• How have you seen (or perhaps tasted for yourself) the long-lasting fruit of personal choices on the lives of others? How have you been harmed by them? How have you been blessed by them?
• What are some of the choices you already know about—ones that are coming up in the next few days, weeks, or months—that will provide you the opportunity to make an impact on your legacy? What can you do now, ahead of time, to ensure that you choose wisely?
• List the people most important to you that you desire to leave a godly legacy to.
Unexpected Legacy
She sat across from me, steaming coffee cup in hand, leaning in to our conversation—the same way she always does every time I talk with her—intent, personal, intimate.
My aunt, all sixty-seven years of her, was sharing the morning’s rainy moments with me in my home, nestled on my well-worn sofa, engaging in some girl talk during her yearly visit to the States from London. In her unmistakably British accent, she shared with me what the Lord had been teaching her lately.
I listened.
I mean, I always listen to her.
I’ve never found her insights to be anything less than thoroughly captivating and thought provoking. A deep student of the Bible, her understanding of spiritual things wafts through the air like the pungent, familiar aroma of her favorite perfume. She’s never lacked for stories about the happenings in her life. Her frequent travels to countries I’ve never even heard of have made for fascinating tales. In sharing God’s Word with different people groups around the world, she’s seen miracles and moves of His Spirit that can make your eyes pop out of your head. The detail with which she describes His marvelous work, things she’s seen up close and personal . . .
Breathtaking.
But at this moment she was even more intense than usual, peering from behind her brown, square-rimmed glasses, her hands grasped tightly around her warm coffee mug, just as her sentiments began to clasp around my heart. Because on this morning, she spoke of personal things.
Of singleness.
Of childlessness.
Her journey had been filled with the longings and losses of both. She’d never been married. She’d been on the cusp a couple of times, but . . . never ultimately felt God leading her to covenant her life with either man. And she was OK with that. Over time she’d made peace with it, with what appeared to be God’s calling on her life to remain purely satisfied in Him. Took time, yes. But it happened.
And yet . . . childlessness. Perhaps something even deeper in a woman’s psyche than the desire to find her heart’s true love. That’s why when she went to the doctor complaining of certain pains and discomforts in her body, his recommendation that she undergo a hysterectomy struck her at a depth of sorrow she didn’t realize she was capable of feeling. To permanently close off from her the opportunity to reproduce life erupted in the form of deep, raw, lonely emotions that are no less staggering for a single woman than one married. It’s the ripping away of a desire that dwells at the core of womanhood—doesn’t matter what her status is. Were God ever to choose a husband for her, she now knew with certainty she could never give him children.
Coming to grips with singleness had been hard, she told me. Coming to grips with childlessness had unexpectedly been harder.
By the time of her surgery, however, she had let God deal with much of her pain and loss. In fact, one day while recovering in the hospital, she heard a baby crying in the near distance. And amazingly, instead of the sweet sound rushing over her with another wave of heartache and grief, it compelled her to seize the moment as an opportunity to receive her season of barrenness and to walk within it wholeheartedly—to surrender instead of fight against what the Lord was allowing. As she did this, a consuming sense of freedom surged through her body. God placed a blanket of His peace and contentment around her in a remarkable way. She knew that He was bringing her through this ordeal victoriously. She felt like He was saying to her, “You have given up the physical womb, but I have given you a spiritual womb.”
Nearly six months later, while attending a meeting at church, she and a small gathering of brothers and sisters were in the pastor’s office, praying passionately and earnestly for God’s work and God’s people. During the course of their praying, a wise, godly mentor—who actually knew nothing about her experience of release and surrender those many months earlier—slipped over to where she was, placed a loving hand across her shoulder blades, and said to her in words that supernaturally confirmed God’s leading, “You are not barren. Out of your womb will come new life. There is life to be produced and a legacy to be left through you. You have daughters, many of them.”
Many of them.
Perhaps you know my Aunt Ruth’s heartache. Perhaps you feel cheated from experiencing a biological legacy. But maybe, if you look carefully, you’ll see the same thing God opened my sweet aunt’s eyes to see—spiritual offspring, a plethora of daughters, just waiting to be imprinted with wisdom and counsel and encouragement and favor . . . with the embrace of someone’s motherly love.
As women in whom God’s Spirit lives and has borne fruit, we have each been called to leave a godly legacy, to pass the baton of His grace and truth to others who will then take it to lengths and destinations we will never go ourselves. This is not an option. This is a heavenly mandate.
How unjust it would be for God’s work in your life to start and stop with you. Your lifespan is simply not long or large enough to contain the heights and depths of His activity, then to swallow it whole without offering anyone else a bite.
This heritage must be carried on. And it can be.
