Family Trip - Generational Questions

Multiply Church, my name is Jordan.

It is a huge honor to be in the room with you this morning.

My family and I have been following your church for the last few years from afar.

We were from Wilmington, North Carolina.

We just moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, three months ago.

Some of you are like, Why in the world would you do that?

You lived at the beach, and there's no beach in Cincinnati.

We know we're going through a little bit of mild questioning, the decision right now, but it's an honor to be in the space.

And a few hours ago was the first time I ever actually walked into the doors of your church, and I immediately turned to Forrest and a few other people on your team, and I said, I love this place.

This is amazing.

This building is amazing.

I didn't even really know what I was walking into.

I kind of came in blind.

And I've been walking through the space, and I'm like, man, this hits home for me because when I was five, my family moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, so that my dad and a small team of people could plant a church.

So I was a church rat growing up.

Church plant kid.

I've done church in the movie theater, the park, the school, the cafeteria, the gym, the ox gym, you name it.

I've been to church there.

And this felt like home for me, not just because of that, but because when I was 13, we moved to the other side of Raleigh so that my dad could plant another church.

Back to the movie theater.

For the last almost decade, my family in Wilmington had been serving at a portable church that was young, and we had been building into teenagers for the last decade.

And this is just in my bones.

A place like this is in my DNA.

And I want, I don't want, I don't know if you know this or not.

This is not normal.

It's not normal.

A church your age, your size to be doing the things that you're doing.

And so I just want to honor you and the team and everyone to say, this is special.

This is very special.

I've been a youth pastor for the last 10 years, and I got into working with the next generation because God radically met me and saved me when I was 17 years old.

A senior in high school, and it was at that pivotal moment in my life that someone pulled me in after that encounter and said, I see something in you that you don't see in yourself, and I want to speak that into your life.

And I've been on a mission for the last 10 years just to do what he did for me for other people.

And I believe that part of my job right now isn't just to be a youth pastor or to help parents, but it's actually a calling to the church to say, Hey, let's let's wake up and see teenagers who are often invisible and ignored by society and by the church and say, hey, we're gonna lean into it.

We're not gonna see them as a side project or a fringe ministry.

No, they're a central piece of what God wants to do in and through his church.

I believe that.

And so what I love is that I get to be here today to speak on behalf of Multiply to say, not on our watch will the next generation be invisible and ignored by the church.

And so I want to bring you a message this morning titled, What is the faith of the next generation worth?

What is the faith of the next generation worth?

Let's pray.

Let's just invite God into the space.

Jesus, we love you.

We are honored to be in your presence.

God, I pray today that you give every individual in this room eyes to see teenagers the way you see them.

God, give us your heart, your mind, your care for an often overlooked and underappreciated group of people.

We love you and we are open to hear from you.

Change us, transform us.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, as I said, my name is Jordan, and it's an honor to be here.

We've been following Multiply from afar because we have family that's connected to this place.

My brother-in-law was just up here leading worship, Hayden.

And I was thinking earlier, I'm not really great at family trees, but that makes me the brother-in-law of the brother-in-law of the lead pastor Forrest.

I don't think that means we are related.

I think we're just friends.

But if if if that's wrong, someone tell me afterwards and we'll figure this out.

So I have to show you a picture of my family.

That's just what guest speakers do.

There's a study out there that says, you'll trust me more and listen to what I say if I show you a picture of my family.

So this is my wife Lauren.

This is our little girl, Skye.

She just turned three last week.

Send help, please.

And uh we're honored to be here.

We're excited to be here.

And I want to tell you uh one of my favorite things about the church.

One of my favorite things about the church is, and you see it in this room right now, it is different backgrounds, different ethnicities, different upbringings, different generations that all come together to unite around something.

It's one of the strangest things actually that happens in society because where else does that type of thing happen?

Where else do you come to a space to find common ground with people that don't look like you, talk like you, or think like you?

It's just not normal.

I believe it's one of the most beautiful aspects of the church because what's baked into the DNA of the church is mentorship, discipleship, accountability, wisdom.

When you get different generations in the room, those things are in the fabric of the church.

And I think that most of us in the room would agree, different people from different generations coming together to be united is a good thing.

It's a good thing.

Now we have to address the elephant in the room because different generations believe and see things differently.

They just do.

It's just the way life goes.

They bring different strengths and weaknesses to the table.

