Nov
3
2009

In the Face of Stress

categories Launch Movements, Love God

Our faith has oppor­tu­ni­ties to be refined as we encounter var­i­ous stresses, over­come obsta­cles and endure the hard­ships of life.  School, fam­ily, work, con­fronta­tion, injury, sick­ness, even death are a part of life that adds pres­sure.  No one’s life is free of stress.  A mature faith that rests solely on the Lord is cul­ti­vated over time.  A matur­ing faith demands that we learn to depend on the Lord in all circumstances.

Our response often reveals the con­di­tion of our heart.  Read James 1:2–4

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“Con­sider it all joy, my broth­ers, when you encounter var­i­ous tri­als, know­ing that the test­ing of your faith pro­duces endurance.  And let endurance have its per­fect result, so that you may be per­fect ad com­plete, lack­ing in nothing.”

Con­sid­er­ing tri­als “all joy” is one of the hard­est things for me to put into prac­tice.  I have strug­gled to find peace at dif­fer­ent times in my life.  I remem­ber as a newly mar­ried man how I strug­gled try­ing to merge our lives together.  Wrestling with self­ish­ness and sac­ri­fice, the con­di­tion of my heart showed that I need to mature in many areas.  There were times when we wanted com­pletely dif­fer­ent things and I had no idea how God was going to rec­on­cile our hearts.

I expe­ri­enced tri­als at work as I faced dead­lines and pres­sure from my employer to give qual­ity results in lim­ited time.  I’ve lied and cheated my peers try­ing to look more put together than I actu­ally was.  I lamented my sin after­ward rec­og­niz­ing that I was more con­cerned with look­ing good then uphold­ing my integrity.

When faced with these chal­lenges, many of us will try to rise up in our own power, draw­ing from our own expe­ri­ences and press for­ward doing what we believe is best.  That is my ten­dency, but it lacks spir­i­tual wis­dom.  It leaves God out of the equa­tion and trains us to be self-reliant, self­ish.  Every­one fails at some point.  Sorry to be so dis­cour­ag­ing, but it is true.  No one has ever been that good, no one except Jesus.  And unless He died in vain, then every­one will fall short and does have need of His power, strength and sovereignty.

Spir­i­tual endurance requires a mature per­spec­tive that sees the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion as an oppor­tu­nity to grow and not merely fail. It demands that we put our focus on the Lord on not our own suf­fer­ing.  When we place our trust and our faith in Jesus we sub­mit to His power, author­ity and sov­er­eignty over our lives.  This doesn’t hap­pen imme­di­ately; it must be learned, tested and refined over time.

true growth and change usu­ally comes on the heels of adversity.

Be assured that ser­vice in the mil­i­tary will afford you the priv­i­lege of mak­ing dif­fi­cult deci­sion under stress.   What sep­a­rates you from oth­ers is where you draw your strength from and what defines your values.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own under­stand­ing, in all your ways acknowl­edge Him and He will make your paths straight.  Proverbs 3:5–6

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Oct
27
2009

Supreme Commitment

categories Love God

Another way that spir­i­tual lead­er­ship takes form is con­nected to how we pri­or­i­tize our time and com­mit­ments. Our rela­tion­ship with God should be above all oth­ers. In my last post I alluded to giv­ing up time with fam­ily as a way that a ser­vant leader could sac­ri­fice in order to love oth­ers. This mode of sac­ri­fice is eas­ily under­stood by those in the mil­i­tary because of the very nature in which ser­vice men and women do their job.
Most every­one who serves in the mil­i­tary knows that they may be asked to give up pre­cious fam­ily time dur­ing a deploy­ment or their assign­ment in order to serve their coun­try and accom­plish the mission.

