Legacies

We're working our way through Colossians at Alliance Bible Fellowship and I am loving it. Today's message centered around Colossians 1:29 to 2:5 - it's amazing what you can understand from the Bible by actually reading it! Here is what I took away from the message.

In these verses Paul speaks of how he has continuously labored with all the energy Christ has given him. And he's not laboring and striving just for people he knows, but for people he has never met. He willingly accepts his burdens, imprisonments, and torture "so that they might be encouraged in the heart and united in love" and so that they might also understand the mystery of Christ - we have all we need  in Him. Paul also suffers as he does so that no one would be deceived by false teachers. Paul surely has achieved his goals; he is still encouraging fellow believers he could never have imagined meeting hundreds of years after his death. Paul spent every ounce of himself in service to God and His people, even to the point of death by sword. How many of us can say we've left a legacy like that?

What stories and lessons do you hope to pass down to others? A story of finding true love, failed adventures, or college mishaps you hope your children don't repeat? What is the greatest moment of your life, and does it have any spiritual value?

Many of us spend hours practicing, training, reaching for and training for different goals of ours. As we're pouring ourselves into these tasks we need to ask 'Can I point to the supreme importance of Christ in this? Would others?' How much of what I'm doing and spending my energy on is for myself, and how much is for others?

It's very popular today to 'leave it all on the mat' and work til you drop - but only for yourself. If I poured myself out completely for a sporting competition, graduate school any other activity for myself, that's perfectly acceptable. But if I pour out every single ounce of myself into something for the sole purpose of others, people would tell me to take time for myself. I'm guilty of telling myself this! In the last weeks I've often wished for more time for myself. I want my personal time to relax and refresh myself. I don't want to burn myself out on something. But, if I follow Paul's example, that's just what I should do. I should give all I have for the cause of Christ. So that others may come to know Him, be unified in love and encouraged.

I should follow the example of many Christian missionaries and martyrs over the past hundred years such as David Brainerd. His life goal was 'to burn out in one continual flame for God.' And he did just that. He served faithfully as a missionary to the Native Americans until he burned himself out and succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of  28. Many would think this a waste of a very promising young missionary's life. I believe Brainerd achieved his life goal and literally left it all on the mission field.

Will I ever be able to say the same of myself?