“The next generation and new in faith have to experience the practical, powerful hand of God in their own lives…
Judges 2:6-8, 10-12
The Third Generation:
• The first generation has a personal experience with the Lord – God is the God I know…
• The second generation heard about the experience they had with the Lord – the God of my parents…
• The third generation (maybe) heard about the secondhand experience – God becomes the God of the grandparents…
The 1st century church, the apostles, and many of those who met Jesus during his earthly ministry had a powerful experience with God…
1 John 1:1-5
We can trust these accounts of Jesus’ life, and His teachings… But we must have more than these teachings, we need to experience Jesus in our context as well… Jesus must be more than propositional statements, we need to personally experience Him…
John 20:26-29
If you’re here today and you have believed, you are blessed…
• I am in no way minimizing that… But we as a church must facilitate avenues for those that have yet experienced God in these ways to do so…
• The distance from those initial experiences that others haven’t experienced creates disconnection and doubt as to their reality, or application to their lives…
The best analogy for this is that; We are running a race… and it’s a relay race…
Philippians 2:16
• He’s talking to the souls that he was handing the baton of faith too… He didn’t want to run the race in vain, he wanted them to hold on, and more than that, pass it on…
1 Corinthians 9:19-27
• Through Paul, God is calling us to run the race… God is calling us to use whatever means possible to hand the baton of faith on to the next person… the next generation…
The baton carries the message that leads people to genuine experiences with God… The “Baton” is the consistent of a race… The runners will change, but the baton must be passed… passed from one person and generation to the next…
A word of caution…
Galatians 5:7-8
• We must be careful concerning the message we carry in our race… not just any seemingly deep or hopeful message will do…
• The hindering it’s talking about is concerning false teaching… False teaching comes in one of two forms…
• First, it denies the fundamental truths of the Christian faith, or, it claims that something in addition to what is found in the New Testament is required for a believer to become a complete Christian… We must experience the truths of God through the word of God… too many believers today are lead astray because their grounding is faulty, or they have no grounding…
So how do we run the race… how do we pass on the baton to others…
• First, we ourselves must be running the race… It’s hard to lead someone somewhere you haven’t been…
• Next look up… John 4:34-38
• Go and pray… Luke 10:1-2… He sent them both to go and work… but also pray that others would come and labor with… We cannot simply wait for someone else to take the first steps… we must step out of our comfort zones and go…
So practically:
• Invest in young people…
• Invest in new believers… The best forms of discipleship are just living life with people…
• Invest outside of the four walls of the church… harvest doesn’t happen overnight… cultivate life giving relationships with the people that touch your life, and trust God to bring the increase…
• Get involved in the current ministries…
• Come spiritually prepared for every service, every ministry… too often we come into services with the idea of what we can receive from God… I believe a healthier approach, though it’s good to receive from God… is to come to our services asking; God, how can you use me…
God desires that each of us would experience Him in deep and powerful moving ways… and be a part of others experience Him in deep and powerful moving ways…”