Bayside Baptist Church

Jason King: You may remember this, but in 2004, the United States of America had a women's track relay team that was the best that there was. As a matter of fact, Marion Jones, who had won several gold medals at Sydney four years prior, was the anchor on this team. It was a 4x100 relay that they were preparing to run on this particular day.

As the race started, they were in good shape. Marion Jones was the second leg of the race, the second 100 meters in the race. As she ran, you know if you've followed track and field that in a relay, each runner has to carry a baton. They call it a stick that they pass from one to the next, and it is through the passing of the baton throughout the relay that the team is able to continue for that team.

Marion Jones successfully ran her leg of the race and went to pass it to a young girl named Lauren Williams, who was a successful sprinter in her own right. She went to pass the baton, and the first time that she tried, Lauren couldn't get it. They tried again a second time trying to get it quick. If you've ever run a relay, you know that is the worst moment of the race because you've got to pass it, stick it, grab it, go.

The second time, it didn't happen. Third time, she couldn't get it. She couldn't get her hands around it. If you drop it, game over. The fourth time, they were able to pass the baton, but there was a problem. There's only a 20-yard section of the track that the baton can be passed in, so they were not able to do it in that space, and they were disqualified from the race.

They were the favorites to win, the clear favorites. You know if you've run track that the most important part of a relay is the handoff of the baton to the next leg. Anyone can run. There are a lot of people that can run really, really fast, but it takes precision, it takes intentionality, it takes effort, and it takes lots and lots of practice for a runner to be able to pass the baton to a runner that is waiting to move on to the next leg of the relay. It takes a skill, practice, and focus to be able to hand it off in such a way that the race continues and your team wins.

Today is the last week of 21 days of prayer, and we've been praying. We've been asking God to break through in my life. I want to get out of the second chair, I want to get out of the third chair, and I want to be living a life that is fully devoted to You, Lord. I don't want to be compartmentalizing my life and filing stuff away depending on where I am and acting like my life is a chest of drawers. I want to be all in. This is who I want to be and what I want to be about. Today I want to talk to you about this breakthrough that I want to challenge you to pray and to walk out today.

Your life is not about you. My life is not about me. It's about those who follow behind us, especially if you have kids or if you have grandkids. It's about the next generation, that you and I, when we run our race, we hand the baton. We don't drop it, we don't try to run without it, and we don't act as if it's not important to pass it. We recognize what the Scripture teaches us for every single one of you who are in Christ. Our job is to pass the baton of faith to those who come behind us.

As important as it is for you to live authentically, living a genuine faith-filled life, there comes a time when a handoff has to be made to the next generation where they receive the baton of faith and begin to run with it. That handoff is not as easy as it looks. You've got to be intentional. It's the result of thousands and thousands of practice runs. For the next few minutes, that's what I want to talk to you about today: how do you take the baton of faith and pass it to those who come behind you? How do you make that handoff in your life?

The first place you have to start if you're going to pass the baton of faith to the next generation is to start with your own life. Start with your own life. Listen to Matthew chapter six, verse 33. It says, "Seek first the kingdom of God above all else and live righteously, and He, being God, will give you everything that you need." I heard my pastor, Chip Henderson, say this past week in a message that he preached, "If you met Jesus and you didn't change, you didn't meet Jesus, you just went to church."

If you met Jesus, if you called on Jesus to forgive you of your sins and to give you new life and nothing changed about your life, you just went to church. You just got "churchified." I think he made that word up. I'm convinced that for whatever reason today in our day, there's a part of us that wants to believe that this is really what life is about. You've got your church stuff over here and then real life over here. We start to get into this place of compartmentalizing our life or living in the second chair, but we have a little bit of Jesus in our life, but we're still calling the shots.

You're still calling the shots in your life. That's great what the Scripture teaches, but we're a little more sophisticated now. That's great what the Scripture teaches, but that'll never work in my budget, that'll never work in my life, and that'll never work in my relationship with my parents, my spouse, or my kids. Yet the reality of it is that if this is where you're at, you are in charge of your life, not Christ. You may have believed that you met Jesus, but if you hadn't changed, you've just been to church.

