Draw the Circle Prayer Challenge Lent 2018 Week 3: Spiritual Inheritances

Legacy

• a gift by will
• something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past (definition Merriam-Webster)

We went to church quite a bit when I was growing up.  Twice on Sundays, sometimes all day on Sundays, sometimes during the week, and the activities.

We were definitely churchgoers.  

To put it specifically we were lukewarm churchgoers

Building a Prayer Memorial

In the Prayer Challenge, Mark Batterson talks about his grandfather who prayed out loud for the family by name.  The only time my churchgoing family prayed together was over the food.

He also cites stories of other people who prayed over their children or prayed for their families and their families now tell these stories as evidence of God's grace, mercy, and his awesome power.  Their families have that spiritual legacy to look to and it is passed down to the next generation.

When I decided to leave legalistic churchgoing, I was really stunned by the stories I heard from people and how God worked in their lives.  I never heard anything like that growing up!  

This is one of the main reasons I know that we were lukewarm churchogoers.  Our lives wouldn't be much different if we had stopped going (except for maybe having more time and more freedom from rules) I certainly didn't gain my moral compass from churchgoing (Not totally true...I learned what NOT to do and how I did NOT want to act when I got older)

There was never any excitement.

I've done this prayer challenge a few times now and one of the things I am most looking forward to is being able to tell my children, "Look...I prayed for all of this.  None of this is my own doing.  All Glory is to God."  Don't you think that will make a huge difference in their spiritual walk?  of course it will!  They will have written prayer memorials to know that I didn't make it all up.

Legacies

Over at Shiloh Church we talk a lot about legacy and inheritances in the spiritual sense.

In a worldly setting, you get an inheritance when the previous generation has invested wisely and put assets aside to pass on to the next generation.  This is what should happen spiritually.  We should be sowing seeds of faith and investing, and those will be passed on to the next generation.

I think this is what is wrong with our young people.  They were not invested in properly and have no spiritual inheritance or legacy to look to.

Most churches are struggling right now.  They are filled with older people and not many younger people to keep it going.

Shiloh is the opposite.  There are older people but there are a ton of young adults, adults, families, and even a lot of men.  I believe that is the do to the spiritual inheritances that are in that house.  

Now we all know that when placed in the hands of fools an inheritance can dwindle down to nothing quickly.  I think that's what has happened in many churches.  They installed leaders who weren't interested in creating their own spiritual legacies and instead wanted to rely on the past.  

They aren't sowing seeds or even taking care of the harvest that may have happened in previous generations.  Perhaps they are too afraid to step out on faith and do something crazy...However as Leymah Gwobee says

You are forfeiting the miracle when you don't step out on faith and do crazy.

Why would a widowed Canadian woman leave Canada for Oakland, California to start an interracial fellowship unless she was crazy?  50 years later, Shiloh is thriving beyond belief.  Today they introduced the new members and they were from all over the world including:  Nigeria, Greece, U.K, Philippines, El Salvador, Colombia, amongst others.

That is CRAZY and could only happen because of God

This is one of the reasons I'm going to continue to circling and keep praying for issues in my life that don't seem to be any closer to getting an answer than they were the FIRST time I did this challenge.

I want to leave a spiritual legacy and inheritance...not just for my family but for others!!