Living for a Generation You Will Never See

Pastor Kris Vallotton has told a story many times that has endured with me, and has become a permanent fixture in the way I desire to live my life. One morning, lying on the floor of a prayer chapel, he found himself carried a hundred years into the future. He stood in a beautiful, ornate, castle-style house during what felt like a family reunion: children playing, the women working in the kitchen, the hum of conversation everywhere. In front of an enormous stone fireplace, he saw an old man, standing and musing. Then his voice changed, and everyone in the house stopped what they were doing, and ran into the fireplace room to listen. You could hear a pin drop. He spoke of their lineage, their inheritance, and how they had come to be so richly blessed. At the end, he pointed to a portrait above the mantle. It was Kris and his wife. This all began, the old man said, with your great-great-great-grandparents, Kris and Kathy.

When the vision ended, Kris heard the Lord tell him: “Quit your ministry and start building a  legacy. From this day forward, you will live for a generation you will never see.”

People forget that God built us with innate supernatural powers. The carnal mind obscures this truth, and teaches us to think that we are but crude matter. As Yoda said to Luke Skywalker, “Luminous beings are we, not just crude matter.” God built us with tremendous capacity to perform mighty deeds that go far beyond the natural, physical world. We cohabit this planet with angels and demons. We walk both in the natural and in the supernatural at the same time. Screwtape referred to this vividly in a letter to Wormwood when he referred to us as “those disgusting hybrids.” We are those who walk in multiple realms at once.

When we forget this, when we stop believing that we are both natural and supernatural beings, our supernatural capacities can become dormant. When your supernatural powers hibernate, your natural powers take over. The apostle Paul called this “the carnal mind”, and he said that it is the enemy of God. Our heavenly Father designed our mind to be ruled by our supernatural spirit, not by our carnal flesh.

I say all this as a preface to this statement: one primary supernatural gift that we have is to live for a generation we will never see. This is a truth that only the mind guiding and illuminated by the Spirit can know. When you live for now, you lose now and later. When you live for later, you get later…and now.

This is a mystery, and it is the truth. Jesus said in Matthew 16 that whoever desires to come after Him (that is, whoever desires the secret of Life, which only Jesus has) must deny himself, take up his humiliation and suffering and death, and follow in the footsteps of Jesus. Jesus said that if you desire to save your life, you will lose it. Focus on your life and what you get out of it, and you will lose everything. But if you choose to lay down your life for others, not only for your friends but also for your enemies like Jesus did, then you will find the secret of Life.

This is what Nelson Nash meant when he said, “Think long term.” I have consistently seen that those who really “get it” with infinite banking are those whose minds are discovering this deep truth. They know that they are living and working and building for something that will never be completed in their own lifetime. They are not living for themselves. They are living for their children’s children’s children’s children. And here is the key: you cannot, you will not have the life that you lack, until you stop living for your life and you live for something that will come to pass in the lives of others, long after you are gone. Mysteriously and ironically, the only way to discover your own life is to live for someone else’s. This is a power that human beings have (and I believe it's supernatural): to live consistently for something that seems wholly disconnected from you and your lifetime, and yet somehow in that very act, you find the flavor and quality of life you would have completely lacked if you had only lived for now.

If you have ever felt that your life lacked the flavor, the quality, the joy, the fulfillment, the meaning, the depth that you know it should have, I ask you to consider this: you have a supernatural ability to have a deep effect on generations hundreds of years after you are dead, and that power has gone into hibernation. Paul says in Colossians 3:2, “Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things.” C.S. Lewis said it this way: focus on earth, and you will lose earth and heaven. Focus on heaven, and you will get heaven, and also the earth thrown in too. Jesus said seek first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, and all these other earthly things will be added to you as well.

How could we design our wealth-building strategy so that it is geared to benefit our children’s children’s children’s children? If we can answer that question honestly, I believe we will fully unlock the key to becoming our own banker, and build a legacy that will endure.

From the rising of the sun, until its setting, the Lord’s name is to be praised!