I would say to you that God wants to break through first before we even talk about your kids or your grandkids or, if you don't have kids, talking about people that you influence. Before you have anything to give to anybody else, you've got to talk about your own life. God wants to break through in your life. If you want to pass the baton of faith to your kids or your grandkids, you have to be carrying the baton first. You've got to be in the race, in the game.

Before you even think about giving your child the oxygen mask, what are they telling you to do on the plane? You've got to put it on yourself. When it comes to your faith, that's where we've got to start. Think about this. If you take a family vacation and you're wanting to tour some place that's just a destination, do you want somebody leading that tour that's never been there before? No. If you're going on a fishing trip, do you want your guide to be somebody that's never been fishing in their life? Do you want a financial planner who still lives in the basement at home and hasn't had a real job yet? No. Same thing, you don't want to take golf lessons from somebody that's never picked up a golf club.

When it comes to your faith, you can't take anyone to a place that you have never been. You can't lead your kids or your grandkids or anyone, for that matter, to a place that's unfamiliar to you. You don't have to go to seminary, and you don't have to memorize the Bible, know the books of the Bible backwards and forwards, to be able to invest and impart spiritual maturity and growth in someone's life. You just need to be one step ahead in your walk with God. You need to have a walk with God first, and then even when you're taking baby steps, God can use that to help you invest in those who come behind you.

Can I talk to the parents for just a minute? Parents, you are the greatest influence in your child's life, period. I don't care how much they're on social media, how much they're with their friends, or whatever they're doing in school or whatever else is going on in their life. You alone are the greatest influence in their life. Study after study after study shows that this is reality. You define normal for them, you shape what life is to look like, and you show a picture of what faith could be or even should be.

If at this moment you will allow God to break through in your life, you will be well on your way to helping your kids experience the same, but you've got to go there first before you can lead your kids there. I love how Warren Wiersbe, the great preacher of yesteryear, said it. He said, "If we put God's will and God's righteousness first in our lives, He will take care of everything else." This is the same thing Jesus is saying here. If you're wholehearted, if you seek the kingdom and you live righteously, seek the righteousness of God, and if you live wholeheartedly in your pursuit of the Lord, God's got you.

What you don't know, even what you don't know that you don't know, God will lead you through it by the power of His Holy Spirit. He'll help you influence your kids towards faith in the overflow of what He's doing in your life. Nobody's asking you to be something you're not, but what God has declared that you are if you're in Christ is filled with the Holy Spirit. As you walk in the power of God's word, He will change your life, and out of the overflow of that, that's how you can influence your kids.

What Jesus is teaching is not that we just make a hierarchy in our lives, a little pyramid where God is first. That's not what He means with "seek His kingdom first and His righteousness." What it means is that your sole allegiance, everything that you are devoted to, is Christ. You're not divided, you're not compartmentalized, and you're not compromised. You're all in in the faith. It doesn't mean you run around beating everyone over the head with the Bible. It means that when it comes to the very core of who you are, you are living for Christ and Christ alone.

What matters most to you is what matters most to God, not just on Sundays but on every day of the week as a way of life. Jesus, in this passage in Matthew 6—and I do encourage you to go back and read that whole chapter later on—but I want to give you in a nutshell what Jesus is saying here right before Matthew 6:33. He says, "If you want to just take a test and see if right now you are seeking first the kingdom of God in your life and, out of the overflow of who you are, all of these things are being added to you and God is using you to influence the next generation," he said there are a few things about this.

He said the first way that you can evaluate this, if you're seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, is where are you choosing to store up treasure? He said, "Are you storing up treasure in Heaven or are you storing up treasure on Earth?" It means where are you investing your time and energy and focus. Is it on people or is it on stuff? Which one's going to last forever? Jesus says the stuff, no matter how nice it is, is going to rot, it's going to rust, and it's going to wear out. Choosing stuff, choosing to accumulate more possessions or wealth or titles or accolades, all that stuff fades away.

Jesus is asking the question, "Are you focusing your life and choosing to invest in people, which lasts for eternity? Is what you're doing on this earth right now affecting eternity?" The second thing He said is to check your eyes, check your vision. In other words, what are your eyes fixated on? When you wake up in the morning, are you thinking about what you've got to do at work and all the stuff in front of you? All that stuff's got to happen, but is that your purpose for what you're doing? Just as your eye affects your entire body, Jesus says spiritually, your eyes and your heart affect everything about you.

