On this episode of The Disciple-Making Parent Podcast, we explore the profound importance of remembering God’s works and sharing them with future generations. We examine how memory serves as a beautiful gift that connects our past experiences to present purpose. In this episode, Chap shares a powerful sermon from a church celebrating its 50th anniversary, where he emphasizes that the gospel continues through intentional remembrance and storytelling.
We discover how remembering God’s interventions—both the miraculous biblical events and the personal moments in our lives—strengthens our faith and keeps us following the Lord.
Join us as we explore the vital mission of equipping parents and grandparents to raise children who not only love the Lord but become disciple-makers themselves, taking the gospel to the world.
Topics Covered In This Week’s Podcast
03:12 Introduction: God calls us to remember his great works and tell the next generation
08:23 Remember God’s great works
19:30 Remember, to tell our children
27:58 What next?
Episode Transcript
I’m Chap Bettis and you’re listening to The Disciple Making Parent, where we seek to equip parents and churches to pass the gospel to their children. Have you seen God at work in your life? How so? If you could sit down with me over a cup of coffee, what events would you tell me about? Well, have you told those to your children or grandchildren? We actually should.
Hi, my name is Chap Bettis and I’m the author of The Disciple-Making Parent. And you know, memory is a beautiful gift. In God’s word we’re commanded to use that memory. We’re commanded to remember to call to mind things again. Why? Well, remembering connects the past with the present. I call to mind something in the past for a purpose in the present. The Bible commands us to remember. That’s a biblical command. In fact, scripture describes those who wander away as those who forgot God. We’re to remember so that we’ll keep following the Lord.
God calls us not only to remember, but to tell those great works to the next generation, and that’s really the main point of today’s podcast. In it, you’ll hear a short sermon at a church that was very influential in my life during my college years. They recently celebrated 50 years of existence and asked me to come back and preach at one of those celebration Sundays. I think you’ll find this teaching helpful because as parents, grandparents, and pastors, we are all called to remember what God has done in the past and to tell it to the next generation.
Well, before we start that, I want to remind you of two resources that may be of interest to you. The first is our newest book. It’s entitled Managing Your Households Well: How Family Leadership Trains You for Church Leadership. And in that book I do a deep dive into thinking about how current church leaders and future church leaders are all called to develop and display relational wisdom in our homes. So you can pick it up where Christian books are sold, and don’t forget to check out the online bonuses.
And of course, the second resource that we always highlight is that we give away the audiobook of The Disciple-Making Parent absolutely free. Just visit our website, thedisciplemakingparent.com, and sign up for our weekly newsletter and we we’ll give you the whole audiobook for free. We are on a mission to equip parents and grandparents to raise children who not only love the Lord, are not only disciples, but are disciple-makers taking the gospel to the world and standing as salt and light. I’m constantly surprised by how many of my podcast listeners don’t know about the free audio book and the weekly newsletter. So head on over to thedisciplemakingparent.com for your free audiobook. But for now, let’s listen in to God’s call to remember what he’s done and to tell it to the next generation.
Well, good morning. It is a joy to be with you, and it’s been a joy to reconnect with so many that I knew. I’m about one for 20 on names, so please lead with your name and you can count that as old age. Yes, I did help plant and pastor Hope’s church plant in Cumberland. And then we moved to Lincoln and then we moved to Attleboro for almost 40 years. And then after 25 years of pastoring, I felt led to start a ministry aimed at helping parents and grandparents pass the gospel to their kids, because so many young people who grew up in Christian homes walk away from the faith. And I realized if we’re going to reach New England, we’re going to have to reach our children and grandchildren. And so there’s some books on the table back there that you can look at, browse, or order from your local Christian bookstore, Amazon, or free audiobook if you go to the website, we’re happy to give that to you.
Well, I do remember distinctly coming to what was at that time Cranston Christian Fellowship as a college student in 1981. So we would gather at the cafeteria and Steve and a couple other guys would come out, drive up their cars, we’d all pile in and come from Providence down to this church that was meeting in an elementary school. I remember just being a naive sophomore but pitching in. So some of us were talking to Dave at the break. Someone would set up the folding chairs either the night before or the morning of. And then they had to be broken down. So as college kids, you’re flinging folding chairs across the cafeteria to fold them up.
