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Generation Gaps Not in God’s Plan

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Kim and me Mother's Day Tea

Sharing the podium with my daughter Kim as “Two About His Work”

Do you remember when you were the next generation full of hope and ideas and ready to leave your mark on the world? I do. I also remember feeling misunderstood and unappreciated when sharing thoughts and ideas with older adults. Yet 36 times in the New Living Translation of the Bible, the Lord uses the term “generation to generation.” Many more verses instruct us to pour into those who are coming up behind us in the church and in our homes. It was God’s plan for the continuation of His church throughout the generations.

A Privilege Not a Burden

Sharing with the next generation some of what God and life has taught us is truly an honor and a privilege. The blessings multiply when the next generation is teachable and eager to learn.

Throughout the Bible, God instructs one generation of believers to teach and train the next generation [see verses at the end of this blog]. Praise God, over the centuries believers have followed this mandate. Think of it: if they hadn’t, you and I would not be Christians today! We are benefactors of the sacrifices of believers who have gone before us. Over the years, followers of God and His Son, Jesus Christ, have felt compelled to assure that the next generation:

  • has access to the Bible and understands its contents
  • knows how to communicate with God through the Holy Spirit and prayer
  • receives guidance in leading a godly life

What Is Our Generation Doing?

The question our generation must ask is: What is God calling believers—you and me—to do today? How can we invest our lives in the next generation, as Elizabeth (mother of John the Baptist) did with Mary (mother of Jesus)? Each of us must answer that question in a very personal and real way. If you are:

  • A mother, you are influencing the next generation through your children.
  • A Grandmother, your grandchildren.
  • An employer, your employees.
  • A ministry worker, the benefactors of your ministry.
  • A pastor, your congregation.
  • A school teacher, your students.
  • A Sunday school teacher, the children in your classrooms every Sunday.
  • A mentor, your mentee.

Why Do We Have Generation Gaps?

There should never be a generation gap in the church—that was not God’s plan. God commanded that one generation was to pass down His truths to the next generation. In churches today, the gap between generations is often so wide that the only thing passed between the two is mistrust and misunderstanding—all in the name of Jesus.

I believe it’s often the older generation who perpetuate the gap by wanting everything to stay the same—same music, same way of doing things, same church service, same church activities . . . . Many churches relegate the young people to their own groups, and their input—whether in music or talents or ideas—is not welcome in the main sanctuary. Then they wonder why the youth are leaving the church in droves.

Church Is Not About Us

Our job as Christians is not to insist that everything goes our way. The purpose of church is not simply to spiritually feed the congregation; we’re to pass on what we learn to others. The Great Commission tells us to go out and tell the world about Jesus, and that includes the next generation.

If we want to stay relevant in the lives of the next generation, we need to learn how to embrace their style of worship . . . their way of communicating . . . their world. If we want to have an impact in their lives—to help guide them in the ways of righteousness—we need to speak their language, care about the things they care about, and reach out to them in love with a desire to understand what’s important to them.

My Call to “Feed My Sheep”

When I rededicated my life to the Lord in the summer of 1992, it marked a turning point in my life. I moved from thinking of how I could further myself in this world, to how could I further God’s kingdom. When I asked myself the question of what God was calling me to do, He clearly answered. I was to take a huge risk of leaving a well-paying career to go into full-time ministry. Not just any ministry—but a Woman to Woman Mentoring Ministry that would teach and train the next generations of believers. The rest is history, as my grandmother used to say.

What Are You Doing to Bridge the Generation Gap?

Many churches today are mentoring, embracing, and equipping the next generation—the future of the church. If you attend or serve in one of those churches, I’d love for you to share specifics of how you are fulfilling Psalm 145:4 NLT—

“Let each generation tell its children of your mighty acts; let them proclaim your power.”

Here are some verses that reveal the significance of one generation passing down God’s truths to the next generation:

Elizabeth and Mary coverElizabeth and Mary coverSome excerpts of this article are from Face to Face with Elizabeth and Mary: Generation to Generation.

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March 17, 2014
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Communicating More But Saying Less

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Everyone looking down at a techie device

Does this conversation on a recent television sitcom between a mother and daughter regarding the son/brother who is away at college, resonate with you like it did with me?

