this little thing called grow on the go. A lot of you would be absolutely shocked 'cause this happens all the time. People will ask my kids,

what was it like to grow up in a house with gospel bill? I'll bet you guys had amazing Bible stories and home devotions and my kids will all say, no, we didn't. And people are shocked. I didn't do that. I did it the way the Bible taught us to do it. And in the chapter six of the book of Deuteronomy, God tells Moses how to teach your kids. And he doesn't say you ought to have a very elaborately planned lesson once a week. I didn't know what he says. He says, you shall talk about this when you get up. When you go to bed, when you sit down to eat and when you travel by the way. So I started taking advantage of just five minutes or so at night, right before we put the kids to bed. Or perhaps on the way to school or on the way home. I took advantage of all those little snippets of time that most people throw away. And I would not only teach my kids the Bible while we're driving to school, but in order to get them to concentrate and focus, we always play the game. And we called it Bible trivia. And I told the kids, I'm gonna be giving away points at the end of the day. And we're gonna find out who was listening the best. Now let me tell you something about points. Points are really cheap. So never give away one point for a correct answer.

My games, you got a million points for a correct answer. And so I would take the kids through a million points for this and I'd really build it up. And I have to admit, I kind of cheated every time. Sometimes I'd let quit wins, sometimes games, sometimes charity. Usually the boys would clobber charity. And so every now and then I would say, okay, charity's gonna get a chance now, it's double or nothing. If she gets this last answer correct, charity wins the game. Dad, you gotta make it hard. It's gotta be a really hard question. It is, it's gonna be absolutely hard. And she really had to listen today to get this right. So charity, this is gonna be a tough one. And I'm waiting right till we pull in the parking lot at school, I'm gonna let her win the game right before we get out of the car. And it's okay to ask, it's gotta be a tough question. It is, it's gonna be really tough. Art, charity, are you ready? The million point question. Who died on the cross? (audience laughing) My boys would hit the ceiling. (audience laughing) Charity would get out, yeah, she's five years old. She won the game. That was the only way to make it fair was to give easy answers.

But this is what Andrew and Sally have come up with. They took this idea of what I did with the kids. And they came up with this list of stories and questions. And Andrew, being the genius that he is electronically, has come up with all these ways to use your phone to connect to lessons, to memory verses, to stories, to the questions, to songs. And it's called Grow on the Go. And he's got these out there at his booth this morning and I hardly recommend these. This is exactly how you teach kids. It's the way you do it. And people will say, well, your kids have such an amazing knowledge of the Bible and they do. They grew up with that. But it wasn't because we had 130 to 45 minute lesson. It's because I had two minutes here, five minutes here, seven minutes here, 10 minutes there. And we took advantage of all those little in between times to communicate the word. That's how you teach kids. believers, most adults, are totally unaware of how significant children's ministry is. It's amazing how many people say, "I don't have kids. This isn't for me. I'm done with this message. I'm going home." You'll make one of the biggest mistakes of your life, because Christ highly sustains kids more than you could possibly realize. I would not offend Him if I were you. Jesus is the model for all ministry. We have people today who can teach. Now believe it or not, there was a time when if someone taught the Scriptures, they were considered phonies, because up until that time, the only people that were acceptable were fire breathing preachers who yelled and screamed and thumped the Bible and all