What are you fixated on today? Tomorrow, when you go to work, what are you fixated on? Are you fixated on Christ or something else? The last thing He says in that passage right before Matthew 6:33 is He says, "The third way to evaluate it is to choose whom you will serve." He says it this way, "Will you serve God or will you serve wealth?" He says you can't serve the master of wealth Monday through Saturday and then show up and serve the Lord on Sunday because if that's you, in reality, you've already divided your heart, you're already compromised, and you've really already given your heart to something else other than God because God can only be served wholeheartedly.

I love how John Stott, the great preacher of the past, says, "Such a desire for God's kingdom and His righteousness will start with ourselves until every department of our lives—home, marriage and family, personal morality, professional life and business ethics, bank balance, tax returns, lifestyle, citizenship—is joyfully and freely submitted to Christ." That's what it means to seek first, that you refuse that I refuse to be consumed with ourselves and instead be consumed with God's kingdom coming to life in you and coming to bear through your life and God's righteousness having its way in you.

Make no mistake, you're going to pass down who you are. You can teach what you know, but you're going to reproduce who you are. God is calling you today, it doesn't matter your story, it doesn't matter how far you are from God right now, or how bad you feel like you might have messed up. God is calling you today to be all in with your faith, no matter where you've been or where you are right now. That is what He is saying to you.

This is where you've got to start. You've got to start with your own heart and your own life. For some of us today, we need to put this idea aside that we just want spiritual stuff and God and Jesus and church for our kids and we're good because it doesn't work that way. You pass down who you are, not what you want. You pass down who you are, not even what you're saying. You're going to miss out on God's best if that's where you are, and you're setting your kids up for spiritual failure. You can only impart what you possess in the life of those who come behind you, so start with your own life.

Whether you're a parent, whether you're a grandparent, whether you're a single adult right now, whether you're a student, whether you don't have kids, you have the opportunity to impact people in the generations after you. You've got to start with yourself. The second thing is this, and this is what Scripture teaches as well: you need to accept God's purpose for your life. Accept God's purpose for your life. Bruce Wilkinson, in the book that we've been talking about over the last few weeks that really was an inspiration for this time of 21 days of prayer called "Experiencing Spiritual Breakthroughs," said this.

He asks this question, "When you understand clearly what God wants for you as a Christian parent"—I'm going to talk primarily to parents and grandparents for just a minute—"When you understand what He wants for you, will you be willing to make whatever change is necessary? Will you take steps to bring your parenting beliefs and behaviors in line with God's revealed plans?" What I would say to the parents, to the grandparents in the house right now, to those that want to be parents in the future, your answer to this question ultimately determines whether you pass the baton of a spirit-led life and faith to those who come behind you, especially those who are growing up in your house.

Sometimes I'm afraid that in the midst of the hustle and bustle and the busyness and all the stuff and the pressure and the pursuit of whatever it is that we're chasing, all the cultural messages about marriage and family, about kids, we misunderstand the whole reason that God has brought a husband and wife together in marriage. If we're honest, we operate a whole lot more according to the world's principles and guidance for marriage than what the Word says. Look at Malachi chapter two, verse 15.

He's speaking to the married folk right here and he says, "Didn't the Lord make you one with your wife? In other words, wasn't God in that bringing you guys together?" He said, "In body and spirit you are His, and what does God want?" God wants you to be happy and to feel empowered and to feel all warm and squishy all the time. That's really what He wants, right? Is that what your translation says? It's not what mine says. What does He want? Married folk, what does He want? He wants godly children from your union.

Look at the word of warning and instruction and direction to those of us who are married. So guard your heart; remain loyal to the wife of your youth. In this day, God is speaking through Malachi. People were a little upset, they were a little frustrated, and a little disillusioned because they were praying and God wasn't answering their prayers. They were wearing their wristbands, I'm sure, and using their prayer cards, and maybe they've been praying for longer than 21 days, and yet God wasn't answering. Nothing was changing. They were getting frustrated, disillusioned, disappointed, and they were suffering trouble.

