Life could not be stranger. Just a handful of decades before, this world really had Ben and Kim on the ropes. Now they had begun a small dynasty. Not the kind of dynasty focused on itself and growing its own power. Such things are destined to crumble and lose all value. But instead they built the beginnings of a family dynasty focused on the Life of Christ blossoming in ever increasing glory amongst each member of their family going forward…even those not born yet.
Ben was no dreamer. He had real life experience of just how hard this broken world can be on you when you least expect it. But at the same time, he felt a tremendous confidence that he had done everything possible to impact his children and as many future generations of his family as possible. He knew that the enemy would not stop prowling, but he also knew that he had left in place concrete steps that would help his family come together in a Christ-centered way. There was no way for him to know if future members of his family would know Christ or not, but he was doing everything possible to ensure that they would have to come face to face with Him and be given every opportunity to make that decision!
And He knew that if Christ was truly at work in their lives, He would be at work through them in the world. Ben fully understood that although God had blessed him with financial wealth, the greatest burdens (and joys) of stewardship given to him were the lives of his family. And although he had made plenty of mistakes, he felt like a system was in place to direct the future of the family back towards Christ whenever it might get off course.
Ben got a little misty eyed when he thought about the promises God had made to his family decades earlier regarding their storehouse. He had actually made the promise millennia earlier, but he and Kim had grabbed hold of it in their mid 30’s and decided that they would begin to fund a storehouse so that God could bring His promised blessings. The whole life insurance policies which had constituted this modern day storehouse had certainly both been a blessing to them, and been a place where God increased beyond expectation! Of course, being blessed didn’t mean that life had been all easy street. Losing your ability to walk for most of your life was hard to define as a blessing, yet in many ways, Ben could see that perhaps that was the greatest blessing of his life. It was that accident that got him to start paying attention to what was real. Knowing Christ and knowing that his kids had a living, breathing, active relationship with Him was far more important than him getting to walk these last few decades. Would he trade those things? No way!
Perhaps, now that he looked back, through both good times and hard ones, it really had all been blessings. Ben understood full well that all blessings come through Christ, and yet he also couldn’t deny the actual financial blessings which had come by way of the Storehouse promise God had made. He was sure glad he had one!
This is Part 12 in the story of Ben’s life using Whole Life Insurance in a variety of ways. You might want to read the introduction to this series which will link to each post in the series explaining how whole life works as well as linking to each post in this series on Ben’s story.
Photo credit: Ana Maria Santeiro