of that. But the teaching ministry was brought forth into the body of Christ and for good reason. Jesus was a teacher. He was also a preacher. He was an apostle, which is what our missionaries are. They're sent ones. And so Jesus was sent to preach the gospel where He was coming. Nobody was asking for Him to come. Our missionaries are like that. Where they go, people did not invite them to come. They went there when nobody even knew to ask them. So we have that kind of ministry. There's the evangelist. The evangelist doesn't have one set church. He travels and has the amazing ability to take a church to a whole new level. And they usually have a very deep and effective gift. That's the evangelist. But they're not the kind of ministries that do well if they're planted in just one place. And so Jesus was an evangelist. He was a pastor. I am the good shepherd, shepherd and pastor. Same word. He said, "I'm a pastor. I'm a teacher. I'm an evangelist. I'm an apostle. I'm a prophet. I'm going to show you in all of those instances the exact Scripture that refers to Jesus as one of those examples. Now I moved here in 1978. I was a kids minister. I was hired at a church to do children's ministry and youth. And when I came, I got an invitation to teach at a Bible school called Rama. And they wanted me to teach all of the pastors about children's ministry. And I thought, okay, oh dear, I've never really taught this before. I know it's important. But I thought, Lord, these people, they call themselves word people. That means you don't do anything if you don't have a Scripture. I don't have a Scripture for puppets. I know they work, but I don't have a Scripture for them. And I don't have a Scripture for my illustrated sermons, not that I know of. And Lord, I don't know that Peter and John did children's ministry services. I don't see anybody in the Bible that had a kid's ministry. And when I said that to the Lord, He arrested me and clear as a bell He spoke back to me. And He said, I had a children's ministry. And if you will carefully read the gospel of Matthew, you will find it. So I went to the book of Matthew thinking I knew a lot about the Bible. I started reading and I started marking down every place where Jesus ministered to, talked about, or demonstrated something relative to kids. There were seven different places. I was blown away.

There are not seven places where Jesus ministered to blind people in Matthew. Not seven, several places, but not seven. And I thought, wow, for someone to say that He's not interested in kids would be to ignore what the Scriptures show. Now I do not have time to go through all seven places. Every one of those is unique and they all teach something different. But there are four of them I feel like we can't live without. And so we're going to take a look at the first one and it's found in the gospel of Matthew, chapter 9, beginning of verse 18. "While Jesus spoke these things unto them, beholder came a certain ruler and worshiped him saying, 'My daughter's even now dead, but come and lay your hand on her and she shall live.'" Now the gospel of Mark, chapter 5, tells us that the guy's name was Jay Iris and it also says that the little girl was 12 years old. When he first came to Jesus, the little girl was almost dead. By the time he got to their home, she was dead. So Jesus arose and followed him and so did his and saw the minstrels, these are funeral home people. And the people making a noise, he said to them, give place, get out of here. The maid is not dead, but sleeps. And you can tell they weren't sincere and they're weeping because they laughed him to scorn, started making fun of him. So they went from mourning to laughing and ridicule in an instant. So nothing that they did was heartfelt. But when the people were put forth, he went in and the Gospel of Mark lays it out in more detail. He went to the bed and grabbed the little girl by the hand and Aramaic being the language of that region. He said to her, it was a very similar to Hebrew. He said, Talithakumai, which means little girl, get up. And she did.

He raised her from the dead. And then he took her to the parents and said, now give her something to eat. Now this is fascinating to me. I love paying attention to all these little details 'cause they mean something. If they're there, they're important. Later on the night of the resurrection day and all the disciples are in great confusion about whether or not Jesus did rise from the dead, 10 of them, Judas is missing and Thomas is missing, but 10 of them are gathered together in this upper room privately and they're afraid. And Jesus just steps into the room out of nowhere. And it's this peace beyond to you. And they're wondering and arguing about whether or not it's him and some say, it's a spirit. And he says, have you got anything here to eat? And so they give him some fish and a honeycomb. And he eats it in front of them. Now, if you understand what's going on, he's trying to remind them about the little girl. Because when she came back from the dead, the first thing he said was give her something to eat. Well, he's just come back from the dead. He hadn't had a thing to eat all day long. So he says, had you got anything here to eat? He's trying to get them to go back and see. This is what you do for someone that just gets raised from the dead.

So after we get raised from the dead, that's why we have this supper, call the marriage supper of the limb. Everybody's hungry. So it's just the way it is after long church services. You know, if you lived in the South 40 years ago and the church got out, you take your life into your hands if you get anywhere near a door shown east, you're gonna get run over. (congregation laughing) So the Bible says when the people were put forth, he went in and took her by the hand and made a rose in the fame here of when it brought all that land. What's the lesson? The lesson is little kids have real problems. The same devil who comes against you comes against them. Most people do not see children problems as real problems. They don't think that the enemy really goes after kids. Can I tell you this? The enemy goes after kids as much as anybody because he knows if he can begin to mess your life up and get you off track as a child, it will be a problem for you the rest of your life. Some of you are battling habits that really began in your childhood. Some of you were traumatized greatly in your childhood and Satan knows this and for people, especially the people of God, to keep the word of God away from little kids and not to teach them and to water things down.