Through you. To them.
This truly is the essence of what a godly legacy is—the continued sharing of values, standards, beliefs, disciplines, priorities, experiences, lessons learned—not only to those who sprout from your family tree but also to those with whom you share the bloodline of Christ.
• If this chapter speaks of your story, what does God seem to be specifically saying to you through it?
• Who are some younger women that come to your mind who could benefit from a mentoring relationship with you?
• If perhaps this chapter doesn’t apply to you personally, how could you use its truths to both encourage and challenge the single, childless women in your life—to invest themselves in the responsibility of legacy building?
Set in Stones
What do these stones mean to you? (Joshua 4:6)
In any other place, they might be just rocks. Gray, bland, boring, stagnant pieces of creation, good for little other than holding down the end of your picnic blanket or cracking open a nutshell.
But put those rocks on the banks of the Jordan River, marking the site where two million Hebrews closed the book on forty years of wilderness wandering, walking across on dry ground into the promised land—a milk-and-honey moment they’d been waiting their whole lives to see—and suddenly these are not just rocks anymore. They’re monuments.
And that’s exactly what God intended when He said to Joshua . . .
“Take for yourselves twelve men from the people, one man from each tribe, and command them, saying, ‘Take up for yourselves twelve stones from here out of the middle of the Jordan, from the place where the priests’ feet are standing firm, and carry them over with you and lay them down in the lodging place where you will lodge tonight.’”
So Joshua called the twelve men whom he had appointed from the sons of Israel, one man from each tribe; and Joshua said to them, “Cross again to the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan, and each of you take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Israel.
“Let this be a sign among you, so that when your children ask later, saying, ‘What do these stones mean to you?’ then you shall say to them, ‘Because the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD; when it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off.’ So these stones shall become a memorial to the sons of Isr
ael forever.” (Joshua 4:2–7 NASB)
Rocks. Just rocks. Until they are gathered, strategically memorialized, and purposefully positioned to be remembered.
Most of us would probably categorize our days as an array of mundane, normal experiences. It’s what we do. It’s who we are. It’s how we get from point A to point bedtime. From good-morning to good-night. But take a woman resolved to leave a godly legacy, and she begins to realize that these moments stand for more than mere calendar dates and common occurrences. They are the ongoing testaments of God’s work in her life. They represent experiences with Him that are unique and personal, as noteworthy and significant as they are normal and second nature.
They may just be Mondays, but they are still monuments.
So I’m asking you today to become intentional about gathering up these “stones,” about building a record of what God is doing in your life. Instead of spending every other night this week on something that will probably yield little if anything of real value, would you be willing to take just one slice of one evening to walk back into the middle of the Jordan—into some moment when you experienced God in a memorable way—and pull out some insights that could help begin construction on a growing record of your legacy?
Your legacy. It needs a script for others to follow. Both you and they need a way to remember.
Now let me preface what I’m about to share with you by confessing that I’m not all that fantastic when it comes to journaling. I wrote a little something in my journal last week, and it was my first entry since, oh, nine months ago? How’s that for consistency? I’ve always admired those women who keep a beautifully bound, leather journal in the top drawer of their nightstand, pulling it out every evening like clockwork, recording in flowing prose their experiences of the day. I’d love to be like that. Maybe one day I will.
But even though I’ve not been terribly dependable in this department, I’m grateful that the Lord has kept journaling an important part of my life. I’m the type of woman who journals when . . .
something is pressing on my heart and mind.
a specific milestone has been reached.
the Lord has been doing an important, transformative work in me.
I’m in the middle of a particular life occurrence that seems to hold implications I just know will matter in the future.
Fairly average days and events, in most respects. And yet the only thing that really makes them forgettable is when I fail to record them.
So how happy I am that I’ve done this through the years. Even the most sporadic sentiments have been fun to look back on. To be able to recall specific seasons of life, to remember exactly what I was praying for, then to recognize more clearly than ever how the Lord responded—few things are more faith building and encouraging to me. It’s like pulling down a photo album and flipping through the pages, reliving scenes you’re so glad you captured when you had the chance. Some are from big moments—family vacations, birthdays, Christmas Eve. But others are just from offhand afternoons when you saw something you wanted to keep and treasure. Recording God’s handiwork, in ways both large and small, provides you and others a walk down memory lane that inspires because it’s Him . . . in you.
And now in stone.
Because the day will certainly come when those to whom you desire to leave a vibrant spiritual heritage will be interested in seeing how you handled even an ordinary moment from an ordinary morning, how God’s faithfulness and care and protection and guidance intersected your path one day and turned it into much more than just a routine traffic stop. Your children, your grandchildren, the younger women you hope your life will be able to affect—they’ll be curious to see how He moved and worked, through both your successes and your failures, your high spots and your biggest mistakes, wrapping them all in His sovereign grace and (with your cooperation) sealing them in ink on these simple pages.
