Ankerberg Show

Guest (Male): Welcome to More to the Story with hosts Michelle Ankerberg and Jeff Palance. Join us as we sit down with guests from the John Ankerberg Show to explore their salvation stories, faith journeys, and what's next for them. There's always more to the story. Let's dive in.

Michelle Ankerberg: Hi, and welcome to More to the Story. My name is Michelle Ankerberg, and I'm here with my cousin, Jeff Palance. Today, we have two very special guests. We have Anne Graham Lotz and her daughter, Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright.

Today, we have them on the program because they have written a new book together called *Jesus Followers*. Both Jeff and I have read this book. It is a wonderful book, and I hope that you would buy a copy of this and read it for yourself. Basically, it talks about passing the baton on to the next generation and teaching them about the Lord.

Rachel-Ruth, I'm going to start with you today. In writing this book, I can tell that you have a close relationship with your mom. I know I have a close relationship with my mother, which is so wonderful. Tell me some of the things that she has taught you throughout the years.

Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright: There are a lot of things, but my mom's relationship with Jesus is the one that trumps them all. She loves the Lord. It's sincere. It's not something put on. It's not something that she pretends in front of us and goes to church and makes a big deal and then comes home and is a different person. She just loves the Lord.

I saw that when she would get up early in the mornings. I'd catch her on her knees praying or reading her Bible. I'd come home from school a lot of times, and she'd be back in her study with her Bible open, preparing for Bible study when she used to teach BSF in our area.

I always saw her in the word, always talked to her about the Lord, and it was sincere. She loved him. It was natural. It came from her heart. I think that was the biggest thing that I saw in her life. It just permeated every area, every conversation, every situation that we faced. She would take it back to the Lord.

Anne Graham Lotz: Michelle, if I can just add to that, because we're talking about passing truth from generation to generation. That's what I saw in my mother. I could catch my mother on her knees in prayer. I could catch her at her desk reading her Bible. She caught that from my grandmother, my mother's mother and her father, the same way. Then my father's mother and father, too.

It's interesting that God has blessed us with a wonderful heritage of people who have passed that baton of truth to the next generation. Then it's up to us to grasp it for ourselves. They can't grasp the truth for me. They can just pass it to me. Then I have to grasp it for myself, which I did at a young age. Rachel-Ruth did it at a young age.

She's passed it to her girls, and her three girls grasped that when they were little. Then, of course, they've got to live it out as adults. But it's the reality of our relationship with Jesus, a vibrant faith that's rooted in his word, but was established at the cross when we came and confessed our sin, told God we're sorry, asked him to forgive us, come into our hearts, and surrendered to him. Then we were born again into God's family. That's passed from generation to generation as far back on my side as I can remember, and then Dad's side, too.

Michelle Ankerberg: To follow up with that, what would you say, and both of you can answer this, what would you say would be something that you could tell mothers out there that is the most important thing to give to your children?

Anne Graham Lotz: The most important thing you can give to your children is the example of someone who has an authentic, vibrant faith, a relationship with Jesus that's personal, that is the core of who you are so that they can catch you on your knees in prayer, in the word. Not because you have to, you're not checking off a box, it's where you want to be. I don't know how you would answer that.

Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright: I think the big thing is to just love Jesus. Fall in love with Jesus yourself. If you haven't, why? What is it that's happened in your life? Is it a past discouragement or something that happened to you or something that you're going through right now that has just caused you to put the Lord on the shelf?

My encouragement would be to just fall back in love with Jesus. Open up your Bibles and read about the Lord and his compassion and his kindness and his direction he can give in your life. When you develop your own relationship with the Lord, then that translates into everything else you do—the way you treat your kids, your husband, your work, everything. That is the main thing, is just to love the Lord yourself.

Jeff Palance: How can the church equip parents a little bit better or come alongside parents to help them in this process of igniting faith in their children?

