John N N Nganga Meditation Of 29th April 2024 Preparing For Old Age and leaving a legacy
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Day 1
A good person leaves an inheritance for their children’’s children, but a sinner’’s wealth is stored up for the righteous.
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Our discussion this time is not the issue of enjoying old age but also choosing to leave a legacy. I want to read several quotations by people who have talked about family legacy. I want us to start with a man who has influenced me quite a lot, called Dobson. And he says,
like never before, the American family is endangered. Many children grow up in homes, with parents who are overworked, destructed, exhausted and involved or completely absent.
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Is that true of Kenya? This is not time for shrinking back. God has uniquely called and equipped us to engage the culture so it aligns with his word. We must not give up the fight or become destructed from our ultimate priority, which is to help build strong families and leave a legacy that will last for generations to come despite the culture of busyness.
As a family, is that your call? Do you sense what Dobson is saying is true of you? That we have been called to build strong families who will leave a legacy that will last for generations to come?
Dobson goes on to talk about culture and says,
it is extremely difficult to prevent your case from being swept downstream into unknown waters.
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You must not become destructed from your ultimate priority which is to raise healthy children and to lead them to Jesus Christ. In other words, there is a culture sweeping our children in the opposite direction….not in the direction you want them to go. Dobson is saying it is going to be pretty difficult to fight that pressure.
Let me take a quotation from Ralph Emerson,
talking about what lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside you.
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Let me repeat what lies behind you and what lies in front of you pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.
Still about legacy, Herbert Spencer says,
the wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, which is true, he is a parent of the future.
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My wife credits her parents for what she became. Now, will we be able to have our children say something similar? If already retired chances are it is a little late because they left home. So the train has passed. Now, the question is, looking at our grandchildren, will we see what happened to us happen to them? That is what we are talking about when we talk about legacy.
Hordon Cutter says,
there are only two lasting requests we can hope to give our children. One is roots and the other is wings.
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You hear that? What you should be giving your children, one is roots, where they come from is you. But the most important is wings as to where they go into the future.
He goes on
in our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.
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He is not going for two, he is going for seven future generations. What we decide as Kenyans, what we decide as families, what we decide as the Church, how will it affect the next seven generations?
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Day 2
Instead of your shame you will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace you will rejoice in your inheritance. And so you will inherit a double portion in your land, and everlasting joy will be yours.
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Paul Meyer, New York Times bestselling author, says,
everything you have and possess today, whether good or bad will pass down to those who come after you.
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In other words, who you are will certainly affect the next generations. Then he goes on to say,
a legacy is like a safe deposit box, filled with valuables. It is only natural that the owner of the box will tell the recipient what is in it, how everything works and why it is so important before turning over the key. It is upto up to the recipient of the box to choose what he or she will do with the key and the valuable inside, or the responsibility, however, does not rest on the shoulders of the one receiving the legacy, the one giving it is equally responsible.
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This legacy business is a choice between two people. In other words, it matters what you do to influence the next generation, but it also matters what you took from your parents. Many of us are called Christians but we are living traditionally.
There is a quote from me Hope FM used to repeat it after I gave a talk. I do not remember where they picked it. they used to say something like,
the two of you maybe may be saved but your marriage is not saved.
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And that is part of the problem, for some of the men reading this run their marriage exactly like their grandfather who was not born again. So although they are born again they act the same with their unsaved ancestors. You are given a baby to hold you say, I am a man, I can’t holda baby. Where is that written in the Bible? Now, you need to understand it is not coming from scriptures, it is coming from your grandfather.
Now, this quotation is saying, you have a choice. There are some things from your past you must say no to so that they do not get to the next generation. Was it a curse? Was it shira? It should end with you. Nothing from your history that is not right should end up with your children. You must deal with it yourself.
