Speaker: Brian Haynes, Associate Pastor at Kingsland Baptist Church in Katy, Texas
What are you getting yourself into?
You get yourself into God’s story
We are just moving, making a shift, from what is right in our eyes to what was God’s plan from the beginning. We go to Deuteronomy 6 and see the Shema. We go to Psalm 78 — the story for the coming generations. Proverbs: ‘my son, train a child.’ Ephesians 4:6: ‘Fathers, train up your children.’ Matthew 28. There is a clear bridge from the Shema to the Great Commission.
Home and church. Home doesn’t go away because the New Testament church is established. Everyone is asking the same question. How do we link the church and the home? Most are missing the link in the family. God is getting ready to do something for our culture that could be epic. It is not going to be tent revivals or the mega church. It is going to happen around the family table. The family table is central to worship.
You get yourself into a spiritual battle
The enemy will attack you. You’ll have parents who don’t buy in to the idea. You’ll have workers leave. Satan will attack your family. You’ll think – is this right? Thank goodness for the Word of God. Praise the Risen Jesus Christ that He has defeated Satan.
Satan will try to mess with you, distract you — all because you are trying to get on board with what God is doing. The Almighty God protects you. If this is just another model or book — than that is all it is. If you see it as God sees it — then it is historic. There is a battle.
You get yourself into the possibility of an extremely biblical church
Haynes said he loves the church. But sometimes the church moves away from Scripture. How can we link Deuteronomy 6 and the Great Commission: how do we put that into practice? If you do, you run the risk of having an extremely biblical church and God will bless that.
When you build the bridge (between those two passages), church doesn’t become perfect, but it does become extremely biblical. You get yourself into biblical community. You get yourself into partnership and accountability.
You get yourself into the hope of generational impact.
My heart is that one day in our culture will come a day when people use a biblical worldview as their filter for everything. Cultural redesign: a culture who gets so far away from the Lord and comes running back to the Lord.
I think about my children: what is life going to be like for them when they are 35? I think of grass root movements who equip their people to do the Family Table well. At our church, we talk much about legacy. Some have started to walk down this road a little bit.
There is nothing more precious than passing down Christ to the next generation in the context of the home. When you empower people to do that, you are giving them a gift. So, here’s my dream: My prayer is that one day I will walk around Katy and Kingsland and see people living out the discipleship of parents to their children. That is how the culture is going to be redesigned.
2 Kings 17-18
These are dark days in Israel. Israel was exiled because of sin. They were sinning and were a stiff-necked people. They forsook God and worshipped idols. They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire.
The Lord was angry and removed them from His presence. The Israelites persisted in their sins.
Compare the days of Israel to today. We need a cultural redesign. I do not want to be the culture that is removed from the presence of the Lord.
Hezekiah – he did what was right in the sight of the Lord. He trusted in the Lord. There was none like him among all the kings of Israel. He kept the commands of the Lord. The Lord was with him. Such a contrast.
It takes one generation to make a difference.