God said to them, "The reason why things are harder than they should be right now is because you've disregarded the purpose for marriage. You've broken your marriage vows." In this verse, he reminds all of us married folk of what marriage is really about. This is a word for us today. Bruce Wilkinson said in this book, "On creation day, God set in place a big idea, a masterpiece, and he put it in the safekeeping of two people, a father and a mother. He didn't just create this plan for their pleasure or their feelings or fulfillment or so they could be the perfect match for one another. He was wanting godly kids to come from godly parents."

God's top reasons for marriage did not include taking advantage of tax deductions or getting invited to more dinner parties or combining income so you could do more, or sex, or keeping the family name going, or raising well-adjusted, educated, and successful children, or even just overall happiness and feeling fulfilled and empowered through that relationship. Some of those things may happen in your marriage, but church, that's not the purpose of your marriage.

According to what the Scriptures teach, God's starting point and His purpose for your marriage isn't very popular today, and it isn't politically or culturally correct according to our day. God's design is that you and your spouse would help fill the earth with more humans who love the Lord. I know some of you may find yourselves in a place to where you're unable to have children and that's your heart's desire. I believe God will give you opportunities to invest in other people, maybe to adopt or to foster, or maybe that's you're single and you've not married. There are opportunities for you.

He specifically speaks to the married folk right here in the point of why God has brought you together. That's why He says guard your heart. It ain't going to happen naturally to guard your heart; it takes intentionality. It takes faith, but he's saying very clearly that godly kids come from godly parents. The Lord wants you to have full integrity and to walk worthy of your calling and then bring your little boys and girls along with you. They're to be walking in your footsteps, embracing your values, serving your God, choosing your Lord to be their Lord.

Yes, it is our Lord's desire and plan and expectation that you and I would pass the torch of godliness to the next generation. Isn't it one of the greatest fears of Christian parents today that somehow we would fail at that? Anybody feel that, just the fear of "what if?" What if our kids don't embrace the faith and make it their own? Cristi and I have talked about this and we've prayed about this a lot in our 18-plus years as parents. There are books and methods and videos and claims and blog posts and processes everywhere.

How do you know that you're even doing it right? Parents, anybody feeling that? It's like you're bringing that baby home from the hospital and I remember thinking, "I just don't want to break him. I don't want to drop him. What do I do?" I don't know, they didn't tell us; they just told us a bunch of stuff and threw us out the door. That's kind of how it feels, and it doesn't get much better as they grow up. Some of you, I want you to listen to me right now. Some of you are spending so much time listening to, reading, and consuming other stuff.

You're watching Instagram and they're telling you this is what you need to do, this is who you have to be or you're not, or you're watching YouTube or you're reading a blog post or you're filling your mind with all of this stuff. Most of it's AI-generated anyway, and you're feeling this weight of guilt because you can't be perfect as a parent. It's this self-defeating cycle that you're just never going to be enough. I want to give you some important advice, and you may want to write it down. You may want to write this down, but if that's where you're finding yourself, do this: stop it.

Seriously. I get that that's the world we live in, we're scrolling all the time, we're watching all the time, and that stuff sounds so whatever, but let me give you some guidance for what I believe the Scriptures would say to you if you're a young parent or you've got kids and you're trying to figure out how to navigate stuff. You start with your own faith, you start with searching in God's Word, and then do this: put your phone down, delete Instagram, delete YouTube, and go ask a godly man or woman who's done it before.

"Could you help me? This little joker won't sleep. I need sleep; help me. We're not sure what to do when they move out of the house; would you help us? We're not sure what to do when they get their heartbreak for the first time; would you help us?" As a family of faith, there are some of us that need to put aside all these other voices, go back to what the Word of God says, and the Word of God says surround yourself with godly wisdom from people who have demonstrated a godly life and ask for help.

God didn't make a mistake giving you the children that you have. He didn't make a mistake placing you where you are. He had a very specific purpose and plan in mind, and we need to understand and put into practice this God-given role and purpose. We can begin to parent with confidence; they're God's children anyway. You don't have to live in fear, but you need to be listening to the right voices. The reality is that Matthew 6:33 we talked about just a minute ago and even this passage in Malachi that we looked at just a moment ago remind us that the most important thing is what's going into your heart and you choosing to live from that place.

