Created to Leave a Legacy
Embedded in the word legitimacy is the word legacy. We are all created to leave a legacy. And, we do.
The legitimacy of our legacy is ultimately determined by God’s true measure, not ours or anyone else’s.
It is true that the beliefs, decisions, and choices we make and subsequently walk out, bear – accordingly – the fruit of our life. That is a basic principle of this website for embracing your design for redemptive living. Jesus instructed that recognizing the fruit produced (difficult as that is at times) is the test.
A schooled or instructed farmer or gardener knows the tell-tale signs of threat to the crop or blossom, as equally as they recognize a healthy, potentially well-producing field or vine. In both cases, it is to their benefit, livelihood, and desired sourcing of others to respond to the work of the land at hand.
In the work of the ministry we steward at Shammahs Field / Ministries, we do not tell a client with specific issues worked through that they are healed or finished. Instead, we make known to them that in time the fruit of work done will be made evident. We are guided by this principle Jesus himself taught.
Holy Spirit’s Effective Work
Holy Spirit works effectively where He is invited or allowed to do so. He does not engage in coercion. Rather, his Spirit witnesses to our spirit that something has changed. By faith, we choose to believe it, hold fast, water, feed, nurture, and speak life over that which Holy Spirit has wrought in secret within us. And, we wait.
F.B. Meyer well said that the nature of anything, whether individual, doctrine, or movement can be rightly estimated only after there has been time for the results to develop. Jesus set forth this fruit test in Matthew 12:33 and 35 –
“Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.
The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him,
and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.”
A Legitimate Legacy
Leaving a legitimate legacy begins with being joined to the Tree of Life, Christ Jesus. Through the ages, humanity has been affected, infected, and influenced by the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is telling that the word evil is live backwards. The redemptive side of that reality is that Christ infuses us with His very life, and that more abundantly as we learn to live and have our being in Him.1
Moreover, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses gone on before. Even now, they are cheering us on with the joy of hope fulfilled. Heavenly encouragement surrounds us more brightly than the darkness pressing in. We endure and persevere through faith in Christ for what is legitimately ours.
No matter how the powers of darkness have distorted and corrupted God’s original design, Christ has opened the way back to the Father that we may regain our legitimacy from Him alone. Holy Spirit’s work in this age of grace will one day be complete. For this present time, we have been given everything we need for life and godliness 2 – and for the legacy we will leave.
Eden: In the Beginning & Beyond
The legacy mandate was given to Adam and Eve when they were commanded by Elohim to be fruitful and multiply. It was not just offspring to which God was referring, though that was part of His blessing.3
- “Be fruitful” in the Hebrew 4 means to bear fruit (literally or figuratively); bring forth fruit or be, cause to be, make fruitful, grow, increase. The Hebrew “multiply” means to increase (in whatever respect), and (bring in) abundance, abundantly.
- Hosea 14:8b “From me comes your fruit”, and John 15:5 and 8 (that you bear much fruit) were contained and accounted for in our lifetime in the Father’s commandment to our First Parents.
The Dominion mandate included His directive to take the life of the Garden of Eden to the non-garden parts of the earth and replicate (bring forth fruit, multiply) what He had set in place in Creation. Adam, and sometime later, Adam and Eve, enjoyed unbroken fellowship with the LORD God – for how long, we don’t know for certain. What we do know is that time as we now experience it started at The Fall.5
Later, when the earth was destroyed by The Flood, Noah was given the same “be fruitful and multiply.”6
Later still, Jesus reinforced the same legacy mandate when He enjoined His disciples to “Go and ‘make disciples’ (pupils, instruct, teach, enroll as scholar) of all nations (foreign, non-Jewish, Gentile, race).”7
Eden: In our Day
One aspect of the study of the redemptive gifts is a personal unveiling of the Eden that believing faith in Christ is purposed to restore in our heart and life. Corporately, as each true believer brings forth fruit of Christ’s life within and multiplies it to the un-regenerated parts of our world, His light of life will prevail.
Legitimacy and Legacy are fruit of the LORD God’s fullness and goodness; inheritance and heritage both.
~ Nancy
1 Acts 17:28 2 II Peter 1:3 3 Genesis 1:28, 4:1 4 Hebrew: Strong’s Concordance
5 Genesis 3:22-23 6 Genesis 8:17 within Genesis chapters 6-8 7 Matthew 28:18-20
Click here for a printable PDF of this article: Redemptive Gifts Lexicon: Legacy & Legitimacy
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