They all have different major events that shaped them and marked them when they were a kid or a teenager or a young adult.

They bring different things and they view things differently.

It's not a bad thing, it's just what is different experiences, different challenges, different environments.

I was hanging out with my grandparents a few months ago.

They came to visit right before we moved from Wilmington.

So we were hanging out at the beach, and my grandma took a bunch of photos of the beach day that we had.

And we were having dinner one night, and she's like looking at her phone like this, and she's trying to scroll and put her glasses on, and she's trying to figure out where all her photos from the beach day went.

She's like, Jordan, I need your help.

And I'm like, all right, give me the phone.

And I'm scrolling through it, I'm looking through it, and I'm like, Grandma, they're in the cloud.

And grandma's like, what is that?

The cloud?

What is that?

What does that even mean?

And I'm realizing I'm gonna have to try to explain the internet to my grandma.

And as I start explaining it, I'm like, actually, I don't even fully know if I know what the cloud is.

It's just the place where all your photos are, but I'm gonna get them for you and I'm gonna bring them onto your phone.

And she's amazed.

I was hanging out with a college student a few weeks ago.

He was talking about a big family trip that was coming up, a big road trip.

And I was like, man, back in the day, I used to crush a family road trip, man.

I'd be on the game boy just the whole time.

And he's like, the what?

I was like, my guy, what do you mean?

The game boy.

He had never heard of a game boy.

I was like, what is what's wrong with you?

It's like if you've ever tried to send a meme to your mom, an internet joke to your mom.

And I send some funny things I see to my mom, and you know she replies back every time, Jordan.

Wait, I don't get are these your friends?

Do you actually know these people?

I'm like, mom, it's just a joke.

But it's not funny anymore.

You're you ruined it.

It's just different.

And I think we can laugh about like the silly differences in technology, in fashion, in trends, in all of the things.

But can I be really honest with you?

I really do think that most generations look at the generation under them and they go, these people are entitled.

These people are lazy.

And their music is horrible.

If you're trying to figure out, am I getting old?

If you catch yourself saying something about today's pop music, that's how you know.

I did it the other day.

I was in the car and I was like, this is this is horrible.

What's going on right here?

And I was like, oh no, it's it's happening.

I'm getting old.

It's just happening right in front of my eyes.

Every generation thinks that the generation's music under them is trash.

Although we can laugh at it, I really do think it's a struggle to love people, see the value in people, appreciate people, serve people that we misunderstand and that we don't appreciate.

And so, on one hand, most in the room would say, it's a really good thing when different generations come together.

Yes.

I think on the other hand, many of us would also say, we don't see eye to eye on pretty much anything.

And this is a problem.

And I think many of us would go, yeah, we're all in the same room, but we are missing each other.

Smart guy named Hayden Shaw, he writes on this exact thing in his book called generational IQ.

This is what he says.

The reason we struggle with other generations is not that they are the problem.

The reason we struggle with other generations is that we don't understand them.

We don't know why they think differently, and so we stereotype, we criticize, and we make jokes.

But when we start to understand another generation, rather than attempting to maneuver others into seeing things our way, we open ourselves up to new possibilities of relating, helping, reaching, encouraging, and loving them.

Now, when I was a teenager, involved in the church, by the way, I want to be very clear, in the church, I started asking some big questions.

And you might be able to relate to this when you were a teenager, young adult, somewhere in that space.

And I wasn't actually saying these questions out loud, they were just living in my head, if you know what I'm talking about.

The first question was an identity question.

Who am I?

Like, not who my parents are, not who my family wants me to be, but who am I?

Like, what do I like?

What am I interested in?

What do I believe and think about the world and the way that it works?

That's a big question, right there.

The second question was a community question, right?

In high school, middle school, you're just trying to figure out who are my people?

Where do I fit in?

Do I belong to this group or this group?

There's all these clicks and and groups forming and taking place, right, throughout those years.

And you're like, which ones for me?

Do I fit into any of these?

Do I not fit in anywhere?

Where's my spot?

Who are my people that I'm gonna run with?

And lastly, the purpose question: why am I here?

Like, why do I exist?

Why am I alive?

Why was I created?

Is there something more?

It's the purpose question.

Like, what on earth am I here for?

What am I gonna do with my life?

Those questions started rolling around in my head, and I remember going through this incredibly isolating season of my life where I was struggling to find the answers to those questions.

