Ron Morse, a third-generation missionary who works primarily among the Lesotho ethnic group, used to tell me, “Marcus, a tribe can receive the gospel in a day, but it takes three to four generations for them to experience revival.”
As a young missionary, I found that idea frustrating until later in life, when it finally sank in. What Ron was trying to say is that the effects of the gospel take several generations to wipe out the hundreds of years of dark culture, witchcraft, spirit worship, and everything that drives a culture at a core values level.
But we can see throughout the Bible that God has a time frame that challenges the boundaries of our 70 to 100 years of life.
Understanding Biblical Genealogies Is Critical
Geert Hofstede, a recognized research pioneer in cross-cultural groups, notes that immigrants take three generations to acclimate to a new culture. He infers that it isn’t until the fourth generation that being fully integrated is finalized. So it’s really difficult for us to think beyond our own generation.
This is why we often flip past the long genealogies of the Bible, but biblical genealogies are a divine perspective that we need to be lifted up into. When we see rapid cultural changes in practice, this is like the outside layer of an onion. It’s exciting and important to see these practices shift, but the heart of the onion is where we see the gradual protracted culture change at a values level.
Values are formed within childhood and are usually transferred from parent to child. Therefore, shifting values within a culture requires generations and a lot of patience. As disciples, we should absolutely teach good practices, but we should also consider carefully how our lives impart good values that facilitate kingdom culture.
The Generational Cycles
We have already looked at how God weaves His covenantal promises throughout generations, but these generations also move in cycles. A really interesting book called Generations by sociologists Strauss and Howe observes that our generations cycle within dominant and then corresponding recessive generations. The recessive generation tends to be reactive to the failures of the dominant generation, which tends to take more leadership.
The cycles of the four generations each have a name:
- The idealist
- The reactive
- The civic
- The adaptive
At the end of four generations, the cycle resets itself.
They actually use these human cycles to predict catastrophic events that would begin in 2020 and change society as we know it. Maybe we should pay attention, eh?
Strauss and Howe focus their academic work on North America, but I’ve observed these patterns globally. This generational cycle of fours is not the only cycle at play, and there are leaders in every generation that break the mold.
Generations Are A Part Of The Divine Design
Don’t miss the Grand Canyon-sized picture that God is painting in this. So, let’s turn our attention back to the scriptures and look into these long genealogies we often skip over.
Notice how God works through generations and the cycles that they create. We first see this cycle through the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and then Joseph. We also see it in King David’s lineage from the line of Boaz and Ruth the Moabite, and next comes Obed, Jesse, David, and the fifth generation Solomon, who represents the culmination of the generational track.
God actually births spiritual blessings for the world through these generational cycles, which is why His choosing of Abraham was very intentional.
Consider Moses’ words to the children of Israel, or when God reveals His glory to Moses as He proclaims,
“Keeping steadfast love to the thousands of generations, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.”
Exodus 34:7
And He does not leave utterly unpunished, punishing the guilt of fathers on sons and on sons of sons on the third and fourth generations.
God will work and even allow a word from heaven to be tested and purified within three to four generations.
But when you move into the fifth generation, often, something spiritual that has been stewarded generationally can become perpetual. Some modern-day examples of generational blessing would be Bill Johnson, who is a fifth-generation church leader from both his maternal and paternal lines.
Or we have Lou Engle, who led the stadium calls to fasting and prayer. His fifth generation traces back to Jacob Engle, a child of an early American pilgrim in the 1700s. Jacob was saved in the great awakening and fostered a generational line of pastors and missionaries.
Many of Lou’s seventh-generation children serve the Lord around the world today. A generational line committed to following God’s promise builds a sure and higher foundation of wisdom for the next generation to accelerate from.
The Acceleration of Grace
A generational line that has failed to steward God’s prophetic promises and turned its back on God’s presence can still discover an acceleration of grace to realign based on the principle that “he who is forgiven much is loved much” (Luke 7:47).
The Apostle Paul is a great example of this kind of acceleration. Let’s look at biblical examples of dominant and recessive generations in Scripture.
Moses, Aaron, and Miriam were part of a dominant generation. They were great leaders who rescued Israel from Egypt and led them into the desert towards their destiny.
Then, we move to the recessive generation, akin to a recessive gene. This was the generation of Joshua and Caleb. They were the two out of the twelve spies who didn’t react negatively to Moses’ leadership and who later brought the next generation across into the promised land.
The first and third generations tend towards public leadership, and the second and fourth trend away because of the previous generation’s excesses. Though leadership tends to be scarce among the recessive generations, they really do play an important role of bridging the new and old wisdom of the dominant generations that they are sandwiched between so that the rising dominant generation can succeed.
It’s an important calling. If we look at this in our modern generations, Gen X-ers are considered reactive or the second generation, and they are often ignored by the older dominant leaders, the baby boomers, in favor of the next dominant generation, the millennials. This makes Gen X-ers generational bridge builders.
These Gen X-ers are gifted to pull together the emerging wisdom of both the younger generation and the tested wisdom of the older generation and help them transition into God’s purposes.
I’ve seen many Gen X-ers get sidelined by the rejection they feel from the leaders of the boomer generation, especially when these leaders ignore them and reach out instead to the millennials. Our upcoming Gen X-ers will be an important generation to watch because, at the end of the fourth generational cycle, we often see great societal change.
Every generation has its flavor or color
Again, generations are part of divine design. The key issue is not conformity to a previous generation’s styles but a commitment to stewarding that word, promise, or gift that God has invested in a family line or a church community.
I encourage you to study and treasure a deep acceptance of the generation you are part of and maintain a loyal love for the generations above and below you.
I want to remind you that we have a God who looks at you and thinks a blessing to “a thousand generations”–Deuteronomy 7.
Don’t be stuck. Find a generation to sow God’s promises into and believe God for some long-term fruit to come from his loyalty to His own word. It’s time for us to function from a higher perspective and not waste this great gift of generations.