Some activities and ceremonies are done by your parents for certain reasons. It is you that must say no to it so that the next generation does not have to be caught up with it. Especially among the Kikuyus, a new move has come where we have to take our grandparent’s dowry unless we want to risk a curse. I am in my seventies but, it skipped us because we were so serious with the Lord that we did not do such things when we were getting married. Now, my generation is requiring their children to do the things we never did. Why? Our parent’s generation helped us to skip them.
A friend of mine told me the other day he went for, what he he was told was an anniversary. We are that age where we are celebrating forty years wedding anniversary. He went thinking it is the wedding anniversary, only to discover it was a ngurario. Ngurario is a Kikuyu ceremony for confirming you are properly married so that you can receive Kikuyu blessings. Now, although he received Christ’s blessings in the wedding forty years ago, all over sudden he realized he missed Gikuyu and Mumbi blessings. So he now was calling people for the function. of course because he knows they are Christians, he does not tell them what it really is. they think they are coming for an anniversary, only to discover the goat is being killed in order to have a ngurario. Once you are involved in those gods of your ancestors, you are setting an example for your children to follow.
So we are talking about legacy, and legacy can be reversed, legacy can be changed. And I thought this quotation is very, very important. So if you ask yourself, what are the things that are wrong with your generation? Would you like to stop them? Seek God’s deliverance, and then you do not pass them beyond you. How do you stop it? By talking to your children about why it is wrong. You know here we have been told you can leave your child with a valuables box as inheritance, but if you do not give them a key, it will remain locked, isn’t it? So it will be important for you to discuss with your children.we born again, do not do such things.
But if you act right that way you will begin a new legacy that does not follow the Bukusus or the Mijikendas, it follows Christ. And I think it will be an important issue that we deal with to leave a good legacy .
Day 3
Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy.
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Let me just go to the scriptures, in the book of Psalms 68:6. It says,
God sent the lonely in families, He leads out the prisoners in singing, and the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.
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In other words, God’s solution to loneliness is to set you in a family. Three things I want to say about that: your legacy should be a legacy of a family that does allow any member get lonely. Why? Your children are aware that they can share their issues with their father freely. They feel there is somebody who accepts them unconditionally and therefore they cannot be lonely. they have somebody to share with. And that must be true of your spouse too.
Ephesians 3:15 says,
I kneel before the Father from who his whole family in heaven and earth derives its name.
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In other words, your family, is supposed to be an expression of God’s family. The reason you are called a father is because God is a father. That is why in the Lord’s Prayer we say our Father who art in heaven, because you have an earthly one also. And the idea of the earthly one is to show the child see how the heavenly one possibly looks like. I tell men, that is a threatening thing to imagine that your child might never get the true picture of God because God wants your child to know the father through you and you do not measure up.
So if you are a quarrelsome father, they imagine even God is quarrelsome. Because you see our Father who is art in heaven implies, do not worry, even if you have not seen God, just look at your father, he is like that. Now, many of us fathers, that is a threatening, isn’t it? Because we know we are not anywhere near the heavenly Father look. Can you see why the Lord’s Prayer is such a threatening prayer for men? Our Father who is art in heaven.
Now, that is basically what we are discussing here. The legacy we want to leave our children is the understanding of our heavenly Father, by being the kind of fathers who can demonstrate to the children that. And that is why one of the reasons why we have to come up lovingly but clearly, against single parenting, for the issue of lordprayer.we must be very careful about it because there is a risk.but , being a single parent is not a sin, but to start becoming the normal thing that girls are choosing they want a child but they do not a father is. Have you heard of those girls?
It has to understand that that way we are destroying the legacy imlied in the Lord’s Prayer. He does not want a family without a father, because your children will discover God by looking at their earthly father. So you need to understand for this legacy to pass be united couple. Which legacy? Of demonstrating God the Father to the children and then to the grandchildren. it will be important that every woman understands that.
I am looking at every single people reading this. If you do not feel like you can withstand a man, give up on getting a child. There is nothing your child has done for you to molest a child, by getting a child without a father. Surely, how unloving could you be? Hurting your own child? You see, you can decide not to have a husband, that is your business. But you cannot decide a child has no father because there has never appeared any child without a father.
