28 Aug 2007, Posted by Lance in General, No Comments.

Family Legacies

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No
matter who we are, where we live, or what our goals may be, we all have
one thing in common: a heritage. That is, a social, emotional and
spiritual legacy passed on from parent to child. Every one of us is
passed a heritage, lives out a heritage, and gives a heritage to our
family. It’s not an option. Parents always pass to their children a
legacy … good, bad or some of both.

A spiritual, emotional and
social legacy is like a three-stranded cord. Individually, each strand
cannot hold much weight. But wrapped together, they are strong. That’s
why passing on a positive, affirming legacy is so important and why a
negative legacy can be so destructive. The good news is that you, with
God’s help, can decide to pass a positive legacy on to your children
whether you received one or not.

Today, if we don’t intentionally
pass a legacy consistent with our beliefs to our children, our culture
will pass along its own, often leading to a negative end. It is
important to remember that passing on a spiritual, emotional and social
legacy is a process, not an event. As parents, we are responsible for
the process. God is responsible for the product. We cannot do God’s
job, and He won’t do ours.

The Emotional Legacy

In
order to prosper, our children need an enduring sense of security and
stability nurtured in an environment of safety and love.

The Social Legacy

To
really succeed in life, our children need to learn more than management
techniques, accounting, reading, writing and geometry. They need to
learn the fine art of relating to people. If they learn how to relate
well to others, they’ll have an edge in the game of life.

The Spiritual Legacy

The
Spiritual Legacy is overlooked by many, but that’s a mistake. As
spiritual beings, we adopt attitudes and beliefs about spiritual
matters from one source or another. As parents, we need to take the
initiative and present our faith to our children.

The Emotional Legacy

Sadly,
many of us struggle to overcome a negative emotional legacy that
hinders our ability to cope with the inevitable struggles of life. But
imagine yourself giving warm family memories to your child. You can
create an atmosphere that provides a child’s fragile spirit with the
nourishment and support needed for healthy emotional growth. It will
require time and consistency to develop a sense of emotional wholeness,
but the rewards are great.

A strong emotional legacy:

• Provides a safe environment in which deep emotional roots can grow.
• Fosters confidence through stability.
• Conveys a tone of trusting support.
• Nurtures a strong sense of positive identity.
• Creates a “resting place” for the soul.
• Demonstrates unconditional love.

Which
characteristics would you like to build into the legacy you pass along
to your children? Even if you don’t hit the exact mark, setting up the
right target is an important first step.

The Social Legacy

In
order to prosper, our children need to gain the insights and social
skills necessary to cultivate healthy, stable relationships. As
children mature, they must learn to relate to family members, teachers,
peers and friends. Eventually they must learn to relate to coworkers
and many other types of people such as salespeople, bankers, mechanics
and bosses.

Nowhere can appropriate social interaction and
relationships be demonstrated more effectively than in the home. At
home you learned — and your children will learn — lessons about
respect, courtesy, love and involvement. Our modeling as parents plays
a key role in passing on a strong social legacy.

Key building blocks of children’s social legacy include:

• Respect, beginning with themselves and working out to other people.
• Responsibility,
  fostered by respect for themselves, that is cultivated by assigning
  children duties within the family, making them accountable for their
  actions, and giving them room to make wrong choices once in a while.
• Unconditional
  love and acceptance by their parents, combined with conditional
  acceptance when the parents discipline for bad behavior or actions.
• The setting of social boundaries concerning how to relate to God, authority, peers, the environment and siblings.
• Rules that are given within a loving relationship

The Spiritual Legacy

Parents
who successfully pass along a spiritual legacy to their children model
and reinforce the unseen realities of the godly life. We must recognize
that passing a spiritual legacy means more than encouraging our
children to attend church, as important as that is. The church is there
to support parents in raising their children but it cannot do the
raising; only parents can.

The same principle applies to
spiritual matters. Parents are primary in spiritual upbringing, not
secondary. This is especially true when considering that children,
particularly young children, perceive God the way they perceive their
parents. If their parents are loving, affirming, forgiving and yet
strong in what they believe, children will think of God that way. He is
someone who cares, who is principled and who loves them above all else.

Here
are five things you do that predict whether your children will receive
the spiritual legacy a Christian parent desires. Do you:

1. Acknowledge
   and reinforce spiritual realities? Do your children know, for example,
   that Jesus loves everyone? That God is personal, loving and will
   forgive us?
2. View God as a personal, caring being who is to be loved and respected?
3. Make spiritual activities a routine part of life?
4. Clarify timeless truth — what’s right and wrong?
5. Incorporate spiritual principles into everyday living

Reposted from Focus on the Family