As Harbor City Church believes that the gospel urges them to love their city by showing up where things are broken and helping to bring healing in Jesus’ name, the church invites members to join them in praying for the needs in their city with various topics each month.
The church website encourages members to participate in praying for an area of need in their cities, such as homelessness, sex trafficking, refugees or immigration, and foster care. Also, they want their members to ask for God’s providence in their ministry partners serving in the said areas. Lastly, pray for the other Bible-centered, city-serving churches in San Diego.
Praying for Foster Care this April
For this month, the church compels its members to pray for Foster Care wherein, according to them, there are 70% of adults in prison, 33% are homeless men and women, and 60% suffer from trafficking who have some history in child welfare and foster care systems.
Currently, the church informed that there are 3200 children in the foster system in San Diego, with 64% under six years old. They added that the system is overwhelmed, but the figures for children continue to add numbers. Meanwhile, many parents risk losing their children to county services as they face poverty, lack of affordable housing, and rising living costs often combined with domestic violence, mental health, and addiction, as mentioned on the website.
In addition, they noted that once in foster care, 48% of girls become pregnant by age 19 with few resources to beak generational cycles of poverty, abuse, trauma, and tragedy.
The church mentioned that throughout the scripture, the Lord expresses His care and concern for the orphan and the fatherless, so they imagine if hundreds of local churches and thousands of believers shared God’s heart for these kids.
Ways to Pray for Foster Care
They listed a few ways to pray for Foster Care, wherein the first is that God would give them the heart for the orphan and the fatherless, precious children made in His image. They noted that members could pray for these verses: Hosea 14:3, Isaiah 1:17, Psalm 82:3, and James 1:27.
Moreover, members could pray that God would raise many Christians to accept the role of becoming foster parents or Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA). Also, to have more and sustain the caring Child Welfare workers. They also encourage members to pray for public awareness and concern for the plight of these kids to grow.
More importantly, the church urges to pray for the city leaders that they would pursue wise regulations that could protect children and help break cycles of poverty. Additionally, ask God for the organizations like Restoration 225 and David’s Harp and local churches such as Redeemer, Trinity, and Risen, who serve families and children in foster care.
Restoration 225
The church would like to pray that God would provide the means to raise the staff at R225 so they could continue to do the work of educating churches on the crisis in Foster Care.
The Restoration 225 website stated that they are a faith-based non-profit organization that collaborates with churches to serve families involved in the foster care system. They said they embrace families with care communities for at least eight to twelve weeks with their Restore Hope Projects, Care Portal, and Awareness and Training programs.
The said organization also has a Care Community program wherein three to five people or couples from a local church aim to establish relationships with a family involved in the foster care system by providing a weakly meal or groceries, a care call, and prayer. The website mentions that they help families involved in the foster care system, including birth families going through the reunification process, kinship families, and traditional foster or resource families.
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