Phone A Friend | Week 4 | Daniel Goulding | Echoes Church

And again, I talked about it last week, but if you have not downloaded our Echoes church app yet on your phone, I can't encourage you enough to do that. It's got all the, like, updates of what we're doing and what's going on here, but it also has all my sermon notes on it. And I know I move quickly. I cover a lot of verses, put a lot of stuff on the screen,

but all of those notes will be in the sermon notes that are in our app there. K? And then also as a reminder, you guys have one week. K? Next week, for all you dudes in here, next week is Mother's Day. Alright? Don't blow it. You have a whole week to prepare, and we have a special service next week planned for all of you moms. We've got a special gift for you, so we hope to see you guys all back for Mother's Day weekend next week. But today, we're gonna talk about how to raise faith filled kids. And again, I grew up in a a big family. I'm one of five kids. I'm right in the middle. Got two older sisters and two younger brothers. And, you know, families of five, you're just like you look at your parents, especially if somebody that has three kids now, I'm like, what were you guys thinking? Like, did nobody tell you how a baby was made? Like, what were you guys doing? You know? Five kids? Like, what are we talking about? You know? And

my parents were awesome, but, like, it was crazy. But the truth is is, like, raising kids even thirty, forty years ago is different than raising kids today. And there's a lot of there's a lot of reasons and variables why, but it's just it's a it's a different world today. I think part of it is because, you know, these kids have had cell phones in their hands for the entire time, but if you just look at culture, culture is different today than it was thirty or forty years ago. One of the things that I see is like one of those, like, okay. This is very clear. Things have changed. Back when I was having kids, we would just text people when we found out the gender of the baby that we were gonna have and we just would say, hey, we're having a boy or we would just call someone and say, we're having a girl. But today,

you can't do that today. Right? You've got to like plan to some monster party. You gotta hire the like vendors and do all the things. I actually found some pictures I wanna show you. These are real gender reveal parties that people have done. K? These these people hired a helicopter

to drop pink dust all in the clouds to tell people that they were having a girl. Now that's next level. This next one is pretty awesome. These people had fireworks going and obviously the blue smoke goes, and every time I get invited to these gender reveal parties, I'm always like, so do we cheer if it's like a boy and we get sad if it's a girl? Like, what do we do? Because I feel like I feel we should be excited either way. This one's hilarious. They were doing a gender reveal party for a panda in a zoo. Okay? That's that's next level, but the craziest one that I could find was was this one right here that a family did, and that one's not real. That's actually AI generated, but

I just told AI, if you could create the craziest gender reveal party, what would it look like? And again, I don't mean to knock it. I understand the excitement of it and I I do love that we are celebrating babies and all of that stuff but it's just things are different. It's a different world today And what what I wanna talk about primarily is focusing on generation z and generation alpha. K? Gen z is most of our kids in this room. They're right now between the ages of 14 and 29.

Generation alpha are the ones that are coming after them. When you look at the data connected to these generations, our our antennas should be going off. We should be almost running around going, hey, something is really broken. And again, I think there's lots of factors to it but you can't discount

the fact that they've all grown up with a cell phone and social media in their hands twenty four seven. They say that the average time that a gen z youth spends on their phone is somewhere between seven and nine hours a day and the reason that it's significant is because the world is discipling them. The world is putting things into them and the question is is what is it putting in them? I I would submit to you that the data is not good. The data is not

it's not it's not encouraging. K? They say this is all about gen z. Again, born in 1997 to 2012, they say that gen z right now, 46% of them have already been diagnosed with a significant mental health condition. They say that forty percent of high school students report feeling persistently sad

or hopeless. They say one in five teens has had a major depressive episode in the last year that has resulted in suicidal thoughts. Nearly fifty percent say that they feel anxious often or consistently.

Gen z is eighty percent more likely to report anxiety and depression than any other generation in human history. They've gone on record to say that gen z has the worst mental health of any generation we've ever seen.

