Do you want to leave a lasting legacy that will point others to eternity long after you’re gone? I’m betting you do. Of course, if you’re still young and full of energy, you might not spend that much time pondering such things. You just bounce out of bed, uninjured from the night before, and go about your day. You eat bacon cheeseburgers and drink Mountain Dew, and your body seems completely fine with it.
But if you’re slightly older, like me (I won’t tell you my age, but annoyingly, you can Google it), you think about legacy a lot. You realize that you won’t be around forever, and you want to make your remaining time on this earth count.
It makes me think of the infamous flux capacitor from Back to the Future. That sci-fi device allowed Michael J. Fox to travel from 1985 to 1955 and then back to the future (a future that, at this point, is now the distant past). If you stumbled upon a real flux capacitor and could travel back to any one point in your life, what year would you choose?
I’d choose 1997. I had just met my wife, Veronica, and she was hopelessly in love with me and had commenced her desperate quest of locking me down. I’d love to relive some of those incredible moments. (Sometimes she tells the story differently, but whatever. It was still a great month.) I was also preparing to leave for Southeast Asia as a missionary and was filled with excitement about that.
I’d also love to tell 24-year-old J.D. about a small investment he should make. I didn’t have a lot of money back then, but I was trying to scrounge up enough to buy a DVD player to take with me overseas. That was one of the hottest-selling items in ’97. DVD players and Nintendo 64s. If you had an extra $1,000 lying around, that’s what you were trying to buy. But 1997 was also the year that an online bookseller called “Amazon” went public. You could buy a single share for $18. Today, one of those shares would be worth roughly $2,000, more than one hundred times the initial investment.
I’d tell 24-year-old J.D., “Forget about the DVD player. Don’t worry about all of your friends playing Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64. Trust me on this and buy some shares of Amazon.”
With a time machine and some well-placed investments, you could easily leave a lasting financial legacy. But the Bible does us one better: Throughout Scripture, God sets up principles for stewardship and generosity that are designed to leave a lasting legacy, not merely with our money, but with our entire lives.
Psalm 112:5–6 says, “It is well with the man who deals generously and lends; who conducts his affairs with justice. For the righteous will never be moved; he will be remembered forever” (ESV). If we do that, we’ll leave a legacy that will last and will be remembered forever. Isn’t that what you want?
But how do we do it? Here are four practical steps:
1. Choose to live generously and start somewhere.
Think of generosity as a three-runged ladder. The first step is giving back to God the firstfruits of what he’s given to us. The Bible frequently calls this a “tithe,” literally meaning “tenth,” the idea being that the first 10 percent of all that we get is given back to God. The second rung is living in recognition that all we have belongs to God—and asking him what he wants us to do with it. And the third rung is knowing that the wisest thing to do with the majority of our money is to invest it in eternity.
Unlike literal ladders, where you have to step on rung 1 before rung 2 or rung 3, the thing about a generosity ladder is you can start anywhere. If we want our lives to count for eternity, the first step is as obvious as it is difficult: Simply take the first step. Start somewhere and ask God to grow you into greater obedience.
2. Make a plan to give.
Good intentions are worthless without a plan of action. In 1 Corinthians 16:2, for instance, the Apostle Paul says, “On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income” (NIV). Paul didn’t want people scrounging around for an offering when he came. He wanted the Corinthians to plan, in advance, for their generosity.
Many of us act surprised and helpless when it comes to our money. We don’t know how much we make. We don’t know how much we have. We have general ideas, but no real plans. But when it comes to generosity, ignorance isn’t bliss. If we aren’t intentional in telling our money where to go, we’ll most likely end up wondering where it went.
The contemporary word for what Paul mentioned in 1 Corinthians is “budgeting.” I know that word is as exciting and sexy as a wet blanket, but there’s simply no getting around it. If we want to live generously, it starts with knowing what we’ve got to be generous with. So take some time to honestly assess your situation. Talk with your family, your spouse, or a close friend. Figure out where your money is going—and then, make a plan for where you want it to go.
3. Do your giving first.
If you look back at Genesis 4, you’ll find two sacrifices to God, one from Cain and one from Abel. The two offerings are different—Cain brings produce and Abel brings meat. But the text doesn’t seem to indicate that what they brought was the issue. The only real difference between their offerings was a matter of timing: Abel offered the firstfruits of his flock. He gave first, before he could see any outcome or guarantee that his work would be successful. Cain, in contrast, gave at the end, after he knew he had enough to spare. God doesn’t want our leftovers. He wants our first and our best.
Giving our first and best isn’t easy. It requires faith. But God invites us to test him by putting his kingdom first and trusting him to provide the rest. And I’ve seen him come through on this more times than I can count.
4. Seek to grow your margin.
Generosity isn’t only for the rich. All of us can start, right now, structuring our lives to invest in eternity with whatever God has entrusted to us. For some of us, that might mean cutting things away from our lifestyle to increase margin. For others, it might mean selling off some asset that we have that we want to invest into eternity.
A warning: If we choose to live this way, we’re going to have to get comfortable with not being able to afford things that others around us can. Why? Because most people in the U.S. don’t live with financial margin. They aren’t giving charitably. They aren’t saving for the future. They aren’t even living within their current means. So if you, by contrast, are giving to the church (which your neighbor isn’t), that puts you one step behind. If you are saving for your future (which your neighbor isn’t), that puts you two steps behind. If you are intentionally living below your means (which your neighbor isn’t), that now puts you three steps behind. Don’t you think three steps is going to be obvious?
But we have to remember that what we see isn’t the whole reality. Sure, others around us may be able to buy more—today, anyway. But remember the future you want to leave behind. Do you want materialism and debt to be your legacy? Or would you rather leave a legacy of selflessness, compassion, and ministry investments?
None of us has a flux capacitor. We can’t travel back in time. Thankfully, the God who stands above time has given us a glimpse into the future. And based on his victory, we can invest today in what we know will last forever.
