We Said Yes
First B Jackson
2023-03-12

Automatically transcribed. Where this and the recording disagree, the recording is the record.

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Absolutely. Thanks for breaking the ice. I yeah. Good right? Good morning, first b.

You congratulations. You have made it to church on time at Spring Forward. Please stand up. We're gonna we're gonna worship together. Carl and Ray are out of town as you could see, but Florine and I and Glenn are gonna gonna do our best.

So here's a good word from re Revelation four to lead us into worship. It says, you're you're worthy, our lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power for you created all things, and by your will, they were created and have their being. Let's sing of it. Stars declare who you are I'm so but still you forever my heart

Alright. Good morning, everybody. You can be seated. Welcome to First Baptist Church. Ray and Carl are away on a retreat this week.

We're really excited for them. Be praying for them that they'd be, rested and renewed and ready to go. We've got a bunch of stuff still going on here. So let's go ahead and check that next slide out there. Oh, I got it.

Oh, Monday night's a first b. Brad, do you wanna come on up? I'm teaching. Oh, Brad is Brad is speaking. They can't hear you online.

So if you have anything else okay. Alright. Brad is speaking. Come on by. I'll be surprised tomorrow.

It's pizza night tomorrow, and also Owana is on. So bring your kids at 05:45, is it, to sign up? And then, we'll have pizza and stuff ready to go. There'll be enough for the kids and for you. The Monday night service is still on.

Brad's gonna be preaching, so, come hear what he has to say. We'd love to have you. The connect hours between services, come come down the hall, meet the people for the 11:00 service. Just stick around for a while. It's great.

Grab some coffee. The ladies fellowship meets on Thursdays at 6PM in the Fellowship Hall. Come even if you haven't been here before, even if it's your first time, whatever, just just show up. It's great. You don't have to worry about being in the middle of something.

Also, the ladies one day retreat, we have Nancy Traziano, who's supposed to talk about that. There she is. Come on up, Nancy.

Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. It's good to be in the house of the Lord this morning. Amen?

I just wanted to take a moment to encourage the ladies to join us this Saturday for our one day ladies retreat. Even though the venue has changed from the lodge to fellowship hall, the content will remain the same. Amy Litzelman has graciously accepted to teach us the way of love, and Casey along with Christine will be leading us in worship through song and we believe that God, the Holy Spirit will have a word for each lady who attends and I know that we all have busy lives and busy schedules but I also think it's important to carve out some time to hear what the Lord would like to speak to each one of us. We will have a morning session after breakfast and a second session after lunch. So, you could join us for the morning or the afternoon but we hope you can join us for both.

And as pastor Ray said a couple of weeks ago, it will not only benefit you but others as well in your life. We do have some planned activities between sessions for fun and fellowship. We have a silent auction that will be going on and if you're doing some early spring cleaning this week at home and you have something you'd like to donate, be feel free to drop it by the church foyer. We also have a close swap and an A con and some other door prize drawings. But we hope that ladies, you will be encouraged to come and invite your encourage your teenage daughters, your friends, your sister, your mother, your neighbors, your coworkers, because it's gonna be great day for all.

And men, if you've tuned out for a minute, tune back in because this is an opportunity for you to encourage your wife and your teenage daughter and your sister and your mother and your friends and coworkers to come. We're excited to see what God is going to be doing in the hearts of the ladies who attend. And I will be in the foyer after the service if you have any questions or you wanna sign up. Thank you.

Great. And you can also sign up all week long. There are some little slips on this back table here. You can turn them into the office and I'll get them where they are going. Sunday school volunteers are needed.

If you have any questions, contact Liz Owings. Please, please, please consider doing that. It's on a rotating schedule, so sometimes you only have to do it once a month. So it's pretty low commitment, but a big impact. And it also gives the people who've been doing it habitually, they'll have a break for change, which would be really nice.

