Someday, my sons will go through my stuff. They will sort, discuss, divide it up, and keep some of it. Riffling through storage buildings, attics, desks, closets, all the rest, I want them to find one particular treasure: I want them to find evidence that I was faithful. Because each of us will leave more than just a headstone in the ground!

There is something more important that you can leave in your attic than any treasure this world has to offer. It is a legacy of faithfulness to Jesus and to His mission. You can leave behind your own influence!

Job felt flimsy, temporary, and marginal and like a leaf blowing in the wind. Yet Job left behind a book of 42 chapters that belongs to the ages. You, like Job, can leave behind a permanent legacy, so never underestimate the durability of the treasures you can leave behind.

For years I have read a little book by Oswald Chambers. Millions of people read this book every morning. It’s printed in many languages. You probably know this book by name, and you may even own a copy. It’s called My Utmost for His Highest. The book, which provides a devotional reading for every day of the year, is one of the most influential Christian texts ever written.

Oswald was a Scot born in Aberdeen in 1874. Few people knew him during his lifetime. He was an artist, a teacher at a small Bible college, and a travelling preacher. When World War I broke out, Chambers volunteered to go to Cairo as a chaplain for the troops affiliated with the YMCA. He brought his bride along, and in a little hut, nothing more than a lean- to, he taught a handful of troops who listened to his striking devotional teachings before they went to the trenches to die.

In 1917, Chambers died after an emergency appendectomy. He was just 41 years old. The pyramids looked down on the little camp where he perished. There lay a nobody, just another anonymous corpse, the earthly remains of a totally unimportant man. Oswald Chambers, like so many men before him, lived, and died, and left no evidence of his passing. He was like Job’s leaf in the wind. Or so it seemed.

Thankfully, the story didn’t end there.

You see, Chamber’s bride Gertrude could take dictation at a phenomenal 150 words per minute. In that desert hut by the pyramids, she wrote down everything her young groom told the little gathering of soldiers. After Oswald died, she returned to Oxford and ran a boarding house. Every morning, after the tenants left, she went into the basement and, on an old manual typewriter, transcribed her shorthand notes. She shaped those notes into the daily readings that the world now knows as My Utmost for His Highest. Even though it appeared, at the time of his death, that Oswald had vanished into eternity, he left behind a shade tree that blesses millions every day.

You may often feel that you live a life of mediocracy. Days of repetitive tasks and mundane experiences stack on top of one another to become weeks, months, and years. You are not alone; countless numbers of people struggle with living a life that seems like obscurity. But nothing could be further from the truth. Your life matters and you have purpose. The lives you invest in, the relationships you cultivate, the use of your talents and the gifts of your time and resources carry long lasting impact. We will not know the full measure of our influence until we reach Heaven. There God will show the full impact of our works on this earth. But make no mistake, you have a legacy that you will leave. Choose this day that yours will be one rooted in Faith in Christ Jesus that points and prompts others to choose Him!

• Dr. Dennis Swanberg (“The Swan”) – America’s Minister of Encouragement

The Bible Broadcasting Network has, and continues to leave, a legacy of influence across our country and this world! I want to personally thank them for their mission and for the work they do each day! With incredible kindness they have afforded Swanberg Ministries the privilege and pleasure of taking part in their efforts on many occasions. It has been an honor to partner with them, tying our influence together! I encourage you to join them with your support as well! – “The Swan”