So you are only cheating the child. So it is not difficult to have a child without a father, it is impossible. So they need to come out of that kind of thinking well before you marry. this idea of setting up a legacy about the God being the Father, it will be important for us to discourage girls ever wanting to get a child if they do not want the father.
Day 4
Wisdom, like an inheritance, is a good thing and benefits those who see the sun.
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The same thing with men. There are men who are not looking after their children.some of them are not doing it accidentally, it is deliberately. They want to be fathers. So they will get you, trick, you, get a child and then they throw you away. My friend, God’s intention is that every child will be brought up by a mother and a father. In order to have that legacy, it will be important that the father knows the mother, and the children, even if you do not love your child mother, they know they did not appear from heaven. They know that they were born by the mother and there must have been a father. So it will be important to understand this.
But the third thing I am saying about the issue, it is for you to understand then that once you have children, you do not have the freedom to just dump their father or mother and go on. Why? It will affect the children and it will impact your legacy. So it will be important to understand that there are things you will need to do as a wife to ensure you stay with their father. In fact, the way to love children is to love their mother. These days there are children that are getting answers in standard six. Why? Fear the mother will be divorced.
Nation newspaper some years ago did a survey and they are saying in Nairobi schools, about six out of every ten children come from broken families. What that means is that the average child in standard six, about ten, eleven years, think that it is not normal to have a father and a mother togueether. So they fear that even theirs is likely to break because they hear stories about how the other childs one broke. So the next time you talk roughly to the mother, they start imagining the divorce, it is happening, it is about to happen. Because they know what is likely to happen. So your children are getting stomach ulcers because of the way you treat their mother.
Just because they have seen it is real for others, they know it can happen to them. So they keep imagining. So because of the fear they will end up without a father or without a mother they cannot enjoy their life today. So when we talk about legacy and you want a legacy, it will mean that you have to fight for your family irrespective of how irresponsible your spouse is. He maybe a useless man but it is your work to recover him with Gods help for the sake of your legacy . For the sake of your children.
The mother maybe hopeless, as he husband with gods help make her hopeful. Work on her with the help of the Lord. Pray about it because if they lose a mother you will also lose a legacy. Because your interest is not just your life but also your legacy. In this topic, your interest is not just how you live your life but how does it affect tomorrow.
Let me just tell you the kind of legacy I hope will happen if you run your family well. Number one, it will give gods kingdom biological Church growth. Any Church with strong families must start building more Churches. Let me just give you an example I like giving. If you have a Church of ten young men, there are no women, but they are very lazy, so they do not witness. But other wise they trust in God and live holy lives.When they come to marry they know the scriptures does not allow them to marry non-christians. They must marry Christians. So they will have to look for Christian girls in other Churches. Without any evangelism, the Church will become double. Simply through marriage. Are you getting my message? They did not witness, they got a Christian wife. But the Church has become double in size. Now, those people, let’s assume they get four children each. In twenty years, those children are adults. Am I right? And they have not gone witnessing, no missions, just running good families. It will mean that in twenty years, they will be the original twenty people, plus another forty people. they will be a Church of how many? Sixty. Have they gone witnessing? No. it biological Church growth through family that work on legacy.That is God’s intention in Malachi 2:15, why one? Why does God bring you into marriage? So that you can have a godly offspring. That is really what legacy is all about. That God is interested in you but even more importantly He wants to see, are you going to produce a godly offspring. And so that is what I am saying.
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The first feedback of well run families is a growing Church. If all these people here are married, are bringing up Christian families, this Church will not fit the children when they become adults. We will have to have, phase one, then phase two, and then phase x... I think they can go upto many phsase . we are not talking about evangelism, we are talking about running Christian families that produce a godly offspring. That is the first thing we are talking about when we talk about legacy.
Number two, we have talked about legacy of better citizens because if you bring out Christian families, some of them will become doctors, others will become lawyers, others will become judges, others will become bus drivers and other politicians. Whatever they become, in your old age, when your children are the ones in control, you will be well looked after by the legacy because they are the ones going to be national leaders in your old age.
