by W. Chaz Glass
It’s notable to leave your children houses and finances as an inheritance, but what’s far more important is to leave them bread from heaven to sustain their souls. While material inheritance can provide temporary comfort and security, spiritual inheritance offers eternal nourishment and guidance. This is contrary to the lure of gaining and leaving generational wealth. If I leave $100 million to my children, they could potentially live off that inheritance without ever needing to work. They could also blow it, or worse, it could corrupt them. This reality vexed King Solomon as he would not know if those who inherited his wealth and possessions would be wise or foolish. However, true spiritual wealth—the bread from heaven that Jesus spoke of—operates on different principles. This spiritual sustenance is handed down in the form of knowledge, testimonies, and experiences our children then use as a foundation to build their own relationships with the Lord.
But we cannot subsist on the reputation of our family name or the past works of faith of our ancestors. Instead, we must actively circulate our spiritual knowledge like currency, focusing on others rather than ourselves. As we do this, it compounds in our spirits like interest, growing and multiplying. This is the principle Jesus illustrated in the parable of the talents, where the faithful servant turned 5 talents into 10.
This living inheritance of heavenly bread is passed on through both conscious teaching and unconscious example. It’s shaped by how we handle stress, how we treat others, how we approach work, how we express our faith, and how we navigate relationships. Our children are constantly watching, absorbing, and internalizing the patterns they see in us. Our children inherit not just what we tell them, but what they observe. They inherit our attitudes, our reactions, our values as lived out day by day. Will they inherit love or hate? Kindness or rudeness? Will they learn to face challenges or run? Will they see us holding on to what matters or letting go? Will they see us pressing on or standing still? Will they witness honesty or deceit in our words and actions?
2 Peter 1:5-9 provides insight into how we can cultivate and pass on this spiritual wealth, this bread from heaven, and outlines a process of spiritual growth and investment. We start with faith and progressively add virtues, each building upon the last. As we cultivate these qualities and put them into practice in our daily lives and interactions with others, our spiritual wealth grows. This growth is not just for our benefit, but becomes a living legacy of heavenly bread that we pass on to our children and others around us.
Unlike material wealth, which can diminish as it’s spent, spiritual riches—the bread from heaven—multiply as they’re shared and applied. The key to this spiritual compounding is not focusing on ourselves, but in how we love and serve others. This is how we participate in divine kingdom enterprises, investing our spiritual capital in ways that yield eternal returns in this age and the age to come. And in doing so, we create and leave a rich, active inheritance for our children—one that they don’t just receive, but see lived out before them every day. While houses and finances may provide for their physical needs, this bread from heaven will sustain their souls for eternity.
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