Several hours before I delivered this message to my congregation, my son Jonathan got off a plane at Ben-Gurion Airport. He came home for the holidays after being away for about three months. Jonathan had been studying in a discipleship school in Chicago called, “Master’s Commission.” It is very gratifying—as it has been for my wife Ann and I—for parents to see their sons or daughters making the choice to serve Yeshua. Leading our children to the Lord can be compared to a relay race in which we parents strive to pass on the baton to our young runners.

If you’ve ever seen an actual relay race, you know how important it is to pass on the baton to the next runner carefully and smoothly. In fact, it’s just as important as having runners that can run fast. This was demonstrated in the 1996 Olympics. The clear favorite in the 4 × 100 relay race, as in almost every Olympics competition, was the United States team—this race has been won by the U.S. team 75 percent of the time in modern Olympic history. The U.S. always puts together four of the fastest sprinters in the world.

Well, in 1996 the U.S. team lost to the Canadian team. Why did this amazing group of U.S. sprinters lose this race? They were disqualified because of an improper passing of the baton. It is noteworthy that the few times the U.S. has lost this race was because of that same problem—the inability to pass properly the baton from one runner to the next.

The Bible compares our life to a race. Hebrews 12:1 says, “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” But I want you to know, it’s not just any race; it’s a relay race. God is not only concerned about how you run or how I run; He cares just as much about the runners after us, who will take our baton and run the next lap—the runners of the next generation.

The relay race that God has us running began with Adam and Eve, who passed on their baton to their children, who then passed it on to their children, and on and on—and it is a race that is still not finished. And who really knows whether the race of salvation history will end with our generation? The Lord may not return for a number of generations yet. So we had better not be shortsighted, but keep a long-term vision in mind.

And we had better learn from the past—we had better remember what happened to previous generations in times past. The Bible is full of examples of glory days of blessing and fruitfulness whenever a generation received proper training from the previous generation. Yet the Bible not only has glory stories, but also gory stories—when a generation experiences spiritual defeat and decay, because the parents and leaders of a former generation neglected to train their offspring for their turn in the relay race.

So I’m going to address the subject of passing on the baton from one generation to the next. My purpose can be summed up as follows:

1. To sound a warning to each and every one of us that, even if we are like Joshua and his generation, who knew the Lord and experienced His power, this is no guarantee that our children and the next generation will follow in our footsteps.
2. To exhort each of us to play a significant role in helping to pass on the baton to the next generation with great care, because the race could easily be lost if we fumble the baton.
3. To give practical instruction to parents, as well as to others who join in this task, on how to pass on the baton of faith to the next generation—that they might win the race.

In this regard, let’s look at Judges 2:6-15:

⁶ “And when Joshua had dismissed the people, the children of Israel went each to his own inheritance to possess the land. ⁷ So the people served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the LORD which He had done for Israel. ⁸ Now Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died when he was one hundred and ten years old. ⁹ And they buried him within the border of his inheritance at Timnath Heres, in the mountains of Ephraim, on the north side of Mount Gaash. ¹⁰ When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the LORD nor the work which He had done for Israel.

¹¹ “Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served the Baals; ¹² and they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt; and they followed other gods from among the gods of the people who were all around them, and they bowed down to them; and they provoked the LORD to anger. ¹³ They forsook the LORD and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. ¹⁴ And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel. So He delivered them into the hands of plunderers who despoiled them; and He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. ¹⁵ Wherever they went out, the hand of the LORD was against them for calamity, as the LORD had said, and as the LORD had sworn to them. And they were greatly distressed.”

1. To sound a warning to each and every one of us that, even if we are like Joshua and his generation, who knew the Lord and experienced His power, this is no guarantee that our children and the next generation will follow in our footsteps.

Judges 2:8 says, “Now Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died….” They all die sooner or later. Jacob died, Joseph died, and Moses died. Hey, if you haven’t figured it out already, if Yeshua doesn’t come back quickly, you’re going to die too. But the good news is that the death of a godly man or woman doesn’t have to be the death of a vision. In fact, if we have been running our race rightly, we will have raised up people younger than ourselves to whom we can hand the baton. And they, in turn, will not only run well, but may even run far better than we did.

But history proves that this good-news scenario is more often the exception rather than the rule. Although Moses was a great leader and didn’t fumble the baton when he passed it on to Joshua, soon after Joshua died, his contemporaries—the other elders who remained alive for a short while after Joshua’s death—fumbled the baton badly. It says in Judges 2:7, “So the people served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua….” But then we read in verse 10, “When all that generation [i.e., the generation of the elders] had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the LORD….”