Under­stand that a lifestyle of sac­ri­fice becomes nec­es­sary as we live out ser­vant lead­er­ship. This should be evi­dent in our pri­or­i­ties. In Matthew 10:37 Jesus says, “Any­one who loves his father or mother more than me is not wor­thy of me; any­one who loves his son or daugh­ter more than me is not wor­thy of me.” Christ wants us to love Him more than even our clos­est rela­tion­ships. We are told that even the close rela­tion­ship of a father, mother, sis­ter or brother should not be idol­ized or become more sig­nif­i­cant than our rela­tion­ship with the Lord.

While there are many who lose their fam­i­lies in their drive for suc­cess, there are oth­ers who swing to the other extreme. We don’t want to be worka­holics and lose our fam­i­lies while we are ful­fill­ing God’s assign­ments, but some have made fam­ily an idol. They have neglected, and in some cases, abdi­cated God’s call for their lives because they wrongly assumed that this was an either/or proposition—they refused to let any­thing come in the way of fam­ily com­mit­ments. God may want to use the sac­ri­fices asso­ci­ated with your call­ing to build and strengthen your fam­ily…. This doesn’t sug­gest that we neglect our fam­i­lies. We should give them what they need and deserve in terms of our time and atten­tion. One of the most impor­tant lessons in life is that some­times there must be jus­ti­fi­able sac­ri­fices that require us to do the right thing because it is the right thing.

Whether mar­ried or sin­gle, our life requires a bal­ance that hinges on Jesus and the grace that He con­tin­u­ally offers us.

Father, plant in our heart a supreme com­mit­ment to serv­ing you and let noth­ing else replace it. Let your exam­ple of sac­ri­fice be exem­pli­fied in our lives as we live out love, joy, peace and right­eous­ness in the Holy Spirit. Amen!

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Oct
14
2009

A Wardrobe of Sacrifice

categories Launch Movements, Love God, Love Team, Multiply Leadership

Last post I touched on this idea of sac­ri­fi­cial love and the under­ly­ing atti­tudes of ser­vant lead­ers.  I wanted to sum­ma­rize what Lead­er­ship as an Iden­tity refers to as “The wardrobe of sac­ri­fice.”  I thought it included a few good sit­u­a­tions of what sac­ri­fice as a leader may look like.

A ser­vant leader will be called to sac­ri­fice him­self in many dif­fer­ent ways.  Here are a few:

  1. Deal­ing with dif­fi­cult peo­ple- I’m sure you’ve heard it said that “Lead­er­ship would be great if it weren’t for the peo­ple!”  Part of God’s assign­ment for us involves help­ing peo­ple like this grow in their faith.  These inter­ac­tions many times reveal under­ly­ing atti­tudes and a part of our own heart that needs to be refined.
  2. Giv­ing up the urge to “just get the task done.” Com­plet­ing the task may be only a small part of an assign­ment from God.  Some of us are dri­ven by a need to work, to com­plete a job and are haunted by the pres­sure, neglect­ing rela­tion­ships in the process. We need to reject this men­tal­ity and allow rela­tion­ship to enhance our jobs and our lives together.
  3. Invest­ing in those who report to you – Some­times this requires a sac­ri­fice of your time.  You may be fac­ing a huge work­load and feel­ing the pres­sure to devote all your time to com­plet­ing it, but you also see the need to spend time train­ing some­one in how to do their job.  By invest­ing in oth­ers we can help them develop.  Whether in min­istry or the busi­ness world, the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of lead­er­ship must be inten­tion­ally sought after in order to help lead­ers grow.   Invest­ing in oth­ers may require a sac­ri­fice in your promi­nence.  This may mean that you give up some of your respon­si­bil­ity to oth­ers in order to train and give them oppor­tu­ni­ties to grow and be stretched.  This assumes the atti­tude of John the Bap­tist (John 3:30):  “He must increase, but I must decrease”
  4. Giv­ing up time with fam­ily- This last area of sac­ri­fice I wanted to dis­cuss a lit­tle more in depth so I think I’ll save it for the next post.  Keep an eye out for it.

