Fearlessly Courageous
Desk of Dennis Piller
11/24/2021
The Holidays – Your Legacy versus Your Past
I listened to the song, “the Blessing” this morning and it caused me to question my commitment to God and his guidelines for his children and my children.
Today, tomorrow, and every day we are afforded the opportunity to glorify God in our daily walk, talk, and expression to life’s challenges. Meaning today, you must decide by our actions, not our words or hopes or dreams, but what roots will we be planting for the next generation. Your legacy. Your children. It doesn’t matter whether they are younger or grown. Every day is another seed that we plant for God or man. In our married life, family life, our kids in college, our workplace. Hope and biblical, spiritual health are your lights to walk by. Sure, there will be serious issues that will require commitment, compromise but mostly Godly wisdom. It requires real intentionality and real work.
Our marriages are “till death do us part”.
(I am not talking about some of us with past marriages,
I’m talking about going forward today.)
My attitude today must be; It doesn’t matter what I am going through, because I will fight to the end to respond and not react. To love and not allow unforgiveness and bitterness to plant their seeds. (Only God’s word can kill those seeds). Only the power of the Holy Spirit can resurrect what might have died in one of your hearts. But he can, he will because He wants to see you together. Marriage is the foundation of the family and the world. God created the union and the covenant of marriage. It is the central glue of civilization. Loving unconditionally that person you married, your children no matter how far they fall. God’s example to us is unconditional love. The alternatives are much harder much more brutal. Looking for greener pastures often leaves people isolated, lonely, without hope because they didn’t stick it out.
Someone called divorce, “Serial Disfunction”.
Some people set out to create a good marriage and better relationships than they were raised in because theirs were full of anger, hurt and pain. Their Damascus road experience was I will never be like that. I will never live in or put my family through such disfunction, and they set out to leave a much different legacy. But we all need the power of the Holy Spirit to see us through our many deficiencies and through many of the tendencies we learned through osmosis of being raised that way.
I began to think of the ramifications of all those innocents at home or the ones who have grown up now. Biblical history talks about blessings to a 1000 generations. What will your legacy be for your family? If a child does not see God’s ways from you, who will be their tutors and mentors? The world? School or college and all the extremism in our world today? Think of the images that will be theirs from growing up. If they are not taught God’s ways that means they will go into their married lives with less than you. They won’t even know what they are missing or how they need to lead and raise a family. That seed is passed on through your kids to their children for a 1000 generations and it can be a Godly legacy if you choose it to be so.
We are supposed to die to our old selves to find Jesus. Death to the old ways to embrace a new living life in the spirit realm. Isn’t that what we are supposed to do as we raise our kids? Don’t we die to so many of our own desires and wants so that we can do for them? Provide for them? Be there for them, even when they fall or fall away for a season or more?
We are at Thanksgiving. What will they say about your life? About your impact? About what they learned from you beyond providing for their food and protection? What is left for them in the form of a spiritual legacy? It is passing down what matters most! Isn’t that true? What is that for you? When did you last think about the specifics of that?
Please don’t get lost in the past of what you didn’t do or what went wrong and maybe it was longer than a season. You can change that today with confession…asking for forgiveness to God and those you love. Don’t let foolish pride keep you from leaving them the diamonds in the sky of the Hope of Heaven and eternity with Jesus.
I will never forget the love I saw in my folk’s marriage. The thousand little things that showed their love for each other. I have often been inspired by a 40 – 50 or 60 yrs. marriages and looked at my wife with tears in my eyes resolving within that I want that to be us. I want to be more. Kinder, more gentle, more loving, less frustrated! I want this!
But I have found even a higher plain than wanting to be known for my longevity in marriage or wisdom in the hard places or even teaching kindness to my generations that will follow. I want them to know Jesus Christ. I want them to not just know God or know about the God of Sunday mornings. I want them to know Jesus personally…to have a personal relationship with him, just like I am talking to you right now. And that can’t just be about being a good person and trying hard to succeed and provide. It can’t just be about going to church on Sunday or even tithing, it has got to be a life lived for Christ and in the process seeing me die to self, to be the person God has called me to be.
To leave the legacy he wants for me to leave to my 1000 generations.
Finally, too many of us have generational curses that need breaking. Sexual unions that created soul ties within us that we have never dealt with before God. Too many of us love the Lord but have not fully committed.
Fearing God is the beginning of wisdom. We justify our lives in that they aren’t so bad. That isn’t going to cut it! Sadly, we talk about our legacy like it was life insurance. Yes, I need to do it but never fully commit to living it out on a daily basis. If we are not purposeful in living a Christ-centered life we will always be off-center trying to do what we think is good enough. It can never be!
We must be born again of Spirit and the natural realm will never… can never, cross over to the Spirit world of Christ.
We must die to that and leave it behind.
Reba McIntyre – Back to God
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9q-08aTNh8&list=PLCd-wh1hNZpQRQZ73gnTCeUYflnkLMF_S&index=10 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9q-08aTNh8&list=PLCd-wh1hNZpQRQZ73gnTCeUYflnkLMF_S&index=10)
