My Legacy

Hello readers.  Welcome to my heart.  Let's begin.

I used to be afraid of the idea of having my own legacy.  I remember hearing people talking about wanting to leave a legacy, and me judging them thinking they were being prideful and not acknowledging God's own glory and legacy. I have seen the light.  First of all.. 

God's legacy can never be outshine or outdone. 

Let's get that straight.  However, there is a battle that could be happening in the hearts of man that they are ignoring God's legacy, but that does not mean it doesn't exist.  Because there will be a day when every knee will have to bow to Him and His legacy---so our ignorance will not be an excuse on that day.

But anyways, I feel like I am entering into a new season of my life.  The false humility I've carried for years is beginning to shift into confident and fulfilled identity.  I must share this story with you so you get what I'm trying to say.

Remember the story of The Prodigal Son?  The younger son goes off to a far off land with his inheritance.  He blows it and a famine hits the country he's in at the time.  He finds work feeding pigs, and there he finds himself starving and desiring even to eat the pigs food.  But he comes to his senses and remembers that at his father's house the hired servants has food to spare and he's starving to death.  So he prepares a speech of denouncing his role as a son in his father's house and plans on begging his father to have mercy on him by granting him a lesser role as a servant.  The son makes his way back home.  The father meets him in the driveway and warmly welcomes him back home.  He then orders the servants to give the prodigal son a robe to wear, a ring for his finger, sandals for his feet, and the fattened calf to eat as they celebrate the return of the son.

So this son has a few options.  He can receive and respond to this love, grace, and mercy by fully embracing it in all it's fullness.  Or he can allow the condemnation of his past to push him into decreasing the fellowship he can have with his father now that he's back home. For example, he could go along with his plan of asking to be a hired servant and work in the fields and living in the servants home.  

And I feel like I've been living there.

I've been extremely grateful to be in the kingdom and in the presence of God again and back at home, but knowing I didn't deserve all He was offering me I stayed outside with the hired servants where I felt like I really deserved to be.  Not enjoying the fullness of God's presence and relationship by being in the house where the sons live, but instead hanging out with the hired servants, who are closer to being back where the son was before he came home.

If you're still finding your identity in how undeserving you are, you'll continue to pursue what you feel like you deserve.  

I'll say it this way.  Stop settling for sin--it's beneath you.

So this legacy of mine is beginning with me stepping back into the house where my Father has already invited me to be.  I'm busting out the bean bag chairs and blankets and sitting right at my Father's feet so I can enjoy His fullness.  I'm finding my identity in this....I belong to God.  I am my Father's son, made in His image and designed to reflect His glory with my life.  My legacy is a reflection of Him, not of anything I have earned, but fully Him.

And I love how God has been transforming my heart to respond to Him in this.  I'm beginning to realize that EVERY DECISION MATTERS.  No one ends up anywhere without taking many steps.  So with my family being filled with obesity and health issues, God's been transforming my heart to realize that EVERY WORKOUT matters, EVERY MEAL matters.  Every thing we invest in matters.  And not to put pressure on you, but it's true.  So as I'm looking at this big picture legacy for myself, and realizing that decisions I make now will begin a path for my children and many more.  The first major one is submitting to God deeply enough to where I desire a healthy marriage and to have a healthy home for my wife and children--fully submitting to my wife in reverence to Christ and leading her by serving her, and loving her how I love my own body by paying attention to what I say to her, how I treat her, how I love her, how I address her.  (Ephesians 5). And also being considerate of her, treating her with respect as the weaker partner BUT also knowing that she is a heir to the same family I've been adopted in to.  (1 Peter 3:7).  She's just as adored by God as I am, and I should treat her that way.

And furthering this legacy is a concern, as which I desire to pour into the next generation by submitting to God's authority with how to raise my children, in hopes of serving them by displaying to them a vibrant relationship with the Father and hoping it encourages them to do the same.

And I'm begging God to grant me with the grace to plant the church He's called me to plant one day.  The thought of doing God's work now and up until then is such a huge honor.  The idea of exemplifying the Gospel to people and doing life and sharing in the ups and downs with other people is exciting for me.  Creating a place that receives the broken and the weary---the hurting and the lost.  I'm so honored that He chosen me to do such a task.  The thought of being able to stand before God one day and He's weighing my sins and clearing them with the blood of Jesus, it'll be awesome to stand there and look at the rewards of faces that I have influenced.  And God looks at me and says, "Son, it was my pleasure to welcome you back home when you finally came back.  And look at all the ones you brought along with you.  Well done."

And with that I'm going to say, that this idea of "my legacy", is not even considered my owns.  I'm choosing to share in Christ's.  He is the Legacy.  I'm only joining in a sub legacy, the one He's been working for and through man throughout generations. I'm now living as a King.  The Prodigal Son has been redeemed, past tense.  Now his work is beginning.  The war has begun.  The Gospel shall be proclaimed in all areas I walk.  The son is suited up, confident that His security is in His father, and He's ready to get the other sons who have been away from home too long back in the bean bag chairs at their Father's feet.

^"Because we understand our fearful responsibility to the Lord, we work hard to persuade others. God knows we are sincere, and I hope you know this, too. Are we commending ourselves to you again? No, we are giving you a reason to be proud of us, so you can answer those who brag about having a spectacular ministry rather than having a sincere heart. If it seems we are crazy, it is to bring glory to God. And if we are in our right minds, it is for your benefit. Either way, Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.
 
So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!

And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!" 2 Corinthians 5:11-20 "  

^{This is THE LEGACY.  
  
COME BACK HOME LOST SONS.}