Jesus shows us what it means to lead sac­ri­fi­cially.  The Lord gives each of us our own assign­ments.  No mat­ter how great or small, our response should be evi­dence of plac­ing the Father’s will above our own.  Our call­ings may vary, but our response to Him should be that of faith and trust and it should be demon­strated in the love that we have for one another.

Father in heaven, teach us to love sac­ri­fi­cially no mat­ter what the cir­cum­stance.  Help us to rest in you and not our own accom­plish­ments, abil­i­ties.  Allow us to com­mu­ni­cate gen­uine love, per­fect love that only comes from you.  Give me a new hearts to love oth­ers and accom­plish your assignments.

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Oct
6
2009

Loving Others

categories Connecting with the Lost, Love Team, Multiply Leadership, Transformational Discipleship

John 13:35 “By this all peo­ple will know that you are my dis­ci­ples, if you have love for one another.” How are we doing at lov­ing oth­ers?  Do we have com­pas­sion? Do we really care? Do we put the inter­est of oth­ers ahead of our own?  Or do we lunge for­ward with our own agenda and ideas?

As God has been work­ing this out in my life. He has shown me that it is not what is shown out­wardly to oth­ers that dis­plays love, but what inwardly my heart com­mu­ni­cates to oth­ers.  This means the con­di­tion of my heart and my moti­va­tion com­mu­ni­cates a greater love then merely the actions involved.  Actions are impor­tant!  But they must be matched with the moti­va­tion behind them.  That is the “WHY” behind our actions

Med­i­tate on Philip­pi­ans 2:3–11

Do noth­ing from rivalry or con­ceit, but in humil­ity count oth­ers more sig­nif­i­cant than your­selves. Let each of you look not only to his own inter­ests, but also to the inter­ests of oth­ers. Have this mind among your­selves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equal­ity with God a thing to be grasped, but made him­self noth­ing, tak­ing the form of a ser­vant, being born in the like­ness of men. And being found in human form, he hum­bled him­self by becom­ing obe­di­ent to the point of death, even death on a cross. There­fore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue con­fess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Our moti­va­tions in how we love one another should be reflected in how the fruits of the spirit are shown (love, joy, peace, patience, kind­ness, good­ness, faith­ful­ness, gen­tle­ness and self-control) Gala­tians 5:22–23

Con­fes­sion time:

I am weak when it comes to patience and there­fore how I love a per­son becomes con­di­tional as to how well I am doing in this area.   If I am patient then I can love peo­ple well, but if I would rather be doing some­thing else, I am in a hurry and annoyed at the circumstances.

Below are two ques­tions that demand that I grow in this area are:

  1. How does impa­tience affect my leadership?
    • It takes the focus off the task at hand and the cur­rent real­ity and puts focus on what’s next.  While this could be a ben­e­fi­cial qual­ity when it comes to cast­ing vision, it doesn’t have much ben­e­fit to those whom I am lead­ing now.  Those whom have been asked to fin­ish the task at hand.  The result could lead to a poorly fin­ished assign­ment.  It could mean mis­takes and errors.
  2. What does impa­tience com­mu­ni­cate to those I am entrusted to lead (love)?
    • Impa­tience shows a lack of value for peo­ple and the task at hand.   It shows that my inter­ests are more impor­tant than yours.
    • It shows pride and arro­gance, not humil­ity and respect.

Ask your­selves the same two ques­tions regard­ing the fruits of the spirit that you need to allow God to grow you up in.

Are you show­ing a sin­cer­ity of heart to love and lead oth­ers?  Show­ing patience, serv­ing oth­ers, hav­ing a hum­ble heart are atti­tudes that makes Chris­t­ian lead­er­ship speak to the heart of oth­ers.  And when it becomes our iden­tity and not just a behav­ior, serv­ing oth­ers invites oth­ers to come along­side, join you and love others.

Father in Heaven, help us to love oth­ers from a sin­cere heart.  As you have been patient with us in our sin and hard hearts, teach us to love and to show patience toward oth­ers by putting their needs ahead of our own.  Help us make serv­ing oth­ers our identity.