And I believe there are hundreds, thousands of teenagers in this city, and they're all asking these questions.

They may not actually ask it to you outright, but they're thinking about it, and they're trying to figure it out.

And so my question this morning is: what happens when a generation grows up without the answers to their biggest questions?

What happens if an entire group of people would be wrestling with the deepest questions of the human soul and they don't get their answers?

It's a big question.

Kind of a scary question.

Because I know something, there's a lot of people that would love to answer those questions for your teenager.

They're already starting the process of answering those questions for your kids and for your teenagers.

I don't mean to scare you, I just mean to say what is.

It's just it's just out there.

You just gotta put it out there and go, there's a lot of people that would like to define my teenager for them.

They'd like to tell them who they are and who they're not.

And so my question is, what happens if they don't get the answers?

But really, the opportunity that we have is if the church could lean in.

The church could actually speak to the greatest questions that a young person could ever ask.

So the opportunity that presents us this morning is we can ignore, misunderstand, keep stereotyping, we can just keep making jokes, it's not my problem.

Somebody else can deal with that, somebody else's responsibility.

I'm just gonna mind my own business.

That's an option.

Or multiply church could say, hey, you know what?

Um, I'm gonna lean in.

I'm gonna take responsibility.

I'm gonna do what someone did for me for someone else, or I'm gonna do what I wish someone would have done for me for someone else.

Because if I would have had a person speaking into the biggest questions of my life, maybe I could have avoided a lot of heartache and heartbreak.

Maybe some jail time even.

Maybe a lot of consequences that I could have just bypassed if someone would have been there to speak into me.

Romans chapter 8 says that although we come from different backgrounds, different families, different generations, the Bible says that we've been adopted into God's family.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

So if you're a person who follows Jesus in the room, you've been adopted into God's family.

What does that mean?

It means that every Christian is a part of two families.

You're a part of your immediate family, your extended family, right?

And you're also a part of the family of God.

So God, in his love and in his grace, has welcomed you into his family as a son and as a daughter.

What does that mean?

Well, now it means that you get to see all races, tribes, tongues, generations the way that God sees them.

And in the family of God, you don't get to opt out of loving or serving certain groups of people.

That's not the way that it works.

And the family of God is also more than just a community.

It's a community that has a mission attached to it.

That mission is providing opportunities for all people, men, women, children, to see, hear, and respond to the gospel.

That's the mission that the family of God gets to partake in together.

And so today, I just want to help us reclaim a vision of a multi-generational faith that gets passed down from generation to generation and that impacts and influences specifically the most formative years of life, which you could argue are the teenage years.

Psalm 78, that's what we're gonna spend most of our time this morning.

It's one of my favorite sections of scripture.

My wife and I have a big like uh poster board in our living room of Psalm 78.

It's just been really impactful for our family.

Psalm 78, the author is telling a story in a song of the history of Israel.

He goes through all these different things.

The people of God, the Israelites, are trapped in slavery, and he recounts that.

He talks about Moses and the Exodus, the breaking out of slavery, the wandering in the wilderness.

He talks about legends of the faith like Joshua and King David.

He talks about reaching the promised land, all the stuff.

And Psalm 78 starts this way: My people, listen to my instructions.

Open your ears to what I'm saying.

I will speak to you in a parable, and I will teach you hidden lessons from our past, stories that we have heard and known, stories our ancestors handed down to us, and we will not hide these truths from our children.

We will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord, about his power and his mighty wonders.

So the author has a purpose.

It's to retell and recount all of the amazing things that God has done, who he is, and what he's done.

And I want you to understand that these were not just random fairy tale stories that were being handed down.

And they also weren't just Bible stories.

I think growing up as a kid in the church, teenager, I was like, oh, these stories almost don't even seem real to me.

Like I believe in them.

Do I believe that that actually happened?

Is that real or was that more of just like a folk tale?

And what I want you to understand is that these weren't just Bible stories, these were family stories.

Like it's real people, it's real parents and couples and kids and teenagers.

They're not just Bible stories, they're the foundational truths of how God has impacted individual families.

So I like to think about it this way: there's stories of a nation that God was rescuing, but around the dinner table in the evening, it was a story of how God rescued mom and dad.

I like to think of it this way.

There were stories of God protecting a nation, but as a bedtime story, grandma and grandpa were getting down on their knees and they were talking to young kids.

