Knowing vs Not Knowing

Judges 2:6-10

Children grow up watching their parents. From toddlers to teenagers, their parents’ actions are seeded in them and no matter how much that child attempts to grow up differently than their father or mother, in time the seeds instilled in them, eventually bring out the good or bad characteristics of what they have been raised around. 

When a child grows up with parents with a good marriage, in other words a father and mother respecting, loving and caring for each other, something incredible happens. The son grows up observing how a man should treat a woman. The daughter knows what to look for in a man who would be suitable for her. Like her dad is to her mom. Those parents have instilled those good seeds, not just by verbal communication, but by their actions as husband, wife, mother and father. That is fertilization for those seeds in the next generation.

When parents live and represent the ungodly lifestyle, their next generation will create a different way of life. Seeding into a version that is not pleasing to God. This is what happened in the generation after Joshua. In Judges, we find that Joshua’s generation lived by what they witnessed and knew about God and His miracles in their lives. But in verse 10 it says that after Joshua’s generation, “… another generation rose up who did not know the Lord or the works He had done…” The godly way of life was not performed in front of that next generation of children. And because they did not know, observe or even hear about what God had done for His people, they began to look to other worldly things to worship and believe in.

Because they did not learn to have faith in what they could not see, they learned to depend on what they could touch, see and smell. They never learned the true meaning behind the real power of God, so they depended on doing things under their own power. When the next generation never learned to have faith, they left themselves open to compromise and submitting to the world and its ways.

As Christians we should always allow the testimonies we have of God’s power in our lives to be shown and seeded in our children. So that they may carry the history of God’s work on to the next generation. This will seed into the next generation allowing them to live out new testimonies from their lives in what God has done for them. It is our duty to keep what we know as witnesses alive in our children. So that they too can live their lives experiencing God’s miracles. 

May God continue to bless, keep and protect you as you journey in Jesus’ name.
 
Amen
 
~Billy

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