And I'm telling you, it is shaking them to their core. What what the world is putting into them, it is not good. And I only submitted to us to kind of prove the point. Fifty years ago, the average population two to four percent of the average population said that they identified somewhere in the LGBTQ

spectrum. K? Today with generation z, the numbers are between twenty five and thirty percent of kids today report identifying in as an LGBTQ

person. Again, I think that there's a variety of reasons and factors that are there but they don't know who they are and they're searching for the world to tell them and part of it is because we as parents have have shook the responsibility. We've pushed off the responsibility

to raise faith filled kids and this is what's amazing about today being child dedication day. I wish I could tell you that I planned all this for me to teach on this today. I didn't. God just providentially hooked me up until I was teaching on this on child dedication day and and I say this as a parent that is in the fight with you. K? I have two teenagers. I have a 16 year old daughter and a 13 year old son and luckily, we're able to make a lot of mistakes with them and now we've got a seven month old that we're gonna correct all those mistakes and we'll do better with him.

And I don't know why it is, but I mean, parenting is without a doubt one of the most difficult and humbling things that I've I've ever done and I'm tempted in times because I just feel like I'm not good at it to check out of it. And my my encouragement today, friends, is to tell you the stakes in the data, it is telling us that something needs to change. Again, when you look at church attendance in generation z, it's heartbreaking.

I'm a millennial, and the data connected to millennials, what was mind boggling when we first started to see it. Millennials were the first generation

in America's history where 50% of them walked away from their faith after high school, and we were like, wait. Hold on. People usually stay they'll come back to the church at a certain point, and millennials didn't do that. The early data with generation z is saying that the data is even worse with them. The projections are about 80% of gen z will not identify as a church attender after high school.

Mind you, how they're pulling and what they're using as an answer for a church attender means that they go to church at least one weekend a month.

We've gotten to a point where like church attendance is like, yeah, I go once a month, I raise my hand like, I am a I am a regular church attender. And the truth is that we know that. Basically, even on our data here, most people come to church about 1.3

times a month. K? And I'm just saying that whatever the solution is, I'm not saying you just gotta come to church every weekend though I would encourage you regular church attendance is a good thing. What I'm saying is is that what we've done is not working and we have to start to address what do we need to do to raise faith filled kids. I think we got to start by all agreeing on what the goal of parenting is. I think the goal is that the primary goal of every Christian parent is to instill genuine faith in God and their children.

Hear me. The primary goal of a parent should be to instill faith in God in their children. That that is the primary thing that we are supposed to be instilling in them. But I think for some of us, because we we get distracted, the world starts to tell us what success looks like, instead of God being primary, what we've run after is we go, no. No. I wanna raise really successful kids. I'm here to remind you that success doesn't really matter if they also don't have spiritual,

that some of us wanna make sure that our kids are successful financially

but don't neglect the faith. We wanna make sure our kids are are educated but we don't think a lot about the eternal implications of where our children are going to end up. We've gotta start with an agreement that the goal is not to just raise good kids but to have godly kids. K? We wanna have godly kids. We want kids to know who they are

in Christ and there's a verse in the bible, there's two verses in the bible that I would say the the saddest verses. The first one is connected to Samson

when he tried to do something that he'd always done before but he hadn't realized that the presence of God had left him. The second verse is also found in the book of Judges connected to the nation of Israel. You gotta remember the nation of Israel were God's chosen people that one point were living in slavery. God delivered them out of captivity in Egypt. They wandered the desert for forty days or for forty years. God God literally parted a sea. They walked through it. They saw God move in power. They would walk out every day and literally bread from heaven would fall on the floor in front of them. Like, could you imagine how much we would weigh if every day you walked outside and there just bread supernaturally appearing in your driveway? Like, we'd all weigh a thousand pounds. Right? They watched God move in power in their generation. The the cloud of God was with them during the day. The a pillar of fire was with them at night. All that to say they were a group of people that saw God move in power, but then eventually they get to the promised land and in the promised land, they forgot who they were and they forgot that the assignment was never about just building a comfortable life to settle into. It was always about contending for the faith and again, I think one of the saddest verses in Judges chapter two verse 10 talking about that generation says this, it says, after that generation died,

another generation grew up who did not even acknowledge the lord or remember the mighty things that he had done for Israel.