Now listen to me, we gear things down to kids, but we don't water it down. It's the powerful word, we just teach it in a little different way and here's what I mean. The prophet Isaiah in the most amazing way lays out the plan for how you teach a kid. And Isaiah 28, verse nine, he says, "Whom shall he teach knowledge? And whom shall he make to understand doctrine?" And then he answers his own question. Them that are win from the milk and drawn from the breast. So see, he's saying that at about three years of age, that's when they would win children in those days, they can begin to learn the word of God. Whom shall he teach knowledge? Whom shall he make to understand doctrine? And by the way, this is a beautiful thing. Whom shall he make to understand? When I was teaching kids, I did more than just teach. If all you do is spit out your lesson, you're not a very good teacher. A good teacher can sense whether or not his audience has it. And so if he preaches talks and communicates and you just have that sense, they still don't have it, you will circle the tree and come at it another way. And that's what a good teacher does. Whom shall he teach knowledge? Whom shall he make to understand doctrine? Them that are win from the milk, drawn from the breast. And then here's the real key.

For precept must be upon precept. Hear a little and there little. The whole idea is you don't try to teach the whole Bible. I had an amazing, amazing friend who was a ventriloquist, bigger than life personality. Disney World tried to hire him to work for them three different times. He was an amazing communicator, real ventriloquist. I did puppets but I couldn't, I wouldn't have ventriloquist. I couldn't hide my lips moving. I just put faith in if everybody pays attention to the puppet, they won't look at me talking. (audience laughs) But this guy was great, but he didn't have the success that he could have had. And I used to plead with him and I said, "Chief, you preach everything from Genesis "to Revelation in every sermon. "You don't stick with any one thing. "You have about five different memory verses. "We don't know what you're talking about. "Kids leave and you haven't stayed with any one idea "long enough for anybody to get it. "Please, I beg you, you're such a great communicator. "Write down in one sentence what you want kids to learn "and hit that eight or 10 times in the lesson. "Just keep coming back to that. "Change, tell a story, do an object lesson, "have a puppet skit, preach an illustrated sermon, "sing a song, have a memory verse contest,

"but let everything you do point to that one lesson "and when kids get done, they'll walk out the door "and they will absolutely know what you wanted to say." And he totally disagreed with me. And then they would come back to me and they said, "We don't understand it. "How do you get all these meetings? "You are everywhere." I remember when I went to John Osteen's church back in 1981, he introduced me to the crowd. And he said, "This is Willy George. "Everybody knows Willy George. "Why did I get invited to all the camp meetings? "It's because we not only taught the kids, "but I remember in 1979, "the Holy Spirit prompted me to preach a message on healing. "So I did the whole service on a Wednesday night on healing." I didn't even have the whip. I had to go down to a boot shop on 11th Street and buy a bunch of leather thongs and I made a scourge like they would have used to beat Jesus. And I had the curtains on the big room upstairs at the convention center open about six or eight feet wide. And I took a little boy up there and he disappeared behind the curtains and I went behind him with that whip and I had a leather chair back there with a microphone in it and I beat the daylights out of that leather chair. Deliva was putting blood on the little boy's back, fake blood. And so we're making stripes on his back

and I'd preach a little bit about what they did to Jesus and how they beat his back and buy his stripes over a hill and I'd keep hitting that chair and it sounded like human flesh 'cause it was a leather chair. And so I finally brought the little boy out, by the way, it cost me a dollar in 1979 and get him to do that. It'd be 20 bucks today, that's inflation. And I, but he did it for a dollar. And so he came out and everybody just went, (groans) and his blood all over his back. And I said, "Jesus did this for you so you could be healed." Little girl who was eight years old, totally deaf, sitting in that service, tells her brother, "I wanna be prayed for her." She comes forward, I start praying for kids. I'd never prayed for a deaf child before, but I rebuked the deaf spirit, but I don't know if that's the problem. So I prayed for God to heal anything in the ears that were broken, but I don't know if that's the problem or maybe something she was born without, I prayed for God to create it. I covered every possible base. Her ears began to pop. She got scared and asked if she could go sit down. I told her brother, "Tell her she's gonna hear." And there's a reason why I did that. That afternoon, when the Holy Spirit told me to preach that sermon, I heard him say it clear as a bell.