No, this is how God saved grandma and grandpa.

And you need to know about that story.

There were stories of God providing for a nation, and around the campfire, around the bonfire, teenagers were talking about how when they were little kids, God pulled them out of slavery and set them free.

And 13-year-old kids were telling that story around a campfire.

I've just never thought of it that way, and it brings it to life.

And I was so convicted as I was prepping for this message because I could tell you so much about the stories and the origins of my favorite brands, teams, and athletes.

Oh, I got stories.

Michael Jordan from Wilmington.

I could give you the whole background.

I can tell you stories of my favorite surfers, my favorite athletes, I could tell you about Nike.

I could tell you about so many origin stories.

You know what I can't tell you that many stories about?

My own family.

And that may sound really silly, but I'm really being honest.

As you move up the ranks and the generations, I don't know what my grandparents did as a career.

I don't know most of their viewpoints on faith or like I just don't really know a lot of that stuff.

And a part of me is a little ashamed to say that, but what it really highlighted for me was the fact that I think when kids are young, like infants and toddlers, sharing Bible stories is amazing, but it gets kind of easy.

Because like they just want to hear a story, and you get to share a Bible story.

But I just felt like over time, as kids move into adolescence and teenage years, it feels like the stories stop.

The stories tend to stop.

It's Bible stories.

Okay, I got that, I got all that.

But I think a teenager's going, Well, has it ever changed us?

Has it ever impacted our family?

Lauren and I have a three-year-old daughter.

Her name's Skye.

She's probably body slamming some kid in the kids' ministry right now.

She's amazing.

I love her to death.

But I don't want her to just grow up hearing Bible stories.

I want her to hear family stories.

I don't want her to just go, well, I know what God did for all these people like thousands of years ago.

No, I want her to be able to tell what God's done for us in different seasons of life where we've lived in different cities, in different places, been a part of different churches and organizations.

How was God working all the pieces together?

How was he faithful in all of those moments, the highs and the lows?

How did he stay with us?

How did he rescue us?

How did he bring us through?

I need her to know that God wasn't just faithful to Israel, he's been faithful to my family.

I want her to know that.

I need her to know that.

Because it's not just the Bible stories that form her, it's the family stories that form her.

And it's the family stories that are often missing from teenagers.

I have a lot of interactions with parents that go something like this.

Jordan, all that's great.

I know where I stand with my faith, but I don't really want to force my teenager to come to church because I just want them to figure it out on their own.

Or it goes something like this in the church lobby.

Hey, Jordan, you know, I get that, heard your message, great.

Oh, it's great, love it.

I know I'm good, like I know where my faith is, but I don't want to drag my teenager to church and force them to come to church like my parents did with me.

And it's a reaction that a parent has to previous parenting.

And to that I say, I hear you.

I really do 100% hear you.

But as I've talked with more and more and more of those parents in church atriums and lobbies, what I've come to realize is that oftentimes what's really happening underneath the surface here is that a parent is really Saying, I grew up in a way in which I was preached at or supposed to be held to a certain standard.

Act like this, talk like this, walk like this, you gotta do all these things.

At church, but then at home, none of that was actually held up.

They didn't actually see any of that, and so there was mixed signaling.

There were mixed messages that were being exchanged.

They didn't see any of it modeled or taught at home, and so eventually they realized, oh, something must be wrong with Jesus.

And I just want to say nothing's wrong with Jesus.

It's hypocrisy that turns you off.

And the solution to that as a parent or a young person who wants to invest into the next generation, in the teenagers, is certainly not to back off Jesus.

No, it's to step towards authentic, true, genuine faith.

And I just gotta tell you, when a teenager sees a mom or a dad, a grandma or a grandpa, a friend, a neighbor, a coworker who actually makes financial decisions based on gospel principles, they go, whoa, that's crazy.

When they see a person who goes, you know what, all my relationships, my marriage, my parenting, my work decisions, all of it is centered around Jesus and what he says is best for my life.

Your teenager is not gonna go, man, I really wish dad would stop shoving Jesus down my throat.

No, your teenager's gonna go, Wow, you have introduced me to the greatest relationship and person that you have ever known.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's what your teenager is gonna say when that happens.

Psalm 78, verse 5.

Psalms 78:5

The psalmist actually doubles down on this principle, the cycle of generational faith.

