How to leave a Legacy Part 1

“I have fought the good fight. I have finished my race...”

These are the famous last words of a man who was chained up, hungry and alone a damp prison cell, yet was not uttering them with a sense of failure or misery, but with the smell of victory. Paul had reached the end of a monumental journey in a life that was radically transformed the day he fell off his horse and met with Jesus.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about the spirit behind these words were that Paul knew it wasn’t over. The dream didn’t end with him. Although he was chained up, his message wasn’t. It was already spreading like wild fire across Ephesus, Corinth, the world. The bell had sounded at the end of his knockout fight, but the battle was destined to continue. A Baton was being passed onto to churches and cities across the nations, but more importantly to individuals. These individuals would take the baton and run harder than ever before for a God that they never even met in the flesh. They may not have fallen off a horse, but they had fallen in love.

Paul had learnt to “consider as rubbish” many of the things that people thought would help you leave a legacy. Paul had no time for monuments, birthrights or titles but instead he chose to invest into spiritual sons. This was the secret to making sure that his race could be so much more than a 100m sprint, it could become a marathon.

In the book of 2 Timothy we find Paul coaching one of his sons as a veteran pacemaker. Paul was at the end of his journey and Timothy was only just beginning his. And so a letter was written by a dying hero to his sidekick and as a consequence, the race marked out for the few, could become the race marked out for the many. The marathon continues...

The question of 2 Timothy is this: If you had one chance to pass on what you knew to someone else, what would you say to ensure that the fight continued into the next round?

Over the next few posts we will explore this question together.