How to leave a Legacy Part 2

"I remember your true faith. That faith first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice, and I know you now have that same faith." 2 Tim 1:5

If you want to leave a legacy, you have to remember your history.

One of the biggest embarrassments to young Christians is often their testimony. Everyone dreads that moment in the youth group or that opportunity at school where you get to tell your story about how you became a Christian. I mean there is always one isn’t there! There is always one girl who was lost in sex, drugs and rock n roll before she was radically transformed after literally hearing the voice of God on the toilet. Or there was always that one guy who used to murder Christians and throw them to lions before he fell off a horse and saw a vision of Jesus glowing like a nuclear lightbulb. You know the type...

When it is your chance to tell your story to the world, your eyes slowly scan the floor, you shuffle awkwardly and beneath muffled hands, you splutter the immortal words “My parents were Christians and I was raised in a Christian home.” It is possibly the least dramatic statement in the universe. I mean you never did drugs, you never even touched a cigarette and the hardest time you ever had at home was when your parents decided to not to go to Disney World one summer (for once).

Yet when we flashback to Pauls letter of legacy to his spiritual son Timothy, we find him highlighting, above everything else, that there is power in this kind of “undramatic” testimony, there is power in multigenerational faithfulness. Whether you hear the message from your horse or your Grandma, the point was always that the baton was passed on. Paul tells it like this: “Your Gran had it. Your mum had it. And now you got it. So don’t forget it.”

Being part of a family of faith is not something to be embarrassed about; it is something to be celebrated. For many young people, if it wasn’t for their parents, they would not have found Jesus. All of us pick up on the characteristics of our family whether we like it or not. And far better than inheriting your Dads big nose or your mum’s eyebrows, is the inheritance of salvation itself. Millions of teenagers are happy to sing out the fact that they want to be a History Maker yet they run from embracing their own history. I trust you feel the challenge to reassess how you may feel about a key part of God’s kingdom plan: your spiritual heritage.

But what if my history is not full of Christians who have invested in me over the years? What if I don’t have Christian Parents? What if my background was actually full of sex, drugs and rock n roll? The answer may be found in Hebrews 11. For in that chapter of the Bible you may, like Paul the Apostle, suddenly find yourself connected to a family tree which you never even knew was yours. You may discover long lost brothers like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. You find that history really is HIS STORY. The story of Jesus at work throughout the ages, leaving his legacy and getting you ready to leave yours. Whatever your background: Welcome to the family...

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." Romans 12

May we never forget that we did not begin our race alone. The baton was passed to us and so we too, one day, must pass that baton on. Whatever position we end up on the podium, we will only ever get there because we were standing on the shoulders of giants...