God issued laws to Jacob, he gave instructions to Israel, he commanded our ancestors to teach them to their children so that the next generation might know them, even the children not yet born, and they in turn will teach their own children.

Did you know that really up until the last hundred years or so, almost every culture and religion on the globe has realized hey, when pe when kids get to like 12, 13 years old, their bodies start to change.

And hormone levels rise and attitudes rise.

And all of a sudden they're like, what is going on with you?

Something's happening, something's changing.

And all of those different cultures and religions all established something that I believe is baked into this scripture right here.

They see something is changing, and then they come together as a community and they form a big milestone moment and marker for that adolescent.

It's called a rite of passage.

A rite of passage.

You've probably heard of this idea before, but it's a little foreign to us in America because we don't really do this.

We don't do it.

Every other piece of society has pretty much still got this thing except for us.

In the Jewish culture, it's the bar mitzvah or the bot mitzvah.

In Latin American culture, it's the kinseniera.

And there's a formal celebration, there's speeches, there's dancing.

Uh, you can look up Aboriginal Australian cultures have this thing called the walkabout.

It's crazy.

They just release 12-year-old boys into the wild, and they're just like, hope you got good survival skills.

And sometimes it's days, weeks, or even months that go by, and the teenager is just figuring it out.

You may have heard of this one, the Maasai warrior tribes.

In in countries in Africa like Kenya, they have a warrior initiation, and they send young boys, like 13, out to hunt and kill a lion so that they can be initiated into manhood.

And it's killer be killed.

And they have said, we've lost a lot of young men to the lions.

But that's the way they roll, and that's the way that it works.

And you can look at all these different rites of passage, and they all have differences, and they all have specific things that make them unique.

But you know what all of them have in common?

They have three things in common.

Number one is they speak to the teenager's identity.

Because in the process, the young person inherits a story.

This is where I come from.

These are the people who have gone before me.

This is my legacy.

This is the lineage.

And they're inheriting it, and it's helping them get a vision that life is bigger than them.

The second thing that they get is not just a story, it's a community to belong to because what taps into them at that moment is the community comes around them and says, This is what we believe.

This is how we behave.

If you want to be one of us, here's the playbook, here's the rules, here's how we do things, here's what we do, here's what we do not do.

It's handed down to them from their community, the traditions of the past.

And then lastly, they get purpose, they get a mission to fight for as they are handed responsibilities.

Okay, hey, well, if you're a man, here's what that's gonna entail.

Oh, you're a woman now.

Here's what that means.

There's rights and responsibilities.

You gotta do certain things around here to chip in and help out the community.

They get assigned a mission to live for.

And I'm like, wow, how crazy that almost the entire world has known the thing that Psalm 78 speaks to.

The cycle of generational faith over and over and over again.

It's almost like God wrote it on our hearts.

This is the way it works.

And in the formative years, we have to pursue the identity, community, and purpose questions for our young people.

If not, we risk losing them.

The answers to the question that every teenager is asking.

Why is it that most countries and societies have it?

And the best thing that we have to offer to a young person is like high school graduation.

Well, you're on your own now.

Hope that works out.

It probably won't.

I mean, that's what we've got.

It's no story.

No future community to belong to, not really a whole lot of purpose attached to it.

But I work with teenagers a few weeks, months, years before graduation.

You know the questions they're asking?

Help, I don't know what's about to happen.

My parents really want me to be a doctor, and I feel really stressed, but I don't want to be a doctor.

How do I tell them?

My goal was just to make a lot of money, but I'm actually thinking now, a 16-year-old would say this.

My goal is to make a lot of money, like six-figure salary, nice car, all of it, but I'm actually scared that that's void of purpose.

16-year-olds will tell me that.

And Psalm 78 represents real people, real families walking through a cycle of initiation into faith.

Initiation from the community into faith.

Because what happens if we fail to do this, a generation will grow up selfish, not understanding how their story connects to God's bigger story, the story that He's been writing for all of eternity.

So if you've ever wondered, well, what happened with my 14-year-old?

Why is he so selfish?

Well, that's what happens.

If you fail to see that you're a part of something bigger, if you fail to recognize the divine calling that God has assigned to you.

If you read Psalm 78 in its entirety, you will see a cycle.

It is the people of God are like, man, this is great.

This is so awesome.