And, this is, for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. They are doing some classes here in May. They're free, and, they're to help teach you how to share your faith. I think it's a really extraordinary opportunity to get grounded and get practiced with sharing your faith because in September, they're doing a big rally over in Idaho Falls. September 23 is the Kids Fest.

September 24 is the tour where Will Graham will come and share, and Crowder will be playing music. That will be free, and we're encouraging people to invite friends to go take take your friends over there, take your neighbors, and would you consider taking this card home that's in the back of the chair? This is for you. It's not for us. Take this home.

Pray about it. It asks you to to put some names in the back of people to pray for, to take, there so you can share your faith with them, and hopefully bring them to the Lord, because it's really a big part of who we are as Christians is sharing our faith and and trying to build other people up. Would you put some names on there that you can consider? Put it on your mirror at home. Put it on your refrigerator.

Pray about it. And, and I'm challenging people to put one impossible name on there, one person that you think will never come to the Lord. Put it on there, pray for them every day, and just pray for an opportunity to share with them and maybe invite them to the the event. It's free. The classes are free.

We've we've interacted with them a couple of times already. I love these people. They're here to to sow into your life and make a difference. So would you would you show up for that? And I think that's the last slide.

So we'll go ahead and sing a little more. Thanks a lot.

So let's stand up. Let's do something a little different. Let's say hi to your neighbors. We haven't done that in long time. God, we we just come before you this morning, and we just thank you for for your grace and your mercy that you have on our lives.

We pray that you that you would be blessed this morning, that we would worship you, worship your name. You have created us for a purpose, and we just thank you for today. And we just pray that you would be with this time and be with Glenn as he brings brings the word. Amen. It's in your name we pray.

Sing of the goodness of God I love your voice you have led me for the fire in darkest night you are close like no other I've known you as a father I've known you as a friend I can say You can have a seat for a minute. So we're heading into a time of the worship through giving part of the service, and I'll invite the ushers to come on forward. Brian, could you lead us in prayer?

Lord Jesus, thank you so much for loving us, and thank you for supporting this church and giving us the ability to

to live here and to

to serve you. And thanks for blessing us, Lord. Thanks for your faithfulness, like the song said, your goodness. And I just pray, God, that you'll you'll use this offering and you'll bless not only this church, church but the local missionaries, the international missionaries, our staff, and use this this offering for your glory, Lord, and multiply. And it's so exciting to see how many different around around the world with with these funds that you provided for us, Lord.

So thank you, Jesus. We love you. Amen. Amen. Amen.

It's time for children's church.

Children's church time. Am I on? I think so. All right. Well, I definitely never had, so much sympathy for Moses.

Literally that was my first thought this morning. My first thought was, man, it feels early because of the time change. My second thought was, I feel for Moses. I understand now. I don't know who my Aaron would be.

Brad maybe would be a good choice. I was the first person who came to mind, but I was like, Brad, you can just read my notes. But Brad's busy tomorrow doing that. So thanks, Florian and Ryan for worship. Great job.

I know that's a big thing to take on, so we appreciate that. We're going to start today by reading a passage from James one. We'll bounce back and forth in it a little bit, but, I'm just going to go ahead and read through it. God blesses those who patiently endure testing and temptation. Afterward, they will be they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.

And remember, when you are being tempted, do not say, God is tempting me. God is never tempted to do wrong and he never tempts anyone else. Temptation comes from our own desires which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions and when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death. Don't just listen to God's word, you must do what it says.

Otherwise, you're only fooling yourselves. For if you listen to the word and don't obey, it's like glancing at your face in the mirror. You see yourself, walk away and forget what you look like. But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free and if you do what it says and don't forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it. If you claim to be religious but don't control your tongue, you are fooling yourself and your religion is worthless.

Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God, the father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you. So that's kind of our our main passage today. My name is Glenn. I know many of you here this morning, certainly not all, if you're not a regular attendee. As you've heard, things are a little different this morning, but I'm certainly glad to be here with you.