So when we talk about legacy it means that the next generation, when you are old people, you are in your eighties, your children will be a generation that cares about society. Unfortunately for us it sounds like Kenya is becoming more and more corrupt. It has something to do with the way we are bringing up our families, the kind of children we are bringing up.
Thirdly, a leagacy of better neighbourhoods. my wife, when our children were younger, she was concerned by the neighbourhood. One child was playing football near our estate and the ball came and broke our window. She had two alternatives; either run for those children and tell them off. But she realized children playing is normal. You know what she opted to do? She decided to begin a neighbour’s Bible club. All those children playing football, who were the age of our children. she invited them to our house for juice, biscuits, etc. And once you tell those children below ten that,they come. They sought their parent permission and they agreed they will be meeting every Saturday. that is how she started a Bible club. All the neighbours knew the house of mama Wambui, where children go on Saturday afternoons. I would come to my house and there would be nowhere to sit because there would be may be sixty children filling every corner. Twenty years later you know, she was attending all their weddings. These are her children now old. One is a medical consultant. Another engineer..etc.They finished University quite a few years ago, because they were the same age with our children. Every direction we go, we are meeting them. They say, do you remember the small boy who used to be like this? This man is the one. They are lecturers in the universities but they all began from our house.
Do you want your neighbourhood to improve? Do you want to reduce the crooks who come to beat up old people? Work on your family which will impct the neighbourhood. And it is important to understand this idea of working on your immediate family but you must also work on others in the nighbourhood.
I do consultancy work and I train people. Some time back I was training Headmasters in another County, with the help of County Education Director. It was not necessarily a Christian meeting. And I heard the Director give a word I have not forgotten. He said there is something called cross-pollination. Cross-pollination means if you have a flower garden here, and the neighbour has a bad flower garden, the bees will bring the bad flowers onto yours. That is called cross-pollination. So when you run your family well and you are not doing anything about your neighbourhood, cross-pollination will spoil yours. So that do not just take your children to Sunday school. If you want to have a good legacy, it will be important to have Sunday school in the Church but Bible clubs in the neighbourhoods, where ten, twenty families come togueether to your house and you run a Bible club. It does not matter which Church they go to on sundays. Those are the same ones that will be potential crooks in five years, but now they will not be crooks. they will be people who are respectful citizens.
That is what we are talking about. And we have to invest in impacting nieghvourhoods. That is why I spend a lot of my time in high schools and universities because I know that is the way to affect the future. And we will have better professionals, will have a better country and a better future. And we could go on. I think I have said quite a few things.
Day 5
A prudent servant will rule over a disgraceful son and will share the inheritance as one of the family.
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Before I finish I want to say, the kind of a family that can produce this kind of legacy that is going to produce better people, right up to the seventh generation, has to be like the following.
Number one, your family must be a human development centre. You must see your family as a human development centre. You need to understand just like a principle of a college works on his pupils and sends them to be employed, understand that your three month old baby is in training alreday. Your home is a human development centre. And you need to start by picturing that three month old baby, when he is fifty years and you are eighty years, how will he look like? Once you have a picture of that grandfather, because by fifty he maybe a grandfather himself, you, you yourself will then be a good great grandfather. Now, picture that three months old baby as a grandfather. What kind of a grandfather do you want to see? Once that picture is clear, you now start working on the baby to prepare him for that responsibility. And you need to start looking at your home that way. Are you seeing it as a human development centre or not? And it will be important that you understand that.
A lot of us are producing just educated boys. Even if your son went through Alliance, got first class honours, he has a PhD, is that what you see of your child at fifty? What are you before now? The scriptures say, the type of a person you should produce is a godly offspring…not just Phd. Now, you need to understand, what am I going to do in three months that will make that child not just become an acadaemic giant, but become a useful human being who is a citizen of this country, and that good? And that is one of the things that makes it be a lagacy.