How does impa­tience affect my leadership?

It takes the focus off the task at hand and the cur­rent real­ity and puts focus on what’s next.  While this could be a ben­e­fi­cial qual­ity when it comes to cast­ing vision, it doesn’t have much ben­e­fit to those whom I am lead­ing now.  Those whom have been asked to fin­ish the task at hand.  The result could lead to a poorly fin­ished assign­ment.  It could mean mis­takes and errors.

What does impa­tience com­mu­ni­cate to those I am entrusted to lead (love)?

Impa­tience shows a lack of value for peo­ple and the task at hand.   It shows that my inter­ests are more impor­tant than yours.

It shows pride and arro­gance, not humil­ity and respect.

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Oct
1
2009

Servant Leader, Selfless Sacrifice

categories Connecting with the Lost

We’ve all heard that Jesus was a “ser­vant leader.”  As fol­low­ers of Christ we’ve been told that we are to lead like Jesus.  Agree­ing with this, I still ask the ques­tion, what does that mean?  Don’t we have the ten­dency to asso­ciate humil­ity and serv­ing oth­ers with being docile and weak?  Is that our view of Jesus?  It shouldn’t be.  Jesus had incred­i­ble power and abil­ity.  He invested his life into 12 men who would change the world.  Yeah, that sounds like pretty amaz­ing lead­er­ship.  So let’s explore a lit­tle more about being a ser­vant leader.  I pro­pose that being a “ser­vant leader” is not weak and docile, but it includes liv­ing our lives in dig­nity, inter­nal strength, and courage.

Let’s first look inside our­selves.  Is our pri­mary moti­va­tion for serv­ing to get things done?  Serv­ing should not be done in order to get some­thing in return that would be self­ish.  Think on this for a minute and really ask your­self, what are my moti­va­tions in rela­tion­ships, at work, in school…?  True ser­vice should be done out of grate­ful­ness to God because of what He has done for us.

So what did He do?

Titus 3:4–6 says “When God our Sav­ior revealed his kind­ness and love, he saved us, not because of the right­eous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins, giv­ing us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit.  He gen­er­ously poured out the Spirit upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior.”

Christ being the best exam­ple of a ser­vant leader gave us a new birth and a new life.  But Christ did not die for our sins so that we would then be good.  Our good­ness and right­eous­ness did not change as a result.  He died because he loved us and His sac­ri­fice for us enables us to have a chance to know our Father in heaven and put on His right­eous­ness and His good­ness, not our own.

When we serve oth­ers in order to get them to do what we want them to do, we are sim­ply using manip­u­la­tion and guilt.  Christ did not model manip­u­la­tion and guilt, not at all.  He mod­eled true sac­ri­fice.  If our lead­er­ship is defined in such a way we come across as disin­gen­u­ous and self-seeking we’re essen­tially say­ing, I deserve your loy­alty because I do this great thing for you.  We are mak­ing an agree­ment with another with­out their consent.

Let me give you an exam­ple of my own lead­er­ship fail­ure in my home and mar­riage.  Not too long ago, I tried help­ing out around the house by doing some work.  I started doing all the dishes I could get my hands on.  I thought I was doing a pretty good thing.   I soon expected that my wife should let me get away with not pick­ing up my things around the house because I did te great things for her.  This didn’t fly for long.  It died and so did this poor attempt to be ser­vant leader in this capac­ity.  My moti­va­tion was self seek­ing and not Christ’s exam­ple of ser­vant lead­er­ship because after a while I began to rea­son that I would only con­tinue to do the dishes as long as I got what I wanted in return.

Being a ser­vant leader involves a sac­ri­fice that demands noth­ing in return.

John 15:13 says, “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  Jesus being the best exam­ple did not lay down his life expect­ing any­thing in return. He gave his life up because of the father’s love for us, and served mankind by pro­vid­ing a way.