Mom: I wrote him this big long email and he sent me a text! By the way, don’t send a text in response to an email. That’s just rude! He said, ‘Going to class gtg’. What does gtg mean?

Daughter: It means . . . ya know . . . Got to go.

Mom: What is ‘brb’?

Daughter: Be right back.

Mom: And then here’s the biggest insult, ‘love u’. Just ‘u’, not the whole word! I gave birth to ‘u’, don’t I deserve the ‘y’ and the o’? Then he sent me this little yellow smiley face. What’s that?

Daughter: A little emoji art for you.

Mom: I want to emoji art back. Show me how. Maybe he’ll respond to me then!

Are you laughing as hard as I did? I was watching this program with my adult daughter with whom I’ve had similar conversations. Here’s how the evolution of communication has spiraled with this daughter and with her brothers and sisters and their spouses! Anything similar happen in your family?

  • The phone: We had frequent conversations on old fashioned, landline phones.
  • Cell phones: Then came cell phones and we all went on the family plan and talked often.
  • Email: Free on the computer! No long distance charges or using cell minutes, so we wrote long emails regularly to each other. Even though I did miss hearing their voices, I loved receiving their newsy emails.
  • Facebook: I first got on Facebook to see what my daughter and grandkids were doing, since she stopped sending pictures by email and was only posting them on her timeline. Then, I started communicating with my readers more via Facebook, but my daughter started posting less.
  • Pinterest: “Mom you have to get on Pinterest,” so I did. Again, it was a great networking tool with my readers, but I seldom see my daughter on it anymore.
  • Smart Phones: All the kids got smart cell phones with virtual keyboards, which are a pain to type on, and if you try the speaker…who knows what embarrassing words you might be sending because the print is small and you can’t see the screen in the sunlight. But I got one anyway . . . . Even though they could receive email on their phones, the kids still didn’t respond to emails.
  • Texting: Then the kids did an intervention with my husband and me insisting that we add texting to our phone plan because that’s how they wanted to communicate with us. So we did, but again typing on phone keyboards is difficult—words are limited, and we have a limited texting plan. But they do respond better to texting, except our “conversations” now go something like this:

Wen wil u b here?

dnt no

How r u

Fine smiley face  or sometimes just smiley face

Meeting Them Where They’re At

I’ve seen some funny Facebook posts about moms and grandmas trying to text or use the speaker and the crazy things they end up “saying.” I haven’t mastered many of the imojis, and didn’t even know that’s what they’re called until I heard it on the above TV program. It took me forever to figure out how to make a heart, and I still haven’t mastered the wink, nor do I understand most other “imojis.”

However, I’ve learned: if I want to stay in communication with my kids and grandkids, I must learn to adjust, adapt, and appreciate new ways of communicating with a good attitude. It’s useless to continue sending emails that seldom get a reply. If texting is the way to get a response, then I’ll text until the next communication craze.

Some parents and grandparents throw up their hands in frustration over these communication trends and refuse to adapt. Then, they’ll complain about never hearing from their kids or grankids. We’re the losers if we stay stuck in techie avoidance, because technology is going to keep moving on whether we do or not.

Everyone’s Looking Down, Be Sure You’re Looking Up

If you observe most people today—families in homes, shoppers in the mall, diners at a restaurant or a coffeehouse—they’re looking down at their most prized possession, a cell phone. Yes, they also use tablets and Ipads, but a phone fits in a pocket or purse, and many simply hold it in their hand. Today’s generation seems desperate to stay in touch and be available, even if words are brief and few.

We can encourage our family and friends to have the Bible “AP” on their phone, and look down at that occasionally. YouVersion is a great resource and offers the Bible in all translations and yearlong reading plans. For years, I prayed that my daughter would want to read the Bible, and then her church challenged her to read the Bible via YouVersion on her smart phone. That worked for her because she checked her phone every morning, and she read the entire Bible in a year and 3 weeks. Now she gets YouVersion morning devotionals on her phone.

Remember what Satan tries to use for bad, God can always use for good.

Putting It All In Perspective

This is a great comparison of the Bible vs. the cell phone:

Ever wonder what would happen if we treated our Bible like we treat our cell phone? What if . . .

We carried it around in our purses or pockets?

We flipped through it several times a day?

We turned back to go get it if we forgot it?

