Transformed: 7 Pillars Of A Legacy Minded ManSample

Pillar 3: Purity

When I was a kid, I told many lies because I wanted to be somebody—somebody I wasn’t. When I was small, I was scrawny and was often beat upon. I was taken advantage of. Anybody who has had those experiences knows they play in your head. They make you angry and they cause you a lot of angst in social situations. I handled the angst by lying.

People lie because they want something they don’t have or to avoid something that is painful. I wanted to be stronger than I was and I wanted to avoid the pain of being weak and inferior to those around me, so I lied. One of the reasons people lie is because it works—at least for the moment. Just like a house of cards, lies will stand up for a while and look good, but as soon as that first gust of wind hits, they topple. That was my pattern early on—build a house of lies and hope I wasn’t around when it crumbled.

Remember, our legacy is our pattern. If our lifestyle is a mess, then our legacy—what we leave for the people who follow us—will be too. We will wake up one day to see our kids repeating or “improving” on our sins, making them worse than ever. In effect, we teach our kids how to sin. As legacy-minded men however, we need to see our own purity as a priority so we can help our kids avoid sin by leaving them a legacy of pure living. This includes matters of integrity and sexual purity.

God desires us to raise us up to his level by giving us his standard for our life.

Think About It

• Purity is God’s “moving in” system; he moves his furniture in and he moves your things out. What items is God changing on the inside of you?
• You no doubt have experienced purity changes within you; how has your family, marriage, and kids reacted to it?
• Sometimes we can wrestle with our desires vs. Gods desires within us. What struggles have you had?

Legacy Lifter:

God’s desire is to continue to make you, mold you, and disciple you to be more like Jesus. The more we yield to the Holy Spirit, the greater the changes.