Spiritual Maturity, Youth, and Influence

One of the things lacking in many churches is the spiritual depth of many of her members. So many are content with a mediocre love for Jesus and knowledge of Jesus through the study of the scriptures.

The mediocrity that is present in the adults is non-existent in many youth. Their desire (youth) of spiritual maturity does not even reach the level of mediocrity.

We parents expect that a hour or two a week is enough "God influence" to counteract the negative and sinful influences that bombard our youth the rest of the week.

Consider that children who go to public school are there 32.5 hours out of 168 total hours in a week. Take into account that if, and that's a big if, they get 8 hours of sleep a night during that week--that's 56 hours.

Now, over half the week is gone for them to be influenced in a god-ward direction.

And, then you factor in extracurricular activities, which in and of themselves is not bad, and the amount of time on video games and watching TV...

And, then, we parents expect them to grow up loving Jesus and following Him based upon 1 or 2 hours a week in a youth group...

We need to get real and stop fooling ourselves about the kind of generation that we are raising up.

Most of our youth have no god-ward direction or disposition--it may appear so for the "older folks" so they can say "we have such a good group of youth"--but, for the most part, it is a farce.

We have deceived ourselves--and our youth.

We have taught and lived such a shallow concept and version of Christianity, it no longer looks like biblical Christianity.

Now we come full circle--the spiritual depth and maturity of the adults.

Because we are shallow, our youth and children will be that much more shallow---unless we change.

If we want to be and if we want to raise up a generation that seeks after God (Psalm 24:1-6), we have to change what we do and how we do it.

We must begin with confession and repentance as fathers who have not led our families into spiritual growth toward maturity and a love for Jesus. It may not be all our fault, but it is our responsibility.

Forgive us God for being slackers and cowards in the spiritual growth of our families.

Forgive us for the mediocrity with regard to spiritual depth in our churches and our lack of zeal for growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18).

Forgive us for raising up a generation of moralistic, worldly, narcissistic, self-centered--wait--they are only modeling to the extreme what they have seen in us.

Forgive us--bring us to repentance.