If you’ve ever seen an actual relay race, you know how important it is to pass on the baton to the next runner carefully and smoothly. In fact, it’s just as important as having runners that can run fast. This was demonstrated in the 1996 Olympics. The clear favorite in the 4 × 100 relay race, as in almost every Olympics competition, was the United States team—this race has been won by the U.S. team 75 percent of the time in modern Olympic history. The U.S. always puts together four of the fastest sprinters in the world.

Well, in 1996 the U.S. team lost to the Canadian team. Why did this amazing group of U.S. sprinters lose this race? They were disqualified because of an improper passing of the baton. It is noteworthy that the few times the U.S. has lost this race was because of that same problem—the inability to pass properly the baton from one runner to the next.

...And we had better learn from the past—we had better remember what happened to previous generations in times past. The Bible is full of examples of glory days of blessing and fruitfulness whenever a generation received proper training from the previous generation. Yet the Bible not only has glory stories, but also gory stories—when a generation experiences spiritual defeat and decay, because the parents and leaders of a former generation neglected to train their offspring for their turn in the relay race.

In Judges 2:6-15 ...we see that the children, the offspring of that generation that had been blessed and privileged to enter the Promised Land, already forgot who the God of Israel was. It actually says, “…Another generation arose after them who did not know the LORD nor the work which He had done for Israel.”

...This should be a stiff warning to us. Many of us are eyewitnesses of the power of God; we have experienced the moving of the Holy Spirit. We may have had great healings in our bodies. And we in Israel have experienced a taste of God’s restoration of the land of Israel and the return of the exiles from more than 100 countries. In some ways, we have experienced as many of God’s wonders and as much of His power as Joshua and his contemporaries did. And so it is hard for us to believe that the younger generation we are raising up could ever stray from the Lord we love and serve. But be warned family of God, be warned parents and teachers, if we aren’t careful, the same thing that happened then could happen now. Our children and our youth could easily miss out on experiencing God the way we have. Unless we successfully pass on the baton, the next generation may not only lose the race, but even their own souls...

(adopted from King of Kings Ministry)