Ministry – including evangelism — is people touching people – life on life. It is not just disseminating information. You can do that with a piece of paper or a book or a website. It is faith working itself out through our lives as we learn from the Word and receive encouragement from each other. It is all our lives lived as an open book. This is really all of it, not just our ministry among other believers but our ministry in the world: life on life, each life as an open book.
Paul put it this way to the Corinthian church: “You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” (2 Corinthians 3:2-3)
Paul defines his ministry by the lives of the Corinthians, and then he points out that those lives speak for themselves in that they are an open letter showing the reality of the Spirit of God in their hearts. Not that they were perfect – and we know the Corinthians were far from perfect – but their lives had become the stage upon which the ongoing story of transformation was being demonstrated.
It’s you … onstage … every day … going through your life, doing what you do with Christ in you. Doesn’t mean you’re perfect; it means you are a letter, an open book. It means you pick yourself up and keep going, because even though you can’t make sense of it right now, God always does.
We are in process, but the Spirit is present in us nonetheless, and our lives tell the story.
John Fischer The Catch 
Which again makes me think about leaving a legacy. Do we just want people today reading the book of our life, or do we want future generations reading it as well. This morning, I was thinking about my sister, who passed away two weeks ago. I don’t really feel like she’s gone. Then I thought about my dad, who passed away twelve years ago, and my grandmother, who passed away two years ago. They don’t really seem gone either. They seem like they’re still alive in me. So, as long as I’m alive, they’re still alive. Which is why children are such an important legacy.
But other things make a good legacy as well, such as books, artwork, films, photographs, letters, public works, etc. They continue to tell our story once we’re gone. When I was in art school, I learned that the best artists are not the ones that are remembered: it’s the ones with the best publicity, either their own writings or the writings of others. There is definitely something to be said for the written word. Which makes the internet somewhat questionable as a means of communication. Will any of the things we’ve written be remembered?
One Person will remember, and, if Randy Alcorn’s book, Heaven, is correct, will resurrect those things along with us. I look forward to Heaven because it will contain the best of the best and the best of OUR best. It will be endless days of joy with those who mean the most to us. And there, our legacy will be eternal.
Some really good points here. Thank you!