How Can Our Children Not Lapse? Three Conditions

8/27/2017

I want our children have this vision too from a really young age, of what their destiny is. I’ve seen little bits of how much some of these guys pick up. I’ve seen how much a two-year-old can pick up of little things, and it’s encouraging to me that there’s an ability to live this out, and hopefully it will all become exponential and just take off! More than I can even think is possible! He came over to me the other day and he said, “Jesus is gonna smoosh the snake!” He’s so dramatic. “And we’re gonna boom, boom, boom, boom.” And I was just like, “Yeah, you are bud. You are. You don’t really know what you’re saying right now but that is going to happen.” But that they could say that as a two-year-old and not even know what they’re saying. As a 6- and 8- and 10-year-old, they can keep thinking of it being real. It is real. When I was really young, I believed things wholeheartedly, but as I grew older I became a little more cynical. Do the children even need to go through that slump where they wonder, “Is God really real?” when I totally, 100%, did all these little things in my five-year-old world. I believed it as much as a five-year-old could, but then as I grew, I thought, “Well, maybe not because of this and this.”

There are only 3 things that could bring children to any lapse or cynicism:

One is you didn’t sow a lot of good seeds, and so there was an equal part of worldly seed and Godly seed. You didn’t read the scriptures—they don’t know the scriptures when they are 6, 7, and 8 because you really didn’t read with them much. You just thought they’d accidentally “get it” in some other context, so you’re lazy and without vision, and they didn’t get much good seed. They’re going to lapse to some extent. Maybe they will come back, or maybe they won’t, but they don’t have to lapse if they have a lot of good seed.

A second reason that they may lapse is their own flesh, and they are all going to have that. Meaning, there’s going to be a decision time for them in various points of their life, including the ultimate conversion time where they decide if they’re going to put on the Armor and go to War, or if they are just going to be selfish fools. So, they may lapse because they have free will, and everybody has that option.

They may also lapse because they see hypocrisy in their home. You can read all the scripture in the world with them, but if what the children SEE is sloppiness in the house, where it’s clearly not your priority… It’s just something you talk about, something you do… It’s a hobby, but you don’t weigh your decisions, you don’t weigh your conversations… They never see the parents apologize to each other for a raised voice and make it right, or apologize to them… The children don’t see, “This is a big decision. Why don’t you sit with us while we ask God about this…” If they don’t see or hear any of that, then their parents to them are hypocrites. It’s a hobby, and the children think they get to choose whether they want that hobby or a different hobby.

So the three things that really matter are: 1) sowing a lot of good seeds; 2) their own flesh and whatever decisions they make of their own free will; and 3) whether or not they really see passion for Jesus in everyday circumstances and decisions and treatment of each other, as well as forgiveness and apologies, as well as decision-making in obvious prayer, or catching you on your knees by accident—those sorts of things.

Because if they don’t see that, they will see through that. No doubt, NO doubt! I’ve seen it a hundred times—where parents were sloppy, and the parents thought that the environment would somehow “save the day” and they didn’t really have to be passionate. And lo and behold, out pops a rebellious 14-year-old, and the parents can’t figure out how that happened. When they’ve been sloppy for the whole first 14 years, of course that’s going to happen! What’d they think was going to happen? The youth group was going to save the day? It’s not going to happen that way.

There’s no amount of good influence that saves the day when the children see hypocrisy in the home. By hypocrisy, I mean lukewarmness and just the absence of talking to God about a decision, or the absence of making things right, or the absence of humility and love and consideration and service. If the children see a human home rather than a Jesus home, they’re not going to believe another word that comes out of your mouth! They’re smarter than that. They’re going to have to decide on their own, like most of us did in our generation that never saw anything worth a hoot. We had to decide on our own; we didn’t have any help.

Can children go from age two onward without any lapse? YES—but those are the three conditions.

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