Knowledge is not caught, it is taught. The same can be said about faith. Theoretically, a child can catch faith from being raised by a parent that has faith, but in actuality the faith of the parent has very little effect upon the child if the child has no knowledge about the way their parent lives their life, or the way their choices are informed by their faith.

The Israelites who had a direct knowledge of the mighty acts of God found it easy to be people of faith. They had seen God work miracles, and they witnessed God deliver them in situations where death seemed certain. They believed in God because they saw God’s actions, and they were taught about God by his prophets. However, in the transition from one generation of Israelites to another, the knowledge of God, and faith in God, was lost. I do not believe that the generation of believing Israelites deliberately set out to raise a generation of nonbelievers. It did not happen because of intention, but rather it happened because of lack of attention. While they did not intend that the next generation grow up faithless, they also did not take deliberate actions to teach and raise their children and their grandchildren with the knowledge of the Lord.

The lack of deliberate attention, combined with their deliberate disobedience, brought about a generation that had knowledge of foreign gods, but no knowledge of the God of Israel. If we do not want to lose our children to the gods of the world we have to be willing to intentionally teach them about Jesus, and the many things God has done, not just historically, but also what he has done in our own individual lives. There have been times God has come through for us in miraculous ways, times where the world saw coincidence, but through faith, we saw the hand of God. We need to teach our children that God’s work is not finished. God is still working today.