Where vision stops is where stagnation starts

What do you see? Where do you see yourself 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now?

What do you see yourself having? What are your circumstances? And more importantly what impact will you be making on your world?

Today is the tomorrow we dreamt about yesterday. The best time to shape tomorrow is before it becomes today because it is still in fluid form. God gave us a beautiful equipment called imagination so that we can use it to shape our world.

I'll always remember the day I did some visioning it was January 1997 and I had written my goals for that year and then I just began to project five years from now. I sat down, I dreamt I imagined. Then I did 10 years from now then I did 15 years, I did 20, I did 25, 30 then I jumped to 40 and I did 50 and I did 60. It was stretching but that is the real job in this life. I was creating, I was cooperating with the spirit of God to create the future. Five years later I looked back and saw my life had changed dramatically.

Sometimes it won't happen exactly the way you wrote it. It was 23 years ago when I did all of that and some of the technology we have now were not even available then so I predicted based on the technology that we had available then. The important thing is these visions pull you forward, the vision turns you into a magnet, vision solves a lot of problems for us.

One day I was praying and the spirit of God said to me "you confess that you have the blessings of Abraham" and yes truly because the Bible says it in Galatians 3:29 that those of us that belong to Christ have received the blessings of Abraham Galatians 3:14 says that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles. We have the blessings of Abraham so the Spirit of God said to me there is a dimension to the blessings of Abraham that you've not been asking for. I said what is that? He said; I can help you to live your life now in such a way that you will still be relevant 600 years from now.

He said he was discussing with Abraham about what would happen to his descendants 600 years later. I said; "wow" He said exactly; I can give you not only prosperity, I can also give you posterity. Wow!

The Blessing of Abraham also includes strategic vision, so I simply said well something comes with that though, there is no way you will be seeing 600 years ahead and using that to control how you live your life now that there will be people around that will not understand what you're doing. So He said the likelihood then is that you would be criticized for some of the things you do. Are you ready to take that? I said; "Sure that's a small price to pay."

Some visions that we have or receive for our lives last only one cycle but when you have a vision and you look at the seed, you know for sure that if you plant that seed may be corn, you plant the seed and harvest it after some three months, you can eat everything, you got only one cycle, but if you take some of the harvest and you plant it, then you have another cycle of harvest and it can actually be bigger than the first one, you can sacrifice and not eat most of the harvest.

We need that capacity to see beyond one cycle either for our jobs or for our lives.

When we have God given capacity for vision, we need to be able to see beyond one cycle. When God spoke to Abraham, he said; I will bless your seed and in your seed all the families of the earth will be blessed. He said I will bless you and make you a blessing but not only him then he spoke about his seed and later on He will be called the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He is a Transgenerational God. So when He's speaking to you and He's giving you visions and giving you dreams, He will show you things beyond your lifetime. When he's asking you to do things now, sometimes He may not even give you the full picture, when you obey Him, He will help you to lay foundations for your posterity.

So when Jesus came here to fulfill his assignment, he had succession in mind from day one when he started his work of ministry. You remember the first thing he did? He began to recruit people, he knew that his time here was finite.

It doesn't matter how long you live, our time here is finite and compared to how long our planet has been here and how likely it may still be here, our time here is very short. There is a need to act with a sense of urgency, Jesus did, he began to recruit people and you would notice all the time he was around that he deliberately groomed them to be able to do what he did even after his exit and at some point he began to discuss with them about his exit.

We will not be here forever, we need to always have that in mind and I'm not even talking about our whole lives on this earth, I'm talking about even the position that you hold right now, the position that I hold right now, we will not be here forever. So there is a need from the day we assume a position for us to begin to think of when we will leave that position, that is what succession is all about.

2Timothy 2:2 Paul told Timothy, this thing did not die with me, you must not let it die with you.

God is a trans-generational God. From the day you begin to occupy any position please begin to also plan for your exit.

Where vision stops is where stagnation starts.