It’s good reading. Legacy making.
I’ve found this to be so valuable and rewarding, in fact, that I’ve started a journal for each of my sons. On occasion when I see the Lord moving in their lives, or I notice them reaching a new level of maturity in a particular area, I open up their little book and make a record of the experience. Even if I only think to do it once a year on their birthdays, my goal is to give it to them later when they’re old enough to appreciate a mom’s look back at their spiritual growth and development, insights that their wives and children—wow, my grandchildren—will find intriguing and priceless, even hilarious in spots. But a legacy all the same. Continually rolling forward. Connecting generations. God be glorified.
If you’ve tuned me out here because you just have no interest in writing things down—again, I understand. My siblings and I have a father who is that way. One Christmas we went to great lengths to find a perfect journal for him, one with a genuine leather cover. Lush and masculine. Quite pricey even, but we thought it was worth purchasing for him. We hoped it would span the generations. We had his name engraved on it and presented it to him with great pomp and circumstance, believing he’d enjoy having it on his desk and writing little nuggets to us whenever he had something special to pass along to his children for posterity. That way we’d always have a record of these important sentiments of his.
That was five years ago. The journal is still on his desk.
And it is also still empty.
My point is—I’m not really asking you to resolve to journal—to do it in this one way and this one way only. I know the pen-and-paper method just doesn’t match up for everybody. I get that. But I am asking you to find your own way to store up your legacy. To gather stones.
Obviously the life you live is much more important than the one you write down. The way you respond in practical, consistent ways to Christ’s lordship is of much greater real-world importance than how some book of yours remembers it. But as a woman of resolutions, you bear a responsibility to others. This is not just about whether you like to do something. It’s about priority. Purpose. Promises.
So talk into a tape recorder. Create your own digital audio clips. Set up a video camera. Design an annual scrapbook. Journal your quiet time notes from Bible reading and prayers that can be left for your loved ones long after you’re gone. One year when my sister found herself too busy to journal consistently, she searched back as far as she could in her Twitter account and Facebook status, and printed up every post she’d made. Saving those writings gave her a perfect way to capture her thoughts and happenings from the past year.
Just find your own unique way to do it, but don’t leave your children and grandchildren without something to see and touch and feel and hear—something that shows what God has done to bring you and them to this moment in time. It’s a masterpiece in the making.
Every day your Father does something new. He molds and shapes. He guides and refines. He rotates and contours and buffs around the edges. Every single day. And though it may seem all routine and ordinary to you, this is the stuff of your legacy. It’s happening all around you. Inside you. In living relationship with the One you long for others to know in ever deeper ways, to ever greater extents. And one day, way sooner than you think, when they come to you wanting to know, “What do these stones mean?” . . . make sure you have something to show them, not just tell them.
You are a woman whose story bears reading and repeating because your God is doing amazing things in you, whether or not you realize it. Things you don’t want to hide and downplay. Things others shouldn’t need to learn all over again. Things that will help them launch into life with a spiritual boost and a head start.
That’s the strength of a woman’s legacy. Your legacy.
Built on a Rock. Carved in stone.
• This final resolution is the climax of every other one we’ve made. The primary purpose of these resolutions has been to assist and support you in leaving a legacy you can be proud of. As we near the end of our journey, I ask you to use this last experience as the opportunity to tie together everything we’v
e been learning and committing to along the way. These have not just been pledges to become a better person. This is about living a life that’s bigger than yourself, one that can’t be contained by the limits of a human lifetime. This is about both responsibility and joy—the responsibility to invest heavily in others and the joy of watching God take our smallest gifts and turn them into eternal treasures. In whatever way He leads you to do this, He will supply you incredible grace and strength to accomplish it. As you make this resolution, realize you’re making a truly lasting difference and that your commitment to these thirteen resolutions will make an impact for generations to come.
• You—a woman of great resolves—are establishing a godly legacy.
LEAVING A GODLY LEGACY
I fully resolve to make today’s decisions with tomorrow’s impact in mind. I will consider my current choices in light of those who will come after me.
__________
THE RESOLUTION FOR WOMEN: AT A GLANCE
I DO solemnly resolve before God to embrace my current season of life and live with a spirit of contentment.
I WILL champion God’s model for womanhood and teach it to my children.
I WILL celebrate my God-given uniqueness and the distinctions He has placed in others.
I WILL live as a woman answerable to God and faithfully committed to His Word.
I WILL seek to devote the best of myself to the primary roles God has entrusted to me.
The Resolution for Women Page 22
