Do you have leaders on your team that need to develop God-honoring core values? (183-3)

Each generation of leaders must help the next generation understand that no matter how much power they accumulate they are still accountable to the One True God. Read Nahum 1:1-10.

Just a little more than a century before Nahum’s prophecies, Jonah had taken God’s demand for repentance to the Assyrian capitol of Nineveh. The king and all the leaders had responded immediately by humbling themselves before God and God spared them from destruction. That generation failed to leave any legacy of humility or repentance and the nation returned to the wicked treatment of people that first brought God’s wrath. Unfortunately, children and grandchildren cannot inherit spiritual life so the attitude of repentance was not automatically passed on to the next generation of leaders.

The current leaders of Nineveh were arrogant, self-assured, self-righteous, and spiritually blind. Though their ancestors had been spared from God’s judgment they had failed to convey the lessons they had learned to the future generations of leaders. Their neglect allowed an erosion of godly values and each generation of leaders reverted more and more to the cruel practices of the past, giving rise to spiritual apathy toward their own wickedness.

Every leader has a responsibility to pass on their hard learned wisdom and mentor the next generation of leaders. Spiritual leadership is not easy and it will demand a leader’s time and attention, and an investment in the leaders on their team to transfer core values that will help them develop and maintain God-honoring character. They must develop a personal core truth that leadership success without a successful legacy is really failure. Wise, legacy-developing leaders view the leaders on their team as an asset God has entrusted to them to develop and refine, and they understand they will be held accountable for the results even into the next generation.

Do you have leaders on your team that need to develop God-honoring core values? Are you investing your time and talent to implant core values and create character that will honor God? Wise leaders will learn from the failure of the leaders in Nineveh and will help the next generation of leaders develop God-honoring core values to live by, and they will teach them to pass these core values on to their successors.