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Fighting for Your Family's Spiritual Destiny
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When I drove onto that YMCA campus for camp last week, before I even stepped out of my truck, I could sense I was entering sacred space—the kind of place where you want to take your shoes off because you're standing on holy ground. It's a place where people come face to face with God, where they hear His voice and experience His love, grace, and forgiveness in a way that restores all the things the enemy tried to steal.
This week, our students and parents heard from God Himself as He declared the same kind of life He has planned for them. And I imagine these are the same words you pray for your kids: I want my children to have a whole life, a complete life, with everything they truly need, and peace—free from needless misery, distress, and the wounds that cause longtime hurt and suffering.
The prophet Jeremiah delivered a message from God to the people of Israel that speaks directly to your family today:
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans for welfare, completeness, wholeness, and peace. That is my plan. Not for evil, misery, or distress. I want to give you a future and a hope.
Now, parents, as much as you love your children, God loves them even more. What you want for your children, God has an even better plan. When God gets involved in your son's or daughter's life, things that even the best parent can't accomplish become possible. With God, all things become possible.
Notice that God isn't just wishing this for this generation. He's not saying, "Good luck, hope you figure it out." He's not making a suggestion. He declares it. This is an aha moment: I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Why can He declare this? Because Jesus is a King. Kings don't ask—they make declarations. They make commands. They say, "Come to me. Go where I'm sending you. Go to the whole world. Do what I tell you to do. Don't depart from my word. Don't be afraid. I'll be with you. I promise. I'll give you the victory."
Our kids just spent five days hearing that over and over. And guess what? A whole bunch of them believed it.
I saw students in tears ringing a bell, symbolizing that the sins, lies, and guilt of my past no longer control my life, and they will not define my future. I saw hundreds of students write down the name of their "one more"—one more person God has put in their heart, a friend or family member they ache for. Many wrote down, "I just want my mom. My dad is my one more." And here's their prayer:
Jesus, I want You to come back, but don't come back yet. Not until I tell my one more that Jesus loves him and wants him in his life.
These young men and women actually believed it. They had faith. I think God actually has a plan for my life. I have a purpose. I'm here for a reason. In tears and laughter, in worship and with a lot of perspiration in that humid room, they embraced their calling.
But I also need to tell you the hard part. This life, this destiny, this mission, this calling—God is not just going to hand it to you. That's not how it works. Just like the people leaving Egypt heading to the promised land, you're going to have to fight for it. The enemy is going to fight you back.
I warned the students: You're getting in a fight. The enemy will say, "No, you can't do that. Your dad will never change. Don't try. Fear. Shame. Insecurity." You're going to hit wall after wall, message after message saying, "Get back in your lane. This isn't going to happen." You're going to feel outnumbered, outgunned, outpowered, and sometimes like you're fighting alone for a life God gave you a vision for.
Over and over, we repeated some simple war chants:
You should hear 500 or 600 students yelling that. God has put on my heart a passion to build an army of holy warriors ready to invade hell and take back what belongs to Jesus. And church, I'm pretty sure with this group of students, we're about to make a big dent in Satan's kingdom.
When that last song ended, it was time to pack up and head back down the mountain. But for some of these students, they were walking back into a desert of uncertainty—tough conversations with friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, and parents.
I had a conversation right in front of the stage with a student who said, "I know God's calling me to be a pastor, youth pastor, or missionary. I'm supposed to put plans on hold and go to Flatirons College for a year to figure this out. But my parents will lose their mind. They'll tell me I'm crazy, that I'm taking this Jesus stuff way too seriously. You're going to mines or wherever, just like we planned. Get your head out of the clouds."
I talked to a tenth-grade boy. He put his hands around my neck and said, "I want to be a pastor." He's the only Christian in his family. His dad walked out when he was three—in and out, in and out. Right now, he lives with his stepmom and serves as the man of the family at age fifteen. All he wanted me to pray for was this: I just want my dad to say, "I'm really proud of you."
I told him how proud Jesus is of him, how strong he already is, and how God is already using him. "Don't be afraid," I said. "Don't give up the fight. God's with you."
These stories are why I want to share something personal. In 1988, I sat on a curb outside my girlfriend Robin's dorm room, wrestling with God. I knew He was calling me into ministry, and I didn't want to do it. This was not my life plan. Here's why: Christians are the meanest people I've ever met in my life, and they sucked the life out of my dad, who was a pastor. I'm like, "No way. I'm not doing this."
