“And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children.”
Deuteronomy 6:6-7
When my mother passed away from cancer in 1982, she left my two brothers and I a small inheritance. It wasn’t much by today’s standards, but as a single mother of three, it was the best she could do. I was sixteen at the time and too reckless and irresponsible to receive it, so she left a stipulation that I wouldn’t see my share until I turned twenty-three. No doubt she hoped that by then I would have gotten my life together. I hadn’t.
In fact, I was in a much worse state of brokenness when the money finally came through, and I squandered it in about a month’s time. It still stings to recount that story, even after all these years.
Thankfully, I’m not the same person today that I was then. I experienced a profound change around the age of twenty-six — some thirty-five years ago now. And the reason for that transformation can be traced, at least in part, back to my mother. As it turned out, the inheritance wasn’t the only thing she left me, or even the most important. She left me a heritage — a spiritual one — that would eventually eclipse and redeem every year wasted in those early days.
As a child and into my adolescence, my mother took me to church every Sunday. As a single mother trying to clothe, feed, and educate three boys, she didn’t have the time or resources to do a lot with us. But one of the things she rarely compromised on was church on Sunday. Her faith in Christ mattered to her. I suspect it’s what kept her going when my father left her unexpectedly and she was left to face the overwhelming weight of her circumstances alone. As a child, I certainly didn’t appreciate — and I suspect my mother could never have imagined — how important her commitment to dragging us to church every Sunday would prove to be in our lives.
Somewhere in the framework of her faith, she understood that Christ could do for me far more than she ever could. Confronted with her own limited time, energy, and resources, she came to understand the importance of passing on her faith in the God who possessed all three in infinite measure.
I don’t know where my mother stood in her family’s line of “the faithful.” But I do know that she, whether intentionally or not, fulfilled a biblical mandate when she set out to pass on her faith to me. In doing so, she became one more generational link in a spiritual family that stretches all the way back to the earliest pages of Scripture.
This responsibility — passing a spiritual heritage from one generation to the next — was first given by God to the people of Israel after He delivered them from bondage in Egypt and entered into covenant with them (see Exodus–Deuteronomy). To that first generation, wandering and uncertain, He said:
“And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children.”
In God’s economy, material inheritance pales in comparison to the spiritual heritage He wants us to have. Money, houses, and possessions come and go, offering only momentary comfort. God alone is eternal, unchanging, and ultimately satisfying. In fact, the history of Israel’s national rise and fall can be traced, generation after generation, back to one single variable: whether their faith was successfully passed on. It didn’t take long for them to drop the baton. No sooner had God given that generation a permanent homeland — their physical inheritance — than they slid into idolatry.
“After that generation died, another generation grew up who did not acknowledge the LORD or remember the mighty things he had done for Israel.” Judges 2:10
Without the spiritual heritage that was meant to accompany the physical inheritance, they lost their way almost immediately.
This isn’t only a biblical principle. It’s confirmed by history and research across the world. There’s plenty of evidence stating that most family inheritances and businesses don’t survive to the third generation, and the data consistently points to the same root cause: the founding generation transferred material goods but never transferred vision, values, or purpose. Likewise, research shows that people who actively pass on wisdom, values and a world-view to their children report far greater fulfillment than those who simply accumulate possessions for them to inherit.
The money my mother left me was gone in a month. But the truths she planted have been growing for thirty-five years, and they’re still growing today. That is the difference between an inheritance and a heritage. One is measured monetarily and spent in a season. The other is measured in generations and never runs dry.
I’ve thought many times about what would have become of me if my mother had only had money to leave behind. I don’t have to wonder — I already know, because I lived it. I spent it, and I was still lost. The stipulation she placed on my inheritance couldn’t protect me from myself. But the heritage she left me carried no such conditions, and it needed none. Her faith in Jesus, her commitment to prayer, the scriptures, I didn’t know I was absorbing — those were doing something no inheritance ever could. They were answering a question I hadn’t even learned to ask yet: not what will I do with my life, but who does my life belong to? The transforming moment that finally changed everything was when I learned the answer to that question. My life belongs to Jesus Christ. The heritage my mother had tried to pass on to me as a child broke forth as new revelation. God loves me. He sent His son Jesus to die on the cross for my sins. He rose victoriously over sin and death on the third day and offers eternal life to all who put their faith in Him. As Jesus Himself said,
John 5:24 “I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life.”
Those simple but radical truths accomplished in me what no inheritance, no amount of money or possessions could ever do.
Every parent leaves something behind. That much is guaranteed. The only real question is what will it be? Will it be an inheritance that gets spent in a month, or a heritage that outlives you by generations — one that reaches your grandchildren and hands them, in their darkest moment, something unshakable to stand on?
So here’s the question worth sitting with before you close this article: if your children remember only one thing about what you left them, what do you want it to be? An address, a number in a bank account — or a faith that will sustain them long after the money is gone and nothing else is left?
In the blackest moment of my life, when I desperately needed answers to life’s hardest questions, it was those eternal truths — sown into the soft soil of my childhood — that finally broke through the hardened surface of my adulthood.
My mother is gone now, and so is the money she left me. But her heritage isn’t. Recently, our entire family was able to gather for the first time in seven years for the occasion of our youngest daughter’s wedding. What a joy to see all of our children passing the baton of faith in Jesus, along with the love, joy and peace He gives, to our grandkids. Regardless of what the future holds for them, I rest knowing that they have a heritage in Christ, and in Him they have everything they need to live life to the fullest.
“I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.” 3 John 1:4
By Pastor Tim Mattox
Paphos Calvary Chapel,
www.calvarycyprus.com