All it takes is one generation for getting the responsibility that we've been giving to hand, the most important thing that we've been given, which is our faith to the generations coming after us for us to lose a generation.

I'm telling you, we have to make a decision, every one of us collectively, but I'm I'm asking, I'm believing that as a as a church community that we are going to collectively say, I don't I don't care what happens out there. I don't care what's happening in the world. As for me and my house,

we're gonna serve the Lord, and we're gonna push hard, and we're gonna make sure that our kids grow up in in faith filled homes. How do we do it? I got four four keys I wanna show you today on how to raise faith filled kids. The first one is you've gotta create a home that fosters

faith.

Hear me. If you're sitting here today going, man, I try to do my best and my kids are still kind of wandering. I don't know where they are with God. You you and I can't force our kids to follow Jesus. I I wish we could. I've probably tried in certain seasons of my life but you can't. We cannot force our kids to follow God but what we can do is we can create an environment where it's possible

for them to have a great foundation in the things of God. And the first thing you have to do is you have to create a home that fosters faith. What do I mean by that? I I think the question that we've got to legitimately sit back and ask humbly and soberly is what what is the primary identifier of your home? And and again, you know the families. Right? They're like, man, that is a that is a college football family. Like, when you walk in their garage, it's painted Chrisman red. They got the Alabama a all over the place. Their newborn that their kid came home with was an Alabama

like, are an Alabama football family. Right? Like, we we Mecca out to the stadium together. We go to football games. We we reorient our schedules to make sure that we're always there to to watch football games. I'm not saying that that necessarily is a bad thing, but I'm trying to I'm trying to paint a picture for you that I think our lives should represent the same thing when it comes to faith, that the primary thing that we should be known for, that the the thing that is talked about the most, the thing that is celebrated in our homes more than football teams, more than baseball programs, more than sports

is the word of God, the presence of God, faith. Our our kids should see us prioritize

things in our world to reorient stuff to make sure that we're able to prioritize being in the house of God. That it's not like we get up and we're like, oh man, it's a great day. We should just we should be outside. I'm not gonna be in church today. Like, Our kids have to see us prioritize it. We've gotta foster

we've gotta foster faith. It requires every single one of us to realize, hey, the church plays a very specific role. We play a unique role in the spiritual development of your children, but again, as a guy that spent a lot of time as a youth pastor, I watched so many families kind of push the responsibility of spiritual development off to us as their youth pastors and I'm like, at best, I have your students for three or four hours a week. You know where they spend the bulk of their week?

At home with you, with you and every single one of us needs to realize that the greatest place of discipleship

is supposed to be the home. What the bible says, what the bible talks about, the verse that I read today for these families, the instruction manual says that discipleship is supposed to primarily happen in the home and it doesn't require

perfect parents. It just requires present parents, intentional parents who are trying to figure it out. It requires us to realize, hey, it is our responsibility, it's not somebody else's responsibility. The church can play a unique role. Again, I'm a big fan of the church, very pro church guy, but we have to remember the primary discipleship makers are are the parents in the home. There's a there's a prayer in the old testament. The most famous prayer in the old testament is called the Shema. It's found in Deuteronomy chapter six verse four says it says, here, O Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one.

