Your spiritual legacy will be a blessing to the future
Have you ever wondered what impact your life might have on future generations? Will people remember you 100 or 200 years from now or will your life be forgotten by the world in general? What will your spiritual legacy be?
You just might have more influence on the future than you can imagine. Think of the influence you can have on your children, if you have children, or the people you know, and the effect that will have on their children and the people they know, and so on down through time. Or think of a teacher who has changed the lives of her students, who then are an influence on those they help.
Maybe you’re a writer and people will read your books years from now. Or maybe you’re an artist or musician, whose creative works will be remembered and appreciated by people hundreds of years from now.
What is my spiritual legacy?
I’ve been thinking recently about what, if any, impact my life might have on people who haven’t been born yet. Recently, I went on a three day solo retreat as part of a program I joined to help bring focus to my life and my purpose, how to overcome self-limiting beliefs, and create a vision going forward.
On the third day of this time by myself, one of the exercises was to visit a historical site and think about the legacy left by those who were associated with that particular place. Then I was encouraged to think about what legacy I would leave to those in the future, whom I would never meet.
Now you may be wondering: Hey James, this all sounds pretty interesting, but what does this have to do with the Bible? Well, I’ll get to that in just a few minutes.
I ended up visiting the site of the winter camp of American Revolutionary soldiers in Redding, Connecticut, Putnam State Park. There were hundreds of troops stationed there from December 1778 to May of 1779 as a deterrent to British troops, who been in the area recently and raided a nearby town.
I won’t go into all the history of the place, but in a nutshell, the men didn’t have enough food because a huge snow prevented supply wagons bringing them supplies. After many weeks of low rations, the men were ready to revolt. But the commanding officer, General Putnam, learned of their plans, came to them and found a solution that worked for everyone.
We know about all this because of journals and letters written at the time.
Will what I do today have an impact in the future?
What struck me was the fact that, here I was 245 years later, learning about something that had a direct effect on my life and the area I live. Those Connecticut soldiers defended this area from the attacks of the British and helped to win the victory for the Revolutionary War that ensured freedom for the United States.
What a legacy! I was deeply impressed. Of course, I have known since I was a kid, about this time period and how the Americans fought for their freedom. But I had never felt the impact these particular men had on my life in such a personal way and so close to home, literally just a few miles from where I live. Being there and thinking about it brought tears to my eyes.
And thinking of the legacy these men left prompted some questions I had never asked myself before.
What legacy would I leave for future generations? Would anything I did or said be remembered 245 years from now? By the way, that would be the year 2269.
Prayer for my spiritual legacy
Walking back from the little museum I poured out my heart to God:
God, I said, I don’t need a statue of me somewhere. I don’t even necessarily need anyone to remember my name, but let the impact of what I do to help people glorify You and follow Christ continue to bless people in the future.
Here I am, God. Use me to build and strengthen, promote and prosper the Cause of Christ in a way that will have a lasting impact on the world.
Give me the wisdom and understanding, the boldness, humility, and love, to bring Christ more visibly to the world. Give me the spiritual authority and courage to do what You tell me, to go where You direct me, to say what You reveal to me.
Empower me to bring healing and comfort to those who suffer, encouragement to those who are hopeless, and light to those who sit in darkness.
None of this is for my glory but to bring glory to You and Your Son, Jesus Christ. Help me leave a lasting legacy for all who come after me.
I knew deep in my heart that God heard my prayer and I felt encouraged that He would answer my desire to bless future generations. In fact, over the next several days I was able to share my faith with.
I unequivocally put my life in God’s hands to do with me as He sees fit. For 50 years, one of my simple little prayers has been: Dear God, prepare me for what You have prepared for me.
Looking back, I can see God has done just that. He has prepared me for this moment.
What will your spiritual legacy be?
Some people want to leave a legacy to be remembered for who they are or what they’ve done. They may have a park, a street, a building, or even a town named after them. But the legacy I want to leave for those far into the future is the awareness of their intimate relationship with God, their ability to think, pray, and love like Jesus, and their ability to let their light shine so they will bless others.