That is why a lot of people are just clever fools. all they are interested in is the acadaemic performance of a child. But, if your child does well acadaemically, minus moral values, he will just be an intellectual thief. And it will be very difficult to control him. it is better a foolish thief than a clever thief. So your child, if you just look at acadaemic performance, you are going to give him a legacy of very bright thief.
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Day 6
An inheritance claimed too soon will not be blessed at the end.
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One morning I heard something on BBC about Korea producing the best hackers. You know hackers? What a legacy! You need to understand that your home must be the kind of human development centre where you are not just producing clver theifs. a human being is not just intellectual, he is also spiritual. He is also social. So you must develop your child not in one way but in all ways. That means you will have to decide that there are some schools you can’t send your children. You cannot send your children to some of the schools despite ther acadaemic perfromnce . Why? You are not just interested in performance, you are interested in the influence. You know the other day I laughed when a pastor who is a Pentecostal Church, sent their son to a Catholic boarding school. In form two, the son decided he wants to be a Catholic. So the priest did such a thorough job that the son for baptism but priest said, no, no, no. This is the Church which I should join he insisted .. I know your father is a Pentecostal. I will not baptize you. He refused completely.
The son went home over the holidays and said, papa I have decided to become a Catholic. Instead of the father knowing it is his problem, he started blaming the priest. I took you to school to learn. What are these things you are bringing home? He said, I am dropping you to school next time. So the father dropped the son to the headmaster. When they met the priest , he was really in a fire. A Pentecostal Pastor with a son wanting to be baptized a Catholic! He was fed up.
But , the son said, papa you are misunderstanding. Didn’t I tell you, this guy has refused, to allow me to become a Catholic. Why are you blaming him? It is my choice. So the priest did not have to say anything. That is when it clicked to the father; it had nothing to do with the priest. He is the one who took the son to admire the priest. Why would you ever send your son to a Catholic if you do not want him to be a Catholic? Just because they get better mean grade? So all you are after is producing mean grade. Now, you need to ask yourself, what is happening? What kind of school is your daughter in?
I still remember Iwhen was working for Shell. … Shell decided they will be paying the school fees for managers children. my children were going to cheap Hospital Hill, which is a government school. And now it was very tempting to move my children to the British system private school.But the headmaster of Hospital Hill was a Christian. Mr. Njoroguee was a born again believer, and had run the school like a Christian school. He had Bible clubs for every class, where my wife and I were also part of the people that were teaching and helping in the religious program of the school. But now Shell wants to pay school fees for my children.
After considering who we want to produce out of our children I said, they can’t move. We are not just after better grades, we are after better children. So what is wrong with Hospital Hill for us to move our children? So I just went to hospital hill school, got an invoice, took it to our HR, but he said, Ng’ang’a, what is wrong with you? Do not you know your allocation as a manager? You know how much school fees we are willing to cover? How can you bring such a useless bill? I said, I am not after bills being paid, the cost of my school is exactly what I have given you. And he thought, what a fool!
Many people are, once they are promoted and the company is paying, they destroy the children in private schools because the company is paying. You are too senior, you will get five people that are going to go to Oxford on their way to hell. It is very important to understand that your home legacy will be determined by the kind of product you want to see at the end.
The next thing is your home should become a personal retreat or recharge centre for the whole family. Your wife has a rough time at work, everybody is blaming her, calling her useless. They need to come home because they look forward to a place where they are not judged, they are received as they are and they have a place where they are accepted and can retreat.
Unfortunately sometimes you have rough time at work only to come home to a lioness. Now, you need to understand if that becomes the problem, home is not a retreat, it is a place to run away from. If you want to have a legacy, your home has to be restructured such that your children have all the peace.you know teenagers, are hurting each other, but they need to know when they come home they are accepted. Is your home a retreat centre? Is it a safe place to be yourself, not to play games? Or like my wife says, is it a place to start doing PR.
