It's been some time that I've wanted to come back to the post series - and I had wanted to start with something more practical to intergender relational and sexual dynamics ... but this is what I believe God laid on my heart for you all instead.

In 309 I explained that there are clear stages of growth toward spiritual maturity, each with their own distinctive need:

  1. All people start as non-believers and need the Holy Spirit. The process of helping a non-Christian grow toward Christ is called evangelism.

  2. On accepting the Gospel, they become new believers who need leadership in order to grow in their newfound faith. The process of helping a new believer grow is called establishing.

  3. Once established, a believer can call himself a disciple - one whose heart is innately oriented toward following Christ - but he still has no vision. A more mature believer uses the equipping process to cast that vision, then give him tools to accomplish it.

  4. Once equipped, the believer then lives in light of the vision for disciple-making by reproducing the entire process within others - and training those he disciples to do the same. One who goes beyond even this is a leader among disciple-makers, organizing their efforts in a common pursuit. The relationship between him and the disciple-makers under his care is one of a mutual entrusting, addressing their joint need for accountability toward staying strong in the mission God gave them.

Given that it's been almost a year since I added to this series, I thought it best to give that recap. 301-308 already covered the evangelism and establishing processes. That leaves equipping and entrusting. But before going there, I wanted to give a more significant word of motivation to my fellow men on a concept that is often overlooked in the church: leaving a legacy.

A GOD OF LEGACY

Our God is not one who leaves loose ends to dangle. He has a plan. We are part of that plan - and his plan spans across the universe and time. Acts 17:26-27 says, "From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us."

This verse is talking about all of humanity throughout all of time - yet, in the present tense, he is never far from any of us. God began with Adam and knew ahead of time every person who would ever be born. That's incredible to me - not just that he knows us, but that he sees the entire connectivity of every person on the planet from Adam to now and onward.

God always intended men to leave a legacy.

  • He used Adam as "a pattern of the one to come" (Romans 5:14), who would be his legacy.

  • God's great promise to Abraham was not riches or fame throughout the world. It was the legacy he would leave behind - a legacy that he would never live to see while on earth, but which he trusted God would give him all the same. That promise was a great motivator for him.

  • Moses allowed an entire generation of people die in the desert and was forbidden from entering the promised land. But his legacy was that he got them there all the same, even if he was never to see the fruit of his 40 years of wandering with his own eyes while alive.

  • Rahab was a prostitute of no significance in a land that was about to be conquered, yet for one act of faith God honored her with being an ancestral mother to Jesus.

  • David was a man after God's own heart, and it was given to him as his legacy that the Messiah would be born of his line.

  • God devotes an entire book of the Bible - Numbers - to the importance of the lineage from one man to the next as a testament to the importance of the legacy that a man is to leave in the world.

  • The succession of Kings, as explained in 1/2 Kings and 1/2 Chronicles, is a testament to the way men can leave their legacy for good or for bad - and we will be remembered for the impact we make by the degree we make it.

A man cannot read the Bible and miss the fact that God does not often work with people in isolation; rather, he works with them in light of the legacy they will leave behind - whether he uses their life as a foreshadowing of greater things to come, or by including them in direct lineage to something vitally important.

And now that Christ has come and the veil is torn, it is not merely for the select few prophets who had a direct connection with God who could leave a legacy, but for all of us. While Abraham may have been the only one who was to be made into a mighty physical nation, we all have the opportunity to be the patriarchs of a line of succession in a spiritual nation.

PERSONALIZE IT

What is your legacy? Or more accurately: WHO is your legacy? Who is your firstborn - the one to carry on your name and continue the work that you started? Are you blessed with dozens of spiritual children or wondering if you're shooting blanks?

These questions matter. Someday you will be gone. Will anyone remember you? Will you have made a difference on the earth beyond a mere hope in the butterfly effect (which won't even tell you the quality of the difference you've made)? Does your life even matter?