To get out of the second chair, you've got to progressively walk through and work through each thought, each desire, each action, one area of your life at a time and give yourself to God completely. You're working towards God having complete possession of your life. This is who He's calling you to be. It's called walking by faith, but let me just help you rest easy. You're not going to be perfect as a parent or a grandparent. None of us are. We don't have it all figured out. Nobody does. If you do, please meet me afterwards and I'm going to follow you around for the rest of your life or my life, whichever one ends first.

We're all just trying to figure it out, but if you will walk in step with the Lord and you will embrace God's Word spoken over your life and giving you direction for your life, he'll meet you right there. He will give you what you need to walk by faith. That may be the step of faith for you today is for you to realize my life is not about me. If you're a parent, it's about those little people that God has given you, but the most important thing you can do for them is to walk by faith and trust God in the midst of it.

Even if you're a single parent today, you've walked through the pain of divorce or brokenness in marriage, it doesn't mean you can't raise godly kids. Don't ever let anybody tell you that. You walk by faith and you trust God in the midst of that. If you don't have children, maybe you weren't able to conceive children or maybe that's a struggle that you're walking through, or even if you're single today, you can invest in the next generation in this what God is doing in your life that He wants you and me to pass along.

Look for those opportunities. He says you've got to recognize evil and temptation and turn away from it. Let your faith be real. Let God guide your path day by day. Follow Him wherever He leads you. Guard your heart. To the married folk in here, guard your marriage. Don't get distracted. Don't miss the purpose that God has brought you together for and embrace the reality of what the Scriptures teach: if you want to see godly children come from your home, it starts with godly parents.

The last thing that the Scriptures teach us today about passing the baton of faith is that you and I leave behind the most important inheritance. Leave behind the most important inheritance. I want you to listen to Psalm 71, verse 17. The Psalmist says this: "Oh God, You have taught me from my earliest childhood and I constantly tell others about the wonderful things that You do." It's this declaration: "God, You've taught me since I first was in the faith and You've helped me understand, You've instructed me in life, and now I'm going to tell others about the wonderful things that You have done."

Today, maybe that's a switch that needs to flip when you think about your own life: the ways you've seen God be so faithful, the way God has provided and met you in your time of need, the way that He showed up when you thought it was impossible. Maybe you need to start downloading that to the next generation. Doesn't matter how young you are today or how young your kids are. Doesn't matter how old you are, if your kids are adult kids and you have great-grandchildren, you can still begin to share God's goodness.

Psalm 145, verse four says this: "Let each generation tell its children of Your mighty acts; let them proclaim Your power." Every generation tells the next of God's work. Notice it didn't say to fuss about the old days, how things used to be, or how much the world and the church has changed and you just wouldn't want to raise kids today. Please don't say that. Don't get so negative and critical about everything, believing that it's your God-given right to say whatever you want now that you're older.

You can do that, but I want to warn you that if you choose to do that, not only are you going to push the next generation away from faith, but you're going to push them away from you too, because nobody wants to listen to that all the time. Be careful. Use your words instead to tell of God's work and to remember, "When we were growing up, here's what God did, and I see this happening now and you can see God work in your life this way too if you'll walk by faith." Proclaim God's power.

Do it with intentionality. It doesn't happen by osmosis. You've got to talk about it, you've got to share, you've got to let them know what God has done and how He's worked in your life and point them to the truth that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Howard Hendricks, who was a professor of mine in seminary, said this: "You only know the quality of your parenting when you see what your grandchildren become." I love that. It makes me think a generation ahead: how am I right now influencing the faith of grandkids that I'll one day have, Lord willing?

I believe the single best inheritance that we can leave behind for our family is the legacy of godliness in our lives. Now, it may be important to you to leave behind money or stuff or a house or land or something like that, but I promise you, all your kids are going to do is fight over it when you're gone. That's what I thought; it is. That's the truth. I love what Bob Russell said. He said we recognize that just as human nature. He said, plus we wanted to have the blessing of seeing our kids and our grandkids receive these blessings, our inheritance, as we give it away to them before we die.

