Red Rocks Church has been doing a series on Legacies, and as Shawn Johnson took the podium for this final weekend, he opened with this simple yet profound truth:

“If I’m going to leave a legacy I’m proud of someday, it’s got to start today.”

When we get to the end of our lives and look back at the legacies we’re leaving, one thing is for sure: we won’t be surprised by what we see.

Legacies don’t happen on accident. I can have the best intentions in the world, the biggest hopes and most audacious dreams, but those don’t make good legacies. Legacies require intentionality and consistency. In the end, our legacies are simply the sum of all our decisions. 

Good intentions don’t leave good legacies. It takes consistency. We have to start making choices that start pushing us toward the kind of person we want to be, the life we want to live, and the legacy want to leave.  

Pick up any self-help or business-focused book – any material on creating/keeping good habits, improving your wellbeing, or attaining goals  – and you’ll find consistent advice: start now, start small, and stick with it.

The best thing we can do for ourselves and for the people we will one day leave behind is to start today – start making better decisions, start prioritizing the important things, and start eliminating the noise. Our time is limited and it will come to an end – to ingore this truth only does us harm.

Aristotle is quoted for saying, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit.” Then there’s Stephen Covey,  author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” who is chock-full of wisdom on the matter:

In 2020, the year of the pandemic, Red Rocks Church gave away $2.4M to other organizations throughout the world, including COVID-relief aid on a local level (helping fund food programs for students that relied on school meal plans, providing for healthcare workers and hosipitals to help take care of provider’s wellbeings, suppoorting small churches undergoing financial stress, etc.).

Just as crazy, the church took their usual “End of Year Offering” in which they ask people to consider how God has blessed their lives that year and give above and beyond what they planned, and the congregation exceeded $2M in additional donations. Wow! How?? Why would people give that much money through a church at the end of such an unstable, unsettling year?

The thing is, the church didn’t do that on accident – it took years of intentionality, planning, sacrifice, and practicing what they preached. It took consistently following a very specific plan to prioritize generosity, even through seasons when it didn’t make logical or financial sense.

I am so proud to be part of this incredible church family. It’s crazy good to have leaders that care enough about us to challenge us with how we live our lives. Our future legacies are dependent on our decisions today. It’s time we define the kind of people we want to be and start making choices that will intentionally help get us there.