According to the prophet Joel the legacy God wants you to leave for His glory is to prepare your children with the truth and equip them to be able to prepare their children, to be equipped to prepare their children. This will enable your offspring to stand tall and true in the face of whatever they encounter in their future.
Standing tall and true in whatever you encounter is more than just living a good life or giving to your children the benefits of your living a good life. What Joel emphasizes throughout his prophecy is that your life is not to be about you. Your children’s lives are not to be about you or them. Our lives are primarily to be about God and His glory.
When God allowed the locust swarms to infest and destroy the land one of the outcomes was, “Grain offerings and drink offerings are cut off from the house of the Lord” (Joel 1:9). Joel used this outcome/discipline to call God’s people to repentance, “for the grain offerings and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God” (verse 13). In addition, “joy and gladness (have been cut off) from the house of our God” (verse 16).
If they genuinely repented by returning to God with all their hearts, “Who knows? God may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing – grain offerings and drink offerings for the Lord your God” (Joel 2:14).
Notice, genuine repentance allows God to bless us, and the nature of God’s blessing is not just health, wealth and a restoration of what was lost in the past. The outcome ultimately is a restoration of what life as God planned it is all about – our true worship of God. Joel says, then “you will praise the name of the Lord your God” (Joel 2:26).