Every time we give them a gift at Christmas or a birthday or some other special occasion, we remind them, "Hey, this is your inheritance; enjoy it." But we get the joy of seeing the blessing that it brings in their life, and we know there's not going to be any drama when we die because there ain't going to be nothing left.

In his book, "Experiencing Spiritual Breakthroughs," Bruce Wilkinson addressed a few questions that you may be asking now as we talk about this today. The first one he said, you may make it sound like I'm responsible for my child's spiritual life and choices. Isn't this a personal thing that every child must decide? Yes, every child must decide. Every single person on earth must personally decide how they will respond to God, no question.

But if parents were not responsible for our children in some special way for their spiritual future, God would not relate your godliness or my godliness to their faith. If God just wanted to leave it up for grabs and let them figure it out as they navigate life on their own after they explored all the options, then you would be able to find this verse in Scripture. It's from Second Hesitations, chapter one, verses one and two. Please don't write this down and try to look it up. Some of y'all are like, "Man, where is that one? I never found that one before."

Look, here it is, Second Hesitations, chapter one: "Close your eyes and hope for the best when you raise your kids. Don't influence them one way or another. That way, when they're ready to decide, they can respond to God's desire for godliness in a way that suits them. Verse two: That's the best you can do as a parent. Shrug your shoulders, go pursue your own goals, and let them figure it out on their own."

That ain't in the Bible. Hope y'all figured that out by now. But the reality is that God not only holds us accountable, but He empowers us. As some authors have said, our children may be the most objective test of our spiritual state and of our walk with God than anything else. You have a responsibility; I have a responsibility. Another question you may be asking: is it fair to judge other Christians by their kids? Nobody has said that. That's naturally where you want to go. You want to try to figure out what chair they sit in. What's going on behind closed doors in their life? No, no, no.

Nobody has said you need to judge or evaluate somebody else's faith or life or their kids. Let's don't do that. The line of accountability in Scripture runs from the parent to the Lord, period. The three chairs and all our conversation is not for you and me to try to figure out where people are. It's for taking a look at your own life. Let's be real: judging other people in this way is a waste of time, time that you and I need to spend asking God for mercy and asking God for clarity in our lives to lead us towards a life of faith.

You and I need to look with grace upon other people, especially parents raising their kids. Who don't want grace as a parent? Because none of us know what we're doing, do we? By the time you figured it out, you're a grandparent, and then you send them back to the parents who don't know what they're doing, and then we repeat the cycle over and over. What about this? Here's another question you may be asking: "My kids are grown and I can look back and see some serious failure and I've got some regret, and I wish I could go back and do it again. Is it too late for me?"

Can I say to you: it's never too late. It's never too late. You may have a lot of things to repent from, sins to confess, things to make right. You just may need to say, "Lord, I messed up. Could You show me what I need to do to make it right? Could You show me what I need to do next?" The first thing you could do is get your life and your marriage in chair one and start over. I believe what you'll find is that it might not be perfect, but God can multiply exponentially your efforts when your heart is right and clean before Him.

Your influence, even if they're grown, even if they have kids or grandkids of their own, your influence is unmatched in their lives, and there is power in a humble, learning, seeking, and God-honoring father or mother of whatever age. You may be asking today what that looks like, how can I begin to do that? Can I just say to us today is not a day for guilt and shame. The cross washes that away when we confess our sin. But what it is a day for today is for you and I to hear and sense and see the conviction of the Holy Spirit and to say it's not about getting them in church.

It's not about trying to be something or do something. It's about who I am and who I'm becoming. So I want to say to you, if you want to leave behind a legacy of faith, if you want to help your kids and your grandkids, the next generation, however you touch the next generation, if you want to be able to pass the baton of faith, it's got to start with you. That's where God wants you and me to start today: say, "God, I want to seek You first and Your righteousness, and then I'm going to bring my life under what You've designed for me with my marriage, with my kids, and for my future."

He's inviting you to take a step of faith today and to carry this baton until you breathe your last breath and pass this baton of faith, not a "churchified" faith, but a vibrant, spirit-led life and faith to those who come behind you. Let's pray together.