I administered the kids for years and years and years. I only heard this one time, only once in all those years, but I know I heard it. I heard God say, "I'm gonna heal every kid who comes into that room." There were over a thousand. I went back to do a puppet show. I was behind the stage for 10 minutes. I came out from behind the stage and there was the little girl's mom. quick?" She goes back to sit down. She tells her brother, "I can hear." Her brother says to one of my helpers, and my helpers, we use our heads, they had aprons and they had big pouches of penny candy, and they're walking up and down the aisles, and any kid that's been quiet, they give them a piece candy. So everybody's been quiet. He looks at my helper and says, "My sister can hear." My helper walks to the back of the room, and there's an usher there from a church called Crenshaw Christian Center in Los Angeles, pastored by an African-American pastor, Fred Price, and they were doing the whole camp meeting that year. He radios to the head usher on the floor, who was sitting next to Kenneth E. Hagen, and says, "Little eight-year-old girl just got healed of deafness." All of this happens in less than 10 minutes. I am behind the puppet stage. I have no idea any of it's happening. So anyway, I come out from behind the puppet stage. Kenneth Hagen has just told the whole crowd that a little eight-year-old girl got healed of deafness. Well, the parents know that's our daughter. They jump up. The whole place is praising God, worshiping God, and the parents and the magazine editor. She grabs the photographer. They're all coming, and they're all there in my children's church when I walk out from behind that puppet stage. Now, let me tell you the effect. The effect is, before that service, I was the babysitter. Not after the service, after the service, I'm the man of God. I couldn't believe the difference in the way people treated me, but they started realizing this is not babysitting. The power of God's operating. And that's what I always believed about children's church, that this ought to be a place where the power of God works. This ought to be a place where we do business of God. Now, that doesn't mean we don't have humor. And I believe in humor. But you know one thing I will tell you about the way I'm

ministered, even though I used humor, I was never silly. Silly people don't carry a lot of respect. And it's fun, it's good to use humor. But you can't be silly all the time. If you're going to be the leader, you can't be silly. That's why I never did like clowns in ministry. Don't people think, don't you love clowns? Nope, don't like clowns. I think it's a tough thing for a clown to preach. Can't be taken seriously, okay? Just remember, Andy is not Barney. Barney's the clown, but nobody goes to Barney for advice. Andy Taylor's the one that saves the day. Are you with me? That's why when I did Gospel Bill, I was never the clown. I had some really funny people, but I wasn't one of them. I'm the serious guy. So just take that, if you work in kids, somebody's got to be the straight man, and that's the one that gets kids to listen to them. That's why kids don't write Mickey Mouse letters and say Mickey Mouse prey for me, my mom and daddy are getting divorced, but they wrote me letters like that all the time. And today, wherever I go, anywhere in America, I'll hear and see 40-year-olds, 50-year-olds who say I got saved watching your show. You prayed a prayer, and I'll pray the prayer with you. My life was changed because I prayed with you when I was a little kid, and I hear that from pastors. By the way, I have about 300 pastors a year come to my ranch, 90% of them are people who watched me when they were little guys. That's the fruit of that. So the devil thinks kids are important because he goes after them. Sometimes the church doesn't think they're important because they leave them alone. Children are important. Now, the next story we're going to focus on is this, is that you can have Jesus at your church every Sunday. Listen to Matthew chapter 18, "At the same time came the disciples to Jesus, saying, 'Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?' And Jesus called a little child unto him, said him in the midst of them and said, 'Verily, I say unto you, except you be converted and becomes a little children, you shall not enter in the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself in this little child, the same as the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.' And listen to this, and who so shall receive one such little child in my name receives me. Jesus is saying, children can't pay you back, so I will. When you minister to children, they have no way of paying you back, so I will pay you back on their behalf." Now, ever after today, I want you to think about something. When you drive across the back road back here and look up at that beautiful 180 building In October of 1995, I became actually late September, very burdened about our youth group. It was failing.

