Thoughts of a Ragamuffin

Thoughts of a Ragamuffin, Part 1: A Lineage, A Heritage, A Legacy

Today I would like to speak to you about your lineage, your heritage and your

legacy.

Your lineage is your family tree.

Have you ever taken the time to do a genealogy?

A genealogy traces your lineage, it puts names and dates and

places and sometimes even faces on your ancestors.

A lineage is the people you come from.

Their DNA is encoded in you.

Their blood flows through your veins.

A heritage is what your family has passed on to you.

You really have no say in your heritage.

Yet a heritage has a profound effect on you.

In my doctoral program I took three semesters of

intergenerational therapy learning how the family tree

shapes your life.

We are profoundly shaped by our family of origin,

by the heritage they pass on to us.

A legacy is what you pass on to others.

For your descendants you can think of it as an inheritance.

An inheritance is more than just tangible assets,

It can be a way of doing life.

Your lineage, who you come from,

Your heritage, what they gave you,

have great influence on how you experience the world.

Lineage and heritage is dropped in your lap,

You have no say in it.

Your legacy on the other hand is built by the choices you make,

The person you become.

The type of person you are to become like is Jesus.

As you become more and more like Jesus you will leave a

legacy of love.

A lineage reveals your roots.

In Luke we have one side of Jesus earthly lineage through Mary.

There is another family tree in Matthew.

One of the reasons these family trees are recorded is because

roots are important, maybe more important than you realize.

Luke 3:23-38 (MSG)

When Jesus entered public life he was about thirty years old, the son (in public perception) of Joseph, who was—son of Heli, ²⁴ son of Matthat, son of Levi, son of Melchi, son of Jannai, ²⁵ son of Joseph, son of Mattathias, son of Amos, son of Nahum, son of Esli, son of Naggai, ²⁶ son of Maath, son of Mattathias, son of Semein, son of Josech, son of Joda, ²⁷ son of Joanan, son of Rhesa, son of Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, son of Neri, ²⁸ son of Melchi, son of Addi, son of Cosam, son of Elmadam, son of Er, ²⁹ son of Joshua, son of Eliezer, son of Jorim, son of Matthat, son of Levi, ³⁰ son of Simeon, son of Judah, son of Joseph, son of Jonam, son of Eliakim, ³¹ son of Melea, son of Menna, son of Mattatha, son of Nathan, son of David, ³² son of Jesse, son of Obed, son of Boaz, son of Sala, son of Nahshon, ³³ son of Amminadab, son of Admin, son of Arni, son of Hezron, son of Perez, son of Judah, ³⁴ son of Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham, son of Terah, son of Nahor, ³⁵ son of Serug, son of Reu, son of Peleg, son of Eber, son of Shelah, ³⁶ son of Cainan, son of Arphaxad, son of Shem, son of Noah, son of Lamech, ³⁷ son of Methuselah, son of Enoch, son of Jared, son of Mahalaleel, son of Cainan, ³⁸ son of Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God.

When you consider your family tree its startling to realize that you are a product of

a unique set of events.

Each member of your family tree made decisions that have had great

impact on you.

Just think, what if dad hadn’t married mom—you wouldn’t be you.

Reflect back then on the whole family tree.

There is a whole orchestration of choices and their decisions that

have resulted in you.

There is a history, with its circumstances that have had direct bearing on you.

The thought can be staggering, if World War 2 never happened,

grand dad wouldn’t have meet grandma on Times Square

August 14, 1945,

one of your parents would not have been born,

which means you would not have been born.

Try untangling the twists and turns.

Then imagine God’s perspective,

God planned you.

Did He start that plan in the Garden of Eden?

Jeremiah 29:11-14 (MSG)

I know what I'm doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for. ¹² "When you call on me, when you come and pray to me, I'll listen. ¹³ "When you come looking for me, you'll find me. "Yes, when you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, ¹⁴ I'll make sure you won't be disappointed."

Lineage means that no one is independent,

No one stands alone.

Our lives are “the product of an amazing process of endless decisions made over

countless centuries.” (James Bryan Smith, Rich Mullins An Arrow Pointing to Heaven, p. 10)

Everyone of us is dependent on the previous generation.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons why the 5^th commandment of

the 10 is to Honor our Father and Mother.

