{"id":717,"date":"2014-10-13T14:51:54","date_gmt":"2014-10-13T19:51:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focuspressblog.com\/?p=717"},"modified":"2014-10-13T14:51:54","modified_gmt":"2014-10-13T19:51:54","slug":"millennial-monday-3-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tampaseo.expert\/focus\/2014\/10\/13\/millennial-monday-3-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Millennial Monday: 3 Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s been a while since the last Millennial Monday article here, thanks to our Questionable Quotes series and a number of other writing projects. But, the issue of youth leaving the church in droves still remains and, in my opinion, needs to be the number one focus of the church today. We\u2019re here to help point souls toward heaven, and if we continue lose half or more of those who we already have in the church from birth we\u2019re not doing our job. Two or three generations down the road the church in America will be increasingly hard to find if we don\u2019t start keeping our own more efficiently.<br \/>\nOf course, this isn\u2019t necessarily the church\u2019s responsibility. Nowhere is the church charged with training up the young. That is left to the family, and that\u2019s where the turnaround has to begin. In Deuteronomy 6 God provided His blueprint for developing faithfulness in multiple generations. Though we\u2019re under a new covenant and don\u2019t have the need to be faithful to the Old Law, that same plan for building a long-term foundation of commitment to God should be our blueprint as well. I believe the text provides three questions all Christian parents should be asking themselves.<br \/>\n<strong>Is God\u2019s Word open in our home?<\/strong><br \/>\nAs I write this article, I\u2019m also tracking the score of a Colorado Avalanche hockey game at the same time. Growing up we watched their games on TV, attended in person when we could, bought the t-shirts, discussed our favorite players\u2026 it was part of our life then, and it still is today now that I\u2019m out of the house. The same can be said for so many families with their favorite sports teams, political parties, or any other interest \u2013 if it was something that was important to their family life, it remains important into adulthood. How sad it is that so many Christian youth root for their parents\u2019 favorite teams and hold the family political views but leave home without understanding that God\u2019s Word is an essential part of their lives.<br \/>\nHow does that change? God\u2019s Word must be open in the home on a regular basis. In Deuteronomy 6:6-7 God told the men of Israel to have the Law on their hearts and teach it to their offspring at all times. If you\u2019ve got time to watch sporting events with them, have your favorite news shows on, attend various events, but don\u2019t have time to open God\u2019s Word and explain it to your children, don\u2019t ask what happened when they grow up and leave the church. The world doesn\u2019t only call to them two days a week, and so they shouldn\u2019t just be taught the Bible by someone else on Sundays and Wednesdays. They need to see its importance in your home. Make a plan to sit down with your family on a regular basis and discuss the Bible. It doesn\u2019t have to be deep theological musings. It needs to be applicable, reverent, discussion of what God has done for us and how He wants us to live. That\u2019s all.<br \/>\n<strong>Is God\u2019s Word lived in your home?<\/strong><br \/>\nThere\u2019s a difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it, and that gap is what leads a number of children away from the church. Though they are responsible for their own actions, it should say something to us when they talk about the church\u2019s hypocrisy. If children see their parents nodding their heads in approval to the sermon before going home and doing the opposite, they\u2019ll see that the Word doesn\u2019t matter. If they are made to go to worship on Sunday but from Monday-Saturday they are allowed to hang out with worldly influences, they\u2019ll learn that what they\u2019re taught on Sunday doesn\u2019t apply to \u201creal life.\u201d Deuteronomy 6:1-2 called for the men of Israel to learn the commandments they were given, fear the Lord, and keep His commandments all their days so that their children and grandchildren would follow it as well. 6:10-25 discusses the need for the people to keep the commandments and points out that by living out God\u2019s Word the opportunity would be given to teach their children why they followed those commandments. If they weren\u2019t living God\u2019s Word, they wouldn\u2019t have a chance to teach their children to do the same.<br \/>\n<strong>Is a love of God cultivated in your home?<\/strong><br \/>\nIn one of my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/focuspressinc\/photos\/pb.239675246073204.-2207520000.1413229889.\/795098973864159\/?type=3&amp;theater\">Lost Generation seminar<\/a> lessons I like to ask how many in attendance plan on leaving a billion dollars to their children. I\u2019ve yet to see a hand raised, mainly because most people don\u2019t have a billion dollars to give to their children. By the same token, we can\u2019t expect the next generation to develop a love for God that isn\u2019t cultivated by this generation. At the center of the teaching of Deuteronomy 6 is what Jesus called the greatest commandment: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might. People who love God don\u2019t <em>have<\/em> to go to worship, they <em>get<\/em> to worship God because of all He\u2019s done for them each week. People who love God don\u2019t serve Him begrudgingly, they serve Him out of an appreciation for what God has done. Israel forgot that first command, and once they stopped loving Him they had no ability to pass it on to the next generation. The worst part of the statistics on youth faithfulness is it tells us that there\u2019s a percentage of those attending the church that doesn\u2019t love God whole-heartedly, and that percentage is larger than we\u2019d like to admit. What the church needs, what the world needs, and what the next generation needs is for the current generation to make the decision to love God with all their hearts, souls, and might.<br \/>\nThe turnaround has to begin somewhere. Just because your children and teens are attending youth today doesn\u2019t mean they will be in ten years. There\u2019s no way to guarantee their faithfulness because everyone has to make their own choices, but you have a choice to make, too. Will the Word be open in your home? Will it be reflected in your life? Will a love of God permeate all that you do? Your choices might make an eternity of difference to yourself and those you love.<br \/>\n<strong>By Jack Wilkie<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s been a while since the last Millennial Monday article here, thanks to our Questionable Quotes series and a number of other writing projects. But, the issue of youth leaving the church in droves still remains and, in my opinion, needs to be the number one focus of the church today. We\u2019re here to help [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20,52,179],"tags":[58,49,382,51,383,384,215,54],"class_list":["post-717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-family","category-millennial-mondays","tag-children","tag-church","tag-deuteronomy-6","tag-faithfulness","tag-greatest-command","tag-lost-generation","tag-millennial-monday","tag-youth","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Millennial Monday: 3 Questions - Focus Press<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tampaseo.expert\/focus\/2014\/10\/13\/millennial-monday-3-questions\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Millennial Monday: 3 Questions - Focus Press\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It\u2019s been a while since the last Millennial Monday article here, thanks to our Questionable Quotes series and a number of other writing projects. 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