Anne Graham Lotz: Be the church. I think to get parents, grandparents, children into God's word in a way that's exciting and in a way that's not just filling them with information, but applying it and helping them live it out. The church ought to have leadership that sets the example of being a Jesus follower. They ought to be excited about God's word. They ought to be in God's word.

I know churches have so many different people with so many different gifts. In a church, you can have some that are excellent in a Sunday school teaching position, some who are great in the kitchen serving the food, some who are great in the nursery taking care of the babies. We all have different gifts.

At the center of it should be our relationship with Jesus and that we keep our focus on the main thing, which is bringing these children to faith in Jesus, passing the truth on to those in the congregation, not only by what we say from a pulpit, but the way we do things and what we do and the way we interact with each other.

Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright: My oldest daughter had a teacher. She was at a Christian school for a while, elementary and middle school. There was one teacher that she will talk about. His name was Mr. Johns. When the class came in, and these kids were typical middle school kids nowadays, just catty and into stuff they shouldn't be and everything. My daughter wasn't like that, but when they walked into that class, Mr. Johns loved them.

He showed them he loved them. He cared for them. He wasn't picking on them or throwing rules down their throat or anything. He just loved them, and they all responded. They did what he said. He didn't have to yell at them or tell them to sit down. They would sit down in class. They would obey him. They would listen just because they knew Mr. Johns loved them.

He ended up dying. He got cancer and died very quickly that year. To this day, these kids—this was years ago because she's now almost 20—every year on the anniversary of when he died, they'll tweet out missing Mr. Johns and so thankful for his example to me.

That was just half a year in class with this man. That's what a Sunday school teacher needs to be like. That's what the elders and the deacons need to be like. When they see kids walking through the hall and they seem ticked off, those are the ones you've got to come up and just love on them and show them the love of Jesus. We're not going to water down the gospel, never ever. But we just need to love these kids and encourage them and help them when they're suffering, they're struggling through middle school and high school, elementary school. I think that's a big part of being that example to them.

Michelle Ankerberg: I think one last quick question to follow up with what Jeff was saying. We talked about with parents or grandparents or anybody to pass the baton on. What would you say to single people or even to the younger generation right now? They might say, "Well, I can't do that," but they can. What would be your response to that?

Rachel-Ruth Lotz Wright: Definitely you can pass it on to anyone that is around you. In fact, my ninth grader went into this school. It's a secular school and led a kid to Christ the first three weeks of school. So she's passing it on. She was just texting him the other day and challenging him to stop drinking and stop smoking, and he has.

As a ninth grader, passing it on, you don't keep it to yourself. It doesn't matter if you're ninth grade, if you're in college, if you're a young single in your 20s. Just whoever's around you, look for people that you can pass on your faith. It could be the person in the cubicle next to you at work. It's not necessarily the younger generation. It can be, but it can be those around you that you just know how you love Jesus, and who can you tell?

Anne Graham Lotz: I think sometimes we talk to parents who for some reason didn't pass that baton of truth when the children were in the home. Now they're gone. Now they realize, "Oh my goodness, I failed and I didn't do it."

God can use a single person who's around your child. Who knows but that God can use the single person to bring that child to faith because of the way you interact with them. You look at the disciples, you look at the apostle Paul, you look at Jesus. They were single. Peter, I'm guessing, was married, but we think the other disciples were probably single.

Some of the women that impacted me the most: Miss A. Wetherell Johnson, who founded Bible Study Fellowship; Amy Carmichael, who was head of Dohnavur down in India; and Miss Henrietta Mears, who started 800 churches out in California. There are people like that, and they were single.

God can use a single person in a very powerful way. The important thing is that we're Jesus followers and we just follow him wherever he leads. If he doesn't lead you to a spouse, praise God and just go after what he has for you. You can make an impact on this generation, the next generation, and the next generation because God's not limited by your singleness.

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us on More to the Story. May the insights from today equip you to present and defend your faith with confidence. To learn more or view our TV program, visit jashow.org or subscribe to us on YouTube. Until next time, may God guide you in your pursuit of truth and empower you to share it with others.