Love your God. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all of your soul, and all of your strength as these commandments I give you today are to be on your hearts. You gotta remember the book of Deuteronomy is written by Moses at the end of his life trying to give these are the legacy letters of a of a grandfather that didn't that didn't necessarily finish his race super well. It's him trying to do his best to write down for him the principles that he built his life on that he's gonna hand to his kids, they're gonna hand these to their grandkids and he tells us guys, here's the goal of passing faith to the next generation is eventually they've got to get it at the heart level. See, the goal of of faith is not just to have a bunch of head knowledge about God. Eventually, we need our kids to have a a heart transformation. We need them to be born again. We need them to know God at the heart level. How do we do that? Moses continues in verse seven. He says, impress these commandments on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.

I don't even know what it means to bind them on your foreheads. Like, maybe you're tying a rope on your forehead or you're getting a tattoo on your forehead. Either way, it sounds awesome. I think we should all do it. So verse nine says, write them on the door frames of your house and on your gates. Here's what Moses is telling us creating a faith filled home looks like. He says, just talk about God

all the time. When you're going to bed, when you're waking up, when you're driving to soccer practice, make it ordinary for faith conversations to be a part of your part of your day.

Reorient the the priorities of your schedule to make it to where faith is something that you talk about. And again, was thinking about this week. I want this to be helpful. I want it to be practical. I could I could talk to you about, man, prioritizing praying together before you go to bed, talk about how to get into the word of God as a family before they start their days and you send them out into the world. All those things I think are important. But as I was looking more at data, I think there's one thing that if we go, hey, we're gonna go all in on this one thing that I think could really begin to move the needle. What what was mind blowing, again, looking at the shifts that are happening in culture, if you look back at the silent generation, the generation that was raised in the thirties and forties,

80 to 90% of them said that regular family dinners were a normal rhythm in our household. What's crazy today, and again, I know we all have justification for why it doesn't happen, We're busy. We travel. Schedules are different. Programs, sports, all the stuff, but they say that today,

the average family only has dinner together in less in less than 25% of homes. Most people say they they never actually even eat a meal together.

I started to think about that looking at the data connected to it and how much the bible talks about faith being formed in the home and how much food is usually connected to it because calories

are good to the glory of God. Right? That I think that if you and I are gonna go, how do we create faith filled homes? I think reclaiming the dinner table is essential for passing faith to the next generation. I think if there's one thing that we're gonna prioritize as a community, we're gonna go, we're gonna reclaim

the dinner table. I might not be able to do everything but what we can do is we can reclaim the dinner table. Once a day, three times a week, you can you can gather your family and say, we're gonna prioritize this for an hour. We're gonna leave the devices in the corner. We're gonna sit down together as a family. We're gonna we're gonna break bread together. We're gonna talk. We're gonna celebrate the things that are happening in our lives, and we're going to we're gonna begin to live life together intentionally.

And as I did research this week, it was mind blowing connected all the data that's connected to families that eat meals together. They say that children that come from homes where meals are regularly eaten together have lower rates of obesity and unhealthy habits that carry with them into adulthood. They say that family meals are linked to lower rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. Kids who eat with family regularly have better grades in school. They develop stronger vocabulary and communication skills.

Kids who eat with their family are less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol, less likely to engage in risky behavior, and more likely to make wise decisions. They did a comprehensive study of Rhodes Scholars, and they said that one of the common things that they had together was that they came from families that prioritized eating a meal together. I know there's a lot of stuff to go, man, I I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to read the bible with my family, but I know what we can all do is go, look, we can we can prioritize

making dinner a reality, and it doesn't require perfect parents. Again, it's not about the food. It's about the formation. It's not about everything going perfectly. It's about making the intention to do it. I know a lot of you are thinking, I've tried to have a meal with my kids before, and it's like kind of corralling a bunch of wild animals. You know? Like, I I get it. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying it's always fun, but I am saying that I think that it's a priority. That's something we've gotta consider. Here's a here's how to structure a family dinner. Simple playbook, again, in the hopes of making this really practical and helpful. Here's how to have a family dinner that I think can foster faith. Get everybody together. Put the devices in the corner and start by just praying together. Just going, hey. Who wants to pray for us? It could be a terrible prayer that doesn't even really count and the food's not even blessed, but, like, the intention

the intention of the prayer is what matters. And then be thankful together. Talk about what we're thankful for because there's always something to celebrate. There's always something to be grateful for. Share your day with one another. Every family's got a version of this. What's your high? What's your low? Go around and just know the things that are going on in their life. Let them see the things that you're walking through, and then figure out a way to open up God's word together. Again, there's a million ways you can do this. Go online. Find a bible study. Open up the verse of the day on YouVersion.

