Victorious Generation
I could not think of a better time to talk to you about the victorious generation than now.
In Arcade (a collection of ministry groups at Hillsong Church London) for the last few months we have been exploring the concept of being the ‘Victorious Generation’ - we in Voltage started to look at what being part of a victorious generation would look like for our kids and trying to get them to understand this in a more practical way.
On Easter Sunday this year we got the kids in Voltage to share some of their testimonies of how they came to Christ, there were some kids who had come to Christ after being born in Christian families, many whose parents were first generation Christians and some who had been brought to church by a family friend and eventually convinced their parents to take them to church (I love that our church is so diverse!). At the end of our Easter service we had an altar call and asked if there were any kids who had not already accepted Christ that would like to accept Him as their Lord and saviour and we followed this up by speaking to the parents of the children who had made this life-changing decision.
I truly enjoyed seeing these kids showing victory over evil through making this bold decision to dedicate their lives to Christ and I am so happy we were able to facilitate letting the little children come to Him (Matthew 19:14), for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
The following Sunday we then taught about why we should share the story of salvation with others and tell others about Jesus giving them examples of stories from the book of Acts. The scripture we fixated on was Mark 16:15 where Jesus said “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation” we looked at how they could do this in their relational groups at school, not just through what they say but how they treat people; i.e. with kindness, sharing and putting others before ourselves and we equipped them with tools to share the love of Jesus with others. Our Voltage kids are amazing with applying practical things that they learn on a Sunday to their week, I know that we often have our kids bring their non-believing friends to church and I know that the week after this teaching one of my High Voltage kids brought his younger cousins to church and they got to experience why he loves church so much and he got to serve them and show the love of Jesus in a very practical way.
In the final week of the ‘Victorious Generation’ teaching we spoke about how Jesus was willing to do whatever it took to save people, which in His case meant dying on the cross. We looked at John 10:10 and what it means to have an abundant and full life linking it to being more than conquerors through Christ like in Romans 8:37-39. For because of this abundant life on earth and eternal life in heaven Jesus saw the cross set before Him as COMPLETELY worth it.
I said at the beginning of this blog entry that I could not think of a better time to talk about the victorious generation than now. That’s not only because our generation needs to know about walking victoriously in Christ but because I have just come back from a weekend of Colour Conference (our yearly women’s conference at Hillsong) where we taught about strength under humility and purpose in each person’s life, I left the conference fully victorious.
These past few weeks of teaching the Voltage kids about the victorious generation aligns perfectly with one of the messages taught at Colour Conference by Beth Moore where she talked about impacting a generation for Christ and she breaks down one of her points into 3 parts saying that to communicate Christ’s message effectively to the next generation we have to communicate:
1) Christ’s story – we teach the kids using the word of God and they often give us examples from the Bible that they enjoy when telling others about Jesus
2) Their story – using their testimony and what God has done in their lives to draw others to Christ
3) Our story - the why we do what we do and how the story of Jesus and their individual story ties to the story of the church which helps them live life more abundantly.
We hear weekly testimonies of victory, from kids writing praise reports of healings at the beginning of our Sunday services, to kids parents telling me differences that they have seen in their children’s lives and then even seeing the changes in kids’ lives myself really inspires and encourages me to see that everyone, no matter which age group they are in can live a life of victory.