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Written by Michelle J. Goff, Founder and Director of Iron Rose Sister Ministries 
On the 4th of July (Independence Day), we sat outside at Grandpa and Grandma’s farm, watching the fireworks in the distance and delighting in our annual tradition of root beer floats. Those grandparents are no longer with us, but my nephew and niece have been warned by their mom that they will hear that story every time we enjoy Independence Day fireworks with family, sipping root beer.
On the maternal side of the family, Granddaddy loves to tell jokes. He collected them for years as a speech professor and occasional preacher. As kids, whenever we heard a good joke, we would call him up and retell it. These days, he regales us with his favorites, telling them as if for the first time. When he asks, “Have you heard that one?”, one sister has learned to cleverly respond, “Not today!” The first time he caught on to her joke, he winked, laughed, and said, “Oh, you’re definitely part of this family with that sense of humor!”
Whether time-honored traditions or long-standing jokes, we celebrate the connections they bring. From both sides of my family, another connection is their legacies of faith. I know this because of the stories passed down.
The Iowa grandparents led a quiet life as farmers. The Florida two were teachers in a big city, rampant with worldly influence. Both couples were challenged to live out their faith in their respective contexts. And since we grandkids lived at least an 18-hour car ride from the nearest, we relied more heavily on our parents to pass down the generational stories of faith.
Prayer was a vital lifeline for all four grandparents. Dean and Evelyn prayed that their crops would produce a harvest ample enough to sell and provide for their own needs. They prayed over whether they should take my dad and aunt in as teenagers (as foster parents). They prayed that God would provide preachers for their one-room church building, built by previous generations.
George and Barbara prayed that God would use them to plant seeds of truth and faith in their students. They prayed that God would lead them in starting a nonprofit called Christian Homes for Children in South Florida and use them to bless children who were not able to receive loving care in other places. George even wrote a book, Prayer Power, contributing the proceeds from book sales to that foster care ministry. Even earlier this year, Grandmommy wanted to pray with whichever family member visited her hospital room.
Their “God stories,” as I have endearingly termed them, remind me of God’s faithfulness throughout all generations and have inspired me in how I live out my own faith.
My mom, a gifted storyteller, has created an expectation that we share the God stories. We cannot keep them to ourselves! She never passes up an opportunity to demonstrate how she saw God working, and it doesn’t matter whether the other person is a believer. Her story becomes an intentional invitation to allow Him to author their story.
The beautiful thing is that the more we tell God stories and recognize His hand at work, the more we see Him and invite Him to be the living, active, all-powerful God that He is in our lives.
In a recent conversation, already needing to get back to work, I asked a couple of friends to give me five more minutes to share the full backstory of connections, because only then would the bigger God story of it all be revealed. Neither hesitated in granting my request, anticipating how they would be blessed by hearing it all come together as only God could orchestrate.
The following five minutes cannot be summarized in an 800-word blog post. I would need a map to illustrate what parts of the world I was referring to (five countries on three continents). Hand motions were required to draw connections, from the family where the story began through the interweaving of other families’ lives. We fast-forwarded and rewound our timeline as we navigated the intricacies of the tapestry God was creating. And yes, I showed pictures.
Iron Rose Sister Ministries and hundreds, maybe thousands, of women are reaping the blessing of those interconnected, generational God stories being passed down… and I’m only referring to that morning’s snippets of those families’ entwined God stories (Wyatt, Holland, Goff, Fincher, White, Yarbrough, Brizendine, and Batres).
The best part is that the eternal impact and blessing of the story is not yet fully written. The oldest generation has gone before us, leaving their legacy. It is our responsibility to carry on and pass down their stories of faith.
We may doubt our impact while on this earth. Yet when we share God stories that narrate another person’s faith, we affirm the ripple effect of one life on the legacy of God’s faithfulness.
I cannot wait to hear the God stories to come! Hopefully in heaven, God will gloriously reveal the millions of backstories, faithfully passed down. Oh, to sing those stories with the angels and the thousand generations (Deut. 7:9)!
What God story can you pass down or be a part of today?
Written by Elina Vath, Virtual Assistant for Iron Rose Sister Ministries in Ohio 
Each week across city, region, country, and hemisphere, we commemorate together the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, through the Lord’s Supper. Redemption and salvation through Jesus were foretold in the garden of Eden, fulfilled in Jerusalem, and will continue until He returns.
Before His death, Jesus entered Jerusalem as King, just as the prophet Zechariah said He would. And although it was the last week of Jesus’ human life, He did not receive any relief from those who were determined to see Him fail. Time after time, Jesus looked straight into the hearts of the teachers of the law and completely annihilated their arguments. In a single day, Jesus sent the Pharisees, Herodians, and Sadducees home with their tails between their legs.
Chapter 22 of Matthew’s account of Jesus’ life tells us that the Sadducees attempted to trap Him with a question meant to disprove the resurrection. Jesus knew the scheming intention behind the Sadducees’ question for exactly what it was: a weak attempt to show His ignorance of Moses’ teachings, as if Jesus Himself hadn’t been there when Moses floated in a basket on the Nile, murdered the Egyptian, met his wife, removed his sandals, spread his arms over the Red Sea, and breathed his last.
I picture Jesus shaking His head, sighing a heavy sigh, and then effectively bulldozing the Sadducees' trap with these words, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God” (Matt. 22:29 ESV). No signs of intimidation or hesitation; rather, Jesus spoke with authority. “You are WRONG,” He told the richest, most powerful Jews of the time. But Jesus didn’t stop there. He then accused the Sadducees of not having done their homework, bringing the conversation to a full stop.
And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. (Matt. 22:31-32)
You see, Jesus knew Moses personally. And when God said to Moses in the book of Exodus, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” Jesus watched as Moses was overcome by the sheer power of those words. Matthew tells us that Jesus’ wisdom and power in repeating these words had the same impact on the Sadducees and everyone who heard Him speak—they were all astonished.
Everything about God is alive. His words are alive, His Spirit is alive, His Son is alive, His kingdom is alive, and we are part of this living kingdom. Abraham, who looked at the stars in the night sky, as God made a promise, is alive. Isaac, the one through whom God began fulfilling that promise, is alive. Jacob, the forefather of Moses and someone used by God to preserve Jesus’ bloodline, is alive. Those who have gone before us are alive. Generation to generation, here we stand today, thousands of years later, as followers of the God of (the living) Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Because of Jesus, who is the Life, you and I are counted among the stars in heaven. Generation upon generation of God’s people will live even after our bodies die.
May we all rejoice together at the history of our faith family, and that our names are written in the heavens as part of a promise that continues to be fulfilled.
