To a Thousand Generations

Gideon’s reformation lasted forty years, but it ended with his death. We must, by the grace of God, not simply be laboring for revival here and now, but for multi-generational covenant-keeping.

Three practical applications:

1. Plug in with your kids

Prioritize them. Be on guard against other things creeping in and causing you to be investing time and energy in lesser things while missing the hearts of your children.

Ask God to show you: what on my schedule is keeping me from being the dad God is calling me to be? Do I have my children’s hearts?

2. Pray for your kids

You cannot save them. You cannot regenerate their hearts. That is a work that God must do, and we must desperately cry out to Him to do it – to protect them from sin, from the world, the flesh, the devil, to fill them with His Spirit, to bless them richly and to make them mighty warriors of God.

Ask God to show you: am I regularly praying (and fasting!) for my children, both privately and in their hearing? Am I praying rote prayers for them or am I thoughtfully and fervently crying out to God on their behalf?

3. Protect your kids

   
   

Protect them from your own sin – unlike Gideon, who had many wives as well as at least one concubine, which sexual promiscuity led to devastating effects in his household.

Protect them from the corrupting influences of the world, like the Baals to whom the children of Israel returned after the death of Gideon.

Protect them from high places of your own making, like the ephod which Gideon made that Scripture tells us was a snare to his household. We must lead our households in a wholehearted devotion to Christ, and in casting aside everything that would distract us from our pursuit of Him.

Ask God to show you: are there things that I am making excuses for in my home that will become a snare for my children? Are there corrupting influences that I am not guarding against faithfully? Are there sins in my own life that I wouldn’t want them to emulate?

Am I setting the example of wholehearted Christianity that my children need to see?

Beyond our own children, as a church, we must be pouring into the next generation, seeking to disciple and raise up leaders who will carry the torch – not drop it in the mud.