First Baptist Church of Tampa Sermons

S1 E10: Jesus Loves the Little Children

• First Baptist Church of Tampa • Season 1 • Episode 10

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0:00 | 11:23

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New Sermon episodes drop every Monday Morning

Sermon Overview

Series: Following Jesus

Title: Jesus Loves the Little Children

Text: Mark 10:13-16

Date: April 12, 2026

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO THRIVE?

We want to help every person make a genuine commitment to follow Jesus and then follow through with that commitment in Connecting People to a Thriving Life in Christ. These Thriving disciples should Dig In to the Bible, Grow Up in Christ, and Branch Outinto the community.

Our Mission: To Connect People to a Thriving Life in Christ. What is a thriving life in Christ? Scripture says that Jesus Christ came “that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Our mission in the city of Tampa is to make disciples who follow the pattern of the believer in Psalm 1 and desire God’s glory above all things.

NEXT STEPS

Are you looking to get connected or learn more about First Baptist Tampa? We would love to help you find your place in our community.

STAY CONNECTED

Wherever you are in life, you have a purpose. First Baptist Tampa wants to help you find your next step.

Our Student & Young Adult Ministries:

SPEAKER_00

Good morning, church. Have a seat right where you are. Make yourselves comfortable. Glad you guys are here. Welcome to worship. It is truly a blessing to worship with you today and be in church with you today. You know, most pastors measure the strength of their church by Easter Sunday. How many people show up on Easter Sunday? I don't measure the strength of a church by who shows up on Easter Sunday. You know what Sunday I use to measure? The Sunday after Easter. That's exactly right. So you guys, you guys are the best of the best. I appreciate you guys being here. God bless you. Hey, if you are a guest, and I know we have some guests here because I've already had the honor of meeting a couple of you this morning. Uh, we welcome you. We are glad that you've chosen to worship. We're honored that you're doing so here at First Baptist Church with us. Uh, we would love to get to know you. In the pew back right in front of you is a connect card. If you would take some time to fill that card out during our service, and then right after the service, we have a very quick reception for you. If you'll go out our main hall and just uh out the slider door and turn to the left, there'll be a tent right there. The pastors will be there. And if you'll bring that connect card, we'll exchange that for a gift and some information about the church. But just give us an opportunity to say hi to you one more time and to greet you personally and get to know you. So, yes, thank you for being here and worshiping with us today. Hey, there's several things I just want to remind you about or make you aware of uh this morning during our prayer time. First of all, we are going to be collecting our offering in just a few moments. Thank you for your faithfulness in giving to that. As we take the gospel around the world, our giving provides for those mission opportunities. So continue to be faithful in that. And then don't also, please don't forget that also during the month of April, we are collecting the Easter offering for North American missionaries. So the Annie R. Strong Easter offering. So if you would like to give above and beyond your normal gifts, there are envelopes at the doors. Just make sure you put it in there so we can make sure that we are supporting those missionaries around the Southern Baptist Convention, and that would be a great blessing as well. Hey, while we are meeting today, our church plant, Redeemer City, which is in Knoxville, Tennessee, has a very, very important day and a very important worship service this morning. We sent about 30 people up to Knoxville. As of this morning, there are about 72 people who are gathering together in that worship service in uh Redeemer City. And so God is already just multiplying that church and blessing that church, and we are honored that they're there. But today they are meeting with another congregation in a joint worship service. Uh Redeemer City is growing, and this church they're meeting with is a smaller congregation who has been dwindling, but they have a lot of property. And so God has brought these two congregations together, and it looks like they may be merging together to form one congregation, and that would be uh what a wonderful blessing that would be. And so they're worshiping together this morning. Uh, I was texting with Trent early today, and God love Trent. He is the he's an amazing man, but he he stresses, he's a stressor. Um and so I I think he's stressed a little bit this morning. So pray for Trent as he's preaching, pray for uh Redeemer City and that church, that God's will would be done. Uh what a wonderful blessing that would be. Uh, that campus is less than a mile from where they're currently meeting, which is just a mile off of the University of Tennessee's campus, and so what a great honor that would be uh for that to work out. So pray for them uh as they are uh meeting today. Also, next week, I rarely tell you when there's going to be a guest preacher because I don't want you to cheat and take a day off just because the pastor's not going to be here. I'm going to be here next week, but I've invited a very special friend, Stephen Rummage, who is the executive treasurer of the Florida Baptist Convention, to come and preach in our pulpit next Sunday. Uh Stephen was a longtime pastor at Bell Shoals Baptist Church. That's where he and I became friends, uh, and then he moved off to Oklahoma City, and now he is back in our state, directing our state missions and all of those things. He is an outstanding pastor, an outstanding leader, and he's one of the preeminent preachers in our denomination. And so I would encourage you next week. You will be blessed. Be here. I will be here, so I'll know if you're not or not. Okay, so I'll be here, but I just wanted you to know, be here. It'll be a great blessing uh to hear Stephen next week as he blesses us. Finally, we have a special guest with us this morning, one of our local partners is New Life Solutions. New Life Solutions does amazing work as they help our community uh to care for uh the weak and the helpless and our children. And Crystal Hetinger is here today. She is a dear friend. Thank you for coming, Crystal. Thank you. And she is going to, Darren's got a microphone there for you. She is going to uh share with us about New Life Solutions, what's going on, and how we can be involved with it.