Going Back In Order To Move Forward

Fall Mission Communities • Week of 10/11

I remember the day that I held my little daughter for the first time.  She was so small and fragile and I remember this spiritual weight falling on my shoulders.  I was a father… a father, and that meant that I was going to protect this little person, I was going to have to guide her, and love her, and eventually let her go.  As a new parent I was terribly worried about making mistakes, and even though I had a great childhood, I like every parent, wanted to do things differently.  But as I eased into the role, I found that I had no idea what I was doing.  One day a friend comforted me with the words, “as hard as we try, we are all going to screw up our kids in one way or another”. 

The truth is that families over generations, pass down all kinds of things, both good and bad.   In my extended family on my mother’s side there is a history of alcoholism that goes back three generations.   But in that same family there is an abiding tradition of hospitality and friendliness that has become a kind of signature of who we are. 

In my family, growing up, it was unspoken rule that negative emotions where a sign of ungratefulness. Because of this I had a hard time learning how to process pain, sadness, disappointment, or fear.  In an unexamined way, I brought this same dynamic into my marriage and into how I raised my children.   When my wife or kids are down or frustrated my first response is almost always to point them to how lucky they are, how good their life is, implicitly communicating to them to “get over it” or complaining, “why don’t you just choose to be happy”.  But this doesn’t help, it just breeds resentment, and makes me an unsafe person to talk to.   

It says in 2 Corinthians 6:18, 

“I will be a Father to you,    and you will be my sons and daughters,

When we enter into the community of faith through belief and repentance, we not only become a part of church, we are adopted into the family of God.   Like adopted children we are called and loved into a new way of being, a new way of relating to the world, our neighbors and our earthly families.  God wants to heal us of the “generational sins” that we inherit, whether caught, or learned, so that we do not pass them on.   But faith is not a silver bullet.   There is no magic to changing, it is always challenging, it is almost always painful.  The truth is, is that we have to go back to go forward.  

This week, in our Mission Communities we want to start the process of “going back to go forward”.  We want to look at some of things that have been passed down to us through generations and ask are these really the things that God wants for us.   Part of the great gift of the Spirit is that we get a choice.  Through the Spirits help, and through community we can begin to understand which pieces of our inherited past are good and beautiful and which pieces need to be repented of and discarded.  This is long process, maybe a lifelong process but we can begin today, we can begin together.  

Please take time to explore one of the activities in the Mission Community Guide to learn more about how generational history, patterns, and messaging may be impacting you today.