Living From Sunday 2 Sunday
Living From Sunday 2 Sunday
EP 174: "It Can't End With Us" - Passing Down The Faith
What happens when a generation forgets God? Pastor B returns from celebrating his 20th wedding anniversary with a burning question about spiritual legacy. Drawing powerful contrasts between Moses' intentional faith transmission in Deuteronomy and the spiritual amnesia described in Judges 2, this episode challenges listeners to examine their role in passing down authentic faith.
The breakdown is startlingly simple: Moses meticulously restated God's commandments to a new generation of Israelites, instructing them to integrate these truths into every aspect of their daily lives. Yet despite this intentional teaching, we later discover "another generation grew up who neither knew the Lord nor what he had done." This spiritual disconnect didn't happen suddenly—it resulted from gradual drift away from daily spiritual rhythms and honest storytelling about God's faithfulness.
Today's mentors face unique challenges. Many hesitate to share their spiritual journeys transparently, fearing judgment over past failures. Yet these very stories—complete with struggles, sins, and God's redemptive grace—provide the most compelling testimony to younger believers that "mistakes are not final." When we withhold our authentic experiences, we inadvertently suggest that faith requires perfection rather than persistent trust through life's messiness. At its core, mentorship means modeling how to love God with your entire being—heart, mind, soul, and strength—while demonstrating that true faith leaves no area of life untouched by divine influence.
Ready to strengthen your spiritual mentorship? Subscribe to Living From Sunday to Sunday podcast wherever you listen, and if you're watching on YouTube, hit the notification bell to catch every new episode. Together, we can ensure the next generation doesn't just inherit our faith, but makes it authentically their own.
Welcome to the Living From Sunday to Sunday podcast with your host, pastor B. This podcast is designed to help you walk faithfully with God through the various trials and challenges this life presents. The truth of who we are is revealed in our lives in between Sundays. You will be inspired, challenged and equipped to live a victorious life that will bring glory to God himself. Come on, let's get started. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Living from Sunday to Sunday podcast. I'm your host, pastor B. I believe that this is going to be the best 15 minutes of your day, because real change happens 15 minutes at a time. So do me a favor please make sure that you like, share and subscribe to the podcast. If you are listening via audio, of course, this podcast is available everywhere where it may be found, so make sure that you download and subscribe and share this with your family and friends. If you're watching on my YouTube video, please make sure that you like the video and hit the notification bell. That way, you're notified every time a new episode drops. All right, so I am back.
Speaker 1:I spent about a week in the Bahamas, me and my wife, a well-needed vacation. We celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary, and so I had time to think, had time to kind of rest, and one of the things that I was thinking about while I was away was the necessity and the importance of mentors, the necessity and the importance of teachers and how, really, when you look at today's educational system, when you look at how our young adults are living their lives, and even the Gen Z, the ones directly after us, there appears to be a lack of the passing of the guard. A lack of the passing of the guard right, most of my ancestors, most of my grandparents and parents. They made sure, especially from a faith perspective, that we were solid and that we knew God and knew about God, and my generation was the one generation that decided that they wanted to choose their own path and wanted to go their own way in terms of seeking God, getting to know God. Part of that was based on, you know, church hurt, poor experiences in the church, is in the church, and I think also part of it was just the we didn't really want to adhere to all of the rules that the church made us live by, and so what can happen sometimes is whenever we can get so wrecked in ourselves, we can forget the foundational truths and if we don't rediscover those foundational truths and choose to pass those along to the next generation, we can find ourselves with an entire group of people, an entire generation of people, who don't know who God is. And so today we're going to talk about the importance of passing down the faith, that it shouldn't end, it shouldn't stop, with just one generation, and so I was looking at the book of Deuteronomy while I was away, and one of the things that I was really impressed with was that Moses was intentional about restating and reemphasizing the Ten Commandments and the law to this new generation.
Speaker 1:The original generation in Exodus 20 had died off because they chose to rebel against God and not to trust God and move in faith to go into the promised land, right. So they have to spend 40 years in the wilderness. Everyone except for Joshua and Caleb die off. And so Moses, who is still responsible for this new generation, chooses to pass down and reteach this new group of believers, new group of Israelites, the necessary truths of the commandments, right. And so one of the things that I think is interesting is that Moses told this generation that it was very important that they spent time, and they taught their generation diligently the instructions of the law. Everything that I'm telling you now is important, that you rehearse this to your family, and I think what's really, really important is that we do a better job of either relearning and starting from the beginning ourselves, or we really be intentional with sharing our faith with those that are coming behind us. Right, many times, especially if you're not a consistent student of the word, many, many times it can be very, very you can forget some of the anchor truths, some of the foundational, non-negotiable foundational truths of your faith. Right, and so for us, I think it's really really important.