All it took was one generation—somewhere between 40 and 100 years, depending on how you calculate a generation—and we see that the children, the offspring of that generation that had been blessed and privileged to enter the Promised Land, already forgot who the God of Israel was. It actually says, “…Another generation arose after them who did not know the LORD nor the work which He had done for Israel.”

I know it’s so hard to believe, that such a tragic fumbling of the baton could have happened. I mean, with all the stories of the amazing exodus from Egypt, the crossing of the sea on dry ground, the miraculous provisions, the signs and wonders, the great military victories—these events were not ancient history for the generation following Joshua. And yet, the Lord and His mighty works were virtually unknown.

This should be a stiff warning to us. Many of us are eyewitnesses of the power of God; we have experienced the moving of the Holy Spirit. We may have had great healings in our bodies. And we in Israel have experienced a taste of God’s restoration of the land of Israel and the return of the exiles from more than 100 countries. In some ways, we have experienced as many of God’s wonders and as much of His power as Joshua and his contemporaries did. And so it is hard for us to believe that the younger generation we are raising up could ever stray from the Lord we love and serve. But be warned family of God, be warned parents and teachers, if we aren’t careful, the same thing that happened then could happen now. Our children and our youth could easily miss out on experiencing God the way we have. Unless we successfully pass on the baton, the next generation may not only lose the race, but even their own souls.

2. To exhort each of us to play a significant role in helping to pass on the baton to the next generation with great care, because the race could easily be lost if we fumble the baton.

I am hearing many stories concerning believing parents who recently immigrated to Israel. Because their children find it hard to adjust to learning a new language and fitting into a new culture, they are particularly vulnerable and easily swayed. In order to gain acceptance among their schoolmates, they get involved in alcohol or drugs and sex, and the devil leads them down the garden path. There are particular immigrant groups that are losing most of their children to the world. And there are many other believing parents as well, in Israel and around the world, who are losing their kids.

So be warned. If it could happen to the ancient children of Israel just freshly arrived in the Promised Land, it could happen to the Messianic body in this land too—and sadly, it is.

Peer pressure is just too much for many children and youth. It says in verses 11 and 12 of our text: ¹¹ “Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served the Baals; ¹² and they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt; and they followed other gods from among the gods of the people who were all around them….” “The gods of the people who were all around them”—who are the people around our children today? How much of the time are our children surrounded by people who know the Lord and how much with people who don’t know the Lord? And with the fascination that Israelis have with the New Age—thousands attend New Age festivals each year and backpack in India in search of various gods—is Israel today that much different from post-Joshua Israel?

In verse 11 it says that the children of Israel served the “Baals.” It’s plural because they began to believe in the many gods of the surrounding Canaanites and Phoenicians, the Egyptians, and the Moabites, Amorites, and Edomites. “Baal” literally means “lord,” not “god.” So when it says that they served the Baals, it means that they subjugated themselves as slaves to various lords.

You don’t have to bow down to an idol made of stone or metal or wood to be a Baal worshiper. Anything that you make your lord and master is Baal worship. If your whole life revolves around money—if everything you do is in the service of making money and that’s the most important thing in your life, then you are just as bad as those Baal worshipers in the post-Joshua generation. Money can be a kind of lord and can certainly be in direct competition with God. Yeshua said in Matthew 6:24, “ ‘No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.’ ”

And it’s not just mammon, or money, that we can end up being our lord or master. We can make fame our lord; pornography can end up becoming our master—to the point where it’s almost impossible to shake free from it’s power. Alcohol and drugs can end up becoming just as powerful as a Baal or lord over us. The success rate in rehabilitation centers run by governments around the world is pitifully low. Only in centers run by believers, where there is round-the-clock prayer and dependence upon the power of the Holy Spirit, is there a high rate of success in deliverance from these cruel Baals.

Now it’s a tragic thing to lose our kids to these Baals. But even more tragic than their slavery to these forces of evil is the fact that our kids will ultimately be destroyed. We read in verses 13-15 of our text:

¹³ “They forsook the LORD and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. ¹⁴ And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel. So He delivered them into the hands of plunderers who despoiled them; and He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. ¹⁵ Wherever they went out, the hand of the LORD was against them for calamity….”

It’s one thing to fall into the hands of the devil—that’s awful. But it’s far worse to fall into the hands of the living God. Hebrews 10:30, 31 says: ³⁰ “For we know Him who said, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord. And again, ‘The LORD will judge His people.’ ³¹ It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

I don’t want my kids, I don’t want your children or your youth, to fall into the hands of the living God—do you? Later, in Hebrews 12:25, we read, “See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven.” And then in verses 28 and 29, it says: ²⁸ “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. ²⁹ For our God is a consuming fire.”

