A Spiritual Trust Fund

The children of your people will live in security. Their children’s children will thrive in your presence.

Psalm 102:28

We can leave behind a spiritual inheritance for our descendants. Salvation is not inherited, but we can infect future generations so that there is a bent in that direction.

The spiritual inheritance I will leave behind for future generations begins with my own walk with the Lord. “Lord, through all the generations you have been our home!” (Psalm 90:1). Part of my estate is my dwelling place. “The LORD is my fortress; my God is the mighty rock where I hide” (Psalm 94:22, emphasis added). I have a dwelling place that is also a fortress.

All that I invest in my personal relationship with the Lord will provide spiritual shelter for future generations. I still take refuge in the faith of my parents. When times are hard, their faith, tested and proved through the years, is a safe place for me to run to. Because I have taken shelter there time and again, I have developed my own faith.

As I continue personally to discover new depths of faith, I am building a home place for my own children and for generations to come. As I invest myself in knowing God, I am creating an increasingly secure fortress for my children. “Those who fear the LORD are secure; he will be a refuge for their children” (Proverbs14:26).

Proverbs 24:3-4 says, “A house is built by wisdom and becomes strong through good sense. Through knowledge its rooms are filled with all sorts of precious riches and valuables.” Wisdom is the material of which your dwelling place is built, understanding is its foundation, and knowledge makes it beautiful and pleasant: “There is treasure in the house of the godly” (Proverbs 15:6).

You are creating for your descendants a spiritual home place. As you come to know God for yourself through firsthand experience, your descendants will be the beneficiaries.

Lord, let me invest in eternal treasure and leave a spiritual trust fund for generations to follow.

Every prayer and every sigh which you have uttered for [your descendants] and their future welfare will, in God’s time, descend upon them as a gentle rain of answers to prayers.

Ole Hallesby(1879–1961), Norwegian pastor and writer