It doesn't have to be super spiritual and super deep. It just needs to be consistent.

Opening the word of God with your kids is a lot like forcing them to eat vegetables. Right? I know they don't always wanna do it, but we know that it's good for them, and eventually as you wash them with the word of God, eventually you will make it to where faith is a it's a normal part of our family. It's not weird to have these conversations and hopefully here's the goal, is that when your kids become teenagers and they start processing through really big things,

they're coming to you to ask these questions and they're not going to their friends and they're not going to social media. That's the hope of fostering

an environment where faith is normal. Here's the second thing you've gotta do if you wanna raise faith filled kids, and I would say this is probably the most important of the four principles I'll give you today,

but you've gotta model faith as a parent. I think sometimes where we miss the mark the most is we think that the goal is to teach our kids about God. And the thing that I've learned about parenting, I wish it wasn't true, is that when it comes to passing things on to your kids, more will always be caught

than taught. Right? They don't always listen to what you say, but I promise you, they are watching what you do. And the question is is what are you doing? What are you modeling for them? Our kids should see us be an example. I think about I think about Paul, his encouragement going, hey, Follow me as I follow Christ. Friends, that that should be our example to our kids that they're they're seeing mom and dad foster an environment of faith. And again, I put in their model faith as a parent because it doesn't even have to be both parents. In an ideal world, every kid will grow up with their mom and dad in a loving marriage inside of a loving home where faith is normalized and talked about but I know we're we're not living in an idealized world and sometimes we're sitting here as single moms and single dads thinking that because the data connected to single parenthood is not great that somehow we're not gonna have success stories and that our kids are just are just doomed. Let me just encourage you, that's not true and that even in single moms and single dads, though it's not ideal, God can still use it but we we need at least a parent to model what faith looks like in the home. Second Timothy chapter one, again, it's just an introduction, but it gives us a really powerful

principle about this idea of modeling faith. Second Timothy chapter one verse five, this is Paul talking to his young protege. He says, I remember your genuine faith, talking about Timothy's faith, for you share the faith that first filled your grandmother Lewis and your mother Eunice.

His introduction to him is, man, I'm so thankful that you have genuine faith. And did you see where he got it? He got it because he watched his mom and his grandma model it. Now again, what what is hard for me to even express is how culturally bizarre it is for Paul as a Jewish man, a Jewish rabbi

to say that he's encouraging and that he's thankful for a mom and a grandma who passed on a legacy of faith in a culture where women were second class citizens. Citizens. K? Every theologian essentially agrees there's only one reason that the dad and the grandfather aren't mentioned. It's either because they're dead, which is like best case scenario,

or secondly, it's that they've completely checked out and they're nowhere engaged spiritually and so the only examples they had of faith in their home was the mom and the grandma. Now again, here's the encouraging thing is that if God could do it for Timothy,

he can do it for you too and God can often work in less than ideal situations but men hear me. Your voice matters.

Your spiritual legacy is needed. We need you to spiritually engage in the home even though it's not it's not always natural, it's not always fun, it's not always always easy. I'm telling you, we need you to help pass the faith to the next generation.

God will use if he needs to. He will use moms and he will use praying grandmas all to the glory of God. Yes and amen. But we need men to step in because here's the principle of why we we have to show our kids, not just tell our kids about faith because we know that faith that is modeled,

it eventually is a faith that becomes mirrored. And your kids will start to reflect what they watch you do consistently.