The devil didn’t prepare the fire of hell. God is the one who prepared it for those who reject Him as their Savior and Lord. We read in Matthew 25:41 that the King and Judge of the universe will “say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’ ”

In another place, Yeshua tells the parable of the wheat and the tares. He interprets the parable in Matthew 13:38-40:

³⁸ “‘The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. ³⁹ The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. ⁴⁰ Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age.’ ”

Now I’m sounding like a hell-fire and brimstone preacher—well, I need to. False teachers are those who only tell you one side of the story. We all need to be warned that if we aren’t careful, we’re going to lose our kids to the Baals of this world, the cruel masters to which so many of their peers are enslaved. And so, if we don’t want to bring distress upon our children in this life; if we don’t want to lose them to the gods of this world round about; if we don’t want to lose them to the fire of hell in the next world, then we had better learn how to pass on the baton of our faith properly to this next generation.

Max Jukes lived in New York. He did not believe in Christ or in Christian training. He refused to take his children to church, even when they asked to go. He has had 1,026 descendants—300 convicts, 27 murderers, 190 prostitutes, and 509 alcoholics and drug addicts. His family, thus far, has reportedly cost the state hundreds of thousands of dollars. They have made no contribution to society that is of any benefit.

Jonathan Edwards lived in the same state, at the same time as Jukes. He loved the Lord and saw to it that his children were in church every Sunday, as he served the Lord to the best of his ability. He has had 929 descendants—430 ministers, 314 war veterans, 75 authors, 86 college professors, 13 university presidents, 7 congressmen, 3 governors, and 1 Vice-President of the United States. His family never cost the state one cent but contributed immeasurably to the life of plenty in the United States today.

What is your influence and what legacy will you leave with your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren?

3. To give practical instruction to parents, as well as to others who join in this task, on how to pass on the baton of faith to the next generation—that they might win the race.

So now that I’ve sounded the warning about how easy it can be to fail in bringing up our children to know the Lord, I now want to give some practical instructions to parents, as well as to others who are called alongside to help parents in the task of raising their kids to know the Lord and win the race. Now I could point out a lot of things we should do, such as setting a personal example for our kids, disciplining them, expressing our love to them, and praying for them. And all of these things are vital and Biblical. But rather than just scratching the surface in dealing with all of these good things, I’m going to confine myself to just two things—two things that come out of our text in Judges 2.

(A lot of the good things mentioned above can be left to congregational groups, such as a new group recently formed in our congregation here in Jerusalem. Stan and Fran Goodenough started a group for parents of small children. The parents come together to encourage one another, comfort one another, and share insights they’ve learned by experience in child-rearing.)

It’s interesting to note that my son Jamie has to take 24 lessons to get a driver’s license, but you can become a parent without a single lesson. Maybe that’s why we have so many accidents and tragedies in the family today.

The first thing we need to do to make sure that our kids know the Lord is to teach them God’s Word.

We read in Judges 2:10: “When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the LORD nor the work which He had done for Israel.”

One of the keys to coming to know the Lord is to know His Word, the Scriptures. Now in the time of Joshua, there were no formal Scriptures. But whatever revelation they had already received, they were commanded to teach it to their children. And whatever works that God had done for Israel, they were to tell to their children.

We read in Deuteronomy 4:9,10:

⁹ “‘Only take heed to yourself, and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. And teach them to your children and your grandchildren, ¹⁰ especially concerning the day you stood before the LORD your God in Horeb, when the LORD said to me, “Gather the people to Me, and I will let them hear My words, that they may learn to fear Me all the days they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children.” ’ ”

And then we read in Deuteronomy 6:5-7:

⁵ “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. ⁶ And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. ⁷ You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.’ ”

And we read in verse 12:

“ ‘Then beware, lest you forget the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.’ ”

There is no substitute for carefully teaching our children. If our kids would automatically come to know and fear God because they live with godly parents and have godly friends, then Moses would never have needed to say to the people of Israel, “You shall teach them diligently to your children.” The knowledge of the Lord isn’t transmitted merely by osmosis.

I must confess that this is one of the weakest aspects of my parenting skills. Although I’ve sat individually with each of my sons and gone through a discipleship program, too often I let other things get in the way—either I would have to leave the country on a ministry trip or my kids themselves would have something come up to take them away from our routine. I’ve had a start-and-stop kind of teaching program. Thankfully, my wife Ann has been a “stay at home” mom all these years and has been such a good teacher to them.

