Legacy Of The Pew: Jesus Series

Video Illustration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEbQswNB6Wc Chris Tomlin Jesus video

Theme – Legacy of the Pew!

(power point slide 1)

Thesis: Sowing seeds today results in bearing fruit tomorrow which in turn leaves a spiritual legacy! (power point slide 2)

Summary of new series:

Questions to ponder this morning: “What kind of spiritual legacy will you leave? Will it be lasting and eternal? Will it be fleeting and meaningless? Or will you leave behind just a physical legacy like buildings, money, and other possessions?” “What will you be remembered for 100 years from now?”

We learned from 2 John 2 things:

1. For us to leave a spiritual legacy means that we 1st love God by obeying His word. In other word’s we live our lives and make our decisions with a Biblical worldview and we do what the Bible says to do.

2. For us to leave a spiritual legacy requires – no mandates that we invest time into our biological and spiritual children so as to pass on the teachings and the ways of the Lord to the next generation.

Introduction:

Story: Leaving a legacy:

Tug McGraw was quite the baseball pitcher. He won two World Series with the New York Mets, and was one of the best closing pitchers in Philadelphia Phillies history. McGraw was a team cheerleader, the guy who coined the phrase, "You Gotta Believe!"

He might still be on television as a game announcer today if it hadn't been for the sudden change of health that came in 2003. By the time the brain tumor was discovered, doctors told Tug, all of 59 years old, that he had three weeks to live. Three weeks (can you imagine).

He lived nine months, pouring his time into his family, into a legacy dedicated to curing brain cancer, and even to reconciling with a part of his past he'd tried to ignore. He had a wife and kids, but he also had another son he had ignored.

The mother was Elizabeth D'Agostino. She didn't tell her son about his famous father, in part because she wanted to move past that particular part of her life, too. But Tim found his birth certificate, and made the most shocking discovery of his life. His favorite baseball player was also his father. Tim changed his name from Tim Trimble to Tim McGraw.

Tim found Tug when he was an older teen-ager, but there was nothing there. No warm feelings, no immediate connection, and no future. But once more, as an adult, Tim tried it again. And the second time, the attraction took. Father and son, as strange as it must have seemed to them, became close.

And when news came that time was running out, they became closer still. In the end, Tug McGraw even died at Tim McGraw's Nashville home.

In 2004 Tim's song, "Live Like You Were Dying," stayed on top of the charts for 10 weeks, breaking a record that had stood for 30 years, and was named the top country song of the year by Billboard magazine. It was the story of a man who got the news that he was dying - a man made a decision of how he would live with the time he had left.

Lyrics of the song:

He said

"I was in my early forties

With a lot of life before me

And a moment came that stopped me on a dime

I spent most of the next days

Looking at the x-rays

Talkin' 'bout the options

And talkin' 'bout sweet time"

I asked him

"When it sank in

That this might really be the real end

How's it hit you

When you get that kind of news?

Man, what'd you do?"

He said

"I went skydiving

I went Rocky Mountain climbing

I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fumanchu

And I loved deeper

And I spoke sweeter

And I gave forgiveness I'd been denying"

And he said

"Someday I hope you get the chance

To live like you were dying"

He said

"I was finally the husband

That most of the time I wasn't

And I became a friend a friend would like to have

And all of a sudden going fishin'

Wasn't such an imposition

And I went three times that year I lost my dad

I finally read the Good Book, and I

Took a good, long, hard look

At what I'd do if I could do it all again

And then

I went skydiving

I went Rocky Mountain climbing

I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fumanchu

And I loved deeper

And I spoke sweeter

And I gave forgiveness I'd been denying"

And he said

"Someday I hope you get the chance

To live like you were dying

Like tomorrow was a gift

And you've got eternity