And there's things that my kids do that I'm like, why do you're doing that? And then I'm like, well, that's because I do all that. Right? And some of the things that I don't like that my kids do, the truth is is they're a reflection of me. And I wish that parenting was like leadership and you could you could just tell people, hey, guys, here's the direction to go. But it isn't that way. You've gotta walk the path and say, follow me as I follow Christ. What's amazing to me is the data connected to kids that grow up in homes that smoke cigarettes. You know, if a kid grows up in a home where the parents were smokers, they're four times more likely to become a smoker themselves,

which is wild to me because every parent that's a smoker tells everybody around them, hey. Don't smoke cigarettes. This is a terrible thing. I I wish nobody I wish I never started this. You shouldn't have smoked cigarettes. We have the picture of people dying on the boxes on all these cartons of cigarettes, and yet still,

kid that grows up in the home of a smoker is four times more likely to become a smoker. Why? Because kids aren't always listening to what you say, but I promise you they're always watching what you do. Let your kids watch you model faith. Let them see you read your bible. Let them see you praying. Let them see you listening to worship music. Let them see you bringing your offering to the church. Let them see you reorient your schedules around the house of God because what what you model eventually they will they will mirror and part of our responsibility is to be an example to our kids. Here's the third element you gotta do is you've gotta build a community that cultivates faith.

And again, as somebody spent a lot of time in youth ministry, there's nothing that will take a kid down faster and further than a friend that is running in the opposite direction of God. And you can foster a home, a faith, you can be a great example yourself, but if you are not intentional with the friends that your kids are spending time with, I'm telling you, you are setting them up for failure because there's nothing that is more influential into the direction of where they're going than the people that they spend time with both at school and after school. And part of our responsibility as parents is to cultivate

an environment and a community that is that is going to support the values that we have. And so we've gotta we've gotta be the parents that are engaged. It requires us to go, hey. I don't always love taking my kids' phones and going through all the messages and reading stuff, but I I have a responsibility

to not just be my kid's friend, but to be their parents. And part of my responsibility

is to curate the communities that they're growing up in because I know that friends matter. They're a big deal. I also know I have a responsibility to look at the people that I'm spending the most time with because what what is what is not helpful to pass faith to the next generation is for us to tell them to do one thing and then they see us, they're like, yeah. But what about your friends, man? Your friends are wild animals. You know? Like, look at who look at who you're hanging out with. Right? And so we've gotta model it first, but we've gotta realize community matters. The Bible literally says Proverbs chapter 13 verse 20 that if you walk with the wise, you will become wise. But if you associate with fools,

you will eventually you will eventually get in trouble. Telling you community

community matters. So the question is is how are you fostering the community that your children are growing up with? I'm not saying you gotta become the complete helicopter parent, but you and I have a responsibility to form and shape the communities that our kids are growing up in. It's one of the the main things that my wife and I are try are intentional to try to do, the schools that we put them in, the sports programs that we allow them to participate in, the youth groups that they go to. Again, I I think we have amazing youth ministries here, but don't don't believe the lie just because a kid comes to our youth ministry that that's a good kid. Right? Like, was youth pastor for a long time. There's a lot of knuckleheads that come to youth ministry. Right? They're they're trying to do the right things, but you still inside of that, you've gotta know, like, you've gotta know them by their fruit, the bible says. So what what do their lives look like? What do their families represent? Are we moving in the same direction? Because that's part of our goals. It doesn't matter if I create faith in my home and if I model it, if I allow my kids to be around a bunch of kids that are running in the opposite direction, I'm telling you eventually

eventually they'll run with them as well. I'm just saying that parents should constantly and should consistently and carefully evaluate the friends in their child's life. You've gotta look at who are they hanging out with, who are they spending the most time with. And this will come with some uncomfortable conversations, and sometimes it's not it's not the most fun. I I vividly remember when I was a teenager,

all my friends had gotten jobs at Abercrombie and Fitch, which oh, come on. Abercrombie used to be cool. It's it's, like, kinda come and be cool again. Like, I I don't know if it's there yet, but it's, like, on the rebound. Like, my kids shop at Hollister and Abercrombie now, and I'm like, what is happening? This is, my teenage years all over again. There was twenty years where it was not cool to shop at Abercrombie, but when I was a kid, man, Abercrombie was the place, like double pop callers to the glory of God. Like, it was it was a good time.