We honor not only them but the whole family tree with our respect for

the part they played in bringing us into being.

Maybe by honoring the family tree,

We honor the one who put it all together—God.

Let me encourage you to research your family tree.

My mom is here with us today and she has a lot of experience in this area

and can give you some tips on how to get started.

I think that knowing at least the names of your ancestors is a

way of honoring them.

Your ancestors will become real people to you.

(James Bryan Smith, Rich Mullins An Arrow Pointing to Heaven, p. 9)

Heritage

Heritage is what your family tree has passed on to you.

Its more than just wealth that is passed on,

It’s a whole attitude and perspective on life.

It’s a whole way of being in the world.

Heritage effects all your relationships,

And since everything rises and falls on

relationships, heritage is vitally important.

No one has a perfect heritage.

Because our people have passed it on to us;

And people to varying degrees mess up.

Think back to the verse from Jeremiah,

When a person doesn’t seek God with all their heart,

God is not found,

What fills the gap is anti-Christ ways of being.

The most devastating anti-Christ ways of being are the

self-sins, the sins of egoism.

Self-centeredness,

Self-ambition,

Self-conceit,

Self-righteousness,

Self-sufficiency,

Just to name a few.

To the degree a person in your family tree lived according to the self sins is the

degree to which they passed on a less than stellar heritage to you.

The more they lived their lives in tune with love,

With the righteousness described in scripture is the degree to which

They pass on a goodly heritage to you.

I noticed in my family tree there was a lot of alcoholism.

An alcoholic has an adverse effect on the family dynamic and that

adverse effect can be passed down from one generation to the next.

The scripture gives us plenty of examples of the sins of the fathers being picked up

by the next generation:

Abijah was king in Israel but this is what is recorded about him

1 Kings 15:3 (NIV)

He committed all the sins his father had done before him; his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God…

We tend to do what was modeled for us.

I’m sure I have a drinking problem that’s why I avoid adult beverages.

There are 17 characteristics of adult children of alcoholics,

I’ve fought with a lot of them.

This is not a blame game,

Not a way to excuse yourself from anti-Christ behaviors.

This is just reality.

You have no control over the heritage that has been passed on to you.

“Until you come to terms with your heritage you’ll never be at peace with yourself.” (James Bryan Smith, Rich Mullins An Arrow Pointing to Heaven, p. 13)

The opposite is also true.

The closer one’s ancestors lived according to Godly wisdom,

The better your relationships tend to be.

Like reproduces like (ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny).

Your heritage can be a blessing or a curse,

A stepping stone or a stumbling block.

Usually its somewhere between those two extremes.

There are things in our inheritance useful to living life to the full

And things we may spend a lifetime to overcome.

One of the tasks of living your life to the full is coming to terms with the bad stuff

that was dropped in our lap.

Seeing it, accepting it, dealing with it, and then moving in a new

direction.

Lineage—who I come from.

Heritage—how I was taught to do life.

Lineage and heritage are the cards that you have been dealt.

How you play them is what legacy is all about.

Legacy is all about what you make of the life you have been given that you pass on

to others.

The legacy we leave is our choice

All of us will leave a legacy to our children.

Some of us will leave a legacy that will reach more than our family.

Regardless of how small or how big a legacy you leave,

You’ll want to leave a legacy of love.

That’s been God’s plan from the start and He has called to every

member of your family tree to produce such a legacy of love for

the generations.

If you have heard that call and responded to it,

Then these words of the Apostle ring true in your heart.

Ephesians 2:1-6 (MSG)

It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. ² You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. ³ We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. ⁴ Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, ⁵ he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! ⁶ Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in with Jesus, our Messiah.

Into your lineage and into your heritage God intervenes with transformational

power.

Power to change the sinful ways that have been ingrained in us by our

Lineage and heritage.

Power to become lovers.

Even if we enjoy a pure breed lineage and an exemplary heritage God still

intervenes transforming us more and more into the image of His Son,

empowering us to do what Jesus did—love.

Being a lover creates a great legacy.