We were not reaching our own teenagers, let alone anybody else's. And so I began to go to the youth services. I started studying teenagers, I tried to get the youth guy to work with me, he didn't have the same philosophy. So I took over and I became the youth pastor. And so I changed everything. We had a contest to rename the youth group, we called it 180. We were about three weeks remodeling the old room we had, we got it fixed. And when I started seeing how much money it was going to take to create spaces for these kids and games for them to play after the service and before the service, I thought this is going to cost us a boatload of money. No youth guy could ever have gotten me to spring for this. It was me being there myself, I saw, we got to do something. And so I canceled all of our adult television ministry. It never amounted to a hill of beans anyway. We had eight cities we were on in, it wasn't working. I said, I'm going to take every bit of that money and I'm going to pump that into these kids. So I took all that money and started pumping it into the kids. And they started bringing offerings, no, teenagers don't have any money, if they do they spend it before they get to you. So we had no money. But I made a decision to go after those kids anyway. At November, 1995, this is eight, nine weeks after we started 180, I get a call from Tremel Crow, a big rule of state company, you've heard of them. Tremel Crow says Reverend George, not Brother George, not Pastor George, Reverend George. I can always tell someone says Reverend George, they're not from church. Reverend George, we have 35 acres north of your property, we'd like to sell you. I said, and you know what, I'd love to have that 35 acres, but I can't afford it right now.

We just launched a campaign to build a new auditorium, which is this auditorium, it wasn't built yet. And I said, so guys, I'm going to have to say no, I got to turn you down. I said, no, no, no, no, Reverend George, you don't understand. Make us an offer, we want this off our books by the end of the year. I thought to myself, that sounds kind of desperate. So I said, okay, I'll call you tomorrow. I said, Lord, there's anything to this, yeah, off from 70,000. What? $70,000 for 35 acres on a federal interstate highway a mile from 169. I'm going to offer this real estate company, they're not idiots. I'm going to offer them $2,000 an acre and they took it. You know what the Lord showed me? He said, you went after all these teenagers. They couldn't afford. So I came back and I paid their bill. I got trampled to give you that land for almost nothing. See that's what happens when you make a decision to go after children. Jesus said, who so receives the little child in my name? You receiving me. He's saying, I will pay you back. You people who work with three year olds, God bless you. In fact, there's three year old lady, three year old teacher, not three year old lady. Three year old teacher grabbed me a while ago as I was walking around in the classroom. She said, thank you so much for telling that story. Well, here's what it was. I said, you know the younger they are, the more faith you've got to have. Three year olds will never say, teacher, that message changed my life. Three year olds look at you like you're not getting anywhere at all with me. I am not paying attention.

Everything about them screams, it ain't working. That's what happens when you teach two and three year old kids. Their parents have a totally different take because when those little rascals get into the car, they start singing all the songs. Why don't you sing in class? They don't, but they sing when they get in the car and they know the memory verse and they pray for every one of their stuffed animals and they act out that lesson all week long and then they come back in your house or your lesson, your class, and they zip their lips, you're not getting through. So that's why when you teach these little bitty guys, you got to use some faith. As kids get older, they begin to express themselves and you can see you have any impact, but not when they're little, you have to take it by faith. And so Jesus said, you receive me. All right, third lesson, you can't miss. put his hands on them and pray, and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, "Suffer little children and forbid them not to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven, and he laid his hands on them and departed there." Now, let me look here. Let me get three of somebody. I can need three of them. Okay, right here is three girls. Four, this lady right here and you three right behind. "If I pointed to these ladies right here and said of such is the kingdom of heaven." In effect, what I'm saying is heaven is going to be filled with ladies. Jesus didn't say that about ladies, sure didn't say it about men, but he said it about children. He said, "Heaven is full of these little guys." What did he have in mind? I think Jesus was looking forward to the 21st century, to the day in the hour in which we live, because he knew this was going to happen. Around the world on an annual basis, somewhere in the neighborhood of 37 million babies are conceived in mother's womb and aborted. Around the world every year, somewhere near 20 million babies are conceived in the womb, but are lost due to a miscarriage. So that's roughly 57 million little beings brought to life in the womb, but not to birth. In a 10-year stretch, that's 570 million people under the age of 10, 570 million. We have about 8 billion people on the planet nowadays, a little over a billion, or believers. No way that one billion of us die every 10 years,

