One of the other things, in case you haven't noticed or didn't know, that Stronghold Baptist Church is a family integrated church.
Family integrated. What that means is that we keep the families together. We keep everybody together in church.
I mean, just by virtue of being a church, a church literally means a congregation, we believe that the church should all be congregated together in one place.
So we don't have multiple churches. I mean, right now it's pretty easy to say that because we just have one room that we're renting out.
So we don't have a bunch of partitions and things to send kids off to. But I'll tell you what, we're never, as long as I'm pastor of this church, we're never going to have that.
We're never going to have children's church, we're never going to have other church things, other things going on where we split people up and you're going to go off into this room and you're going to go off into that room and we're going to be here.
We're not doing that. We're not splitting the church. This is church. We're a family integrated church. Now, there are a few things that go along with that.
Obviously, we're keeping everybody together in the same space, we're sharing the same space. We know that kids are kids. Kids aren't always going to be sitting perfectly.
We saw that this morning from my own son. I've got a two year old. I know a one year old. Now I expect an older kid, they better be sitting there right now. They know better.
But there's going to be younger kids. And you know what, sometimes there's going to be people coming in that are unchurched, right? Maybe their kids have never had to sit through a church service before.
And they're going to be antsy and they're going to be rough. We need to just be able to deal with that. And I'm going to prove to you from Scripture why it's biblical to have a family integrated church, to have everybody together in one place, and why we do it.
This isn't just some preference. This isn't just because I'm pro-family. It's because I think it's the right thing to do.
And this is the way that all of our doctrine should be within this church, is that there's actually scriptural reasons and evidence for the reason why we do everything.
Even the church service that we hold, now not everything is detailed to the point of how many songs we need to sing, whatever, but we know that in a church setting that we should be singing praises unto the Lord.
We know that we're going to be hearing from God's word. There's certain aspects that go along with congregating together and having a church service that ought to be there, and it all should be coming from the Bible.
We should just be throwing in, just changing things, make it all our own way, and changing the way that the Bible defines it.
This is the way, this is our source, this is what we're going to for all purposes, for everything that we believe, all matters of faith and practice.
Not just what we believe, how we practice it. So we're practicing church, we're actually holding a church service right now, and we believe that everyone should be together.
There's multiple reasons for that, but number one, look at Mark 10, verse number 13. This isn't necessarily church. I'll say that right off the bat from the context, this isn't just, you know, they're having church.
But what's going on here is that Jesus is teaching. Jesus is wandering around and teaching, and there are, I believe, there are churches that are assembling to hear, there's congregations assembling to hear Jesus teach and to hear him preach.
Now he's going around healing, he's doing a lot of things, okay? But the statement that he makes here in Mark chapter 10 is applicable and I think goes a long way above and beyond just this one particular setting that he's in with his disciples.
Look at verse number 13. The Bible says, And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them. Now why do they want to be touched? They either want to be healed or they just want them to be blessed.
Right? So some people have their children there and they're trying to bring their children to Jesus because they want Jesus to lay hands on their child.
And the disciples reviewed those that brought them. So they're saying, what are you doing here? What are you doing bringing those kids here? Don't bring, you know, Jesus doesn't want to be bothered with your kids.
Now obviously we don't know exactly what they're saying, but they're being reviewed for bringing the children unto Jesus.
Verse number 14. But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased. So that bothered Jesus Christ. He noticed what was going on and it bothered him and he was upset. He's like, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.
He says unto them, Suffer the little children. Suffer means allow. Allow this to happen. Suffer. Allow the little children to come unto me and forbid them not. For of such is the kingdom of God.
Verily I say unto you, Suffer shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child should he shall not enter therein. And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them and blessed them.
Jesus cares about the little children. They're precious in his sight, not just a song. It's actually true. It's biblical truth. Jesus loves the children. He wants them to be blessed. He wants them to learn just as much as anybody else.
Children are just as important as the adults when it comes to receiving the word of the Lord. And he's saying, you know what, even for you to be saved, you have to receive my word like a little child.
You have to become like a little child just to completely trust and depend on Jesus Christ as your Savior. The same way that a child just has to completely depend on their parents and take care of them and support them.