In order to become a lover you must first be loved, know that you are loved.

John Wesley grew up in the church

His Father was a Anglican Priest,

His mother Susannah was devout.

He grew up in a time when being part of the church was

the expected norm.

He knew the creeds, the confessions of the faith and he knew theology,

But it wasn’t until God broke through all the religion that John

testifies that he felt his heart “strangely warmed” and suddenly

was aware that God loved him, loved him personally.

It transformed him

1 John 4:19 (NIV)

We love because he first loved us.

The first thing you need to be convinced in order to build a legacy of love is to

know that you are loved,

that God loves you,

even you,

so completely that He’s done everything to win you to

Himself.

He wants you with Him

How are you going to become convinced that God loves you?

You’re going to daily practice the seven habits of a disciple that’s one way.

Your convincing will be the result of an encounter with God,

Then you will know that you are loved.

To be a lover you must first know that you are loved.

Then to be a lover you must follow the example of the One who loved you first.

That example is Jesus.

Jesus demonstrates what a lover’s life is like.

A lover’s life is about serving a greater cause than yourself.

When you are passionately involved in something greater than yourself,

It moves your eyes to others.

Jesus said:

“I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has

taught me.” John 8:28 (NIV)

A great cause is helping to change for the better the way another person lives their

Life.

A great cause is being a conduit of righteousness and justice and

mercy from God to others.

A great cause is using the gifts God has entrusted you

with to accomplish His will for others.

To give yourself to the challenges of a great cause is to really come alive.

You focus. You get your hands dirty. You make a difference.

A couple of weeks ago I was researching heaven and hell for the Voyage of the

Dawn Treader series.

I came across this quote from Gian Carol Menotti

“Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might

have achieved,

of all the gifts which we have wasted,

of all that we might have done which we did not do”

(http://www.famousquotes.com/show/1035127/)

Heaven then just might begin on the day when you decide to live for something

greater than ourselves and vigorously work to make the most of every

opportunity.

Its not the qualified who make the difference,

it’s the caring who make a difference.

A lover’s life is about seeing the world around you.

“When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them,

because they were harassed and helpless,

like sheep without a shepherd.” Matthew 9:36 (NIV)

Seeing leads to compassion and compassion to empathy.

Empathy getting in sync with the experience of another.

Empathy leads to action.

The Apostle Paul calls us out of ourselves,

To look out of our little world, and then seeing to engage,

To take action.

Philippians 2:4 (NIV)

Each of you should look not only to your own interests,

but also to the interests of others.

Seeing people—knowing their hearts, (Matthew 9:4)

what motivates them,

knowing what they want to accomplish,

knowing what they really need,

that’s all involved in seeing someone.

Seeing includes both discernment and wisdom—

Both are gifts from God “who gives generously to all who ask.”

(James 1:5)

Discernment is knowing the scoop.

Wisdom is knowing how to deal with it.

A lover serves a cause greater than themselves.

A lover sees those around them.

A lover’s life is about satisfying the needs of others.

Again we look to Jesus as the model of the lover we are to be.

Matthew 20:26-28 (NIV)

“…whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, ²⁷ and whoever wants to be first must be your slave-- ²⁸ just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

Our culture tells us it is better to be served than to serve.

But that’s a lie.

Jesus put it this way:

John 15:13 (NLT)

There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

When we satisfy the need of another at the cost of a personal sacrifice,

We’re living a life of being a lover.

A lover serves a cause greater than themselves.

A lover sees those around them.

A lover satisfy the needs of others.

That’s the example Jesus demonstrated for us to imitate.

To be a lover you must first know that you are loved:

And then you must follow Jesus example.

By doing those two things,

Regardless of your lineage and your heritage you will leave a

legacy of love.

A lineage are the people you come from.

A heritage is what your people have passed on to you.

A legacy is what you give to others, what you will leave behind.

What kind of legacy are you building?

Whatever it is, you’re building it right now,

every choice, every decision, is building material.

What you do can effect countless others,

Maybe even for eternity.

I think that is a pretty high stakes game,

An awesome responsibility,

A precious gift.

You get to create your legacy.

What do you want to pass on to others?

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