I learnt something profound in the story of Hezekiah when the Lord told him he would die. I grew up hearing this story about how he prayed to live longer and God added fifteen years to his life but it is rare to hear people emphasize on what the Lord instructed him to do before dying.
Through prophet Isaiah, the Lord told him to put his affairs in order. That struck me. We can deduce that prior to that time, his affairs were not in order. He doesn't have a laid down order or structure for his life. No succession plan or order, nothing about how his estate will be managed after his demise.
God only reminded him to put a structure around his affairs when death came knocking on the door. Failure to set one's affair in order before death is the reason for much of the family problems we see after death. I read about a top lawyer who prepared will for others but failed to prepare his. After his demise, his four children who are lawyers started a bitter legal battle.
Now, I want to say that we do not need to wait for death to come knocking before putting a structure around our lives. Our daily living must portray orderliness. Right from our homes to offices and to everything that we do.
A life that is not structured in an orderly manner has no future. A church or organization without an orderly structure have no future. If you look at institutions that has endured for centuries, they have structure and order in place. Most African businesses rarely last a century because they die at the death of the founder. One reason for this is because we are not orderly. We don't know how to put structures around things.
One of the oldest institutions on earth is the Roman Catholic Church. They have survived through the centuries because there is structure and orderliness. If we pentecostals do not learn anything from them at all, I think we should be humble enough to admit we don't know how somethings work and learn from churches that has endured centuries.
Most of the in-fighting in churches especially about leadership succession are results of loopholes in the structure we put in place. This is a bitter truth but someone must say it. How can you pastor or lead a ministry for over three decades without evolving a succesion order/ structure? No one lives forever. It is wisdom to think and plan posterity.
In anything the Lord has committed into your hands no matter how small it is, put a structure around it in an orderly manner so that what starts with you will not end with you. Let it start with the way you run the affairs of your family.
Men who live for today will never be orderly but men who live for posterity will set their affairs in order.
