Leaving a Legacy
Men, this is our day. We praise God for you. We salute you. We honor you. This morning I want to encourage you to leave a legacy, not of this world, but that which is eternal. So the question I pose to you this morning is this: Where are you putting your marbles? In what are you investing your time and skills and energy?
At EPCOT as soon as you walk into that theme park, you will see a giant slap of black granite, actually tons and tons of granite—with a signs on it that invite you to “Leave Your Legacy.” You pay your fee, they snap a photo, and somehow transfer that photo onto the granite for time immemorial. Why do people do that? Because they want to be remembered.
My parents often bemoaned the fact that they were not able to leave us kids a legacy, i.e. an inheritance of money after their deaths. Why? Because that is the way it should be. Your children should always have more and be more prosperous than the parents. They didn’t want us to struggle financially in our golden years as they had.
I want to give a different twist to this idea of legacy—not one of everlasting photos. Not one of monetary riches. As Christian men we need to ask: As a dad or granddad, what kind of legacy do I want to leave my kids/grandkids. As a man, what kind of mark or legacy to I want to leave in this world? As the redeemed people of Jesus Christ, I hope and trust and pray that our highest desire is to leave a legacy of godliness and righteousness in our kids and in this world.
How do we do that? How does a father, a man leave a legacy? In his 1st letter to the Thessalonians 2:7-12 the apostle Paul gives us 6 life habits that will help us to leave an eternal legacy in our families and in our world.
The first habit is found in verse 7, “but we were gentle among you like a mother caring for her little children.” The word there is “to cherish.” The first habit is to cherish your family greatly. Remember that word? “To love and to cherish till death do us part.” To cherish means to hold in high regard, to esteem highly, to place great value on. Paul compares the care he gave the Christians at Thessalonika to the care given a nursing infant by his mother. It is a care that places the children above that of the mother. We have all had those situations with our kids. Remember those first shots when they let out a crying, deep lung scream of pain and held their breath for a seeming eternity? Everything in me wanted to slap around a few nurses and punch that doctor out! All for hurting my baby! The first habit of leaving an eternal legacy is to cherish your family.
The second habit is to love your family deeply. We see this in verse 8. The term used here by Paul is “affectionate longing.” It is a term that is used in the nursery but is of masculine gender. This word describes “a yearning for, a fond desire for, a heart’s appetite for.” This means that our heart’s deepest desire is to be for our family and its welfare.
In 1985 our first foreign mission trip as a church was to Rock of Horeb Camp in Spain. Six of us joined up with people from New York, Indiana, Alaska, and Mizpah, NJ. Our kids were little so I went alone. While I had a wonderful time mixing and hauling wheel barrels of cement, learning how to lay block, and a variety of other things, I missed my family. As the days dragged on I began to “long for” Sharon, Steph and Steve. That longing turned into an ache, and while I cherished that experience, I couldn’t wait to get home. When our heart’s appetite is for our family and our love is deep, we long for them and want them around all the time.
The 3rd habit that will enable us to leave an eternal legacy is also found in verse 8, “We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our lives as well.” The 3rd habit is this: invest into your family personally. That word ‘share’ means “to impart, to show, to give part of.” The image here is that of a old master craftsman spending year after year teaching, training and preparing his apprentice in all the craft and skills he knows so that the apprentice, one day, could take his place. He invests into his apprentice his experience, his knowledge, his wisdom, his character into his apprentice. He gives his apprentice his life!
Paul mentions 2 areas that he invested in these early believers. #1 is the gospel of God. Men we are to be the spiritual leaders in our homes, with our families, in our church and in our communities. It is our job to tell our kids about Jesus. It is not the job of the pastor or children’s or youth directors. It is not the job of the Sunday school teachers or youth counselors or Delanco camp workers. It is our jobs as men, as dads.
On June 11, 2004 in Simi Valley, California as the casket of former President Ronald Reagan, Michael Reagan, his son, recounted that on a flight from Washington to California in 1988, his father, the President told him “about his love of God, his love of Christ as his Savior.” Michael explained, “I did not know then what it all meant, but I certainly, certainly know now. I can’t think of a better gift for a father to give a son, and I hope to honor my father by giving my son, Cameron and my daughter, Ashley that very same gift he gave to me.”
