I was sitting in Bible study this morning listening to the presenter talk about what the Bible has to say in Ephesians 1. There were 12 guys sitting around the table and the conversation moved toward the need for discipleship and how the church has failed to emphasize how critical discipleship is to the long term future of the church as an organization. In a way, discipleship is a transfer or passing on of knowledge in a way that results in a change or augmentation of perspective or ideological position on the part of an individual. That individual then becomes a disciple or follower of that ideology and in turn passes it on to someone else. It is not unlike what we do when we create an estate plan. An estate plan is an opportunity for someone to inherit our equity rather than allowing it to dissolve when we pass away.
Lately I have been giving a lot of thought to the importance of our need to pass on our equity – specifically spiritual equity. That is what Christ did with his disciples, he filled them with his spiritual equity. To take this concept further, discipling is an estate plan for our faith. To disciple someone is to pass on the equity we have in the ultimate asset, God’s grace. Both discipleship and estate planning create generational transfer of wealth, one worldly, one heavenly.
So let me circle back to the worldly subject of estate planning. I spent a good part of my life working to build equity in assets that would provide me with a comfortable lifestyle. Most of us do exactly the same thing, we spend the first half of our life gaining, the next quarter of our life using and the last quarter of our life lamenting our failure to do anything meaningful with the equity in the assets we spent the first half of our life trying to acquire. To top it all off many of us fail to construct any sort of estate plan to insure the equity we have built up gets passed on to the next generation. The result is our children and grandchildren are left to consider how wasteful and careless our lack of planning has been. They have watched us work to build up the equity in assets and then they will have to watch again as that equity and those assets get swallowed up as a result of our failure to plan for when we pass away. If you believe, as I do, that God has entrusted us with those assets then you should also believe that you need to be a good custodian of those assets. Being a good custodian doesn’t mean you cannot enjoy what you have acquired but it does mean you should not waste it. Failure to have an estate plan is wasteful. Failure to create an estate plan eliminates the opportunity for generational transfer of our wealth.
In the same vein, failure to pass on our spiritual equity is a lost opportunity to tell others about the estate plan God has offered to us. The reality is The Bible is all about God’s estate plan for us – Jesus. In Ephesians 1:11 it says, “in him we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined.” In Ephesians 1:13,14 Paul goes on to say, “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth (someone passed on their spiritual equity to you), the gospel of your salvation (the good news of God’s estate plan for you), and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance (again God’s estate plan for us) until we acquire possession of it the the praise of his glory.
The time is now – you are not too young or too old to formulate an estate plan. Do it for you, do it for your loved ones. Make sure there is an inheritance of your equity. Then turn you eyes to the inheritance God has promised you. If you haven’t already claimed that inheritance, find someone who can disciple you and transfer their spiritual equity to you. Oh, one more thing, there is no tax on your heavenly inheritance!
Doug's Journey 