And then they get tired and they um, you know, see a squirrel and they wander off and they start doing this other thing and they disobey, and then something really bad happens, and then they cry out to God for help, and God saves them.

That's like basically the entire Old Testament.

There you go.

That's the cycle.

And what you see throughout that as you read Psalm 78 is there are moments in time where the death of a spiritual leader led to the falling away of an entire generation.

An entire generation of people did not know the Lord because one guy or one girl died and no one stepped up to lead.

Millions of people grew up not knowing God or the things that he had done because no one stepped up to take the baton.

So Psalm 78 now calls everyone who knows God and the things that he has done to pass down the faith.

Which means that whether you're a parent of a teenager or not, you are assigned as a spiritual father and a spiritual mother to the next generation.

Congratulations.

It's you, spiritual moms and spiritual dads.

What happens then when an entire group of spiritual moms and spiritual dads get together and link up?

Like this room.

What happens when they do that and pass on faith to those who came before them?

Psalm 78, verse 7.

Psalms 78:7

Well, what happens is that a new generation will set its hope anew on God.

That's what happens.

They won't forget his glorious miracles, and they will not stop obeying his commands.

Verse 8 says this.

Then they will not be like their ancestors.

That generation was stubborn, rebellious, unfaithful, and they refused to give their hearts to God.

The faith of the next generation is always attached to the spiritual mothers and fathers who came before them.

There's no way to separate the two.

The faith of the teenagers in our midst is connected to the faith of the spiritual fathers and mothers who have gone before them, who are here right now.

What does that mean?

It means that we cannot judge or critique or stereotype a generation for the sins and shortcomings of their fathers.

We can't look at a generation and go, how could you, and throw our arms up and talk down to them that didn't have much pass down to them.

We can't do that.

We can't blame the next generation for trying to figure out faith, for trying to disciple themselves when we fail to take personal responsibility as a family, spiritual mothers and fathers, to pass it down.

And so there's parents of teenagers, young people who go, Well, my kid, he's just not really that interested in church and blah, blah, blah.

And I'm like, no, what your teenager's not interested in is things that don't actually make a difference in people's lives.

That's the thing that teenagers aren't interested in.

Because I've worked with enough teenagers to know they are always on the prowl for something to go all in for.

And I've worked with hundreds of them.

They go all in for high school football games.

They go all in for a Taylor Swift concert, for a new Fortnite season.

The list goes on of the things that they will go all in for.

And so my question would actually be: if the teenager's not interested in going all in, are you all in?

Are they seeing a change?

Are they seeing the family stories passed down from generation?

Not just what what happened a long time ago.

No, no, no.

What's God doing now?

And when they see it, I believe they'll do it.

I mean, isn't this what every parent wants for their teenager, that they would set their hope on God?

That they would find their foundation in his character and in his goodness and in his faithfulness, that they wouldn't be stubborn, rebellious, and unfaithful.

That's what I want for my little girl.

May it be said those things of her when she's 14, when she's 17.

So now what?

Well, young people in the room, teenagers, young adults, I would encourage you to get a mentor, to get on their calendar, and to listen.

For far too long, we have placed the 25-year-old vegan ripped social media influencer on the seat of honor in society.

Do you know what the Bible says is actually the person who deserves the seat of honor and wisdom?

They have gray hair.

They have stories to tell.

They've seen some things.

They may not be able to help you update your phone, but I guarantee they got some wisdom about how to fix a broken relationship.

You need a spiritual mom.

You need a spiritual dad.

I want to encourage you to get one.

Wisdom carriers in the room, adults, parents, grandparents.

I want to speak on behalf of the teenagers in this room and behalf of the teenagers in this city.

We want to hear from you.

We need to hear from you.

Please don't run and hide.

Please don't turn your head.

Please don't walk away.

We need you.

We're open.

We're ready.

We invite the stories and the wisdom and the encouragement and the rebuke and the truth.

Because I believe this community is filled with desperate teenagers in the most formative years of their life, asking the biggest questions of the human soul.

And they're searching for a spiritual mom and a spiritual dad who will pass down faith and say this is the way to be initiated into the kingdom of God.

Right before Jesus was betrayed, arrested, and ultimately put to death, he is by himself praying.

And you could read the entire prayer in John chapter 17.

John 17 · chapter mention

It's absolutely fascinating.