I remember watching Dave Ghadouri preach from a simple wooden box, but lives were being changed. Mine was. I heard the Bible opened and explained in ways I’d never heard it before. Expositional preaching. I saw adults professing faith in Christ and being baptized. I saw sin and conflict resolution being taken seriously. I saw imperfect men and women opening up their homes and their lives to college students. I was hooked. I ended up giving up my dreams of going to med school to bring the gospel to this area, which is, when compared to some areas that we send missionaries to, as you know, our state, our region has maybe 3% evangelical Christians.
And so yes, we planted and pastored a church. I was ordained as a pastor in 1987. Boy was I young, making lots of youthful mistakes, but God was gracious and we also saw adults come to faith. So today I’m rejoicing at 50 years, celebrating with you. I’ve watched the videos through 1985 and recognized a lot of those faces.
There’s a slight echo, are you-? If everybody else is okay, I’m okay with it, but okay.
But now I’m on the other side of that hill. I’m someone that some of the kids are going, Man, that guy’s old. What’s he doing up there? Preaching. So the question really what I would like to put to you is this: How will the Gospel keep going? Will Hope Fellowship, Hope Church celebrate another 50 years going forward? Will there be a hundred years’ celebration where videos are shown and people are looking at us today and then the kids are laughing at the styles and the cars? There can be, and there should be another 50 years. Well, how? Well, the only reason that you and I are here today is because someone told us about the gospel and someone told them about the gospel and someone told them about the gospel, and so on and so on.
It’s been said that the gospel is one generation from extinction, and in one sense that’s true. Each of us has a solemn duty to remember and also pass on what we’ve learned to others. And so we’re going to look at Psalm 78 because the way that Hope Church will go forward is found in Psalm 78. And there’s so much we can think about in that psalm. It’s a long psalm. I’m not going to read the whole Psalm, but my main point really coming out of that Psalm is very simple: The God calls you to remember his great works and to tell them to the next generation. God calls us to remember his great works and tell the next generation.
So let me just stop and pray and ask the Lord to meet with us. Fathers, thank you for the gift of your word. Open our eyes that we might see wonderful things in your word by the power of your Spirit. I pray in Christ’s name. Amen.
Really, the first point is really simple, which is just remember God’s great works. Remember God’s great works. Look at verses 1-3. The writer is saying, “My people, hear my instruction. Listen to the words from my mouth. I will declare wise sayings. I will speak mysteries from the past, things that we have heard and known and that our ancestors have passed down to us.” I’m not going to read the whole psalm, but he takes the majority of it, verses 9-72, recounting the history of Israel. He says, remember your history, and if you go through those verses, which I encourage you to do, what you’ll see is it’s a refrain of Israel’s sin and God’s mercy. Sin and mercy. Sin and mercy. Don’t forget your history, Asaph is saying. They’re prone to forget God’s works and wonders. We are a forgetful people. One way we remember is to gather. That’s what Asaph is saying. Listen to my words. We gather to hear teachers, we gather to be reminded of how God has worked in the past.
I want us to think about a couple of ways that God has worked in the past. One of those types of works that we’re prone to forget is God’s miraculous intervention as recorded in the Bible. And that’s what verses nine to 72 are. The writer is saying, Israel, listen to how God miraculously intervened to bring you out of Egypt, to feed you in the desert, to lead you into the promised land. Remember and don’t forget.
Today we have even more to remember and not forget. Even better. Because we get to read about and understand the crucifixion of the son of God who came to bear the brunt of sin. But he didn’t just die, but he was raised to new life. He rules and reigns from heaven today. So we are not able to see the miracles of the gospels or of the Bible, but they’re recorded by reliable eyewitnesses, and we need to believe those. You need to believe those. If you’re here saying, I don’t know if God’ exists, let me just humbly say to you that Jesus said one sign is going to be given for humanity, the sign of the resurrection.
I remember as a kid thinking that if God would just line up the stars one night to say Jesus, people would believe. That’s not true. That’s not true, but there has been a sign given: the sign of the resurrection. So don’t be so arrogant as to say God has to do something for me. He already has. How do you know? Well, how do we know anything is true? Well, science, science we know is true because of repeatability. You learn that in third grade with the scientific method. You form a hypothesis and then you repeat it. But history can’t be repeated. We can only have one first president of the United States. So how do we know anything in history happened? It’s because of eyewitnesses, and that’s what the apostles were. The first believers were called to be witnesses to what had really happened. And so one event that it’s easy to forget is the saving work of Jesus on the cross. We’re prone to forget that.
