Legacy Stewardship

Most of us never deliberately attempt to learn much about the full scope and scale of our influence. Our legacy is something we think of only at the end of our tenure at a firm, or when we're on the cusp of retirement. But what would it look like if we began to think about the legacy we want to leave early in our lives.

Such thinking forces us to ask important questions: What is most important to me? What do I want my children to emulate about me? What contribution do I want to make that will last well beyond my death? How do I need to live today so that tomorrow’s future will be better for my neighbor?

What's more, when we do look back, we often measure success in terms of how I helped increase market share, or what size house I lived in, or the car that I drove. Legacy thinking causes us to grasp things that transcend the physical world, but which have a deep impact on it. What investment am I going to make in my children, in my community, in the social systems that keep people in poverty or homeless or abused?

Legacy thinking forces the connection with the decisions that are before you daily right now, and the behaviors you engage in today, tomorrow, and next week.

Elton Trueblood (not John) once wrote about the meaning of life: “People have made at least a start at understanding the meaning of life when they plant shade trees under which they know full well they will never sit.” When you think about what lasting impression you will make in the world and the worlds of those who are close to you in your life, then you act today in ways that you know will benefit generations in the future. The Apostle Paul hints at this when he says in 1 Corinthians 3, “I planted the seed, and Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.” (the God part helps us keep an appropriate humility).

Everyone’s life tells a story and it’s that story that will go on for generations to come. It's a story that you write yourself. Every paragraph is penned by your own hand. What does your story say about you?

When we think about our financial stewardship – stewarding the financial resources that God entrusts to us – thinking in terms of the legacy you want to leave can enable you to see more clearly the priorities that must be set for today. Remember that your legacy as a Christ follower is not about how much money you had or what you owned, these things will fade away in time. It's about the impact you make in Jesus’ name on the lives of others (whether positive or negative).

I’ll leave you with something I read recently, "You can't do anything about the length of your life but you can do something about its width and depth"

Embracing Unity, Acting out Jesus' prayer

You can perhaps tell a lot about someone by listening to the prayers she prays. Not the public ones. Too often we pray in public with what other people have in mind. We pray in public - and this is not to judge - trying to sound good. It's the prayers that someone prayers when no one else but God is around to listen. That's when you can perhaps tell the most about someone. Wouldn't you agree?

Because it's in those moments that the inner desires and hopes of every one of us gets expressed. Or maybe it's in those moments of personal intimacy with God that our deepest longings take shape ... interesting... that's not something that I have thought of before.

What did Jesus pray? Wouldn't it be huge to know Jesus's actual prayers? What he said to God? What of his heart he poured out as his deepest longing and perhaps as an expression of his greatest need because he wasn't able to make it happen on his own? Hmmm...To be a fly on the wall when Jesus prayed?

Well, we have a few recorded in the gospels. By some counts nine. There is perhaps the one that is best known - the Lord's prayer, "Our Father, who is in heaven..." And there is the one he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane in the darkness before the darkness, "Father, take this cup from me..." And of course, there are the ones he prayed in his greatest pain on the cross, "Why have you forsaken me? Forgive them, for they know not what they do. Into your hands I commit my spirit." They reveal so much, don't they?

If Jesus' prayers, like our own, reveal his deepest longest and most urgent needs, look at one in John 17. “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Abba, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me."

When you live with others in community, a community like Christians who form "church", you have to ask yourselves the question: Am I embracing unity with others who may be very different than me? Do I behave in ways that foster a spirit of oneness? How am I a fulfillment in my actions of Jesus' prayer, "...that all of them may be one"?

Encountering God, Experiencing His Grace

Several Sundays ago we began a new emphasis in worship called "A Search for Vitality." We have become a church which has grown more intentional about implementing the things that we hope will lead to our Acts 2 Vision becoming reality: Bringing people into a vital relationship with Jesus. The series of messages are based on Isaiah 6, Isaiah's powerful and moving vision of God. It's in that moment that Isaiah's cries out, "I am ruined!!" Every encounter with God's holiness leads to a profound sense of our shortcomings and failings...it simply cannot be any other way in God's presence.

But contrary to our expectations of being pulverized, every time without fail God responds to such acknowledgement with grace and compassion. It's not always a painless process. The heavenly being in that story touches the lips of Isaiah with a live coal from the altar. But it is really the touch of grace. God's grace is further displayed when God asks of Isaiah, "Whom shall I send." God doesn't want to destroy us. God wants to use us.

In the first message, "Encountering God's Holiness," based on Isaiah's powerful and moving vision of God in Isaiah 6, I invited people to participate in a spiritual discipline for four weeks. Here's how it works: If people want to participate, they simply turn in their name and email. Once or twice each week for the next four weeks, I send out an email to this group and once they receive it they take 60 seconds to stop and get present to God - to encounter God's holiness.

As they get present to God's presence in their lives in that moment, people simply pray, "Lord, here I am. What do you want me to see...hear...do? How do you want me to relate to the person near me...the person far from me? What are you calling me to understand about myself and my life?"

As we get present with God - encounter God's holiness - we look for things that we "don't know that we don't know". That is the realm where transformation begins to take place. We experience transformation when we move what we "don't know that we don't know" into the area of what we do know.

As people have shared their experience, it has been truly exciting to see people get present to God in the midst of the ordinary routine of their lives and to see how God is speaking into their lives through Jesus.