If someone associates my name with that hundreds of years from now, I’ll never know. And I’m okay with that. God knows the desires in my heart and God will know what I do to bless those I come in contact with now and those who will be blessed in the future because of what I do now.
It kind of reminds me of the story in Ecclesiastes about a man who saved a town, but no one remembered him.
There was once a small city with only a few people in it. And a powerful king came against it, surrounded it and built huge siege works against it. Now there lived in that city a man poor but wise, and he saved the city by his wisdom. But nobody remembered that poor man. Ecclesiastes 9:14, 15 NIV
This little vignette pops us in my Bible study every once in a while and every time it does, I think about this man, who knew what to do and did it. We don’t even know his name. And he was quickly forgotten.
But he has left a legacy. Here we are talking about him thousands of years later. We don’t know all the details, but we know he saved the city. This always inspires me to just do what I know is right. Do what God directs me to do. We can still learn from this poor wise man today. His legacy does live on.
Is it really possible to leave a spiritual legacy?
So what can you and I do to leave a legacy, a spiritual legacy, for those who come after us? Is it possible to do something that people will be talking about and be blessed by 100, 200, 1,000 years from now? Or more?
Well, it is possible. Look at all the people in the Bible who lived thousands of years ago. We’re still learning from them today and being blessed. And history is full of people who we still learn from because of the legacy they’ve left.
Of course, there are lots of people in the past, even in the Bible, we don’t know anything about, but that doesn’t mean we have not been blessed by the good they did in their lives. There’s really no way to know how even the smallest act of love may have influenced the way people acted going forward. And you may be blessed by that.
So let’s come back to this idea of how we can bless those who come after us.
The first step
One of the most obvious ways to do this is to obey God’s commandments. God makes it clear to Moses and the children of Israel that He will
[show] love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. Exodus 20:6 NIV
Think about that for just a minute. Every time you love God and obey His commandments, God will bless and love people a thousand generations into the future. Whether you take that literally or just metaphorically meaning a long time, when you are obedient to God, it has a lasting influence on the people you know.
It will affect the way they treat the people they know, and the cycle can keep going forward to future generations. And God is blessing them. That’s part of that legacy.
This idea of passing along love for and obedience to God is found often in the Bible, either directly or indirectly.
Sharing God’s love with future generations
I love this passage from Psalm 78:
I will open my mouth with a parable; I will utter hidden things, things from of old—things we have heard and known, things our ancestors have told us. We will not hide them from their descendants; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, his power, and the wonders he has done. He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel, which he commanded our ancestors to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands. Psalm 78:2-7 NIV
And the prophet Joel expresses pretty much the same idea. God tells him,
Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation. Joel 1:3 NIV
This can refer literally to your children or it can refer to the people in your life that you help.
It was a heartfelt desire of those who loved God to share their faith with the next generation and that generation would tell the next generation and so on, until here we are today and it’s up to us to keep this cycle going.
A broader sense of spiritual legacy
But this next verse got me to thinking a little deeper about this idea of blessing future generations.
…do not forsake me, my God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your mighty acts to all who are to come. Psalm 71:18 NIV
Did you catch that last phrase, “to all who are to come”? It seems to me this prayer in Psalms is really catching a glimpse of how the good we do today can have an influence far into the future.
But is there really a way to bless and leave a spiritual legacy to “all who are to come”? The human mind and intellectual logic will quickly say “Of course not! There’s no way one person can bless everyone else throughout all future generations.”
But the Bible often contradicts human reasoning with the infinite possibilities when mankind acts in obedience to God’s will.
Abraham’s spiritual legacy
And here’s an example. When God calls Abram to leave his homeland and go to a new country, He tells him
all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. Genesis 12:3 NIV
Later God reaffirms this promise. God says to Abraham
I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me. Genesis 22:17, 18 NIV
There it is plain and simple. God has blessed the whole earth because of Abraham’s obedience to God. Does everyone who has ever lived since know they have been blessed because of Abraham’s obedience? No. But they have still been blessed in one way or another, whether they are aware of it or not.