I love our pastoral staff. We're really blessed to have them. The way they teach the Bible is so valuable to this church and the community. My wife, Liz and I have four children, Logan, Caleb, Timber and Sealy. Blake, And there we go.

We've been in the area since we moved to Bondurant from Montana about eleven years ago. We've been attending First Baptist, since 2015, and then Liz has been doing children's ministry here for the last several years. We're both off and downstairs, so I might be maybe more likely to see some of you in passing, than in this very room, but I'm glad to be here with you today. So Ray and Karl had this upcoming trip and asked that I fill in with a message. I tend to be somewhat academic in just how I approach things, life in general.

So, this is gonna be a little different, and that's, it's gonna be a stretch for me. Like, it's gonna be somewhat personal, and, that's a good thing for all of us maybe. So as I was praying today about today and what I should talk about, I felt pretty clear direction I should share our adoption story, which is not really a standalone thing. It's part of our life and our testimony, as a family. Some of you know, many of you know probably that we adopted our youngest child, Sealy, from India a little over five years ago.

There are a couple of things that immediately brought some doubt and insecurity into my mind, just to be totally honest. They're both probably a little delicate and hard to articulate. I hope I come across the way that I mean to. The first is that I don't want anybody to think that I'm like impressed with myself that we did this amazing thing. God asked us all to do things.

Some things we say yes to in obedience and some things we don't. And, I know that I've wasted time and opportunities to serve Christ, and obedience in this particular thing was saying yes to God and just simply that, and him absolutely doing the rest. And, he used other people who said yes and continue to say yes to come alongside of us to make it happen. So it's really not not about us at all, it's about it's about God a 100%. Any good thing that we do as believers is a reflection of God's goodness to us, and that's kind of one of my primary main takeaways from today.

The second is that this is Sealy's story too, and in a way, it's hers more than anybody else's. She will have her own completed story someday, and I hope that God is in the very middle of it. I tried to be thoughtful about what details to share and which to kind of keep more privately to ourselves, and I hope I landed a good balance on that. With that, we'll begin. So the beginning of our adoption story is really the beginning of our marriage in a lot of ways.

Liz and I met about fifteen years ago. At that point in our lives, we both truly wanted to do whatever God wanted us to do. That's probably the thing we remember most about one another at that time, during that season of life. It was a really short season because, we met in August and got engaged in September, and we got married in November, and we had Logan nine months later. So, this is not a timeline that I recommend, in general, but it was the right thing for us, and I can honestly say we were lockstep with God's voice during that time.

And I think that has a lot to do with what took place afterward. When we were very first married, we attended church where there was a strong I call it a culture of adoption, I don't know what else to call it, for lack of a better term. So many of the staff and attendees had either adopted children themselves or been involved in helping others do so, and that just felt right and felt biblical to us, Our kind of mentors at that time that we spent time with at that church had a big impact, on our worldview. So that concept to just being open to God's plan and that being really what brought us together kind of set us off, on this path. We moved to Bondurant in 2012, with our two boys at that time and kind of began our adult life, so to speak.

I don't know exactly when we started talking about adoption in a less theoretical and more literal sense, but not long after that. So here we are, we're 25, 26 years old, two kids, school debt, not making much money. I was working as a range ecologist for Sublette County. Liz was doing some tutoring and, homeschooling the boys. We were both praying about it and just kind of came to the same conclusion individually through our prayer time that it was time to jump in.

With international adoptions, there are multiple concurrent processes going on. And some of it depends on the foreign country that you're involved with, the agency, where you live and just in terms of access to resources domestically. So we needed to focus on a country where the age limits for adoption for us as parents were fairly low because we were pretty young at the time. Many countries require the adoptive parents to be like at least 30 or 35 before you can even start the process. Which is something you might not necessarily know.