We need to remember, and in fact, God helps us by giving us a remembrance, a memorial, and it’s called the Lord’s Supper. We are to repeat that so that we remember, because we’re a people who forget: as often as you drink it, do it in remembrance of me. You’re proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes. Death. Resurrection. We are to remember. If all we had were the events in the scriptures, that would be enough. But there are other things that we’re to remember and that are easy to forget as well, because God is so kind, not only to break into history and the person of Jesus, but he breaks into history your story by saving you so that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that your life has been changed: that story of your salvation.
When God broke into your life in a way that may not be explainable to other people. That once you were dead to God, unresponsive and now you’re alive. Such a radical change that Jesus called it being born anew, born a second time, born again. God has broken into history through your salvation. You need to remember that. And guess what? One of the ways you can be reminded of that is that he gave you a sign. What sign? Your baptism. Your baptism is a marker that helps you remember that you were dead and now alive. And some pastors of old have exhorted the saints, Remember your baptism. Remember your baptism. Remember your coming to faith in Christ.
Well, maybe you’re here. Maybe this is your first Sunday, and you say, I don’t have a story like that. You can. You can. You can turn from your sins and trust Christ today. You can say, Lord Jesus, come into my life. I want new life in Christ. I’ve been walking away from you, but I want to come to you. God will break in. See anyone who’s been up here, pastor Rick and others. So we’re to remember. We tend to forget. So we need to remember miraculous works in history and in your life, but I want to suggest there might be other small events that I want to encourage you to remember where God gives you a taste that he’s there and he’s watching you.
Because a lot of life is just routine. It’s just mundane. It’s just plotted day after day after day. I mean, the miraculous does happen. Spring does come, but we overlook it because it happens every year. I’m thinking about times when God broke in and you’re like, That was the Lord. I know that was the Lord.
Let me give you an example that happened at CCF, at Hope. I’d moved to New England to help start a church. We were going to go to the northern part of the state, but the understanding was that I would look for a job. The only problem was I had no idea what to look for, and so I’m scrambling to look for a job. And so in the meantime, as I’m waiting to hear back from people, I started working for a temp agency. Well, what was interesting was, I didn’t know but the temp agency actually held onto your money for like two weeks. And so I miscalculated. There was a time I literally had no money in the bank for the first time in my life.
Now, looking back, I wasn’t going to starve. I had friends, I had parents, I wasn’t going to starve, but that was the first time in my life I thought I was. I have zero in the bank. So the next day was Sunday, I went to CCF, Hope, and that Sunday night as I walked out to the car, there’s an envelope on my car with a hundred dollars in it. That’s the first time I’ve walked into the grocery store praising God. That’s about $300 in today’s money. See, it does pay to go to church. So, what’s the point? The point was, it was more in my heart. It was more than going to the grocery store. I knew God was watching me. I was worried. If I get an accident, how am I going to replace my car? I knew God was watching me. I want to encourage you. Do you have moments like that? Amen.
But you need to remember, because life is long and life is tough and a lot of life is mundane and it’s easy- scripture tells us- to forget God, and so we’re called to remember, remember, remember. The cross, the resurrection. Remember your baptism, coming to faith. Remember the moments like that when God breaks in. In the Old Testament, they were to raise standing stones so that they wouldn’t forget. Some of these I’ve recorded in the front of my Bible. Just maybe once a year, twice a year, something will happen where I’m like, that was the Lord there. That circumstance shouldn’t have happened. Because life is long and there will be times we need to go back and look at that memorial. And be reminded. That’s why we have memorials today. They either mark a heroic event, a place where something heroic happened or something tragic happened. But it reminds us because we’re people who forget.
What is the purpose of memory? Why does God give us memory? I would’ve suggest it’s a gift, but we’re actually commanded to use it because remember means, think again. Rethink. It connects the past to the present, but it connects the past to the present for a purpose. Remember what God has done so that you will not forget him and so you will serve him. You can see that if you have your Bible open. Verse 11: “They forgot what he had done, the wondrous works he had shown them.” Verses 41 and 42: “They did not remember his power shown on that day.”
