Lord, raise up young Christians who will be Gospel-soaked and Gospel-loyal as the end approaches. I’m afraid that my generation has not done its job in preparing the next so I’m asking You for some time and some help today. Place within the next generation a holy disgust for anything that seeks to bring an alloyed state of being to Your eternal truth. For some reason, the past few generations of your people have been willing to mingle their own ways with your ways and present as if it were only your ways. Expunge from the upcoming generation those silly trends which deceive, as You also explode out of them those equally deadly traditions which enslave. We want Your fullness and we want to pass that hunger down to those young people coming behind us. We need courage to reclaim and then place the uncompromised truth into their hands. Father, make us both wise and courageous to admit that some things which we have allowed to season and flavor our cultural, Americanized Christianity have nothing to do with your Gospel and mission. Lord, somebody started making things important that You never made important and, because they have been passed down generationally, they now feel all-important. We need to tip those sacred cows, Lord, so please raise some reformers up in this generation.
Jesus, I see that the coming generation will be tested more severely than we have been. The cost of their confession of You as Lord will be higher for them. Their faith may cost them everything and we cannot afford to hand them a hybrid version of your will and your ways and tell them it will be all they need. I’m afraid we are handing them something besmirched with our grubby fingerprints. They need the Holy Word and the Holy Spirit. They need wild abandonment to you instead of weekly church attendance checklists. They need power, not creeds. They need unapologetic boldness, not polite acquiescence to what our culture expects of Christians. They need unextinguishable fire in their bellies, not uncertain repetitions on their lips. Lord, please let my generation prioritize present-day reformation of the Church so that this upcoming generation knows what is real and what is pre-fab, propagated pretense. I’m concerned that, should they be required to die for what we have imparted to them, they will choose instead to live. I am concerned that this will happen because we have not presented them the true life of Jesus Christ, the holy seed of eternal truth or the vibrant, other-worldly intimacy with the Holy Spirit. Lord God, I am afraid that we have handed them a self-pleasing, self-improving, self-stroking philosophy and simply signed your name at the bottom of it. They will not die for that because it is not worthy dying for! But, You, Lord Jesus – You are worthy of them giving it all. Please help us give them that. We seem to be standing by at the carnival while the onslaught is two blocks away and moving swiftly toward us. God, my inner-prophet’s voice is telling me that time is running short and that we have not readied the generation to come.
So give us sanctified outrage at things that anger You while infusing irrepressible love in us which will regulate how we express that outrage to a spiritually blind and empty world. Make my son a man of God, not a mild church attender. Make my daughter a downpour of love, mercy and service who exchanges the American Dream for the Great Commission. Help Amy and me to have penetrating wisdom to prepare those precious children for what will be required for them as adult Christians living in a post-Christian world where an allegiance to Jesus Christ will have to be proven because those who oppose Him will persecute all who claim to follow Him. Lord, we ask for an unprecedented and extremely necessary outpouring of the Holy Spirit who is our absolute and only hope. Position us to receive this from You, lest we perish in the quicksand of apathy and uncertainty. I am convinced that nothing else this morning will do.
For Jesus’ glory, Amen.
I am so thankful that my son has the “fire in his belly”. My plea to our Father is similar to yours, Jeff. I feel sometimes like the Marines: “Looking for a few good men.” Not good in themselves but good because they understand that, when all has been said and done, the only things left standing are people and the Lord. I’m looking for men who abandon themselves to reaching other men who will also reach other men ad infinitum. In short, I’m looking for men who have the Spirit of God burning inside them.
May the Lord hear our prayers and grant these requests.