I argued with God for a couple of hours. Then I made a deal—probably blasphemy, but I made one. I said, "Hey God, I'll do it on one condition. If I can talk about real stuff in real ways about what real people are really going through—the thing I needed in high school and couldn't find anybody to give me. I needed raw and real."
I sensed God say to me, "Hey Jim, I wouldn't want you to do it any other way."
Turns out the only people really open to being raw and real are students. So that launched 22 years of Robin and me pastoring students. And I'm still doing the same thing. Here's all we do: We say, "Come as you are." We meet people as they are. Don't get cleaned up before you come to Jesus. Come as you are. We tell them these amazing stories about Jesus. They encounter Him, bump into Him, and He changes them. Nothing's changed. And on my watch, nothing will change.
But I want to be honest about something. Looking back at my 22 years of student ministry, here's my biggest regret: I spent all my time pouring into students when what I should have done is spent most of my time partnering with their parents.
I had those students a couple of hours a week, sprinkled with a retreat or camp once or twice a year. But parents, you have them 24/7, from birth through their twenties and thirties, and they never leave. You have them when they do nothing but cry and poop. You have them when they call you names, slam doors, throw tantrums, and tell you you're the worst human being in the world and they hate you. You're the one who feels the pressure to fund the latest hobby and interest that will change next week. You're the most important person in their life, even when they roll their eyes at you.
You are the biggest influence in their life—for better or worse. You get all the pressure and almost no grace.
Here's what I can't find in the Bible—especially in the book of Acts where Jesus describes what the church is going to be: youth ministry, kids ministry, women's ministry, men's ministry, young adults ministry. They just called them "adults" back then. Back then, youth ministry was called parenting.
Here's the biblical definition of next-gen ministry from the Apostle Paul:
Fathers, don't provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4)
Parents, that doesn't mean never make your kids upset—we all failed at that today. It means something much deeper. Paul is calling out the unique role and influence that a father's spiritual leadership—or lack of leadership—has on a son or daughter's life.
Here's how it translates from the Greek: As you raise your children, don't do or neglect to do anything in your child's life now that sets them up for a no-win life of frustration later, even if it ticks them off today. We're playing a spiritual long game called parenting.
The alternative to them ending up with a no-win, frustrating, angry life later is to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. What does that mean? You are to teach, lead, and demonstrate to them: This is what it looks like. This is what the Lord says leads to a future, a life that prospers and isn't evil. This is what Jeremiah 29 describes. This is what our family is going to do. This is how we're going to live day after day after day. That's called the discipline of the Lord.
So that when our children are out there making their own decisions and we have no influence anymore, they have embedded in their hearts, minds, souls, and DNA: This is what the Lord says is right and good. That's what I'm going to do.
Now listen closely, because I'm really talking us out of a job here. The primary spiritual instruction and leading of a life of godly discipline in your child's life is not Flatirons. It was never meant to be Flat Irons Church. It's you.
Flatirons wants to partner with you in the raising of your children to follow Jesus. But that doesn't mean any of us can outsource spiritual development to anybody, including the church. Partner, yes. Replace? No.
You are the most important pastor in your child's life. They need your voice. They need your ear. They need you to listen to them. They need you to be praying for them. And they need your wisdom—even if that wisdom is "here's everything I did wrong."
Here's what I want to challenge you with: Camp was life-changing for hundreds of our students. But what if camp becomes the catalyst not just for affecting your child, but for God using this week to bring about change in your whole family?
What if the conversations you're having with your son or daughter—where they're trying to make sense of hearing from God—becomes the doorway to actual spiritual conversations with your whole family? Conversations where you have something specific to pray about beyond "God bless our family and keep them safe today"?
How about this: "Hey God, what do you see in our family? What do you want to do in our family? What needs to change? What's the plan? What's the purpose? What's the destiny You have in mind for us so our family prospers and experiences good, not more evil? No more frustration?" We've had enough of that.
I want to tell you one last story—a very private, intimate, and emotional story about a son and a father. I have their permission to share it, and their response was, "If God can use our story to help another family, you've got to tell it."
Tim Wagner is one of my closest, most trusted friends. His son Isaac recently graduated from school and now serves in the IT department here at Flatirons. If you were to rewind, there was a time when this story didn't look good. The Vegas line was against them. It looked impossible, unfixable. There was no way back. The enemy looked undefeatable.
