Changing our world, one person at a time
Leaving a Godly legacy for our children
Part One
Opening:
1. This is the first of message series that is entitled, Changing your world one person at a time.
2. I want to speak on this morning, Leaving a Godly legacy for our children.
3. Every person wants to be remembered for something.
I want to be remembered for two things: When I am dead and gone, I would like to know they said…
He loved his family… He loved his God…
4. 24 yrs. Ago I saw Allie and fell in love with her… and after all we be thru… I never lost that love for her
20 yrs. Ago, I fell in love with my God… and after all we’ve been thru, I never lost my love for him.
5. My children, what can I say… but that every man ought to have had the opportunity to have had the children I have had.
A. To change your world, you must change yourself
1. How many of you want at least one person or family member in your life that you would like to see changed?
a. Tell story of Zig Ziggler meeting with a lady who complained about the people of her office.
2. Before you can change the world, you must be changed
Before you can change your family, you yourself must first be changed.
3. Jesus Christ modeled this so effectively.
a. Read Phil. 2:5-8
b. Jesus knew that in order to change this world, he needed to change his.
He left the splendors of heaven, knowing his destiny,
It was the lonely hill of Golgotha, there to lay down his life for me.
He knew in order for us to be changed – he needed to change
A. Everyone leaves a legacy-
1. My children, especially my older ones, catch me intently looking at them.
a. My one boy, told me, dad, stop, you are freaking me out.
b. I was not so much looking at them as I was thru him. I was taking account if I had taught them properly enough to carry on after I am gone.
Will they stay godly?
Will they be good mates?
Will they be good parents?
2. Everyone leaves a legacy
a. My dad’s father, left home when he was eight and died on skid row in Chicago.
He left a legacy of drunkenness to his boys. Each one drank to excess.
b. My father became a Christian, took us fishing and to church and staid with my mom.
We now go fishing with our children, and stay with their mothers
c. What kind of legacy will you leave?
What will be written on the tombstone of your life?
3. Abraham left a legacy
a. For I know him God said of Abraham in Gen. 18:17-19
b. Also God blessed Isaac after his father’s death
Gen. 25:11
What Legacy will we leave behind? How will our lives affect those we leave behind?
B. What kind of Legacy will we leave?
1. Will it be one of respect?
One man said it this way. I want it to be so when my son meets up with someone who says, “I know your dad,“ he will stick out his chest instead of his tongue.
2. Will it be a Godly Legacy we leave?
Author, pastor, and onetime atheist Lee Strobel says…
My daughter Allison was 5 years old when I became a follower of Jesus, and all she had known in those five years was a dad who was profane and angry.
I remember I came home one night and kicked a hole in the living room wall just out of anger with life. I am ashamed to think of the times Allison hid in her room to get away from me.
Five months after I gave my life to Jesus Christ, that little girl went to my wife and said, "Mommy, I want God to do for me what he’s done for Daddy."
At age 5! What was she saying? She’d never studied the archeological evidence. Never read the Bible for herself. All she knew was her dad used to be hard to live with.
At a tender age, she gave her life to Jesus.
God changed my family. He changed my world. He changed my and my families eternity.
3. Will it be a Godly Legacy we leave behind or prison walls?
At a 1994 Promise Keepers’ conference in Denton, Texas, pastor James Ryle told his story: When he was 2 years old, his father was sent to prison and when he was 7, the authorities placed him in an orphanage.
At 19, he had a car wreck that killed a friend. He sold drugs to raise money for his legal fee, and the law caught up to him. He was arrested, charged with a felony, and sent to prison.
While in prison James accepted Christ, and after he had served his time, he eventually went into the ministry.
Years later he sought out his father to reconcile with him, and when they got together, the conversation turned to prison life.
James’s father asked, "Which prison were you in?" James told him, and his father was taken aback. "I helped build that prison," he said. He had been a welder who went from place to place building penitentiaries.
Pastor Ryle concluded, "I was in the prison my father built."
Closing….
C. We shape today, the Legacy we leave
1. I ask the fathers, what Legacy will WE LEAVE for our children?
A father’s example builds a place to live for his children. Will it be a house, or a prison?
2. I well remember sitting in a meeting at Sunnyside fellowship when a godly preacher preached on fathers. At the close of the meetings he asked for testimonies. One after another men after men rose to their feet in their 60-70-80’s and wept like babies because their fathers were in the home but not in their life.
3. Are we leaving a godly legacy for our children?