It couldn't be a country that required months and months of in country stays because of our other young children. So that narrowed it down. Finally, maybe the biggest hurdle for us is, at least at that time, was we had to demonstrate a certain level of financial security, and savings and income. And I mean, once I probably didn't think about it that hard and maybe that was a good thing. Once we got started, remember saying basically, I don't care if we have to borrow every dollar to do this and live our life in debt, we're going do this and see it through.

We started working with a domestic agency to do our home study and then an international agency to begin work on placement and just the mountains of logistics that have to take place. At that time, based on our criteria of kind of where we were at in our life, Ethiopia was one of the only countries that we qualified for. So, we began praying for this little person that we didn't know who would be our child. Things are kind of humming along after about eight months. We learned that our agency was going bankrupt.

Thankfully, we didn't lose a ton of money in that process. I know some people did. It was a tough emotional setback for sure. It was kind of like gut check, are we really doing this? Is this really what God wants us to do?

James says, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So we end up moving to another adoption agency. And just kind of as a look behind the curtain, you know, in terms of the process, the many countries don't adopt out children who don't have some kinds of physical challenges, and that varies again by country. But as part of the process, you tell the agency and ultimately the foreign government what medical conditions you would consider and those that you wouldn't.

And it's a really heart wrenching process. You basically get a checklist, and you know that every box that you don't check represents real people, and that's tough. Because we lived relatively far, we still didn't bond or anything. Hard to get medical emergency medical care, we decided it needed to be something where it wasn't going to be something where it was likely we would need emergency medical care regularly. And also just it's a with all the snow, frankly, and something where the child can still like be mobile.

So then fast forward to 2016, we got word that Ethiopia was going to be closing their doors to international adoption, and that remains the case to this day. At that point, we'd put quite a lot financially into the program. The agency offered to transfer all the costs that they could into another country's program, which was maybe half of what we paid up to that time. So India, which previously we did not qualify for because of our age, by this time we did. And so that was our next option.

We said yes. We immediately started praying for a little Indian girl. By October 2016, we were notified that we had been matched to Sealy. Those are a couple of the first pictures that we got of her. We periodically get a new photo every couple of months, but we never really knew when the pictures were taken.

They do some, at least in this circumstance, some kind of basic health checks. So we'd occasionally get kind of like a one pager about kind of her general health. But

we were

thrilled to see the pictures. It was great. At that point, it makes it easier in a way because this is the person that's going be part of our family, but also harder because this person who's going to be part of our family is across the world and we don't know when we're going to be able to go. It's just a waiting game for paperwork and court processes. During this time, many of our family members, friends, this church specifically, to never stop praying and giving.

It's just tremendous how how giving people were and and helping us fundraise and just all those things to make it happen. And God used that absolutely to keep our faith strong when we were doubting or we weren't like, can we do this? God used God used folks to help us in that way. And I guess, you know, if the theme today is saying saying yes to God, many brothers and sisters in Christ said yes along with us. And that's that's part of the testimony too.

Sometimes in our journey, we we are the God ordained support that holds one another up. As the country did its final review of our finances, we found out that we made enough to move forward with the final steps of the adoption by literally $56 of annual income, which is crazy. All right. That's more familiar. Okay.

That sets me at ease. So this is not a dramatic reenactment. This is literally the spot that I was sitting on 09/16/2017. I was hunting, backpacking alone, sitting on this knob. I've been glassing all morning, and I got a text from Liz that we're leaving to go to India in less than a week.

So I don't even remember the rest was kind of a blur. I don't remember if I could text back or not. It's kind of those places like there's one bar, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I've been back to this place many times. But just kind of started mentally, like preparing.

I actually ended up shooting a nice buck later that afternoon. I was like, alright, I got to like get this hunt over with, and it worked out great. So it's a really special place to me, a special memory, and, that'll always be a special place and a special time. So from there, we hopped on a plane. I mean, I have frantic e mails and calls and all of that once I get back to civilization.