We used it to receive messages from the text?

We treated it like we couldn’t live without it?

We gave it to kids as gifts?

We used it when we traveled?

We used it in case of emergency?

Unlike our cell phone, we don’t have to worry about our Bible being disconnected because Jesus already paid the bill!

 

BTW, I still use email, allot, so email me or visit me on Facebook or leave a comment. I love to hear from you.

Be right back       THX

September 30, 2013
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Who Needs to Hear Your Story?

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Sharing Your Story

Another term for “your story” is “your testimony.” A testimony focuses on God, not us. It describes our lives before we turned them over—or returned—to God and on how He changed and transformed us. Your story doesn’t have to have a “happy ending” for you to share it. We give our testimonies to show God’s faithfulness in spite of the circumstances, to let others know they’re not alone, and maybe just to stop someone else from making the same mistakes we did.

When people tell me their hardships, I often advise them to begin journaling because it’s recording the story that will become their testimony.  We must be willing to share our hurts and hang-ups and how God helped us through difficult times. It’s our witness to His faithfulness. It’s the opportunity to give purpose to a crisis. Otherwise, we spend our lives feeling sorry for ourselves. Revealing is the first step to healing.

The Bible tells us that“the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Hidden sin has us in a death grip that will kill us from the inside out. But exposed sin loses its power. We don’t have to worry about others finding out about our past. We can “Thank God we’ve started listening to a new master, one whose commands set us free to live openly in his freedom!” (personalized from Romans 6:18 The Message). One of the steps in most recovery programs is openly telling one’s testimony to a group. Public sharing frees us and allows God to minister to someone in the audience who is going through something similar.

When I told people I was writing Praying for Your Prodigal Daughter and would be including my daughter Kim’s story, they often asked, “How does she feel about that?” I assured them she wanted her story told to help others and, in fact, wrote portions in her own words:

Mom, I want to share my story in your book because you also need my perspective. How can you effectively write about you and me if you don’t know what I was feeling? You can’t teach others what to do correctly if you don’t know what works and doesn’t work with kids. I’m so thankful I’ve come to know the Lord, that my life is so blessed, and that I didn’t make too many serious mistakes along the way. If I can help you save one daughter by sharing my story, then that’s what I want to do!

Your testimony won’t always be shared in a public setting. God will bring people across your path and the Holy Spirit will prompt you to share one-on-one. When people ask Kim and me how we made it through, the best answer we can give them is, “We couldn’t have done it without God.”  And that’s your best answer too!

Kim and I had the opportunity to share “Our Story” at a Mother Daughter Tea at The Journey Church the Saturday before Mother’s Day. Watching my sweet daughter articulately share her prodigal journey as I shared mine, I could only imagine how God was smiling down on us. So many women came up and thanked us for being open and vulnerable.

What story is God asking you to tell and who needs to hear it? In all of my books, I give others the opportunity to have a venue for telling their story. I am currently receiving stories for my next three books. If any of these titles spark your interest, please contact me.

  • How Good is God? I Can’t Remember….10 Ways to Never Forget God’s Faithfulness
  • Dear God, Life is Hard
  • Mentoring: A Way of Life from the Pulpit to the Pew

 

You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:14–16 The Message)

 

Excerpts in this article are taken from Praying for Your Prodigal Daughter.

 Kim and me Mother's Day Tea
Kim and me sharing “Our Story” at The Journey Church Mother’s Day Tea
May 20, 2013
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40 Years of Love!

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“I’m sorry, but you’ll never have children.” Those were the doctor’s words to me at a post-op visit after surgery for a ruptured ovarian cyst. “Your ovaries look like those of a 90 year-old woman.” I was a twenty year-old, newly engaged college student. My life was over. Or so I thought.

After three years of marriage, I was thrilled to hear another doctor congratulate me: “You’re pregnant!” My mother called it a miracle, but I just wanted to be like any normal woman who could get pregnant and have a baby.

The last week of pregnancy, when my baby was a week overdue, everyone kept calling to see if I was “still home.” I enjoyed every moment of those 9 months and one week, and even steeled myself through a natural, long delivery, but nothing could prepare me for what it would feel like to hold my baby girl—instant, unconditional love.