All my friends got jobs there, and so one of them got me a job there. And literally, the interview Abercrombie and Fitch, I kid you not, you line up and they walk by and they go, yes, no, no, yes, yes, no, yes, no.

Purely based on appearances, that's how you get a job. So apparently, I looked like Abercrombie and Fitch, which I guess was a good thing. I go home and I tell my mom how excited I am. I just got a new job with all my friends, and my mom has like this check-in her spirit. There's something about that place. You can't work there. I'm like, what do you mean? All my friends work there. It's a great place. Like, it's amazing. She's like, no. You can't work there. And it became like this massive issue. The crazy part is today, the Abercrombie and Fitch CEO is literally spending a lifetime in prison because of all the craziness that he was doing inside of Abercrombie and Fitch. Again, just as an example to go friends, moms and dads will have an intuition that you've gotta follow. You've got to run after. You gotta be praying for God to give you discernment, to give you wisdom. How do we navigate these things? God, I'm not just I'm not just navigating this in the natural. I'm believing you're gonna give me divine insight, and then you've gotta be willing to have some of the harder conversations in times because we know that our job is not to be their friend, but it's to be their it's their parent because the right community will eventually reinforce reinforce the right convictions

and it's impossible to have the right life with the wrong friends. Fourth element of raising faith filled kids, and I don't just mean this as a platitude, this is probably the one I would put first but they're all important so I put it last, but you've got to fight for their faith in prayer.

You've gotta contend for the faith of your children in prayer. And I think, again, part of my my fear with the church in America today is we just are not a praying people. We don't know what prayer looks like. Outside of a thirty second thing before a meal, we don't really know what what intercession looks like. We don't know what contending in prayer is like. And I'm telling you what is all throughout the scriptures is the power of prayer, specifically of moms and dads that are going after the faith of their their children and their grandchildren. And this is the good news for all of us sitting here today going, man, I I felt like I did my best. I felt like I tried to curate faith in my home, and yet my kids still they're still wandering. And I'm still I'm still praying. Believing I'm

that they're gonna come back to the faith one day. And the truth is is that some of them don't even wanna talk to me about faith. If you said, mom, dad, like, let let's stop talking about this stuff.

Let me encourage you. It doesn't matter where you sit today, how how great of a job you felt you've done with this up until this moment. The good news is that your child's story is not done being written. And at any moment, you can make a decision to go, no. I'm I'm I'm contending for their faith.

And and though they might not listen to the words that you say, they can't they can't stop the the prayers that you pray, and your prayers can penetrate parts of their heart and their soul that they're in this season not allowing your words to get you. Again, I wrote it down this way that people may dismiss your wisdom. They can't resist the power of your prayers.

And friends, don't dismiss the power of a praying mom and a praying dad and a praying grandma and a praying grandpa. I'm telling you, without a doubt, one of the only reasons that I'm here today and not homeless

and in a gutter somewhere is because I had a grandma that was praying for me, and she reminded me often, Daniel, I I pray for you every day. I'm like, what do you pray for? She's like, I pray that you're miserable in your sin, and I pray that you you just have you have a wandering soul and that you just feel no contentment and joy until you come back to God. And I'm like, thanks. I think. You know?

But the truth is I'm telling you, I'm standing here today as a byproduct of a a mom and a grandma that believed in the power of prayer. Friends, don't dismiss what you can do in the supernatural.

