Discipling an Awakening Generation, Part 1: Pray

Adapted from a talk given to 242 Community by Olly Goldenberg

In this three part series of blogs I want to share 3 thoughts on discipling the generation God is raising up right now. They all come out of the life of one person: King Josiah. So let's start where his story starts.

An Unlikely King for a Desperate Time

2 Kings 22 opens like this: "Josiah was eight years old when he became king." Eight. Not eighteen. Eight.

I brought a visual aid to this talk — a plain wooden stick, standing in for the kind of sceptre a king would carry. Here in the UK we recently watched King Charles crowned with an orb in one hand and a sceptre in the other — an extraordinarily fancy stick. But strip away the jewels and it's the same idea Moses carried into Pharaoh's court and held out over the Red Sea: a plain rod that became a symbol of God-given authority. And that authority — real authority — was handed to an eight-year-old.

He wasn't born into an easy moment either. His grandfather, Manasseh, had wrecked the nation spiritually. His father, Amon, lasted two years on the throne before his own advisors assassinated him over his idolatry. The people then executed the advisors and made the eight-year-old Josiah king. Political vacuum. Spiritual vacuum. And into that gap, God placed a child.

"He did what was right in the sight of the Lord and walked in the ways of his father David; he did not turn aside to the right hand or to the left." (2 Kings 22:2)

Kids Who Already Know How to Use Their Authority

I don't think Josiah is a one-off. I've watched children carry real spiritual authority in exactly this way.

One eight-year-old girl began leading her own friends to the Lord — a group of around sixteen children meeting with her regularly. I got curious about what was actually happening in that group, so I pulled her aside one Sunday and asked how it was going.

"Really great," she said.

"What do you actually do?"

"Well, the night before I meet with my group, I spend an hour praying and asking God what he wants me to share with them."

I was already reaching for a notebook – this girl had some clear leadership lessons for me.

She went on: they'd gather, share how they were doing, pray together, sing some of the songs from church, and then she'd share whatever God had given her the night before. Afterwards, some of the children would come to her with problems.

"What do you do when they share a problem?" I asked.

She looked at me like it was obvious. "Well, I pray, of course."

The next week she'd ask them how things were going. If God had answered, they'd thank him together for the miracle. And if he hadn't?

"I pray again, of course."

That girl didn't need much from me. My job was simply to encourage what God had already put in her.

Another eight-year-old talked about Jesus so often that her head teacher pulled her aside and told her she could talk about her faith at home, in her community, at church — just not at school. She came to me genuinely upset. I asked what she was going to do about it.

"I'm going to pray."

"Pray for what?"

"That God changes my head teacher's mind. Or that God changes my head teacher."

Three weeks later, mid-term, with no warning, that head teacher was gone — and the restriction went with them.

When children understand the authority God has given them, they don't wait for permission to bring his kingdom near. Our job is to recognise it and get behind it.

The First Thing: Pray

So here's the first thing I want to encourage you toward: pray. Take up the stick of authority you've been given and use it to stir things in the spiritual realm. Become an intercessor for this generation.

There has never been a genuine move of God that wasn't birthed in intercession first. Prayer aligns us with God's purposes — and it requires consecration. We can't simply turn up on a Sunday and expect God to move. We have to consecrate ourselves before him first.

That's exactly the pattern in Josiah's own story. "While he was still young" — around sixteen — "he began to seek the God of his father David; and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem" (2 Chronicles 34:3). Seeking comes first. The purging — the reformation — follows four years later.

That order matters. Revival is the church waking up. Reformation is society being reset around the kingdom of God. In the Welsh Revival, the reformation ran so deep that pubs closed across the land, and in some towns weeks went by where police recorded not a single crime — because hearts had genuinely turned back to God. I believe that's the pattern to ask for again: not just a revival that stirs the church, but a reformation that reaches into schools, homes, and culture through the children we're raising.

Before You Do Anything Else

In the next two posts we'll get into provoking our children toward boldness and protecting the flame that's being lit in them. But neither of those things works without this one coming first.

So here's the question worth sitting with this week: is your team genuinely consecrated in prayer for the children in your care — or are you, like most of us most of the time, simply showing up on a Sunday and hoping? Before you try to disciple this generation, pray for them like your ministry depends on it. It does.