Many years ago when I began to teach entrepreneurship and then I began to research and to check around and then I saw a cultural dimension to it and I began to ask questions 20 years ago. How many businesses do you know that were founded by Nigerians that are 100 years old? At that time we did not have them, maybe we have a few now but at that time we had none. Evidently it's not been a cultural practise for us to build things that last long, things that last beyond our lifetime, It's either the organization dies with the founders or they even die before the founders.

I came here today to declare that in the name of Jesus Christ, we are shifting to rest on a new foundation, the cornerstone of that foundation is Jesus Christ and in the name of Jesus Christ your dreams will not die.

We talk often in Daystar Christian Center of this principle that was discovered by a Harvard professor The Law Of Time Perspective and it simply says; the longer the time you take into consideration in making your plans and taking action, the higher you rise. People that think beyond their lifetime actually have the potential to succeed more even in their lifetime.

I know the challenges that we face in the developing parts of the world, in Africa, in Asia. When we have experienced deprivation, deprivation tends to erect limitations to our vision.

So we tend to pursue only survival then we think only of our lifetime.

Deprivation fuels selfishness but the truth is God wants to give us more.

Proverbs 13:22 -A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children. So we ought to leave posterity, we ought to leave legacies, we ought to leave things for generations that have not come yet for as long as Jesus tarries.

Sometime operating with a long term vision requires for us to sacrifice some material or visible success in the present. Sometimes also when you are thinking long term, you don't appear successful to people around. I studied engineering construction and if you are going to build a 30 or 50 storey skyscraper, you are going to spend some time working when people can't see you, you are going to be digging down, you are going to spend a lot of time building the foundation under. When you have a culture where success is only defined by the material, by the visible, then you are under pressure and you want to quickly impress yourself and other people that you are free from poverty so we build shallow foundations and the things we build don't go beyond one lifetime.

God is calling us to cooperate with him to build posterity.

The long term vision of Jesus made him to dig foundations. When you look at it some system seemed to be more powerful than he was when he was around but then if we look back today we see that he was busy digging ideological foundations, he didn't have that much of visible success except for the crowds and the powers that be decided to take him out. The question now is those powers that be, where are they now? Over 2000 years later, the foundation that Jesus Christ laid is still being built on.

It is important that we have long term vision, that we do not fight to preserve today at the expense of tomorrow. It is because we don't think beyond today that is why we even abuse the power, we don't think there is a possible tomorrow, it then blurs our vision to realise that it is God that gives power and the person that is little today, the person that is a child today, when God gives them power tomorrow we have no control over how big they can become. When you are strategic in your vision at some point you become part of the making of other people's successes because that's the only way you maintain relevance over a long period of time.

My encouragement today is; don't be caught on the wrong side of history. Its time for us to think way ahead, to develop strategic vision and when we do that succession becomes part of our consideration.

This is important, we are dealing with cultural issues here. In parts of Africa and Asia where the leadership culture is monarchical, a King/Queen doesn't leave his/her position until he/she dies, succession then only happens upon the point of death and we have to move away from that.

SUCCESSION LESSONS FROM JESUS

1. See and think beyond your lifetime or your time in this current position.

Whatever your position is right now, think beyond that position.

I remember the day we had a discussion with our children many years ago and I said; life is in three phases you start with dependence, you move into independence, then you move into interdependence, we are in the dependence phase right now, it's not going to last forever, you're going to get independence and be on your own and then after independence is interdependence, at that point I won't be able to send you on errands anymore anyhow, because you will have to discuss with your husband or wife, we will have to cooperate to achieve goals at that point. What was I trying to do, I was stretching their vision?

2. Define your vision and values. Be clear, have clarity about that vision that transcends your lifetime and then the values, the standards, the principles that control your behavior, be very clear about them, they may sound like abstract things, but the are really powerful for the other foundations that you're going to be building on and the people that will come after you, that is what they're going to build on.

