Leaving a Legacy

Ah!! It's almost December! Siiiiigh... time passes too quickly and too slowly at exactly the wrong moments. Oh well, I shall just jump right into this.


As I have not blogged for quite some time and have not really allowed myself time to formulate my thoughts.. this shall be quite unorganized and choppy. :) 


Annnyways.. so, this past semester I've been listening to the lessons taught to the youth group back home via the internet. They went through this series called One Month to Live and it touched on how you should think and manage your time in view of how we never know how much time any of us actually have. So, basically, the whole thing touched on the question "What would you do if you had one month to live?" It's quite the thought provoking question to be sure. After all.. I'm in college. If I had one month to live, I'd drop out of school, and spend more time with my loved ones, tell more people about Jesus.... and the list goes on and on. BUT.. here's the thing..what's preventing me from doing all that now? I mean..granted.. I'm not gonna drop out of school.. but I can spend more time investing in my loved ones, and for sure I could tell more people about Jesus and all that other stuff. Mmmm.. I'll get back to that thought in a minute.


So, I finally was able to listen to the last message in the series the Thursday before my Thanksgiving break. It was appropriately called "Leaving a Legacy." And the verse that has been the theme in the series the whole time is Pslam 90:12
It says, "Teach us to number our days, 
   that we may gain a heart of wisdom."

Number our days.. so.. if you had a month.. that's about 30 days... annnnd...that's not very much when you think about eternity. When I first started listening to this series, it sparked an interesting discussion with one of my  friends here at school. His argument was that we shouldn't think of life only being one month long because we wouldn't consider going over seas and helping people in Africa. I'm not really sure how that conversation ended.. most likely positively and leaving us both thinking about something deep. Buuuut it was a long time ago. 

So.. fast forward. I was actually in the middle of listening to the Legacy lesson when a different friend happened upon me and I thus paused the lesson to have a short little conversation. The short conversation turned into a 40 minute conversation with much discussion about how I was about to take the final step in switching campus ministries. I was much encouraged to hear that I would be missed,  if nothing else, by this one individual to whom I had done an absolutely terrible job of being a friend.  I thought to myself "Hmm.. maybe I did something right.." 

So the series closed and what I got out of that final lesson was that obedience and faithfulness will leave a legacy and that obedience is like building a house on bedrock. 

So... That kinda confused me. I was trying to put it in context of my life. I'm stepping away ...and I'm pretty sure it's what God wants me to do..so that's obedience..mmmm ok check.  Doing that.. and faithfulness..well.. I really love God everyday...so yep.. check that off too. Hmmmmm something is missing. 

I don't feel like I'm leaving a good mark.. if any at all. I thought about this for the rest of the day. How am I leaving a legacy? It was later that night that I realized that I wasn't really. I ran into a friend who was wishing to return something to me and asked if I would be in church on Sunday like I usually am... Ummm no... I stopped going to that church almost three months ago... yeah. I don't know why that bothered me..but it struck an odd chord. I was quite upset at the thought that while my presence often goes unnoticed..so does my absence. It was quite the wall of discouragement. 

I decided to ignore the feeling as it was a big church and college students aren't always consistent with church attendance anyways. The next day I was talking with another friend and asked about the recent baptism that had taken place at the church that I no longer attend. To which I got the response "why are you asking me? Weren't you there?" Aye.. so twice in less than 24 hours, two of my formally closest friends had not yet noticed that I had not been to their church for a couple months. The question popped back into my mind "are you leaving a legacy?"... apparently not. I failed. From there it was just a downward spiral of thoughts of discouragement about how I've wasted this whole semester, all my friends are gonna forget about me when I step completely out of the one ministry, I'm not making any difference.. so on and so forth. It was quite miserable. 

I had a few hours by myself while waiting to meet up with someone later. After an hour sitting in the freezing cold I found myself sitting in a random hallway of a random building somewhere on campus. During this time I thought to myself, "well.. I am defeated. That's all there is to it." But.. somehow, I remembered a quote from a Beth Moore study I did a long time ago and it was "When we are defeated, we have defeated ourselves for the enemy has no right to defeat us." I think that's like getting hit on the head with a spiritual 2 by 4. I used the time to myself to talk to God and see what on earth was at the bottom of such a ridiculous downcast spirit. 

I put a lot of stock in the people that surround me. I want everyone to like me and I want everyone to be my friend. That's obviously a ridiculous idea that by Gods grace would never come true. After some encouraging conversations with other people I realized my fear of being forgotten or unimportant was really lame and I should not waste any more energy being discouraged. 

Then.. God had a special present just for me! I went home for thanksgiving and was greeted by my precious family. And on Sunday I got to go to church with my family. I was suddenly surrounded by lots and lots of people who I've known and loved and were as excited to see me as I was to see them. Adults, peers, friends, old Bible study leaders, friend's parents... it was glorious. God has blessed me with the most wonderful spiritual family I could ever hope for and I do not need the acknowledgement of people I have only known for about a year to gauge how much of a difference I'm making for Jesus. To be honest.. I don't think we truly will ever know how many people we affect when we come in contact with them. There are some people that I knew for only a short time that have encouraged my walk with Christ and there have been others that I've known a long time. 

So.. to wrap up all these thoughts.. I was thinking.. what is it that makes a difference? What's the magical formula that you gotta do and suddenly you've changed someone's life?

I think what I've realized is that while I would like to affect people with charm and flattery.. the only one that is genuinely going have an impact is Jesus. I mean, when I think about it.. my face is most lit up when I'm close to Jesus. I love people more when I'm filled with Jesus. And if there is anything i would want people to remember about me at all ever.. it would be that I love Jesus. A lot. And I truly hope that people knew that before I wrote a blog about it.. cuz that would be super sad if that wasn't obvious in my life.