Obedience that saves lives.. (the warning of an undiscipled generation)

I've been enjoying doing some basic obedience training with my neighbour’s puppy this week. She’s six months old, which is slightly older than my usual puppy pupils, but she’s learning fast. It brought back memories of my Rusty in Scotland and my Kylie in South Africa who, by eight or ten weeks old could sit, lie down, stay and come on command. Why did I intentionally teach them these things at such a young age? Quite simply because it could save their lives! No one wants their puppy to dash into the path of a coming car because it wasn’t trained to stop and lie down when instructed to. 

Here in my town, I know a couple of people whose dogs are about a year old and yet still don’t consistently respond to these basic commands. I feel nervous when I see those dogs bounding around near traffic, because I know they haven’t yet learned the kind of obedience that could save their lives.

What’s true of dogs in the physical realm is true of people in the spiritual realm. This morning I was reading what I consider to be one of the saddest verses in the whole Bible: in Judges 2:10, it says that Joshua’s generation followed the Lord wholeheartedly, but then a generation grew up that didn’t know God or the things He had done for them. And the result, in verse 11, is that this "undiscipled" generation served false gods and did evil in the eyes of the Lord.

How could this be possible? How could the generation that saw God’s miracles in the desert, and experienced God’s victories in conquering the Promised Land, have children who didn’t know God and weren’t obedient to His commands? The answer is very simple: they failed to understand that discipleship needs to be intentional. It’s not enough to get people into the Promised Land and assume that they can work the rest out for themselves. We need to have a clear plan for helping people become disciples who love and obey God with all of their hearts.

This is the particular responsibility of parents. As the psalmist said, a few generations later, “What we have heard and known, what our fathers have told us, we will not hide them from the children; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, His power and the wonders He has done.” Psalm 78: 3 - 4. Surely no one would be crazy enough to “hide” the ways of God from their children. But that is exactly what we are doing if we are not intentional in discipling our kids, teaching them to read and obey the written Word, and to hear and obey God’s voice.

The same is true in our churches. Sometimes we make great plans for evangelism... but then we forget to be equally intentional in our plans for discipleship. And so a generation of believers grows up who have experienced salvation in the true sense of the word, but who live lives shaped by the values and customs of the world around them, instead of learning to love and honour God in all things. They’ve entered the Promised Land, but they’ve never learned to enjoy its blessings or to conquer the cities and the giants that live there. Let’s remember that it’s not enough to get people saved; we need to be intentional in teaching them the kind of obedience that could save their lives.