We hopped on a plane to Pennsylvania to leave our other three kids with Liz's parents, and we flew from there to London, and then London to Bangalore. We spent, just one night in Bangalore, and then drove about a half day drive or so to her orphanage from there. Without going into lots of detail, I'll mention a couple of things that I remember specifically that maybe kind of help paint the picture of, what it was like. The caregivers there definitely loved the kids a lot. That was obvious and really a blessing to see.

It really encouraged our hearts that, that was the case. The orphanage had two main rooms. It's that building there, it was two stories, each with about 15 to 20 kids. You kind of went up these stairs, turned the corner and the room immediately off the left off of kind of a landing was for older kids, so maybe like five to 12 years old. And after I mean, after that age, they're basically on the street on their own, trying to make it on their own as semi adults.

Then there was a separate room as we kind of kept going around for younger kids, which was babies all the way up to, four or five years old. Many had physical handicaps of varying degree. Was kind of off of that room with younger kids, there was kind of a side room that was a little bit more of the smallest babies. Otherwise, just a big open room. Kids would take turns sleeping on the ground on a rug and in the cribs because they didn't have enough beds.

Pretty much immediately, Celie was with us. They kind of just like, here you go. I mean, it was emotional for them though as well. Just gals who've been taking such good care of her to to do that was tough. And it's one of those moments where well, so from there we're we're whisked away to the court.

So we're we're in this local court in this state in India with millions of people, and I just remember being kind of overwhelmed in a way because of how reliant we were on everybody else. We were worthless. Like what we don't know the language, we're in a court, like we're about to appear before a powerful judge. And it was this giant cement structure. It had big banks of open windows, windowless windows, glassless windows.

It was cool. It was interesting. It was in the jungle. There were monkeys all over. You couldn't really like where the building stopped and where the jungle started was nebulous.

So that was cool. I mean, was really, again, kind of surreal experience. There are rows and rows of attorney's offices. We met the attorney who been dealing with our paperwork this whole time. Was like, okay, so you're the guy.

We stood before the judge and said our piece, which was essentially, you know, we're thankful to be there, we're excited to add to our family, most of the court spoke English, which was helpful to us. So after that, we were again taken away by car back to Bangalore. The next day we got on a plane to New Delhi, where we were in Delhi for about another week while we did more appointments, doctor appointments, court appointments, and then a meeting at the US Embassy. Truly by the grace of God, we made it out on a flight before the country closed for a holiday weekend, so we were able to get back home. And the first time that our other kids saw Cely was here at the the airport.

A lot of just kind of day to day survival followed, obviously the jet lag. Another big step was just getting ready for the surgeries that she would have to repair a cleft lip and palate. The first one was just over a month after we got back. And we also found out that she had recently recovered from hepatitis and also had giardia, so she was really not healthy enough to do that quite yet. And so it took a few weeks and she kind of started to gain some strength.

Most kids with cleft lip and palate start their surgery process fairly shortly after their birth. So we kind of had a unique situation in terms of her care plan, and we're very thankful for the medical care that she's had at, Salt Lake Children's. It's been amazing and, really blessed to have that. She's now had quite a number of major surgeries to graft bone and skin and a variety of things to make it easier for her to breathe and to eat and swallow. That will be ongoing until she's an adult, but we're kind of in a lull right now, which has been a nice break.

So here we are. What's the I guess what's the message, the meat of the message that God put in my heart? Life is a series of choices. We make mundane choices like what to eat for breakfast, what are we going to wear. We also make big choices like where we are going to live, if we're going to get married, what we do for work, who we surround ourselves with as friends.

We decide if Jesus is real to us, We if we accept him as savior. And my challenge for you and for myself is just to be sincerely seeking God for what he might be asking of us, not vaguely, but specifically. Something that he's said upon your heart, maybe even in years past, that seems right and purposeful and fulfilling. It might also be scary and it might be hard. And ask yourself, what does failure look like, and is it actually failure?