Unless Christ comes back, you'll be gone someday while this world carries on. Don't you want to have made your mark in it?

SPIRITUAL STERILITY

But here's the thing: what if you create a next generation that's sterile? David's lineage to Christ would have been cut off if Solomon was sterile. Yet we know that David raised his son to enjoy women ... perhaps a little too much ;)

Think about that for a moment. How many men are as good as sterile today because their fathers weren't setting the right example or leading them properly? How many fathers today look toward the days they will one day have grandchildren, yet have done nothing to train their sons in how to attract a woman to have those grandchildren with in the first place? The exceptions do exist, but most men want the legacy without putting in the work to ensure their sons will carry on the family line. The best they can do at that point is sit back and pray for a miracle.

Not at all ironically, but by extension: this is exactly what most people do in their spiritual lives as well. They pray desperately to God to use them to change the world ... yet when it comes right down to it, they're not willing to train up a next generation to know how to spiritually procreate. So even the ones who do have children are still left without a true legacy. Their lineage dies with them. What will happen to your spiritual legacy if you make the same mistake?

In one of his talks, Dawson Trotman explains that there are 3 main reasons why a person might be sterile:

  • He's immature. His body hasn't physically grown enough that his pieces and parts start working to where they can reproduce.

  • He doesn't have a spouse to procreate with.

  • He has some disease or deformity that pervents him from procreating, such as ED, castration, actual sterility, etc.

Spiritually, the causes are not so much different:

  • If someone is spiritually immature, he will not actively share his faith with other believers. Fortunately, spiritual maturity does not depend on time, but on character. Paul says in Philippians 3, "All of us who are mature should take such a view of things and if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only live up to what we have already attained. Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you." This is, of course, disciplesihp - modeling one's own life for others to follow in. And Paul says that this is the mark of a spiritually mature man.

  • If someone is a non-believer, he has no spiritual spouse. Christ is not his groom. There is no ability to reproduce for God.

  • Any other reason for not reproducing is unnatural - a disease or affliction, just as any other reason a believer might give for not spiritually reproducing is an unnatural spiritual disease or affliction. That could be sin; it could be bad theology; it could be any number of things. Just don't let it happen to you.

Men were created to have sex. That sexual urge was meant to inspire us toward multiplying and filling the earth through generations that would flow from our loins. It was also meant to inspire us toward understanding our spiritual mission toward disciple-making - and not merely that we make disciples, but that we leave a legacy.

APPLICATION

I always like to bring it back to something you can walk away with, and this one is simple - a question I've asked dozens of times here: Where's your fruit?

Jesus says, "By their fruit you will recognize them." So, where's that fruit? Who is your man? And if your fruit falls to the ground and dies and never grows into a fruit-bearing tree of its own ... did you produce good fruit or a dead tree? That's a pretty big question, if you're reading Matthew 7 and Luke 13.

Dawson Trotman says in his talk Born to Reproduce: "If i were the minister of a church and had deacons or elders to pass the plate and choir members to sing, I would say, 'Thank God for your help. We need you. Praise the lord for these extra thigns that you do,' but I would keep pressing home the big job - 'Be fruitful and multiply.' All these other things are incidental to the supreme task of winning a man or woman to Jesus Christ and then helping him or her to go on."

  • Who's your man? If you don't have one yet, your application is to find him.

  • If you have found him, who's his man? If he doesn't have one yet, is it because he's immature, a non-believer, or something's just screwed up?

Let me leave you with something my college discipler once shared with me. He asked the very first time we met: "Do you know why I'm discipling you?" I answered something obvious: To help me grow toward Christ. "Sure, that's a secondary goal, but it's not my primary purpose. I'm here not just for your benefit, but for the benefit of the people you'll disciple one day." Do you have that attitude about the people God has placed in your life? Are you a good steward of those relationships? Are you living your life in a way intentionally designed to leave a legacy, passing on what God has entrusted to you to other reliable men? (2 Timothy 2:2)