Thirdly, the home must become the unconditional love centre. That is a place where you are not judged. My wife likes putting it this way; you are a mother, not a teacher. You should never see your child in terms of grades. It is the work of teachers to see grades, isn’t it? This is my A child, not this is my B child. Your child is not an A child or a B child or a C child. He is your child. You do not take over the job of a teacher. In class your child might be number one from the back, but in your home he is always number one. When you do that, your child will feel accepted. Some of the reasons why they are performing badly is because they feel devalued, isn’t it? The moment we accept that he is accepted the way he is, he will be different.
The last thing I want to say is that your home should become the worldview foundational centre. You need to understand that worldview are the glasses through which we interpret life. Remember we are talking about legacy. The most important thing you will leave your children is glasses through which they see life. You live in such a way that people know, dogues eat people, people do not eat dogues. They will then never eat dogue meat.So it is important to understand worldview, in other words he grew up where the worldview glasses said you do not eat dogue meat, although he cannot remember anybody telling him, thou shall not eat dogue meat, you do not .
Now, that is what and in order to be a worldview centre it means you stay with the children as they grow. You need to understand by the age of ten, a child’s worldview is fully made. By the time they become teenagers, that is why they are so difficult to parent teenagers, because by that time they ask questions using their worldview. So that is why you need to understand your child.
Day 7
Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.
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As we conclude studies show you are eighty percent your environment, only twenty percent your DNA. In other words if, my wife and I are from Nyeri, and we get a child, and then that child is brought in Bondo, that child will not be a Kikuyu, that child will be a Luo. Why? Because you are not your parents DNA, you are your environment that you grow in. Studies are showing that. What that tells you is, sometimes you ask each other, why are children doing so badly? Both of us are graduates and our children are doing so badly in school. You are missing the point. Those are not your children. You spend a little time with them. There is somebody else giving them their worldview, and she only dropped out in standard three. You need to understand your children are sons and daughters of standard three drop out. Your housegirl is the owner. She is, because they are eighty percent who brings them up, only twenty percent who conceived them. And you start understanding that child is the daughter of a housegirl.
So it means that if you cannot change your job to become available to your children, please understand you are baba mkate, foster father,your job is to pay the school fees. The real parents are the ones who spend time with them. So if you cannot restructure your career, especially those first ten years of life, you will not have a legacy. The legacy your children will carry will be your housegirl’s legacy.
But we read Deuteronomy chapter six, and it states clearly the work of creating a worldview. Work of producing a biblical worldview does not belong to Sunday school teacher. does not belong to schools, does not belong to the housegirl, it depends on the parents. The question is, what kind of legacy will you leave? What are you doing about it? How will you restructure your life especially those first ten years of a child’s life, to become available?
Some of us, the big challenge is, those first ten years are the same ten years you are trying to build a career. So that is why you are struggling, but at the same time you are not available to your children. You tell your self .. once I am senior I will be available for the children. Once your children are teenagers, they might not need you near.those of us who are older can tell you, you will be there, you have even taken leave to be available to the children, you call them, they say, papa what are you asking for? You have nothing to say. They go back to their room. Those of you with teenagers am I right? You are available but they are not available.
Yet when they are young, they are available but you are not available. My friend, you can even take leave, you can even resign, but once your children are adults and not available now. the only power you have is the power of prayers. They are not available, but you can pray cannot... because they are not available themselves. So you need to understand ,as a younger family, be avaible otherwise it is too late for others. as a younger family it is important to understand you are either available now or never.
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Let us pray. Lord Jesus, how easy it is to say these things but how difficult to practice. We need your help. We are in the same world that is pushing us to make pushing us to success, yet the message today is you want us to produce for you a godly offspring. Lord, convict us right in our hearts to where we will change the way we live so that we are available for our children, available for our spouses, and we will create the kind of home we have just been talking about, the unconditional love centre, the biblical worldview centre, the personal retreat or recharge centre, the human development centre. Only you can help us. Lord talk to us and help us, we stand in need. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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