If I were to ask you to hand me a million dollars, could you do it? Could you come up to the church building this evening and drop it in my lap? Probably not. What about an actual monkey, could you hand me one of those? I doubt it. Could you give me a home-grown pineapple? Not today. And do you know the reason you can’t give me any of these things? It’s because you probably don’t have them to begin with. It’s not that it is impossible to possess any of those things that I just mentioned. In fact there are a lot of people out there somewhere who do posses those things and could readily hand them to me. (One time a guy did hand me a million dollars in cash! But after we took a quick picture I had to give it back). But I bet you can’t give me any of these items solely because you, yourself, don’t have them. You can’t pass on what you don’t have to begin with.
What about your faith do you want to pass on to others? Maybe you want your children to have a strong faith as the foundation for their lives. Perhaps you want your coworkers to have the joy found in Christ. Or maybe you want your friends and peers to be well versed in Scripture. If you are wanting to pass these things on to others, you need to start by possessing them yourself.
Now, that’s not to say that you have to wait to encourage others toward Godliness until you have it all figured out. By no means! But rather we need to be working toward attaining that which we would wish for others.
May you posses a strong relationship with the Lord that you can then pass on to others.