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you. Thank you so much, Pastor Bob. I love this church. Your church is beautiful, but the people inside of it are even more beautiful. So I thank you so much for your smiling faces. Um, my name is Crystal. I'm with New Life Solutions. I have the honor of serving in a ministry that is so near and dear to my heart. How many of you know about New Life Solutions? Great. That's why I love this church even more. There's so many of you that know about New Life Solutions. Well, our mission is simple it's to protect the unborn, to share the gospel, and to transform our communities one life at a time. We all love that. So we do that through our three distinct ministries, and that's through first our Mortal Life Youth Development Program. How many of you have known about Mortal Life? How many of you are involved in any kind of schools in the area? Tiffany, take note of those people. We need to find out more about them so we can get our Mortal Life program into, simply put, um, Mortal Life is about building healthy relationships. We want our students to build healthy relationships so they don't need to find our woman's place medical clinic uh when they find themselves in a crisis pregnancy. Our um second piece of our ministry is our intervention piece of our ministry, and that's a woman's place. And in those um clinics, we have three clinics throughout the Tampa Bay area, and um in those clinics we um meet with women who are being faced with unplanned pregnancies, but more over than that, they're dealing with crisis situations all at the same time they find out they're pregnant. So we try to break down the barriers of uh the reasons why these women feel like they need to choose to have an abortion. And our next piece of our ministry is our restoration piece of our ministry, and that's our passages of hope piece. That's even more important too, because there are women that leave our clinics, they do decide to have an abortion, but we need to help them also. There's men and women that are even here today that have dealt with the um choice of having an abortion, and we need to minister to those individuals too, both men and women are affected by the abortion decision. Now, really, I'm here today to talk about our walk for life, and everybody that's with me, Tiffany's here with me, Tiffany, raise your hand, and Caroline's here. She's wearing a shirt just like mine. And this shirt for Walk for Life, if you raise $100, you get one of these awesome t-shirts. Now, this t-shirt tells a story of what our mission is. Our mission, of course, is to protect the unborn, and we do that through ultrasound, providing free ultrasounds, and that's the um ultrasound, the heartbeat in the middle. And then we share the gospel, and that's the heart. And then we transform our communities one life at a time through that baby and that mom accepting Jesus into our heart. We're an evangelical ministry, and our niche market happens to be pregnant women in their support systems. So I ask you to come out and support the walk for life, but I want you to know that we are continuing to be innovative, and the things that the Walk for Life provide is our free services. We've just put together a 24-7 nurse chat, and we can actually meet those women in the depths of their non-sleep at night because they're thinking about their crisis pregnancy, and we're making appointments with them, and they're able to find out about the life-saving Ministry of New Life Solutions and the hope that they can find in Jesus. The next thing we're being innovative with is through abortion pill reversal. We have all heard about chemical abortion, correct? In the news, it's horrible. But we can actually intervene between the two pills that they are given, and we can provide them an influx of progesterone. And the women are seeing about a 72% effective rate with abortion pill reversal. So the funds that we're raising through Walk for Life are going to provide these awesome innovations so we can meet these women faster and we can break down barriers. Now, the third thing we've done is we offer mental health counseling. These women need to have one more layer of care through mental health counseling. So we're doing that, and we want you to know that you're part of that. We can't do this without all of you. So I pray that all of you can go to iWalkforlife.com, register to walk today, become a fundraising walker, or support one of your walkers here in this church. Come out on May 2nd, which is Saturday, May 2nd, at North Shore Park in St. Petersburg, and come and celebrate what God is doing through all of us. Um we know we can't do it without the church, and we thank you so much for being a part of that. Um, also, your church is doing something even more, and you're offering a baby shower. So you're collecting baby shower items up until May 3rd, and these items are actually going to our women as they get education. So, this education piece is where we actually allow uh the Holy Spirit to work and for the hope to be shared. They're getting classes like prenatal classes, classes about co-parenting, who can't talk about hope when you're talking about co-parenting. And these women are receiving um the hope from Jesus. So thank you for being a part of that. Remember, iWalkforlife.com and register today. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you, Krista. Crystal is just a blessing. She uh she loves her ministry and it shows as she uh relates to the partner churches, and she's always been a blessing to me as we've we've interacted together. So if you're interested in learning more about new life solutions, or about the walk for life, or about uh our our diaper drive, our our baby shower for them, uh there is a table set up right next to our connection desk in the hallway. And then there's also be a table right out in the breezeway today uh where Crystal will be and our liaison Caroline will be. And if you have any questions about any of those things, just stop by there uh and ask those questions. If you just want to encourage them, stop by and encourage them. Uh that would be a great blessing uh as well.