The gap between what we bring and what God does

This National Foster Care Month, we’re exploring the Church’s calling and central role in caring for children and families in foster care. But the transformation we long for is rooted in something far deeper than innovative ministries, hard work, and collaborative problem-solving. It’s rooted in asking the God of the universe to act in our communities.

As a high schooler, most nights you’d find me upstairs in my family’s old Kansas farmhouse, talking to my best friend on the phone. Our conversations often involved football, school assignments for the next day, and any number of ridiculous observations and imaginings about animal hijinks. To this day, the text string between us is littered with mentions of camels, bears and platypuses.

But one night, he mentioned something that would change my life. He told me that he read one chapter of the New Testament every night before sleeping. I had a Bible my mom gave me in middle school sitting next to my bed. It just never got used. But as a person who had been going to church every week for as long as I could remember, reading one chapter a night seemed like the kind of thing a guy like me ought to do. 

So I began in Matthew. It wasn’t very many nights before I couldn’t stop at just one chapter. I would stay up reading, amazed by the things Jesus said. I quickly recognized I was reading truths that I could go out and live the next day, and it was changing me. 

While I found this practical wisdom revolutionary, I had not yet settled the question of whether God was actually real. After all, good life advice doesn’t necessarily prove the existence of an all-powerful deity. 

Then I came across Matthew 21:21-22 (NIV): 

“Jesus replied, ‘Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.’”

Those last few words got me: “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” 

Really? Could this possibly be true?

As any self-respecting teenage boy might do, I decided to test it. I asked God to do things that were, in retrospect, pretty superficial. But in an act of kindness, the God of the universe chose to show Himself as real by answering some of those prayers. 

Prayer and the space between 

Over the years, my prayer life has gone through many iterations. 

Early in marriage and ministry, when money was tight, prayer became how God would provide our daily bread (chocolate chip pancakes, actually, but that is a different story for a different time). And as we’ve navigated some of our darkest days, prayer is often a place of refuge where very few actual words, if any, are spoken – toward heaven or coming down from it.

But whether we’re talking about the superficial requests of a 15-year-old boy or the deepest hurts and longings expressed by a much older man, prayer has always filled the space between what I have to offer and what is actually needed. 

I think we all feel that gap in our lives and work. 

It’s the same feeling the disciples had when they scoured the crowd for food to feed the 5,000 and returned with five loaves and two fish. Not only was it not enough, but it was so utterly inadequate that you might wonder why this minuscule offering even got mentioned in the pages of Scripture.

We feel the same way when considering vulnerable children and families in our communities. We bring what we have, but compared to the crushing need, what we are offering doesn’t seem worth mentioning. The gap between not enough and more than enough extends beyond our wildest imagination.

But we serve a God who, for whatever reason, likes to live and move right there beyond our wildest imagination. He is the God of more than enough, the only One who can fill the gap between our measly loaves and fish and the overflowing baskets of nourishment for those who so desperately need it. 

Our desired outcome for children and families impacted by the foster care system is going to require efforts and resources that go way beyond what we could ever orchestrate ourselves. It will require God to move in people’s hearts to do hard things. It will require God to make a way for people who disagree about many things to act in unity. And it will require God transforming the lives of people mired in generations of addiction, abuse, and mental illness. 

If you want to see more than enough happen in your community, God will need to show up in a big way. And prayer allows us to see His tremendous power and love firsthand. 

If you’ve ever prayed for something big and saw God answer that prayer, you know that approaching God in this way is one of the greatest privileges imaginable. If you haven’t had that experience yet, get ready.

A movement of prayer

In the early 2000s, Greater Faith Community Church in Brownwood, Texas, led by Bishop Aaron Blake and his bride, Mary, had begun taking children from foster care into families within the congregation. At one point, 50 children from foster care were part of the church’s small gatherings, and they’ve had more than 400 children from foster care come through over the years. 

As the congregation began to experience the realities of caring for children who had experienced trauma, they became collectively very intentional about praying for these children and their families. 