As children of God, we don't measure success and failure the same way that the world does. In Philippians, Paul's talking about his earthly credentials of which he had many and comes to the conclusion in chapter three that, I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. And there's this constant push and pull. Our human nature craves comfort and ease, yet our lives are fulfilled with joy our lives are filled with joy and purpose by surrendering to God's better plan at the cost of our comfort and maybe even our short term happiness. I struggle with this temptation to pursue comfortable circumstances all the time, and frankly, sometimes I feel like a fraud.

And I have to go back to those promises of of who God says I am in him and not of what I am on my own. What if I step out in faith and get embarrassed? What if I'm not skilled enough, strong enough, old enough, young enough, wise enough, or righteous enough. The truth is we're not enough of any of those things. It's just whether we want to admit it or not.

We do have gifts that God's given us to use for his glory, and we do have the Holy Spirit as born again believers, and we have the promise of heaven. We're strong in his righteousness. We are wise in his guidance and truth, and we are supported by his provision. And I say this not just generally today, not someone who has everything figured out by any means. Today's testimony is really about just a regular family who didn't have enough time, and we didn't have enough strength, we didn't have enough money, we didn't have enough patience and grace, but without knowing the answers we said yes to this particular thing, this particular time, that God asked us to do, and we took step of faith.

And he sent others to walk along with us that again said yes with us and helped in ways that he asked them to in order to paint this complete vivid living story. And right now, this moment, there are little boys and girls around the world who will never know the unconditional love of a mom or dad. They'll never hear the name of Jesus. We don't know their names, but they have names and they have faces. They have hands and feet, and they have joys and sorrows.

They have passions, things that they love. They have talents from God. They have struggles. They have temptations, and they have souls. They represent just one of the many, many opportunities that we have to say yes to God.

Something that haunts me a little bit is to imagine an alternate path where we chose not to do this, and maybe we made a safer financial decision or decided it would put too much stress on our family, which are totally reasonable concerns. And from a human standpoint, those are reasonable things to consider. But Sealy would still exist. She would have different circumstances, but she would still be on this earth. She would still exist.

The little girl downstairs with the big sometimes mischievous personality who loves animals and loves Jesus would still be here. She'd still be somewhere. And maybe for you saying yes to what God has placed on your heart means taking that step to say, yes, Jesus, I accept you as the son of God and, I want you to be Lord of my life. Maybe it's, starting a business that gives you the flexibility to lead short term missions trips. Maybe it's saying yes to fostering or adopting a child even though you don't have the time, you don't have the money, or you don't have the grace in your own power.

Maybe it's reaching out to your neighbor or your coworker who you know is depressed and struggling to find any joy in their life. And just to be clear, I'm not talking about doing good things during God's favor. It's just extending the grace and love that he's shown to us because it is so great and it is so good that it just overflows. Is everything going to be perfect when we say yes in obedience? No.

Definitely not. In the first part of James one, it says that when troubles of any kind come your way, consider an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing. If you need wisdom, ask our generous God and he will give it to you.

He will not rebuke you for asking. Many members of this church and the greater local church model this love in action that I'm talking about by serving those in need. I know that that encourages me to be listening for that next next whisper from God and to be looking for his guidance and and the next opportunity that he has orchestrated. So with that, let's pray. God, thank you for this time together.

Thank you for your grace and for your wisdom and for your guidance. I pray for strength and your will to be clear to us all. I pray for peace in all of our decisions to follow you. Give us strength. Give us your words as we go out today to visit with our families and our friends.

We're thankful for your grace and your peace and your forgiveness. We love Jesus. Amen.

Thanks a lot, Glenn. If you guys will stand, we'll we'll end with one more song. Righteousness Thanks for coming this morning. I can't see the back of that. So we've got a little benediction.

God decided in in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for this for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear son. Thanks for coming. Have a great day.