That was what Jesus focused on, ideological foundations we call them. Paul the Apostle spoke about them in 1Corinthians 3:10 (Message Bible) "Using the gift God gave me as a good architect, I designed blueprints; Apollos is putting up the walls. Let each carpenter who comes on the job take care to build on the foundation." Fantastic!

It's a beautiful thing when you know your own place in history, that your job is foundation laying, isn't that beautiful? On the construction site that's the point; some people work on the foundation and they leave to go lay another foundation.

You stay too long, you lose relevance. Some of us have outlived some positions right now and we need to be designing to go.

3. Recruit people to replace you.

Whatever position it is you're acquiring right now, there has to be at least one person you are training to replace you. I know many years ago we used to have this scenario where only one person knew how to do something in the church, perhaps playing the piano and when the person did not show up in the service the worship session was dead and should I confess to you? That thing makes you feel cool, that you were not there and nothing worked, it used to be something to brag about. "See they don't know my value, I did not go just once and everything practically collapsed." You know what I want to say to you, I'm sorry that's failure, at least in terms of leadership. You have success, but you have no successors and wise people have said success without a successor is failure.

Whatever position it is you occupy, use it as a rehearsal because it is when you outgrow your current position that God gives you something higher.

4. Tain people.

It is not enough to recruit, you have to train people. Teach somebody everything you know, don't take your knowledge down to the grave.

Culturally speaking that's what they say about us in Africa because our forefathers actually made some discoveries, we may have called them witchcraft, but they were pure science. They made discoveries from vegetation and things like that but they died with them because they didn't want somebody else to steal their success. Nobody steals nothing, you teach somebody what you know and you move on to higher gifts

Proverbs 11:24 "There is one that scatters and yet increases, there's the one that withholds more than is necessary and it results in poverty"

Enough of this poverty of ideas, enough of this generational poverty, enough of poverty in leadership, it's time for us to train people, teach them the tricks of the trade, everything we know.

Delegate duties to people and when you delegate duties, delegate power, delegate authority for them to do the job.

5. I encourage you to pray.

You remember the two disciples of Jesus went to meet him, to plan succession, they had vision and I appreciate that but they were asking Jesus when your kingdom fully comes we want that one of us will sit on your right hand and the other on the left and Jesus said can you take the suffering that is coming to me? They said we can take it but they didn't know what they were saying. He said actually you will even get the suffering but as for who will sit on the left and the right, it is the father that determines that so it's important that you pray.

Succession requires intuition.

God has a plan for every life, but sometimes it is not exactly what you think it is.

6. When the time comes, when the season comes leave, just move.

When the time has expired it's time to go, it may be hard, it may be tough, but one thing I know is God has higher levels for us and that's the only way we build posterity.

If we stay too long we'll begin to pull down what we used our own hands to build.

DECLARATIONS

I prophesy over you today, there are many reasons why we find it difficult, people that have betrayed us, people we cannot trust, dangerously ambitious people around us, but I prophesy in the name of Jesus Christ, you will not build for somebody to occupy, you will not plant for someone else to eat.

I prophesy today in the name of Jesus Christ, that since the word of God says in Proverbs 10:22 That the blessing of God makes rich and He adds no sorrow with it. There will be no trace of sorrow around your blessing in the mighty name of Jesus Christ.

Envy will not prevail, no devil will steal what God gave you in the name of Jesus Christ.

Receive grace to reproduce yourself in the mighty name of Jesus

Receive grace to lay foundations that will be there for decades, for centuries in the mighty name of Jesus Christ.

I prophesy right now, you will not die before your time, it's okay to plan but in the mighty name of Jesus Christ you will not die prematurely, you will live to fulfil God's calling on your life.

You will not know stagnation.

You will not know regression.

When you go forward you're never coming back

I prophesy on that person that is a part of this service right now, you have a sickness in your body by the power that raised Christ from the dead we remove that sickness from your body, receive your healing now in the name of Jesus.

If Satan stole anything from you receive restoration in Jesus name. Amen