In 2013, the Faith Covenant Fellowship of Interdependent Churches and Ministries Prayer Line was born from this effort, and it has expanded to include people from all over the country. 

Today, these followers of Jesus get on the prayer line at 6:30 a.m. Monday through Friday and at 8:00 p.m. Monday through Thursday. These folks from across the country gather to pray over the phone for children and families nine times each week. And they average between 20 and 30 people per call. And they’ve been doing it faithfully now for 12 years.

One of the pillars of this group from the beginning has been Sister Elouise Edwards. Sister Elouise has limited mobility, can’t walk, and has been primarily confined to her bed in a physical rehab nursing home in Kansas City for several years now. Bishop Blake describes what the scene looked like when he visited her: “Literally when you walk into her room, around her bed is her Bibles, her books, and where she prays, and she studies all day . . . The reality of her world that she lives in doesn’t match the voice that you hear on the prayer line.” 

Pastor Gary Henderson from Big Lake, Texas, has been instrumental in the prayer line for over 10 years. He shared, “I’ve never met Sister Eloise personally or face to face – not even on FaceTime. Oh, but her voice resonates in our spirit.”

I had the privilege of talking to Sister Elouise on the phone. I asked her about her passion for children in foster care, and she explained, “ The Bible tells us to look (after) the widows and orphans and the children. So, if we don’t take care of the children, you know, we’re not doing our job. It’s in our spirit. God put it in our spirit, so that’s why we do it.” An otherworldly joy resonated in her voice and in the melodious prayer, saturated with Scripture, that she prayed at the end of our call. 

Bishop Blake, Pastor Henderson and Sister Elouise are doing the most important thing a person can do for vulnerable children and families. They are bringing them, by name, before the God of the universe, and they have repeatedly watched God answer those prayers now for many years. 

Planning to pray

Hundreds, if not thousands, of people in your community consistently interact with those in the foster care ecosystem. This includes children in care, their biological families, foster parents and social workers. But even beyond that, lawyers, medical professionals, therapists, teachers and coaches have an instrumental role in the lives of vulnerable children and families. Carving out time and space to pray by name for people in each category can have a profound impact. 

So, what does it look like to be intentional about creating that time and space and making prayer foundational to the work of your local foster care network? Here are a few ideas:

A daily prayer pause

4KIDS, a fantastic foster care organization in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., asks staff to set an alarm daily at 3:20 p.m. to pray for one minute for their work and for foster care in their community. They chose this time based on Ephesians 3:20-21: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.”

At 3:20 in the afternoon, alarms on cell phones all go off in the 4KIDS office. Everyone stops what they are doing to pray. If this time falls in the middle of a meeting, they will pause to pray together. If someone is on a ZOOM call, they might say, “Hey, every day at 3:20 my alarm goes off to pray Ephesians 3:20 for children and families in our community. Would you mind if we stopped for a minute and prayed together?”

Imagine the impact of every foster care advocate in your community stopping their work simultaneously every day to pray for more than enough for children and families before, during and beyond foster care where you live.

A weekly prayer call

You might have been intimidated by the nine weekly prayer call meetings Sister Eloise and company are conducting each week. Don’t worry – you don’t have to match that.  Some communities gather a group of at least four people and commit to a time each week to pray for 15 minutes on Zoom or by phone. 

An annual foster care prayer vigil

Invite the community to come together for an evening to pray for children, their families and all the others involved in foster care in your community. You can have groups pray by table or set up prayer stations in a large room to allow people to better understand foster care and pray for the most pressing needs in your community. You can dedicate each station to a different group of people in your community who can impact foster care.

Ultimately, prayer is a habit of tangible admission by a group of people that we don’t have what it takes on our own to bring about the kind of change our kids, families and communities need. We are utterly dependent on Him showing up. 

Prayer is an expression of dependence on the only Being in existence who can get this done. 

While the things I pray for have changed since those early days of faith in the upstairs of our family’s farmhouse, the God who graciously answers those prayers has never changed. He continues to accept my meager offerings and turn them into more than enough.

–Jason Weber is the National Director of More Than Enough, facilitated by the CAFO community.

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