Discipling an Awakening Generation, Part 2: Provoke

Adapted from a talk given to 242 Community by Olly Goldenberg

In part one we looked at the first thing King Josiah's story calls us to: prayer. But taking up the stick of authority God has given us isn't only about stirring things in the spiritual realm through intercession. It's also about turning to the children and young people in our care and prodding them toward more.

"Let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works... exhorting one another" (Hebrews 10:24–25). Or as it's sometimes translated: provoke one another to good works.

Josiah Didn't Stop at the Temple

"They broke down the altars of the Baals in his presence... the wooden images, the carved images, and the moulded images he broke in pieces." (2 Chronicles 34:4)

Josiah didn't just clean up the temple and call it a day. He went out into the towns, the cities, the villages, and tore down every false altar he could find — some of them centuries old, standing since long before his grandfather or great-grandfather ever reigned.

Try to picture how disruptive that would have been. Imagine if I stood up and said we were destroying every trace of the colour blue — not because blue is evil, just as an illustration. Somewhere in the car park is your blue car. Maybe you're wearing a blue top right now and quietly hoping I don't notice. Statues that had been in place for centuries and acted as landmarks were torn down. That's the scale of what Josiah was doing to the fabric of his society, and he didn't stop for anyone's comfort.

I imagine his advisors tearing their hair out. ‘Josiah, you're going to cause division. You're going to hurt people's feelings. You're young — learn to be a bit more sensitive. Don't rock the boat.’

And Josiah's answer, in effect: I'm not here to be politically correct. I'm here to be biblically correct. I'd rather offend everyone in my kingdom than offend Almighty God.

Get Ready to Be Doubted

If we raise children to live that uncompromisingly, some people around us — including people inside the church — will struggle with it. That's not a sign something has gone wrong. It's fairly normal. Every genuine move of God I know of has had someone close to it asking, "Is this really from God?"

A new generation pursuing God often does church outside of the box. John Wesley was banned from preaching in the established church because his preaching was to uncomfortable for people to hear, but he set up societies across the nation. Christians were warned to stay clear of the early Pentecostals because they were strange. The Salvation Army did church on the streets using the tunes of drinking songs from the local pub. Even the church organ faced opposition from established leaders such as John Calvin and John Knox when it was introduced.

In the Welsh Revival, two elderly women had been praying for years for God to move in their land. When reports of the revival started coming in, they didn't believe it — it didn't fit what they'd expected, so they stayed in their prayer shed, still asking God to do the very thing he had already started doing. Don't let that be us.

Build a culture of action

There was a boy in that group — I'll call him Albert — who genuinely loved God but was painfully shy about talking about it. I'd spent a year or two gently encouraging him: you don't have to make a big announcement, just let it slip that you went to church at the weekend, same as you'd mention a film. Nothing much changed for a long while.

Then, one week Albert mention that he'd invited a friend to church. That alone was a breakthrough. But on the Monday, his friend turned up at school visibly upset — his mother had disciplined him for going. After school, Albert went to his friend's house and sat across the table from the boy's mother and told her, respectfully but plainly, that he didn't think it was right that his friend had been punished just for coming to church with him. They talked for an hour. A week later, they talked again. By the end of it, the mother had agreed her son could keep going to church with Albert whenever he wanted, without further consequence.

That's the boldness Acts 1:8 talks about — power to be his witnesses, right there in a school hallway and a stranger's front room.

Another boy in the group — I'll call him Shamrock — had been just as shy. Then one week he asked his teacher, who turned out to be a Christian herself, if he could share something with the whole class. She said yes. Within a couple of weeks he'd led around thirty classmates to the Lord and was meeting with them regularly to disciple them.

There was also a boy who put up a sign at his school: If you're a Christian, meet me at lunchtime on Thursday. One person showed up — a teacher. He decided that if he was the only Christian student in the school, he'd live like it, and made himself a badge: "I am a Christian, ask me why." For two days, nobody said a word. On the third, one of the school's more difficult students — someone most people avoided — asked him why. He got to share his faith. That student wept, repented, and gave his life to Christ, then walked into school the next day wearing his own badge. Within weeks, thirty or forty students around the school were wearing the same badge.

A Practical Way to Provoke

One simple, practical thing I'd encourage every team to do: give children and young people regular space to share testimonies out loud, in front of others. Celebrate publicly what God is doing in them. It costs nothing and it's one of the most effective ways I know to provoke a whole room toward more. Set a challenge for children to be radical, ask the Holy Spirit to inspire them with creative ways to carry Jesus into school and then cheer them on as God moves.

Something Worth Asking

Are you creating room for the children in your care to be genuinely radical — even when it unsettles the adults around them, including you? Are you provoking them to good works while staying open to being provoked right back? One set of parents I spoke to have started praying more themselves because their five-year-old was up at 5am seeking God. Let this awakening generation provoke you to go deeper with the Lord.

In part three, we'll look at the third and final thing this story calls us to: protecting what's being lit in them before it has the chance to catch properly.