Speaker 1:Verse chapter six or seven in Deuteronomy, um, it says you shall teach them diligently to your, to, to your children. Right, so the diligent, intentional, um, formation of the faith is what? As parents, as guardians, as teachers, we must not get bored with the foundational parts, right. A lot of times, as students, the meat of what you learn is never the exciting part, and, especially in today's generation, we flock to the easiest thing, we flock to what can be consumed in the shortest amount of time, right, and so there's not always enough time to really for the truth of God, for his word, for hearing the voice of God, right, these are things that we have to really be intentional about, because our lifestyle, what God has called us to do, is to integrate his word into every part of our lives, our daily rhythm, so to speak. And so the one thing that we must be responsible for is that we must show people how to love God, must show people how to live for God.
Speaker 1:Because when you look at these instructions and this is what's really, really sad when you look at these instructions that Moses spends a bulk of Deuteronomy breaking down and explaining, he wants to ensure that this generation knows who God is, knows the procedures of worship right and why God called them out right, and so the hope is that this generation holds on to God and doesn't struggle with the same shackles of sin that the previous generation does. But here is the sad reality. When you go over to Judges, chapter two, essentially this is what happens. This is what it says. It says after that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who neither knew the Lord or what he had done right. What does life look like when you forget who God is? What does life look like when you've forgotten what he's done? There's a disconnection and there's a disinterest.
Speaker 1:I believe in the things of God whenever the stories of old are not rehearsed every single day. Now I will say this um, it is very vital and very important that you develop your own relationship with God. Right, that is the most important thing. But the one way for you to do that is to remain connected. We are inspired by the stories of our, of our ancestors. We are inspired by the stories of our ancestors. We are inspired by the stories in the Bible, right, because if God did it for them and they had flaws and issues and worries and all of these things that the Bible characters dealt with, if they still were able to trust God, if God was still faithful to him, then it gives us an example and a benchmark for us to shoot for. Right, because God will do his. You know, god is faithful and he doesn't change. So if we did it for them, he certainly can do it for us.
Speaker 1:Right, and so whenever an entire generation misses or forgets who God is, a part of that is due to the fact that we lost the daily rhythm and the daily connection to God. The cares of this world many times chokes us out, right, and so what I think is really important and what I want us to make sure that we're doing is that we take a look at our daily lives, right, how often do we pray? How often do we sit still and listen to the word of God? These are, these are the things that one we must model ourselves. And then to those that we talk, to those that we engage with our family members if we're mentoring people, to those that we engage with our family members, if we're mentoring people, we want to make sure that we tell them hey, it's important that you spend time with God, it's important that you steal away separate time and just really know who God is for yourself. All right.
Speaker 1:And then, secondly, one of the other things that this particular chapter, chapter six in Deuteronomy, that it emphasizes is that Telling your story and rehearsing what God has done. It's important in the framework of being relatable, right, because a lot of times, whenever I'm going through my own thing, the enemy wants us to be isolated, right, and many times, sometimes, we can be ashamed of our story. We're talking to the mentors here, right, we can be ashamed because our record isn't clean. Right, there are some spots, there are some stains, right, that God washed away, but we're still in, but we're still dealing with the residue of those choices and those decisions, right. And so what we can't be afraid of is we can't be afraid of showing who we are right, we can't be afraid of rehearsing the stories to the generation that's coming behind us. Be open with your struggles. Be open, be transparent with those things that only God pulled you through and only God carried you beyond the hurt and beyond the pain and past the shame that your previous mistakes and sins have brought right. We have to again rehearse that God is the one that is carrying us through right.
Speaker 1:Because again, the comparative and the contrasting story that we look at, you have the focus of Deuteronomy 6, of Moses being intentional about rehearsing the law and the commandments. Then you have Judges 2, where the same generation they didn't even adhere or keep everything that Moses taught right. And how do we get from there, from Deuteronomy 6 to Judges 2? Part of that is not doing the daily work, not rehearsing or remembering those stories.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, especially whenever you're young and you're bold and you're brash, you don't respect the wisdom of your elders. You think that you're smart enough, you think you can do it better. You think that, oh, it wasn't that bad that. Oh, it wasn't that bad right. And so we just have to, as the mentors, we have to do what God has told us to do, right, we have to be open, be honest, be transparent. Right, we have to pray for this generation coming behind us as well.
