Talking About You

I want to be known for being a selfish jerk.

I want to be known as a quiet, introverted, shy person that no one is let in to my world.

I want to be forgotten.

I want to be remembered for being greedy and ruthless.

I want to be remembered for being lazy.

Obviously no one wants to leave these kinds of legacy. We want to know that somehow our lives mattered, we made the world a better place, we made a difference. The question is how? It is an important question because I don’t know many that get a do over in life.

“The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God stands forever.”(Isaiah 40:8)

If you are going to leave a great and godly legacy, you have got to build godly convictions. I grimace at my hair style in high school, the clothes I wore back in the day, and why did we have that orange carpet anyways. Things change…God’s Word never does....cliché however it was true hundreds of years ago and it will be true thousands of years from now. This is what conviction is all about; they are core values that are unchanging and eternal. It is a strong belief that shows up in the way we act.

The problem is too many have what Craig Groeschel calls preferences and not convictions. He describes a preference as a strong desire that you will compromise when the cost becomes too high. It goes like this…

I prefer to be a virgin when I get married until the peer pressure is too much and the moment is just right and then I give away my preference.

I prefer to be generous until I see that new car and then you got to look out for number one.

I prefer to be generous, but it's not the way I always live.

Maybe you would say I prefer to go to church but football season starts next week. Church or football? You can't have both, you've got to make a choice. Football often wins out.

You prefer to be a tither until money gets tight.

You prefer family time; you want that to be important but people demands, work demands, etc.
We want these things but we give them up when the going gets tough.

To leave a great and godly legacy let’s attach convictions to God’s Word that cause us to live it out (James 1:22).

I like the way The Message says Jesus words in Matthew 7:26, “But if you just use My words in Bible studies and don’t work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach.” You don’t really believe something unless you live it out.

Often are convictions are misguided. Kids know that parents will flex on most things…but don’t move the remote control….

More concerned with the appearance of our kids then their character.

Who cares about commitment, you better not change the church service style.

We are giving off a message we don't want to leave because we have wrong convictions. A godly legacy is going to be directly tied to the convictions we are demonstrating. Remember there will be a day everyone will be gathered together and they will be talking about you, only you won’t be there…what will they say? Will there be awkward silence, a forced niceness to mask what was really true, or a pouring forth of gratitude for your life and the difference you made?