Think of how this applies to you. Will you accept God’s blessing upon you because of Abraham obedience?
Can your spiritual legacy bless everyone in the future?
So let’s come back to this idea of your spiritual legacy, how you can bless people in the future.
If it’s possible for Abraham to be a blessing to the whole earth, down through time, then why wouldn’t it be possible for you and me to live our lives in a way that is a blessing to future generations?
Of course the best example in the Bible of someone blessing all future generations is Jesus. His mission was for the salvation of the whole world. His obedience to God and his love for all mankind continue to bless every single person on this earth, whether they know it or not.
In spite of all the challenges and threatening circumstances people face today, and have or will face in the future, on a deep spiritual level, Jesus’s life is nevertheless a blessing to everyone.
Now you may be thinking: Hey James. I see what you’re talking about how Abraham and Jesus are still a blessing to everyone, but I just don’t see how it’s possible for me to bless all mankind into the future the way they have.
Well, how you’ll be a blessing to future generations will be different than the way Abraham and Jesus did. But your God-given purpose is unique to you, just as theirs were to them.
Jesus expected us to follow his example, not just in the little stuff, but in every detail of his life, which includes the big stuff too.
Jesus knew his influence, his spiritual legacy, would remain long after he was no longer physically on earth. In fact, he knew the truth he shared would outlast the material world itself.
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. Matthew 24:35 NIV
What will your spiritual legacy be?
I encourage you to consider the spiritual legacy you will leave for future generations. Maybe you will start, or have started a foundation or organization to do much good in the world. How will it function once you’re no longer in charge of it?
Maybe you have written a book or books, or hope to, that will bless people for generations to come. Or maybe you’re a parent who has taught your children to love and obey God and be kind to others. That can have a more lasting influence on the world than almost anything else.
Whatever it is, I encourage you to embrace Jesus’s assurance that he would be a blessing to all mankind, as possible for you as well, as one of his followers.
Ask God what you can do to be a blessing to people who haven’t been born yet.
You may not get an answer all at once. It may come in bits and pieces as you pray about it, over many months or years. But when there’s a righteous desire in your heart to be a blessing to future generations, God will honor that desire and answer that prayer.
If you’d like a few more ideas to think about in your prayers, you might enjoy an episode of The Bible Speaks to You from about a year and a half ago: Episode 176 – How Much Do You Love the People Who Will Be Born 100 Years from Now?
The choices you make today in obedience to God, the way you live your life in following Christ, the humility you express in being guided by the Holy Spirit, will have a lasting influence far into the future, more than you can imagine or will ever know. Acknowledge this influence is possible. Accept it. And trust God with the spiritual legacy you’re giving to future generations.
Photo Credit: Jonathan Cosens
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James Early, the Jesus Mindset Coach, is a Bible teacher, speaker, and podcaster. He conducts Bible workshops online and in person. His focus is on getting back to the original Christianity of Jesus by embracing the mindset of Christ in daily life. Contact him here.
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Bible References
Ecclesiastes 9:14, 15 NIV
14 There was once a small city with only a few people in it. And a powerful king came against it, surrounded it and built huge siege works against it.
15 Now there lived in that city a man poor but wise, and he saved the city by his wisdom. But nobody remembered that poor man.
Exodus 20:6 NIV
6 showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Psalm 78:2-7 NIV
2 I will open my mouth with a parable; I will utter hidden things, things from of old—
3 things we have heard and known, things our ancestors have told us.
4 We will not hide them from their descendants; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, his power, and the wonders he has done.
5 He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel, which he commanded our ancestors to teach their children,
6 so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children.
7 Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands.
Joel 1:3 NIV
3 Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation.
Psalm 71:18 NIV
18 do not forsake me, my God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your mighty acts to all who are to come.
Genesis 12:3 NIV
3 all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.
Genesis 22:17, 18 NIV
17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies,
18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.
Matthew 24:35 NIV
35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