Speaker 1:We see it. We see that there's so many different points of view, there's so many different slants and false gospels out right now that if we don't reinstitute the foundation of the word of God and the foundation of the truth of God's word, the word of God and the foundation of the truth of God's word, then it's going to be very, very easy for the generation after us to be confused, to go after these false paths, searching for something that can only be found in God. Right, and then, lastly, one of the core scriptures and it's repeated by Jesus in the New Testament is found in Deuteronomy 6 and 5. It says love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, all your soul and all your strength. We understand that the two greatest commandments that Jesus outlined, that he mirrors here, is to love the lord, your god, without your heart, mind, soul and strength, and the second is to love your neighbor as you love yourself right. So our identity, who we are in god, our um, our fuel behind our mission and behind our purpose in life is found in Jesus Christ. And so, because it's found in Jesus Christ, we know that we won't always be perfect, but because we're he is, because God calls us his children and Jesus is our big brother, so to speak. Big brother, so to speak, we know that there's a grace and forgiveness available to us Whenever we fall. Whenever we ask God for forgiveness, he's going to wash away all of the sin that we've committed. This is what we have to continue to preach, continue to teach, continue to walk through life with people understanding that their mistakes are not final right, that what they've tripped up on they don't have to continue to make the same mistakes over and over and over again. There's hope in Jesus, there's peace in Jesus, there's restoration and a expected end for those of us who trust Jesus with our lives, right People of God, we deeply identify with what Christ has done for us, right.
Speaker 1:And so what this generation forgot is that loving God, committing themselves to God, was the core principle of their lives. They forgot that because, by the time we get to Judges 2, not only did they do evil, right, which is going opposite of the commandments and the law that Moses had outlined, that was received directly from God. Right, not only did they go against the law of principles, but they also chose to serve other gods. They didn't see the value in a God that they couldn't see. They didn't see the value of being led by someone that they felt that they could relate to. Right. One of the core commandments that Moses outlined, both in Exodus 20 and in these chapters here in Deuteronomy, was do not make any graven images, don't carve any idols. Right. Love God with everything that you have.
Speaker 1:And sometimes we don't think that, um, we don't. We don't think God deserves all of us. Right, there's some parts of us that we want to keep to ourselves. We want to keep our pride, we want to keep, um, those areas that we have fallen in love with that are against his will. Right, because the one, the one thing, when you love God with your, your heart, your mind, your soul and your will, that's like all of you. Right, there's no part of your life that God does not have access to.
Speaker 1:And so, whenever we choose these other guys, we have told God this part of my life you cannot have. I don't trust you with it. I don't believe in what you're saying. I need some other type of concrete belief system that makes sense, and a lot of times faith never makes sense.
Speaker 1:Right, faith in God, committing to him. He will ask us to do things that do not make sense, and so, because they don't make sense, we have to choose whether or not we're going to trust and love him with all of our heart, mind and soul. Right, if we're going to give him every part of our lives, or if we're just going to hold off certain parts for ourselves, for our own self-gratification and our own pleasure. Let's just call a spade a spade. We're just trying to have fun and not deal with God sometimes, right.
Speaker 1:And so what I want you to do is I want you to ask yourself am I focused more on myself, is my identity found in other things, or is my identity in Christ Jesus? Right? It's time for us to recenter our identity. We must remind ourselves who we are and the influence that we have in the earth. Right, loving God first, that's where we are, that's, that's all of who we are.
Speaker 1:Right, and I think if we continue to do this as a mentor, if we commit ourselves to just studying the scriptures again, we commit ourselves to retelling our story and walking through life with this generation behind us, our story will be different than Judges 2, right, the generation behind us will know who God is.
Speaker 1:They will have an experience with God, and as long as you choose to have an experience with God and we train up the child, as Proverbs 22 says, in the way that they should go, when they're old, they will not depart as they go through life, the highs and the lows. They'll never choose the other gods of Baal, but they will stay rooted and grounded to Jesus Christ and to God himself. All right, so that's today's episode. Again, thank you all so much for listening and subscribing to this podcast. This podcast is available everywhere where podcasts can be found, and so make sure that you again like, share and subscribe, hit the notification bell so that you're notified every time that a podcast is dropped. And until next time we'll see y'all. Let me see you bye. Don't forget to like, share and subscribe to our channel, as well as this podcast, everywhere where they can be found.