Isaac started wrestling at three and quit at five. Then his dad Tim said, "You're going to wrestle." Tim made him do it through elementary and middle school—sometimes three wrestling practices a day, six hours a day on top of school. When Isaac won a match, there was peace in the house. When Isaac lost, the whole family paid for it. Verbal, emotional, physical abuse.
I asked Tim, "Why is Isaac's wrestling so important to you?" Here's what he told me: Because my dad told me I was a loser and a piece of crap every day of my life, and my son will not be a loser. Tim now sees that it was never about Isaac. It was about his own repressed, unresolved, unanswered pain and abuse from his own father. But back then, he just destroyed anyone and everyone in his path—his wife, his daughters, and Isaac—because winning and losing was about him, not Isaac.
I asked Isaac, "Why did you keep going?" From the perspective of a grade school and middle school kid, he said: I did it to protect my family, because if I won there'd be peace, and if I lost, life would be hell. That's a lot of pressure for a little kid.
After several concussions—knocked out unconscious on the mat at least twice—by the end of eighth grade, Isaac looked at his dad and said, "Dad, I'm not wrestling anymore. I'm done." His dad went after him. Isaac said, "You can make me wrestle if you want. I'll just lay down on the mat and lose every match." Tim plowed into him in every way imaginable.
The next year was nothing short of horrible. One day, Tim and Isaac were out on an ATV working on the farm. Tim spotted a trespasser, got out, and was on his way to give him a beating. He turned to Isaac and said, "Come on, I need you to have my back." Isaac, now a ninth grader, said, "No, not my fight."
Tim got back in the vehicle ready to give Isaac the beating of his life. And here's what Isaac said: Dad, something is missing in your life. And it's Jesus. You hit me, but I love you. And Jesus loves you. You need Jesus.
What Tim didn't know is that every night—for years—Amy, Isaac's mom, and Isaac prayed for Tim. I just looked at Isaac as he told me this story and asked, "Why didn't you run? Most boys with that kind of life would have gotten out of there as fast as they could."
Isaac said, Because I love my dad, and I knew that if he knew Jesus, Jesus would be the only one who could help him.
Things didn't change overnight. To this day, with a lot of help and support, and a few blunders and mistakes along the way, Tim is now becoming the husband that Amy always knew was in there, and the father that Tim's children didn't give up on.
Because a 14-year-old boy who should have been filled with hurt, hatred, and resentment looked at his dad in the face and said, "I love you, but something's missing. I think it's Jesus."
Now Tim and Amy sit on the second row most weeks with their family. Isaac sits beside his wife Hannah, who's pregnant with their first child. That's the breaking of a generational curse right there. And it wasn't led by Tim, the spiritual leader of the home. It was led by a 14-year-old boy who loved his dad and told him he needed Jesus.
Soon Tim and Amy will be grandparents—double grandparents in February. And those two babies will be born into a family centered on Jesus.
I don't know who I'm talking to right now. I don't know who needed to hear this. But God put this message on my heart for somebody today. If you're thinking, "Well, that's nice for Tim, but it wouldn't be possible at our house, in our marriage, with my past," listen: it probably was especially for you. He's talking to you.
Baptism is the public demonstration of not a second chance, but a whole new life born from above. It's also a statement to the gates of hell: Ring the bell, hit the drum, you lose. I belong to Jesus.
A bunch of students this weekend are getting baptized, which is wonderful. But what if this is the moment where your son or daughter comes up out of that water, sees you, and you look at them and say, "Hold on. Thank you. You led the way, and we know things need to change. Change needs to start right here and now. It's my turn."
Then you step in beside them into the water and fill that void. What if you demonstrate true humility? What if you say, "Mom, Dad, something's missing. I think it's Jesus"? What does the crucifixion of pride look like? Repentance.
The greatest step of leadership your family may ever witness is this: If you want to fight for the right things—the right life, the destiny God has for you and your family—come get baptized tonight. Won't go down without a fight.
Don't be scared. The Lord is with you. The Lord is with me, and your King is calling you home.
Father God, I celebrate in advance what You're about to do. Not just in this room, but in the lives and families that are going to be changed forever. Because we don't need a second chance. We just need the blood of Jesus.