How we doing on that one, guys? Are we talking about Jesus to our kids? Praying with them and for them? They are listening and learning.
#2. They are also watching. Paul is taking a part of himself and giving it to the church, ie the believers, at Thessalonika. More is caught that taught. For us to leave an eternal legacy, we need to invest who we are and what we know into the lives of our families. We are to be real. People, especially kids, can tell a face a mile away. The teens in our church know who is the real deal and who are the hypocrites in our church. In order to share our lives we need to be open and honest with our families.
That means we share our hurts, our frustrations, our failures, stress, successes, joys and the lessons of life. We need to be very judicious with this weighing each situation carefully keeping in mind how any negative stuff might affect and even harm our kids. But the point here is to be real. Several years ago when our Steven was in early grade school I gave him a spanking. As the dust settled Sharon pulled me aside and told me that I blew it. That it was not Steven’s fault and that unfairly blamed him and spanked him for it. I went to Steve and told him that I was wrong for what I had done. I had acted too rashly and blamed him and spanked him for something that was not his fault. I’m not sure who started first but I cried, he cried, I cried and he cried even as we hugged each other and told each other how much we loved one another. I was wrong. Sharon knew it and Steven knew it. I had to own up to my mistake and sin. I had to live out before him what honesty, confession, repentance and forgiveness was. I had to humble myself and ask my son to forgive me. The sweet part is that he did! Reconciliation is so sweet and wonderful. Investing God’s truths in your family brings eternal rewards.
The 4th habit that will help us leave an eternal legacy is what is commonly called “sweat equity.” We dads and men do this quite easily. We work long hours, lots of overtime, maybe even a 2nd job so that we can provide for our families and give them the best this world offers. Gaining the material things of this world is not all bad but we have to keep it all in balance. There are times for a season or short period when we may need to work more hours or take that 2nd job to meet a short term goal like a house down payment or that special vacation. But be very careful that this does not become the norm. If it does then what you get and all you may get is a temporal legacy and not an eternal one. Leaving an eternal legacy also takes sweat equity---time, effort, stepping out of your comfort zone, investing in your family’s character, morality and spiritual development as your transfer your faith in Jesus to your wives and children.
The 5th habit is found in verse 10—live godly lives before your family. Paul points out that he and his entourage had lived a holy, righteous, and blameless lives before these Thessalonikan Christians. This means that they practiced what they preached. They walked the talk. They did NOT live by the proverbial pronouncement, “Do as I say, but don’t do what I do.” There was no discrepancy between their lips and their lives. Paul modeled what it meant everyday to live for Jesus.
The final habit that results in leaving an eternal legacy is that of influencing your family toward godliness (verse 11-12). Paul uses 3 terms in verse 11 to describe his influence toward these early believers—encouraging, comforting, and urging. And what did Paul encourage, comfort and urge this Christians to do? Look at verse 12—“to live lives worthy of God.” As men we can provide for our families the material aspects of life. We can model what it means to follow Jesus. But we also at times need to intentionally encourage, comfort, and urge our families to follow Jesus and live for Him. In our world today it can be so difficult to keep all the plates spinning on their sticks. We are so busy doing all kinds of stuff. Then there always is life’s garbage thrown our way that takes our time, energy and effort. It is so easy simply trying to keep up with our day-to-day responsibilities and activities of being a dad and husband that we easily neglect that, which is eternal. One father advised his son, “Don’t let your family keep you from God or God might take your family from you.”
Men, remember that as highly important your family is, your family is still secondary to your relationship with Jesus. Our first priority is to let Jesus pour His life into us, and then we are able to pour our lives into our families.
These 6 habits help us to leave a godly legacy in our families that is passed on to our children’s children and to their children. Men, it begins when you accept Jesus as your personal Savior. You can’t pass on what you ain’t got! As Jesus begins to pour His life into you, you are then able to pour an eternal legacy into your families.