We’re commanded to remember those things, but it’s for a purpose. So as you think about the 50 years of God’s faithfulness, the goal is not to pat yourselves on the back. The goal is to say, Okay, Lord, what is it we are to do going forward? Give us a heart full of faith. And that brings us really full circle, that the best way to remember is to gather with the saints to be reminded of how God has worked. Because in the day-to-day, in the mundane, in the routine, we are surrounded by people who also sense that mundaneness, who also sense that routineness and they try to self-medicate with pleasure or other things. They live for themselves. We know the creator and we know that God is at work, and so we need to remember what God has done in the past and look forward to the future. So as we gather with the people of God, as we open up the scriptures at home to remind ourselves of the truth, as we take communion, as we remember our conversion of baptism, as we watch videos of CCF and Hope’s history. . . to remember the faithfulness of God.
There’s a second thing that is included in that Psalm. And that brings us to the second purpose of remembering, and that’s to tell our children. Tell your children. He calls us to remember and tell the next generation. Verse 4: “We will not hide them from their children but will tell a future generation the praiseworthy acts of the Lord, his might and his wondrous works he performed. He established a testimony in Jacob. He set up a law in Israel, which he commanded our ancestors to teach to their children so that a future generation, children yet to be born, might know they were to rise up and tell their children so that they might put their confidence in God and not forget God’s works, but keep his commands.”
What are we told to do? Don’t hide what God has done. Tell the future generation, tell the next generation. Tell our children, our grandchildren, the words of God, the works of God. Why? So that they’ll put their confidence in God, so that they’ll set their hope in God. So just as important as us remembering so that we’ll trust God, we also tell our children so that they will trust God.
Let me just put what you know about the Bible together with what you’re thinking about parenting or grandparenting. God has not just given you a child. These kids up here, yes, they’re children, but God has given you parents, grandparents, eternal souls that you get to influence. Can you think of a higher privilege than that? That that makes being a father and a mother, a grandmother, grandfather, an unmarried auntie, an uncle, a high and holy calling. If you get that, these are little eternal souls. The youth department and the children’s department should be turning away volunteers. This is the next generation, but the devil also has them in his crosshairs. 40 to 50%, it seems like the statistics say, don’t walk with the Lord. So unfortunately, too many people think that just bringing their children to church will ensure that they follow Jesus as adults. So I’m thankful for children’s workers and I’m thankful for youth workers. But what scripture says and what’s research shows is that you are God’s most influential shepherd.
Let me just read a couple of verses. Deuteronomy 6:6-7: “These words that I command you today shall be on your hearts”- talking to adults. “You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise.” You know how I know those are to parents and not just to the community? I haven’t found a Sunday school teacher yet who’ll come to my house and put my kids to bed or get them up in the morning. This is to parents. And fathers. Ephesians 6: “Fathers, don’t exasperate your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” Believe it or not, God calls you- Yes, you looking around like, Who? Me? Yes. You- to disciple your children, your grandchildren. Sociology backs it up as well. So Christian Smith said this: “A lot of research in the sociology of religion suggests that the most important social influence in shaping young people’s religious lives is the religious life modeled and taught by their parents.”
And guess what? As we’re teaching them, God is doing something in us because we’re remembering. Because every teacher learns more than the student. It’s always the way, right? Teachers, you and I, we learn more than the students. And if we don’t teach them, scripture actually says we’re hiding it from them. I remember one time my kids were taking a history class and they came home and I said, “What did you learn?” And they told me and I said, “Wait, what? That’s not history. I lived that.” No, that’s history to them. And by not telling them, in a way, I was hiding it. There are so many things that we can take for granted that the next generation knows that they don’t. So it’s on us and we need to fight against our flesh. Statistics seem to say that only one out of eight kids have conversations with their mom at home and one out of 20 with their dad. Dads, we need to speak up. Before you know it, the next generation’s going to be leading. Believe it or not, I knew Maggie when she was a little girl. Time flies.