I was a mom at last! But I had no concept of the life-changing responsibility I was undertaking or the importance of my being an exemplary role model for her. After all, she was just an infant and I would have so many years to work out all the details of mothering.

Where did those years go? This week, February 26, my baby girl, Kimberly Michele, turns 40 and she is a mother herself of three precious children. I remember the day I turned 40 and it doesn’t seem that long ago.

Kim and I didn’t have the life journey I anticipated upon first looking into her dark brown eyes. When she was only 2 years-old, her dad and I divorced, and I would spend the next seventeen years as a single mom juggling motherhood and a career. To the outside world, I did a great job as I moved up the career ladder of success; but as I moved further into the world and father away from the Jesus I asked into my heart at eleven, I role modeled the world’s ways to Kim.

Kim loved our life and all that I was able to provide her, even though she often cried that she missed me, as I headed off on another business trip. But we had time, right? She was still young and eighteen years is a long time…. I’ll make up to her the time we’ve been apart.

But in a blink of an eye, she was sixteen and dating. Then within moments, she was nineteen and declaring she was going off to college to live with her boyfriend, and she didn’t care what I had to say about it. I had recently rededicated my life to the Lord and was now trying to tell her this lifestyle was wrong, but she wasn’t buying it.

I mistakenly thought that when I changed my life and returned to God, she would follow right behind me. Wrong! That’s when the Lord assured me that, yes, I had let the first nineteen years of her life slip by without including Him in the parenting, but it wasn’t over yet. And so I began praying—daily, biblically, expectantly, persistently, sacrificially, unceasingly, and thankfully—as I describe in the first seven chapters of my book Praying for Your Prodigal Daughter.

I’d like to say that she instantly changed her ways, but it would be another six years of daily praying before she returned to me and to the Lord.

The Lord graciously restored the years the locust had eaten. I had the opportunity to do what I should have done from the day she was born: mentor her in how to be a godly woman. Today, I am so proud of the woman she has become. We’re now speaking together as “Two About His Work,” and she’s giving her testimony in a few weeks at her MOPS group.

Even through the difficult years, my love for Kim never faltered. She knew I didn’t condone her behavior, but neither did I condemn her. Our relationship has endured and grown stronger in spite of divorce, single parenthood, a traveling mom, both our prodigal years, my remarriage and blending a new family, my breast cancer, her infertility, and all the trials and joys of life.

I thought I would feel terribly old the day she turned 40; but instead, I feel blessed with the 40 years God has given me to love my precious daughter, and I’m grateful that the work He has done in my life will carry on through the work He is doing in her life. She’s my legacy, and I have given her the most valuable of inheritances: belief in Jesus Christ. 40 years is nothing in light of spending eternity together.

Mentoring Words to Moms:

  • Are you the woman today you want your daughter to become?  You’re the closest role model and mentor your daughter has.
  • It’s never too early to pray daily for your children. Pray for them before you have a problem.
  • Praying personalized Scripture—God’s Word back to Him—keeps you praying God’s will and not your own.
  • Enjoy every day of your children’s lives—they never get younger and neither to do you. Make each day count.

Janet-and-Kim

My daughter Kim and I speak together as Two About His Work.

February 25, 2013
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Praying Scripture

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Many have asked me how to pray and personalize Scripture. You just choose a Scripture and insert a name or pronoun. Scripture was meant to be applied to our life, and I find the best way to pray God’s will instead of my own, is to pray His Word back to Him.
So here are some examples from the Appendix in my book Praying for Your Prodigal Daughter. These will get you going and then you can start praying Scripture yourself.
1) I pray that my daughter ____________ would listen to You, Lord, and You would quickly subdue her enemies and turn Your hand against her foes! (Psalm 81:13-14).
2) Evening and morning and at noon I commit to pray and cry aloud for my daughter _________. And You, Lord, shall hear my voice. (Psalm 55:17 NKJV).
3) Lord, I know You do not change, and I pray my daughter ____________ will return to You, so You will return to her. (Malachi 3:6-7).
4) Lord, please teach my daughter ____________ to live a disciplined and successful life and help her do what is right, just, and fair. (Proverbs 3:1 NLT).
5) I pray that my daughter _____________ will know the truth and the truth will set her free. (John 8:32 NIV).
__________________
August 24, 2009
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