I have an aunt who loves genealogy. She’s the relative who shows up at family reunions with all the collated handouts to distribute or with full albums of old photographs to lay across the picnic tables, tagged by specific names and dates. Imagine her delight when, as part of her digging around for bits and shreds of family history information, she came across a well-worn Bible that appeared to have been used by one of our ancestors as far back as the mid-1820s.
It turns out this Bible belonged to my great-great-great-grandmother.
With this and other records, we learned about our family’s vibrant spiritual history. When my great-great-grandfather came to Christ, I discovered a significant shift in my family line that impacts us even today. It’s humbling to know that when my great-great-grandfather was praying for his family, he was also praying for me and mine. This is the power of knowing our family’s spiritual history.
The spiritual history of our family helps us draw our little household circle existence inside a much larger, much more purposeful ring of influence, one that rolls backward and forward. It’s also a way for each of us (especially our kids) to develop a new sense of belonging, a deeper sense of gratitude, a broadening sense of time and identity.
Many parents share a difficult response to this, “Our family does have some Christians in it, but also has a lot of trouble and brokenness and breakdown—some of which our kids know about, some they don’t. It’s not a very pretty picture. Not much of a spiritual legacy.”
While many of us carry that burden, consider the meaningful benefits of better understanding our family’s history. When we view our genealogy from a spiritual perspective, it can shift our family’s legacy from places of pain and regret to a movement of grace. Isn’t that powerful?
If that legacy of hurt and pain describes your home today, begin to break the cycle —right now. You’re the first in what could represent an entirely new form in the direction of your family legacy by God’s grace.
Here are a few ways you can get started:
- Begin by interviewing one of the older members of your family. Learn about their part in your family’s spiritual journey. It might be a difficult conversation, but the truth will be freeing and it will allow you to evaluate and prepare the parts for a new spiritual plan.
- Next, take the critical step of attending and inviting a family member to attend a Charting Your Family Spiritual Course workshop.
- Lastly, change the trajectory of your family’s legacy by evaluating your immediate family’s spiritual condition through the resource of Victorious Family’s parenting HomeKit or a 90-minute session with Dr. Terence Chatmon.
Let me leave you with the Lord’s instruction to Moses as Aaron and the sons of Israel were ordained as the first generation of priests over Israel. At the end of the training, Moses leaves them with this statement in Leviticus 8:35, “Keep the Lord’s Charge.” We need to link arms with these saints and keep the Lord’s charge for our family–one generation to the next. Join me in this humble endeavor.
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