You know, each generation needs its own experience of God as well. And let me just address you. If you are the younger generation, you’re looking at me going, Hey, that guy’s old. You need your experience of God. You cannot rely on the past 50 years of CCF. God wants to meet you. So if you look in the Book of Judges, there was one generation that saw God’s miracles that brought them out of Egypt. There was another generation that saw God’s miracles that took them into the Promised Land. And then there was a third generation the Book of Judges talks about would that generation seek God, would that generation seek to drive out the enemies in the land? And of course now it’s through the gospel that we spread the good news of a flourishing life, a connection with God.
You, if you are the next generation, my exhortation is to seek God. God wants to meet you and use you. Yes. 20-year-old you. Yes. 15-year-old. You, he wants to seek you. He wants to use you. Sometimes I get discouraged about the state of our country. And I was reminded of how God intervened in a very tumultuous time. And this is why knowing history can really help. In the 1966, Time Magazine had a cover that said “Is God Dead?” Secularism was taking all over our country, but God wasn’t dead. There was revival breaking out in the Jesus people so much so that five years later Time Magazine had a cover on the Jesus Revolution, the Jesus People.
I think it’s happening again today. So you see some of the news of football teams, like college kids getting baptized. God is at work. In fact, CCF was born, Hope was born out of a revival in a time that was sweeping this area. It wasn’t as much as I appreciated Hope’s strategy. It wasn’t that. God was doing a revival in that area. We need to pray for that as well. If you go back to that verse, you see that we’re to declare God’s works in history. God’s works in salvation on the cross, the resurrection. God’s works in our lives. We’re to declare those in God’s words. We don’t want to leave that out.
I want to end by pointing out the surprising ending of this Psalm. In verse 72, after he recounts their history, God sets David on the throne, and then the Psalm abruptly ends. It’s as if the writer is saying, Remember your history, and now what’s the future going to look like? The writer- Luke, I think- did that in Acts. If you read the book of Acts and you’re reading the history of the spread of the church and then come to Acts 28, Paul’s in Rome and it just stops. You’re like, What happened? It’s almost as if God is saying here, What’s next? What’s next? What’s next, Hope Church?
God will be faithful, but he’s laying down a challenge. God has set David on the throne. God has set Jesus on the throne. What’s next? We remember God’s great works and God’s great words. Don’t forget, don’t be a people who forget their God, and we tell it to the next generation. Any of those under your influence, children, grandchildren, aunties, uncles, youth ministry, children’s ministry, we tell it to the next generation.
Here’s some, uh, here’s a couple of some next steps you could possibly take. I think these are in your bulletin. One next step is I’ll take time to tell a story of God’s work in my life to someone else. Tell it among yourselves. It could be the story of my salvation, or it could be the story of God’s miraculous provision when I knew God was watching over me. So kind of my envelope full of money story. Who could you tell a story to? Maybe even a child or grandchild. Just encourage one another. Life is routine and hard. God works. God works.
A second application or next step could be this: This week I’m going to pray especially for the salvation of my children, my grandchildren, or the children of the church. And I’ll ask for an opportunity to tell them about how God has worked in my life. Another application would be to pray, especially for the salvation of my children, grandchildren, or the children of this church. And a third application might be this: I’ll think about how I’m teaching God’s words to my children or grandchildren, or those under my spiritual influence. You do have influence, and God will give you grace to speak his words.
Before I pray, I just want to remind you, I’d love to see you out. I’ll be standing out by the table and happy to see you and love to see people that I haven’t had a chance to see. Let me just pray for our time.
Father, thank you for your word, which as you say, is a lamp to our feet, and it is a true record, Lord Jesus, of your miracles. It is a true record of your death on the cross and your resurrection, overcoming death, giving hope to those who face trials that yes, Lord Jesus, you reign and you invite. You invite people, even to this day, to place their faith in you. You change the lives of many people in here. You continue to do that today.
Would you by your grace help us to remember all the great things you’ve done, even in the routineness of life, and to pass it on to the next generation. We pray in Christ today. Amen.
Thanks for listening to the Disciple Making Parent podcast. We love offering resources to equip you in family discipleship for free, but we can only do that because of our faithful financial part. Would you consider joining us? We’re a small and lean ministry, and we make your kingdom dollars go far. So head on over to thedisciplemakingparent.com/partner. Thank you for listening.