And both father and mother should be involved in teaching the kids. Proverbs 1:8 says, “My son, hear the instruction of your father, and do not forsake the law of your mother.” Also, other family members can effectively help raise up the kids to know the Lord by teaching about Him. We read about how Timothy was taught not only by his mother, but also by his grandmother. It says in 2 Timothy 1:5, “When I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also.”

And then we read in 2 Timothy 3:14,15: ¹⁴ “But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, ¹⁵ and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” It’s interesting that from an early age—“from infancy,” according to one translation—Timothy was being taught the Scriptures by his mother and grandmother.

Now what about singles in our congregational family? Do they have a role in helping to raise the children and youth of our congregation? Yes. Just as Timothy’s grandmother had a part to play, so do they.

In Bible times, wealthier families employed tutors to teach the children (see 1 Chronicles 27:32). Schools for children are first mentioned by Josephus (Ant., XV, x, 5). According to the Talmud, the first school for children was established about 100 BCE, but in the time of Yeshua such schools were common.

Paul writes in Galatians 4:1,2: ¹ “Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, does not differ at all from a slave, though he is master of all, ² but is under guardians and stewards until the time appointed by the father.” Here Paul alludes to the common practice of having nonfamily members play a significant role in teaching children. And in the Word of God, Paul himself talks about his own education when he was probably still a teenager. He left his parents as a youth to study in Jerusalem. He says in Acts 22:3: “ ‘I am indeed a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, taught according to the strictness of our fathers’ law, and was zealous toward God as you all are today.’ ”

So you don’t have to be a parent to have a significant role in teaching our children and youth. In fact, we need more of you to answer the call to this crucially important ministry. I’m so thankful that my kids have faithfully attended our congregation and received the teaching of others. This has made up for my lack in the personal teaching of my kids. For most of our history as a congregation, we’ve had excellent teachers in our children’s ministry. I’m so grateful to the Lord that right now our children and youth ministries are in such good hands—and if we will make sure that our kids come and get involved in these programs, they’ll get excellent teaching.

I’ve observed that even godly parents who have a deep spiritual walk with the Lord have failed desperately in the discipline of bringing their kids to services regularly. A huge percentage of such parents ended up losing their kids to the world.

One congregation did a survey and found that when both parents were faithful to the Lord, including maintaining an active interest in the local congregation’s programs, 93 percent of the kids remained faithful. On the other hand, if only one of the parents was faithful, that figure dropped to 73 percent. Where the parents were only what we would call reasonably active in the Lord’s work, only 53 percent of the young people maintained their faith. Now here comes the shocker: In those cases where both parents attended only infrequently, the percentage of their children who remained faithful to the Lord dropped to 6 percent.

So if we want our young people really to come to know the Lord, we need to teach them about the Lord from God’s Word.

Now the second thing we need to do to make sure that our kids come to know the Lord is to make sure that we ourselves walk a life of faith and dependence upon God.

A new problem faced the children of Israel once they finally arrived in the Promised Land. They had now been delivered from their enemies who had threatened them on their journey and whom they had to fight and defeat in order to take the land and receive their inheritance. They no longer had to live from water hole to water hole and in a blistering hot Sinai Desert. They no longer had to eat a boring diet of manna and quail. Now they were in the land of milk and honey, in a fertile land where they could prosper.

But I want you to remember one thing: The greatest danger to our children and youth is not starvation, nor enemy armies or terrorists. A far greater enemy that has the potential to starve the soul and destroy the soul is having too many comforts and too much prosperity.

Dr. Ralph Minear, a member of the Pediatrics Department at Harvard Medical School, thinks we modern parents have gone overboard. In his book, Kids Who Have Too Much, he warns, “A social epidemic is endangering the physical and emotional health of our country’s children. ‘Affluenza,’ the Rich Kids Syndrome, attacks not only the children of the wealthy but also those of middle-class and low-income families. Parents are pressuring their children into becoming over-achievers, while giving them excessive amounts of freedom, money, food, information and protection.”

In verse 6 of our text in Judges 2, it says, “And when Joshua had dismissed the people, the children of Israel went each to his own inheritance to possess the land.” Up until this point, the children of Israel had to depend upon God daily for their food, and for their protection in battle and from many other dangers. But now they faced the greater danger of prosperity and ease and comfort. They now had received their inheritance. They had all that they needed and more.

This reminds me of the tragic story of the prodigal son. Let’s turn now to the account in Luke 15:11-18:

¹¹ “Then He said: ‘A certain man had two sons. ¹² And the younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.” So he divided to them his livelihood. ¹³ And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living. ¹⁴ But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want. ¹⁵ Then he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. ¹⁶ And he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything.

