Legacy Sermon Questions
I received a couple questions after Sunday’s sermon, so I thought writing up a quick article would be a helpful way to engage the topic more broadly. Please let me know if this kind of format is beneficial, and I can try to do it more in the future.
The two questions I received regarding last week’s sermon on Legacy and the passing on of our faith were these:
What do you do if you passed your faith on to your children but they don’t seem to have received it?
What does legacy work look like for those who don’t have children?
These are fantastic questions that I will do my best to answer here.
When our Children Don’t Receive our Faith
This is a highly delicate but important topic. I will say the most important thing to keep in mind is that your children’s stories are not yet finished. When our older and adult children seem to have walked away from the Faith, it can feel in the moment like it is a done deal. But it isn’t. Their story is not yet done. Like most of us, our stories of faith are not straight lines but are filled with zigs and zags. Your role now is to pray diligently and hope and trust that God will lead them back to him, like prodigal sons and daughters. Continue to be a faithful witness in their lives.
I also want to carefully address the fact that it is possible that one of the reasons our children might be walking away from the faith could be due to how we passed our faith to our children. I understand I am stepping into delicate waters here, but because the gospel is true, we can be honest about this. As you pray for your children, if you realize that there were places that you have failed (and there will be those places for all of us), then all you need to do is repent, and ask God to forgive you… and he will indeed forgive you. If the Gospel is true, then it has to be ok for us to acknowledge where we failed and could have done better. This could be the very thing that helps lead your children back to the Lord. Tell your adult children that you made a mistake, ask for their forgiveness. That could be the very thing that the Spirit uses to grip their hearts. Remember, we can be honest about our story, even our failures, because the Gospel is the story of God’s faithfulness conquering our failures.
For every parent one of the most important ways we can model the gospel for our children is asking for forgiveness when we mess up. It helps them to see that we need the gospel as much as they do. This is a healthy thing to start with your children even when they are young. As you model repentance and trust in the gospel, it will help them learn to repent and trust in the gospel as well.
Take comfort in this testimony of St Augustine, one of the early church fathers, whose mother prayed earnestly for her wayward son’s salvation: https://www.ligonier.org/learn/series/heroes-of-the-christian-faith/augustine
When we don’t have children of our own
I mentioned this in passing in my sermon, but even those who don’t have children, or can’t have children, for any variety of reasons, can still participate in this legacy work of Psalm 78. We are part of a larger community than just our homes. The children in the church are part of the legacy that you are called to. Our children need other mentors in the church outside of the home to reinforce the grand story of the Gospel. Invest in them. Pray for them. Spend time with the families of the church getting to know them and their children. When we have Sunday School some day, volunteer to teach the children. When we have some sort of Youth Group one day, volunteer to help teach and model the gospel for our children. It is a group project and we need everyone in the Body of Christ to play their part.
Consider the example of Jesus in Mark 3:31-34:
Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”
“Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.
Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”
Another way we pass our legacy on is through fulfilling the great commission and sharing our faith with others. As they come to have faith they join this great legacy work as well. So don’t wait until you have children to get started in this great and important work. It is for all of us.
If you have other questions, or sermon questions in the future that you would like me to address, please reach out.