What are you Handing Over?

It is like a relay race, you finish your stint and then another person takes over… you hand over the baton. Relay racers learn how to take and handover the baton successfully so that they can avoid the baton dropping. Once the baton drops, the race is disqualified and none of the participants is rewarded. If this happens in the last lapse, then all the previous runners are all losers. This is how life is.

What are you handing over? If you have children, it is important for us to understand that our lives will affect theirs (even if you do not yet have children understanding that the next generation in your lineage when they come will be affected by your action is of utmost importance). As parents we must be fully aware of what God expects and how the children are linked to the vision that He has given to you today…the promises that He has made to you.

Today in church my pastor was teaching on Headship and he was taking his text from the book of Genesis chapter 24. Abraham understood the importance of the next generation towards the accomplishment of God’s will and fulfillment of the promises which He has made to him and did not take chances. Every little decision was important because he understood God’s mind and would not take His words lightly. He asked his servant to make a promise about how and where he would get a wife for his son. This he knew was extremely important in continuing God’s instructions to him and in fulfillment of the utmost promise that He (God) has made to him.

Some of us as we get older we look back at the actions and behaviors of our youth although it is filled with vigor and passion but often we all sigh and say “Oh how foolish I was then”. The Psalmist in Psalm 37 verse 25 was reminiscing and telling the younger people that he has been young and now old but he (David) has never seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread. What are you telling your children today about whom God is or who he is not? Even if it is not about God, what are handing over to your children?

To a lot of people, they were born and they grew up in abject poverty and they made a decision that for their children it will be different and they set out to en-masse wealth or build something so that they can give their children a better life and even more. There is nothing wrong with this, this is actually a good thing but what are you handing over to them that will keep them firmly anchored when the storms of life toss them around? What legacy are you leaving to them?

Once God has given you children, He has given you an enormous responsibility to nurture and teach them to live…you are to hand over the baton to them and the baton you hand over is as important as how you hand it over. In our lives each day, the little things we do, the little decisions we make will impact not just our lives but the lives of the next generation. We must think it over, we must pay attention to our actions and our words because we are handing over something to the next generation (God has already started dealing with them even when they are yet unborn) and decide what we want to hand over to children to continue the race with.

What are you handing over? Who are you handing over to? Will the dream die or will the flame continue even when your days are gone? Will the baton drop as you want to hand over when your own lapse of the life race is over or will you teach the next person how to take it from you successfully? Think about it!!!