Nothing more important!

Dad baptizing Josh in 1992

God has called parents to serve as primary disciple-makers in their children’s lives.

The world is in a mess, and it does not seem to be getting any better. What is wrong? It all goes back to events recorded in the Book of Genesis. Except for the account in chapters 1 and 2, the first eleven chapters of Genesis record one failure of man after another, the same failures that are being repeated everyday today.

• The first family disobeyed God and were cast out of the Garden (Genesis 3).
• The first family’s twin son Cain murdered his brother Abel and lied about it (Genesis 4).
• The first family’s descendants became so corrupt that God cleansed the earth with a flood (Genesis 6–8).
• God’s solution to corruption, Noah, got drunk and exposed himself to his son Ham (Genesis 9).
• In their defiance of God, men built a city and a tower; and God had to send confusion to end the rebellion (Genesis 10).

Disobedience, murder, deception, drunkenness, nudity, and rebellion sounds pretty relevant, doesn’t it?

If you were God, what would you do with these sinners, men and women you had created in your own image? “Destroy them?” That’s not what God did. Instead, God called a man and his wife to leave their home and go to a new land, so that they might start a family and He might give future families a New Beginning.

The pattern for humanity’s depravity has been consistent from the very beginning of sin. Humanity has always failed and turned away from the true and living God. That process of corruption is described in Romans 1:18–32.

Leading their children to faith and faith development in Jesus is the parents highest calling.

• Like every parent, God called Abraham to salvation by faith and
• God called Abraham to world mission through his family.
• Salvation comes because God calls in grace and sinners respond by faith (Ephesians 2:8–9).
• Like every parent, God called Abraham out of idolatry (Joshua 24:2).

Abraham did not know the true God, and had done nothing to deserve knowing Him, but God graciously called him. Jesus said, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you. I appointed you that you should go out and produce fruit and that your fruit should remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in My name, He will give you.” (John 15:16).

• Abraham was 75 years old when God called him, so age doesn’t need to be an obstacle to faith.
• He trusted God for 100 years (Genesis 25:7); and from his experience, we today can learn how to walk by faith and live to please the Lord.

It was God’s call for Abraham to separate himself from the corruption around him, and Abraham obeyed by faith (Hebrews 11:8; 1 Corinthians 1:26–31). The same is true for every parent. True faith is based on the Word of God and leads to obedience.