but there are 570 million little kids under the age of 10 in heaven. And when Jesus said of such is the kingdom of heaven, he was saying to his followers, "Heaven will be full of children." Somebody says, "I don't know about that. I'm going to give you a scripture." The fact that little children, before they're born, are real spirit beings, is confirmed by what happened with John the Baptist. The angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and said, "Your cousin, Elizabeth, has conceived a son in her old age. This is her sixth month." That's Luke 136. So Mary went to go see because she had not heard that Elizabeth was expecting. And when she got to the house of Elizabeth and Zacharias, the parents of John the Baptist, the Bible says this is what Elizabeth said, the minute that Mary walked into the property. For indeed, as soon as the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. Little John the Baptist started leaping for joy when he heard that baby Jesus was next door. You have to have a spirit in order to have joy. Joy is called fruit of the spirit. Your dog can be happy because he has a soul. Wags his tail. But in order to have joy, you got to be a spirit being. John the Baptist was a spirit, hadn't even been born yet. He's three months from birth, but his spirit recognized the presence of the Messiah. So these little beings, God said to Isaiah, "I knew you and your mother's womb before you were born. I knew you. I called you by name before you were born." Over and again, God says that to people in the Old Testament, "I knew you before you came into the world. I knew who you were." And so heaven is going to be full of kids. Wouldn't that be something for churches to say we have no room for kids and get to heaven and find out the whole place is full of kids? Hey, this is the quietest world you're ever going to live in. If you don't like kids, you probably shouldn't go to heaven. Last thing is this, the enemy is greatly threatened by kids who know the Lord and kids who praise the Lord. And this story is found in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 21, verse 14, "Then the blind and The lame came to Jesus in the-- that he did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, "Hosanna," to the son of David, they were indignant. And they said to him, "Do you hear what these are saying?" And Jesus said to them, "Yes, have you never read out of the mouth of babes and nursing those? You have perfected praise?" I'm reading this story years ago, and I'm saying to the Lord, that the whole temple is full of little kids saying, "Hosanna," to the son of David.

And I'll be honest, I just told the Lord. I said, "These are not Texas bus kids." I've never seen a group of kids all yell at the same time, "Hosanna," to the son of David, and they initiated it. Show me what's going on here, Lord, how this happened. Did somebody show them what to do? I mean, this had to be coached. This is the day that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of the donkey, and everybody in Israel was expecting the Messiah to come. They were not only expecting the Messiah to come, but on that particular day, they understood it was the exact day that Daniel the prophet said the Messiah would enter Jerusalem on the back of a donkey cold. And so they went to the streets, and they saw him riding in on this, which is a miracle. The little streets in Jerusalem are tiny. They're not very wide, maybe 12 feet, tiny little streets, and thousands of people lined them, and they're waving palm branches. Jesus is setting on the hip, the back hip of this little donkey cold, and it's not bucking. That in itself is a miracle. If you know anything about horses, mules, anything like that, there's no way that one that's never been ridden is going to be calm in that kind of a place. But this one was. And so all of these grown-ups are saying, "Hosanna," to the son of David. They have an ulterior motive. They know the Messiah is someday going to restore the kingdom to Israel. They know someday the Messiah will drive out the Romans. They know someday the Messiah will restore national sovereignty to Israel and put David back on the throne. They know that, and he didn't do it, because they didn't understand that his first mission was to win our personal salvation by dying on a cross and rising from the dead. So the parents gave up. The kids didn't. The kids went on to the temple. They had just seen what their moms and dads did. They got into the temple, and the Holy Spirit was there moving. And all the children began to worship, and they all began to lift their hands and say, "Hosanna," to the son of David. And Jesus began to heal blind people all over the temple. All kinds of sick people. But this is what his enemy said. "Do you hear what they're saying?" In other words, what the kids were doing was more of a threat to darkness than the miracles were. And for good reason, because Israel had a history of kids being used by God to completely flip situations. It was one kid who totally turned the Philistine army on its heels when it killed Goliath, a 17-year-old named David. It was another kid, Joseph, a 17-year-old who was sold into slavery, but yet goes down to Egypt and becomes the vice president of the most powerful empire

