GENERATION TO GENERATION
14th Jan 2026
When God chose Abraham, He gave him a very significant promise, “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you….you will be a blessing…. all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:2-3)
I was struck by what God said later to Abraham in Genesis 18:18-19 in The Message, “Abraham is going to become a large and strong nation; all the nations of the world are going to find themselves blessed through him. Yes, I’ve settled on him as the one to train his children and future family to observe God’s way of life, live kindly and generously and fairly.”
What impressed and challenged me was the mandate for Abraham to train his children to “observe God’s way of life, live kindly and generously and fairly.”
The responsibility to raise our children to follow God and commit their lives to Him begins with our being fully consecrated to Him in every aspect of our lives. In Psalm 112:1-2, it says, “Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who finds great delight in his commands. His children will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed.”
We have five married adult children and eighteen grandchildren. When they were much younger, our children all made a personal commitment to Jesus, in many different ways.
On one occasion, this came up in conversation with some friends as we were recounting how each had come to faith, when our friend said, “The key point is not how you sought to lead each to personal faith, but the lives you were living in front of them.” He then quoted the Psalm above.
God’s plan for all people is that they should know Him and have a personal relationship with Him, and that this should go from generation to generation. Praying for our children to find personal faith was an essential part of our lives many years ago, but praying for the succeeding generations remains a priority to this day.
Abraham had a strong, personal relationship with God as Father and friend. He passed that on to Isaac, his son, and from there it has passed down to us. We now have the mandate to pass it to succeeding generations.
Don’t ever stop praying for your family to come to living faith in Jesus; it is God’s heart and should be our passion.
by Charles Sibthorpe