And I just want to hone in on this specific thing right here, because I'm like, okay, Jesus, you are literally about to be arrested, and your final destination is the cross.

Like, this is the first domino to fall, so that all of that spins into motion.

Out of all the things that you could pray for, what are you praying for?

And you know what Jesus prays for?

He prays for his followers at the time, and he prays for you.

If you're a follower of Jesus in the room, this prayer had you on it.

This is what he says.

I'm praying not just for these disciples, but also for all who will ever believe in me through the message.

It took a lot of people initiating a lot of people under them into the faith for thousands of years to get to the moment that we're in now, where this could be taking place.

He says, I'm praying that they will be one, unified, the strength that comes in unification, just as you and I are one, as you are in me, Father, and I am in you, and may they be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me.

That every tribe, every nation, every tongue, every generation would come together, would work together, and would worship together.

This is the way Jesus says, that the world will believe that he's God.

That's it.

And so in a culture that says these generations are too different to ever come together or do anything significant or special, I want to push back on that and say if Jesus prayed for it, I believe he's calling us to it, and I believe that it is within reach for us to set aside our differences so that we can make a difference, so that we can be unified around the things that really matter, and so that we together can pass down faith to the next up generation, so that they will know who God is and the good things that He's done.

So, what is the faith of the next generation worth?

It's worth everything.

It's worth everything.

Maybe today, as you are hearing this message, you're sitting in this room and you're going, awesome, yeah, unity and family of God, all that stuff sounds really cool, but like I don't even know if I believe in all of this or if I have never had a time where I've like trusted Jesus with my life, and I'm kind of figuring all that out.

I would say there's no better time than now to say, I want to go in on that.

I want to go all in on the family of God.

How do I get into the family of God?

Teenagers would ask that question.

Okay, what do I have to do to get into God's family?

And I just want to explain it to you like I normally explain it to a teenager.

I would tell them this, okay, um, the gospel, that's the good news, this is the gospel.

It's that eternal life, which means you were created to live forever, and you will live forever.

And life to the full, that means here and now in the present life, the best life you could ever imagine.

Eternal life and life to the full, it's available to anyone.

Does not discriminate based on age, race, gender, generation, anyone.

What about my past?

What about the stuff I did when I was a dumb teenager?

Yeah, it's okay.

Available to anyone by grace alone, through faith alone, and in Christ alone.

That's the gospel.

The good news that eternal life and life to the full is available to anyone by grace alone.

Grace alone means there's nothing you can do to work your way or earn your way in.

It's just a free gift that God gives you.

He trades your sin, your disobedience for his righteousness and his perfection.

Well, then it's through faith alone.

Well, what does that mean?

The Bible says if you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, you'll be saved.

So you have to believe it.

And lastly, it's in Christ alone.

That means there's no other name or way that a person can have access to God the Creator than through the person of Jesus.

And today, if you're in the room and you're like, I want in.

I'm gonna go in on that.

I wanna be a part of the family of God.

Well, I would love to create an opportunity right now for you to do that.

I want to pray for you.

And I tell teenagers all the time, these aren't magical words.

It's just a cry of the heart that says, God, I want you in my life.

And if that's you today, let's pray.

I invite you to just pray where you're at, to repeat these words, to say, God, today I see that I am a sinner who is in need of a savior.

God, thank you for saving me from my sin and for giving me a new life.

I believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose again, proving that he defeated sin and death itself.

I will walk with you and follow you for all of my days.

Thank you for saving me.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, I know I'm new around here, but I want to create an opportunity not to call you out, but to celebrate you.

Because I think that's the greatest decision that you could ever make in your life.

And so I actually, in this moment, want to ask you to do something brave and bold.

I tell teenagers all the time, this is a special moment.

And if you just prayed to make Jesus your Lord and Savior, I just want to invite you right now to just raise your hand.

Yep, that was me.

I prayed to make Jesus my Lord and Savior today.

I think we have a team of people who would love to answer some questions, talk with you, maybe give you a gift.

I don't really know what we do around here.

But congratulations.

It's the greatest decision that you could ever make.

Welcome to the family of God.

I want to pray for you.

Jesus, thank you for multiply church.

Thank you for their heart, for the invisible and ignored.

God, I pray today that you've convicted us and woken us up to your goodness, to the divine calling that you've given to us, to raise up the next generation to know you, to love you.

God, we thank you for this moment.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.