A Generational Chain Of Believers

A Generational Chain Of Believers

Understand, therefore, that the LORD your God is indeed God. He is the faithful God who keeps his covenant for a thousand generations and lavishes his unfailing love on those who love him and obey his commands. Deuteronomy 7:9

For my birthday one year, Karen gave me the gift of genetic testing and a membership to www.ancestry.com, a website that allows people to trace their family tree. The results were fascinating and helped me learn more about the last fifty or sixty generations of my family. The furthest ancestor that I could identify was a Viking who lived in Norway around AD 400.

It’s humbling to think about all the generations that came before me. What would have happened if they’d made different choices along the way? What if one of them had married someone else? Would I still be here?

Reflecting on the lives of so many people from so many generations and the number of choices involved was illuminating. For the first time, I realized that, somewhere back in England, one or more of my ancestors had made a commitment to Jesus Christ and started a generational chain of faith.

From the moment of that decision, the Lord lavished his love on every generation that would follow. God has never wavered from the promises he made to that first person in my family who committed to him—even when some of us down through the ages strayed from him. During my own wandering in the desert, he was always there, sustaining me even when I didn’t acknowledge him as my provider.

Karen and I have four children, some of whom now have children of their own. God’s covenant with my ancestors continues through them. And I have many families in my practice with similar stories of multigenerational faith in which God has been constant and trustworthy. Many of these families are pillars in our community.

One of my daughters lives in Great Britain, where our family’s chain of believers began. Recently, while visiting her and my grandson, I once again marveled at how the Lord has shown us his steadfast love for more than a thousand years—and yet, his promise is for a thousand generations, so there is so much more to come.

TODAY’S RX

Your legacy matters. The faith you choose and the example you set for how to follow the Lord may affect a thousand generations.

God, you are faithful. Your love endures forever. You shine your love on all who follow you, and I’m grateful to be your child. Help me to leave a lasting legacy for the generations in my family that are yet to come.