on earth and gives it a witness for God and at the same time saves his own family. There are three young men, maybe in their late teens, early twenties at the oldest, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who in their determination not to bow to an idol are thrown alive into a burning fiery furnace and are instantly delivered. And the whole kingdom of Babylon is set on its ear because they see this miracle to the extent that the emperor Nebuchadnezzar says, "Anyone who speaks a word against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, I'll cut you in pieces and make your house a dung hill because there's no other God who can deliver after this sort. All of these things brought about by kids." And so the enemy lives in These are just four of the lessons about children found in Jesus' ministry in the Gospel of Matthew, three others that are equally important. Ladies and gentlemen, church on the move is where it is today because of the fact that we've always honored kids. And kids' ministry is something important. It needs to stay that way. Children's ministry is not something people naturally have faith for. If you have faith to do kids' ministry, it's because you heard somebody preaching. That's why no amazing announcement can ever fill a church staff with children's workers. Because the Bible says that faith cometh by announcements, no, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. And that's why it's so important that we hear messages like this from time to time, that we go back and recapture and reestablish. This is important. It's like the three-year-old teacher that I met just a bit earlier. Thank you for telling that story. This will help me to continue doing what I do because the little kids that she's teaching do not yet have the capacity. Now I'm old and I've been around for a long time. I now have the benefit of seeing what this does over the long haul. I see what it did with my kids. I see how it changed my kids' lives. I see what a miracle did and quit one night when I prayed for him when his arm was broken. I had put him to bed. I walked down the hall and I heard the Spirit say you're not done. I went back and he said pray for wit. I knelt down by the bed. I said wit we're supposed to pray again. I laid my hands on him, started praying in other tongues. I'm praying and wit's praying for me. I'll never forget it. He's praying for me with his hand on my head and I'm laying my hand on his chest and I heard the Spirit say tell him to take his arm out of the sling. I said wit I want you to do something. If it hurts you tell me immediately. You don't have to do it if it hurts but I want you to take your arm out of that sling. He started moving it. I said does it hurt? No dad it doesn't. Go ahead keep going. Does it hurt? No.

Five minutes before I bumped it and he almost started crying. I said wit now lift your arm. He said look dad look and he starts doing his arm like this. Do you think that marked the pastor of your church when he was nine years old? Do you see how badly God wants to show himself strong to children? Do you see why this is an important thing? It's so very important. Ladies and gentlemen we have an opportunity before us to shape a whole new generation. There ought to be men and women signed up to get involved with it especially men. Men this idea that it's Mickey Mouse let me tell you something. If you can preach to kids you can preach to anybody. That's why I did so good when I started church on the move. I've been peep I've been preaching on the fourth grade level all those years and all I did is keep it up when I started this church. Let's pray. Heavenly Father thank you for letting me have this time with these precious people. Help them I pray in the name of Jesus to continue to remember these important principles. Lord you're going to show us in the days to come just how effective this work can be and we give you glory for all of it in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you Lee. Thank you so much for watching this message from Church on the Move Tosa. We really hope it encouraged you to take a step toward Jesus. Church on the Move is a family of churches in northeast Oklahoma each with its own in-person pastor. We love our Bibles learning and community and taking steps toward Jesus. If you live in the area we would love for you to join us in person. For more information check out our website at churchonthemove.com or we've got a few videos we think you might like. Check them out here. [Music]