| Time | Text |
|---|---|
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Next Generation Focus
00:03:11
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| What will be next? | |
| What should Christians be focused on with the election behind them and four more years of conservative government ahead of them if President Trump has won? | |
| So where do you see it? | |
| It's not going to solve all the problems. | |
| I think they're going to be quite upset if the president wins. | |
| Is that right? | |
| They'll be upset, but what we should look at is future. | |
| And we should be doing this regardless of who wins. | |
| We need to be looking at the next generation. | |
| You know, here I sit with white hair. | |
| You got white hair. | |
| Tim doesn't have white hair yet. | |
| The generation below him, they're not getting the information that they need in so many areas, whether it be on America's economic system or our constitutional system or our faith system or anything else. | |
| We need to be focusing on the next generation, which means we need to be focusing on mentoring, on training, on teaching, on equipping, knowing what they get taught. | |
| I've got to say, one of the most optimistic times of the year for me is in the summer, because in the summertime, we bring in young people 18 through 25. | |
| They're in college. | |
| They're going into college. | |
| They're in their postgraduate work. | |
| We know the garbage largely that colleges teach. | |
| And so here's students have been exposed to this. | |
| And over a two-week period of time, because of all the original documents we own, what Tim does and teaching them, I see students go from knowing what they know to learning what they didn't know to being really aggressive leaders on the other side. | |
| It is just thrilling to me to see how quickly they respond to truth. | |
| Many of them have never heard truth. | |
| And when they hear truth, they embrace it at a rate higher than our generation ever did. | |
| And they become warriors for truth. | |
| And every single year we've done this leadership training program, we get reports that these kids have changed their professors, that they've gone back in with what they know and changed. | |
| And I don't recall anybody in my generation changing a professor. | |
| So I am so thrilled with what's out there. | |
| But regardless of what happens politically, we have to recognize like Elijah did, I need an Elisha to be training. | |
| I need to be training the next generation. | |
| And that has got to be the focus because even if we get a four-year reprieve with President Trump, it's only a four-year reprieve. | |
| What are you going to do 15 years from now, 20 years from now, if you don't focus on training that next generation to know truth, to know Bible, to know things? | |
| And that's the other thing is as at the point of the election yesterday, only 6% of Americans have a biblical worldview. | |
| Only 4% of millennials have a biblical worldview. | |
| Only 2% of Gen Z have a biblical worldview. | |
| America will not survive with those numbers. | |
| That has to go up. | |
| And that's every single one of us who profess Christianity have to get into God's word at a deeper level, at a more dedicated level, and become biblical thinkers. | |
|
Discipling In Our Sphere
00:04:22
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| Yeah, and this is one of the things, too, that's very important to know about the rising generation. | |
| And I think probably even on the set, people that probably more in my realm that we maybe a little gray hair, but not a lot yet. | |
| We can attest to that for most of the rising generation, whether it be millennials or Gen Z, they are very relationship-oriented. | |
| And they actually are in many cases looking for leaders and mentors to invest in them and pour into them. | |
| It could be because what we know just statistically is that it's almost half of millennials and Gen Z are growing up in a broken home where mom and dad are not living together. | |
| Mom and dad are not married. | |
| And so there's a lot of brokenness. | |
| And so there's a lot of hurt. | |
| There's a lot of people looking for relationship. | |
| And that gives a lot of opportunity for individuals in the church, whether you are a parent or grandparent or wherever you are, maybe you don't even have any kids. | |
| There are a lot of people that you can look to and who are looking for someone to invest in their life or looking for someone that values them. | |
| And this is where Jesus talked about in the Great Commission to the disciples. | |
| He said, go and make disciples of all nations. | |
| One of the challenges that we have seen the church not do a great job on is the church spends more time on evangelism than discipleship, thinking that evangelism is really the main goal of the church, that everybody needs to know who Jesus is. | |
| And obviously, we want everybody to know who Jesus is. | |
| But once you learn who Jesus is, then you need to learn to live how Jesus wants you to live, right? | |
| Where Jesus told the disciples, if you love me, keep my commands. | |
| Part of what we should be doing is helping every believer learn what are the commands of Jesus? | |
| What are the commands of the gospels? | |
| What does the Bible actually teach? | |
| What's a biblical worldview? | |
| What does that look like? | |
| What are biblical principles and philosophies? | |
| That's the discipleship process that we haven't done a great job of, generally speaking. | |
| And the reason I even bring this up is one of the things we know is that in every single city in the entire nation, there is at least one church. | |
| Well, if every church just said, we're not going to focus on the whole nation, we're just going to focus on our sphere of influence on our city. | |
| If every church just said, we want to make a difference in our city, if every city was being reached by every church, all of a sudden the entire nation has been reached just because we focused on discipling in our sphere of influence. | |
| And we live in an era where social media and TV and cable and everything else, we see things from a national perspective. | |
| Even looking last night, one of the biggest things that was focused on was the presidential election. | |
| It's a national election. | |
| Well, that's true. | |
| National things do impact us, and it's significant that we pay attention and we know what's going on. | |
| But the reality is, if, for example, we live in Texas, God has not called us to reach the people around you guys, wherever you might live. | |
| Presumably, you don't live where we are in Alito, Texas. | |
| But we've been called to reach the people that are in our sphere of influence. | |
| If every Christian reaches their sphere of influence, if every church reaches their community, all of a sudden, the entire nation is being discipled. | |
| And so often, as Christians, we look for the next great awakening. | |
| We look for the next pastor. | |
| We look for the next president. | |
| We're looking for somebody else for God to raise up and use. | |
| And the reality is, God has chosen us for such a time as this. | |
| We are the solution. | |
| We are the answer. | |
| We just have to look to be used by God. | |
| And so for many people, it's finding those individuals in the church that we can pour into, that we can disciple. | |
| And maybe there's not a lot of young people in your church. | |
| So maybe you need to look for people that are working at the convenience store, that are looking at Walmart, that are working at Home Depot. | |
| You need to find people that you can invest in, that you can love on, that you can share the gospel, that you can disciple. | |
| But we need to find people that we can pour into, as you're mentioning. | |
| Unfortunately, when you look even at people that have a biblical worldview in America, what is true is that if you are a Christian, the older you are, the more likely you are to have a biblical worldview. | |
| The younger of a Christian you are, the less likely you are to have a biblical worldview, which means we really do need people that are older in the faith that are pouring into and mentoring people that are younger in the faith so that they get that impartation of a biblical worldview. | |
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Investing in Righteousness
00:00:39
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| And this is regardless of who wins. | |
| If it's Biden, if it's Trump, it doesn't matter. | |
| Our nation needs a restoration of biblical values, of biblical principles. | |
| We need a return to righteousness. | |
| And that's not going to come regardless of Trump or Biden as a president. | |
| That's going to come when Christians say, I need to help invest in my family. | |
| I need to invest in my church. | |
| I need to invest in the next generation. | |
| And when the churches say, we're going to invest in our community, that comes when Christians, once again, are seeking and promoting righteousness. | |