If if we could peel back the layer between the world that we live in, the natural world that we see, and the supernatural realm where there's a battle taking place over your life and over your children's life, I'm telling you, we would all be running after,

contending for our children's faith in prayer. Let me just tell you to to do it by faith even though you might not be able to see it. How do you pray for your kids? Here's an amazing prayer. It's recorded in Ephesians chapter one verse seventeen and eighteen. This is something that I pray consistently

for my kids. This is Paul. He says, I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus, the glorious father,

that he may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation. Why? So that you may know him better. The first part of our prayers that that we that our kids would know god better. I pray that the eyes of your heart verse 18. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.

It's a prayer that says, God, I hope that they know you like I know you. I pray that the eyes of their heart would be open to see you the way that I see you, that the greatest gift that I've ever been given is forgiveness of my sins, redemption, restoration, hope, peace that surpasses all understanding.

And God, I'm praying, and I'm asking that you would begin to do the same work in my children's heart. And I'm telling you, do not dismiss the power

of a praying parent, a praying grandparent, a praying relative, a praying friend. And I I don't know exactly what the what the combination is that leads to raising up a faith community,

but it's some element of this, the church playing our part. Parents realizing we've gotta foster faith in the home. We've gotta model it with our lives. We've gotta be praying for our children. We've gotta cultivate a community

that is supporting the direction we're trying to take them. And I promise you, if we if we begin to lean in,

this task that is that is a an arduous one, that is a difficult one of being a parent, Man, I'm telling you, there's nothing that I do that is more difficult than than navigating the complexities of being a parent in 2026.

But here's also the beautiful reminder to all of us is that God has never asked you to do it alone. You have a community of faith to support you in the journey, but you also have the spirit of God alive and active in you, and God will give you revelation. God will give you discernment

if you seek him. This is the beauty of who our God is. The scripture says that if you, oh, if you knock on the door, he'll open it. If you seek him, you'll find him. That God doesn't wanna be a mystery to us. And so my encouragement to us today is don't take on the task of parenting,

this difficult task. Don't take it on alone. You don't have to. God wants to partner with you. God wants to be in this journey with you. You've gotta invite him in. You've gotta go, God, would you help me? Would you show me the places in my life where I need to model faith better? Would you show me where I've just kind of thrown in the towel because I'm tired? I just I don't wanna have to fight anymore. I don't wanna tell him you can't hang out with these friends. You can't do this thing. He said, I've just kinda let him do whatever. God, would you give me a backbone again? Would you give me courage again?

And, father, we're believing that there is revival coming again for this next generation. And I know that the data is alarming,

that that it looks like based on the numbers that Gen z and Gen alpha are just gonna walk away, and there's gonna be a generation that forgets about the things of God, but we're standing up and saying not with us.

As for me and my house, we're choosing the Lord. We're choosing to take a stance. We're choosing to intercede in prayer, believing that God is going to do the immeasurable, the impossible. God If we do the natural, God will do the supernatural. Amen? Let me pray for you. Father, God, I thank you.

God, I thank you for every single person that's here today. I know there's people that are just here because they're supporting a loved one or a family member that's dedicating their child today. But, spirit of god, I know that you are here and you're moving.

So, father, I just pray that you would have just a moment with us, that you would remind every single person sitting here today how much you love them. And, father, if I never get a chance to see them again, would you just remind them that two thousand years ago, you you sent your son to die to prove your love for them.

And that, father, you're not looking to us to be perfect or to figure it out and then come back once we've gotten our our lives together. No, God. You're sitting here saying, hey. Come to me in your brokenness, in your shame, in your pain, in your distress. Bring it to me and watch what I can do with it.

So, father, we pray that we would have the courage, the conviction, the boldness today to to come back to you, to surrender our hearts to you anew, to ask you to fill us afresh

so that we could walk as faith examples to our children in our community. Jesus, we we love you. We desperately need you this morning. It is in Jesus' holy and mighty name all God's people said. Amen and amen.