What's your legacy?

Sometimes....sometimes I wonder what we're teaching our children by our leadership, by our example? I liked this picture. I heard on the radio this week a thought that really got to me....

"......you cannot close the acorn
Once the oak begins to grow...."

Isn't that the life we lead as parents? Once a thought, a life, a person begins to grow it is so hard (actually impossible) to start over. So we have to, to the best of our abilities, do it right the first time!!

I have a hard time with parents who put "living life" before worshipping God. I laughed yesterday as I heard a mom at alternative school say, "He's had his meds, don’t let him tell you he hasn't! The only way he's leaving school today is if he needs to be Life Flighted!" I smiled. I so understood her thoughts!

Our intent, our path, they both matter!! How intentionally we live? I feel that the intentional way we live our life matters! I think we need to be just as firm about our time spent fellowshipping with our sisters and brothers in Christ and worshiping God! The only way you shouldn't be there is if you are dying (or near death).

 

I don't say that to those who have to support their families and work on the Lords Day, but I do strongly feel their job of setting an example of "where to be" is sometimes harder. They cannot slip on the "being there" when they can! They also have to talk openly with their families and have their families there, even when they work.

I personally get such blessings from being with my family of God. When I am with them I feel compassion, joy, delight, enjoyment, gladness, happiness, jubilation, elation, satisfaction, enthusiasm, zeal, zest, excitement, thrill, exhilaration, contentment, pleasure, eagerness, hope, optimism. I also feel sad often and in that same family of joy there is exasperation, frustration, suffering, hurt, anguish, guilt, shame, regret, remorse, pity, sympathy, nervousness, tenseness, uneasiness. It is not a place of fantasy I go to, it is a place of understanding and grace. It is a place where real people have real problems and so often I can be a help and so often I am the one helped. For sure when I am there I find I always have a longing, a longing for Heaven.

It makes me so very sad to know that I have Christian sisters and brothers who do not share their strengths and weaknesses with others, those who forsake fellowship. They will not be blessed as those who fellowship are blessed. And what are they teaching their children? That being with God's people is not important? Do those children think that they have to live life big without considering our Lord?

I think, in our country, we live big (all of us because we are all blessed in a BIG way). But that BIG life is not enough. People believe God is there to serve them, to enrich their lives, to take care of them. God IS our Father. No doubt. But, to those who believe He is serving us? You're wrong. You're setting a bad example!

In fact, opposite is true. We are to serve our Lord. We are to enrich His kingdom and we are to take care of one another. Our lives are blessed by God, but not when we are living without Him. Then I feel anything people kick into the "blessed" category can just as surely be the devil. The devil wants us to feel we can do everything on our own. The devil wants us to live this life with no regard and he sure wants us to give our children a legacy of trash...trash being junk that has no eternal value. Those "blessings" are not blessings.

I told one of my guys the other day, "With God your life will be so much better, in every way!" And I mean it, because it's true. When cancer attacks a family, that family needs God and they need God's family! I cannot even begin to describe the emotional physical and REAL help my family of God gives to me daily.

I hope of all the things I leave my children, of all the legacies they see? I want devotion to God to be at the top. I want them to remember that I turn to Him and that I obeyed Him. Then I will have left the legacy that God intends!

“…that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life…” Dt. 30:20

11 Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. 12 It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 13 Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 14 No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.

15 See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. 16 For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.

17 But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 18 I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.

19 This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20 and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (Dt. 30:11-20)

What's your legacy?