God's desire is that every one of us coming into this world leaves a legacy. He has gifted you to do that; and the great movement of God in this coming decade will be God's people arising, and beginning to make a mark with their lives, and leave an imprint in society - an imprint on the lives of others, by bringing the life God gave them creatively into wherever they live.
Main MessageI want to look at how you receive a legacy; and we're going to look at it from two points of view. Firstly, from the perspective of the people that God brings into your life - given to you as a gift, to help you get ahead.
If someone has built up an estate of $1 million, and they leave it to you, you've got a head start in life; so God knits us to people, and connects us to people, who have already obtained something from Him - and we can draw on the legacy, that it cost them something to get.
You don't have to pay the same price as I had to pay, to be able to operate in the things that I can move in. What took me 30 or 40 years to build and develop in my life - this generation can get within a year or two. It doesn't take long to pick it up; but it's the life that I live underneath, that carries, and contains it, and enables it to grow.
Today we want to focus not just on the legacy we leave; but also how you draw from people to actually receive something, that you can then grow and develop - and it becomes a legacy you can leave to others.
Most people think that you just get things straight from the Lord. We get an immense legacy from the Lord; and I want to spend a special session focussing on the legacy Jesus has left you. Whether you get it is another thing; but He has left you a legacy and a most amazing rich legacy - and every believer must discover and reach into and take hold of the legacy, which Jesus paid a price for you to have. It will give you everything you need for life.
God not only gives it to us through a direct relationship with Jesus; He also ministers into our life through other people, who have laid hold of God. We don't have to do the hard work they did - we can get it much easier.
There are two groups of people that you can receive from; and I'm going to focus particularly on the second group, and today we're focussing on receiving.
God has put people in your life to impart something into you; and I’m going to break these into two main groups:
1) People that you just can learn from – information that you're taught; or it's an example you see.
This group of people are not people you're in relationship with; but you can listen to their CDs, and you can learn from them. They share what they learned; and what took them years to learn - you can learn it in one hour.
Learning has to do with putting it into your life. You can go on the internet, and you never have a direct relationship with them, but nevertheless you can draw on their experience that they have in life. The difficulty is in learning how to apply it; so God wants us (and expects us) to learn from people that have gone ahead and to make the effort.
1 Corinthians 10:11 - Jesus said: all of the people in the Bible, all of Israel's journeys - they were written as an example for you and me - forewarning us, or instructing us, about life.
The Bible is full of people who walk with God; and it tells their success, their failures - and God expects you to apply yourself to learn from the people. The Holy Ghost wrote down the story of these people for us to learn from; so very clearly, God expects us, even though we have no relationship with Moses, to learn from Moses.
When Jesus was teaching one group of people, in Luke 16 He said: “they won't listen to Moses; and they won't listen to me either”. He expected people to apply themselves to learn what men of God in other generations had discovered.
So when you go through the Bible - it's not just lots of boring stories; it's actually God's story, in the lives of many, many different people; and the lessons are there of success and failure that you can learn from and draw from.