Legacy of Faith
When we first launched Gospel Family Ministries, I told my wife, “My prayer, is simply that the Lord will use this ministry to lead married couples to pray together and families to disciple one another.” By God’s grace, I have seen these disciplines joyfully cultivated in families, just as I have seen the Lord teaching my own family how to celebrate these things more and more.
Oh, that you and your family would catch this Gospel Family vision and fully experience the blessing of living as a Great Commandment and Great Commission home! If you do, though, how can we be sure that it will continue? How can we be sure that the next generation will also catch this vision? How can we be sure that your Gospel Family will leave a legacy of faith?
This isn’t inevitable, and shouldn’t, therefore, be assumed. We see this in the legacy of the Old Testament leader, Joshua:
“The people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel. And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years. And they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash. And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel” (Judges 2:7-10).
God’s people served him for as long as Joshua and his elders were alive. As long as the generation who had walked through the parted sea and eaten the manna lived, the Lord was praised. Those who remembered all that God had done for Israel worshiped God for all he had done. Once Joshua and the elders died, however, there arose another generation who, tragically, did not know the Lord.
How is this possible? How could a man like Joshua not pass the baton to the next generation? How could our example of a spiritual leader, the one who led his family to serve God and put away idols not ensure this in the homes of those who would come after him? How could the miracles of the plagues in Egypt, the Passover lamb, the parting of the sea, and the conquest of the Promise Land not be told over and over again to the point that every generation knew intimately the Lord and the work he had done for Israel?
Witmer writes, “We are all just one generation away from unbelief. It is our responsibility to pass the truth along to our children. This is no area in which we should drop the baton.” (1)
It’s not enough to just lead our family to be a Gospel Family. This must reproduce. This must carry on. As disciples make disciples that make disciples and churches plant churches that plant churches, Gospel Families cultivate discipleship, worship, and missions in the home in such a way that other homes are impacted and the next generation follows the example. This is a legacy of faith.
In the Amazon, I had the chance to go hunting and fishing with the men of the tribe, two things in which I am inexperienced and just plain terrible. So I would frequently be assigned the easiest, least demanding jobs on these hunting and fishing trips, lest I mess something up. One such trip found me and one of the Amarakaeri men in a small canoe in a still lagoon. He was the fisherman, so he stood in the tip of the boat with his bow and arrow, staring intently into the water, waiting for his shot. I, on the other hand, sat in the back of the boat, slowly and quietly rowing us around the edge of the lake.
Every few minutes Victor would wave me to stop rowing and I would grab a branch hanging over from the bank, causing the canoe to stop. Victor would then fire an arrow into the water, piercing a fish every time. We would retrieve the kill, toss it in the boat with the ever-growing pile, and keep moving.
After a few hours of this, Victor waved me to stop and I assumed he saw another fish. Instead, he slowly put his bow and arrow down, never taking his eyes off the water. Suddenly, he dove into the water and disappeared. I just sat there in disbelief. I looked around to see if anyone else saw what just happened. I looked into the water to try and catch a glimpse of my friend, but all I saw was my own reflection. I waited for about a minute and then Victor exploded out of the water, lifted up a huge turtle with both hands and shouted, “We’ll be eating turtle eggs tonight!”
I did not enjoy the eggs, but I’ll never forget seeing Victor plunge into that still lagoon to get that turtle. The calm lake burst with a splash, sending ripples all across the surface of the water.
When we lead our families to dive into the Gospel so that we can emerge holding a Gospel Family in both hands, we send ripples that can stretch across multiple generations. When we are sanctified by the truth of the Gospel in such a way that we are set apart from the world, living differently than any house on the block, the impact is felt. Like an echo vibrating for miles, the discipleship, worship and missions cultivated in our homes can resonate for years.
Pastor Matt Chandler summarizes the ripple effect, writing, “The first ripple is our personal reconciliation to God. The second ripple establishes the body of Christ, as we are reconciled to each other. The third ripple is the missional posture of the church as we mobilize to proclaim the fullness of reconciliation in the gospel. In essence, we are reconciled to reconcile.” (2)
R.C. Sproul Jr. discusses this idea of legacy in the terms of taking Family Discipleship one step further, to another level: “Love, trust, and obey God and teach your children to do the same. We haven’t taught our children to do the same unless or until we have taught them to teach their children. We must with sincerity and zeal teach our children to teach their children to teach their children to teach their children and to keep going until the King’s return.” (3)
Helopoulos puts it this way: “This must be our true heart’s desire: that our children might set their hope in God and that they would teach their own children in turn. And that they would set their hope on God and teach their children and on and on it goes.” (4)
*This blog is an excerpt from the book, Gospel Family: Cultivating Family Discipleship, Family Worship & Family Missions
[1]Timothy Witmer, The Shepherd Leader at Home (Crossway: 2012), p. 110.
[2]Matt Chandler with Jared Wilson, The Explicit Gospel (Crossway, Wheaton, Illinois: 2012), p. 175.
[3]R.C. Sproul Jr., When you Rise Up: A Covenantal Approach to Homeschooling (P&R Publishing: 2004), p. 25-26.
[4]Jason Helopoulos, A Neglected Grace: Family Worship in the Christian Home (Christian Focus Publications: 2013), p. 36.