¹⁷ “‘But when he came to himself, he said, “How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! ¹⁸ I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.’ ” ’ ”

When the son had his inheritance, he spent it; he wasted it. He lived it up. And he stayed far away from home, too ashamed to go back to his father, whom he thought might never accept him back.

Parents, don’t spoil your kids. Don’t lavish on them too much money, too many toys, or too many possessions. The wife of a prominent Philadelphia Christian businessman felt that her husband was not spending enough time with their six-year-old daughter. He decided to make up for that failing all at once. He had his limousine driver take him to her school, where she was picked up and deposited next to him in the backseat. They took off for New York City where he had made reservations for dinner in an expensive French restaurant and had tickets to a Broadway show. After an exhausting evening, they were driven home. In the morning, the little girl’s mother could hardly wait to find out how the evening had gone. “How did you like it?” The little girl thought a moment. “It was OK, I guess, but I would rather have eaten at McDonald’s. And I did not really understand the show. But the best part was when we were riding home in that great big car and I put my head down on Daddy’s lap and fell asleep.”

So let’s not go overboard and spoil our kids with things they don’t need, and things that might actually cause them to turn from the Lord their provider. If we spoil our kids, they’ll never learn to depend upon God. But you say, “We’ve earned good money over the years; we want our kids to have it better than we did growing up in poverty.” Well, of course, we should be generous with our kids; but, believe me, if we overdo it, they’ll come to expect it. They’ll no longer appreciate what they have. And they won’t ever come to the place where they have to cry out to God, as you did, for their provisions.

If you’ve got too much money, I can suggest a good cause to which you can give. Don’t hand over all your money to your kids; if you want your kids to put their trust in God. Solomon prayed this wise prayer in Proverbs 30:8,9:

⁸ “Remove falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches—feed me with the food allotted to me; ⁹ lest I be full and deny You, and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’ or lest I be poor and steal, and profane the name of my God.”

It seems to me that this was the problem at the time of the passing of the baton from Joshua’s generation to the next. They now had their inheritance. They now possessed the land. They no longer had to depend upon God for daily miracles. And as a result, they became full and said, “Who is the Lord?”

One father said this prayer: “Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid; one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory. Build me a son whose wishbone will not be where his backbone should be; a son who will realize that to know Thee and know himself is the foundation stone of knowledge. Lead him, I pray, not in the path of ease and comfort, but under the stress and spur of difficulties and challenges. Here let him learn to stand up in the storm; here let him learn compassion for those who fall.

“Build me a son whose heart will be clear, whose goal will be high; a son who will master himself before he seeks to master other men; one who will learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; one who will reach into the future, yet never forget the past. And after all these things are his, add, I pray, enough of a sense of humor, so that he may always be serious, yet never take himself too seriously. Give him humility, so that he may always remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.”

So parents, when we get to the point when we’re past the stage of barely making it financially, when we have the comforts of life—let’s not get too comfortable. Let’s give generously to the work of the Lord when we get blessed with much. Let’s watch that we don’t spoil our children and they come to say, “Who is the Lord?” Instead, let’s live by faith, and let our children walk with us in that life of faith. Let’s have them pray in the groceries and pray in the promotion at work and pray in the things we need. Then our kids will see with their own eyes the mighty works of God. It’s not enough for you to have seen those works; they must see them too.

We read in our text in Judges 2:7: “So the people served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the LORD which He had done for Israel.” But what about the children of these elders? Sadly we read in verses 10 and 11: ¹⁰ “When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the LORD nor the work which He had done for Israel. ¹¹ Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served the Baals.”

Some of you have children that are away from the Lord. I want you to know that it’s not too late. I think again of that prodigal son. Let’s go back to that story and read Luke 15:14-24:

¹⁴ “‘But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want. [So often, it’s when we face lack that we turn back to God.] ¹⁵ Then he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. ¹⁶ And he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything.

¹⁷ “‘But when he came to himself, he said, “How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! ¹⁸ I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, ¹⁹ and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.’ ”

²⁰ “‘And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. ²¹ And the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

²² “‘But the father said to his servants, “Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. ²³ And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; ²⁴ for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” And they began to be merry.’ ”

Many of our kids are going through a hard time, and will go through more hard times. Some will wander for a season in the wilderness. But I believe that if we will continue to pray, God will use that wilderness wandering to bring them to a place of want—to a place where they realize that they need God. So keep praying. It is not too late to pass on successfully the baton to the next generation.