UntitledLike­wise sol­diers train with each other and build com­radery and a fel­low­ship with one another.  They fight shoul­der to shoul­der in fox holes, humvee, pinned down in cover against enemy fire.   These men may be fight­ing for their fam­i­lies, the free­dom or for the bond friend­ship that has built with their fel­low sol­dier.  These men and women “serve” our coun­try and our best inter­ests. Sac­ri­fice, if demanded, is given out of a love for another.

No finer expres­sion of love is shown then here.  Self­less sac­ri­fice does not demand any­thing back.  But it can inspire others.

Think about how Jesus’ sac­ri­fice inspired so many after Him and still does.  Does it inspire you to give with­out the expec­ta­tion to receive, to serve selflessly?

Ser­vant lead­er­ship should not be some­thing we embrace as a strat­egy to achieve our goals, but it should be our iden­tity.  Our love and treat­ment of oth­ers should not make sense to them apart from our love of Christ.

Father teach us to be ser­vant lead­ers, to sac­ri­fice our lives daily for You.  Let our life be the very expres­sion Jesus’ love for us.  To God be the Glory.

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Sep
23
2009

Transformation-Old to New

categories Learn for a Lifetime, Love God

God really has me dig­ging deep lately.  I’ve been think­ing about 2 Corinthian 5:17, “There­fore, if any­one is in Christ, he is a new cre­ation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

How does that really change the way I live?

As I grow in love for God and for oth­ers (the two great­est com­mand­ments (Mark 12:18–21), I can’t for­get that I am beck­oned to take action and not remain pas­sive. Our effec­tive­ness as lead­ers is directly con­nected to our will­ing­ness to con­tin­u­ously learn and grow while stay­ing com­mit­ted to build up oth­ers. If we become unteach­able it shows a death of the spirit and we quickly seek to be served rather than serve oth­ers, which reveals a death of love. We have to con­tinue to learn and serve or we’re in trou­ble and I won’t grow spiritually.

How do I take action? How do I move toward the “new” and work at let­ting the “old” pass away?
As I read all of 2nd Corinthi­ans chap­ter 5, it reminds me that God has saved me and con­tin­ues to save me every day. He wants to save me every day, every moment from the sin that remains. Begin­ning in verse 11, Paul begins specif­i­cally talk­ing about the min­istry of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and how I am to be rec­on­ciled to God, through Christ. This is not just a one-time occur­rence because while posi­tion­ally I am “saved” through faith in Christ yet Paul tell me to “work out your sal­va­tion” (Philip­pi­ans 2:12) which takes a entire life­time and will never be fully accom­plished while I am alive.

Prac­ti­cally speak­ing, this “process” can only be devel­oped through liv­ing in a rec­og­nized need for God. I need to depend on God, not myself. Gala­tians 6:8 tells us that I will either strive in my own strength (pro­duc­ing cor­rup­tion) or strive in His strength (pro­duc­ing eter­nal life). As a man sows, he reaps…

Let me give some prac­ti­cal advice. If we are to be rec­on­ciled to God, then I must allow the Sprit to work in this “new cre­ation” and we must put to death our “old nature.”

Live Above– rec­og­nize that our earthly lives will even­tu­ally fade and what­ever work is done in the flesh will fade but only eter­nal work remains, work of the Spirit (2 Corn 5:1–5)

  1. Be coura­geous in how you live (6–10)
    • Walk by faith, not by sight (7)
  2. Give up our con­trol and let the love of Christ con­trol us (14)
    • “He died for all, that those who live might no longer live for them­selves but for Him” (15)
  3. Start see­ing people/relationships through spir­i­tual eyes (16)
    • Don’t just look at peo­ple accord­ing to worldly stan­dards and val­ues as if one’s present phys­i­cal life is all that matters.
    • Ask your­self the ques­tions, “How does God see this person?”

Will you join me in this process of being con­formed to the image of Christ?
Medi­ate on Romans 8:28–30
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called accord­ing to his pur­pose. For those whom he foreknew he also pre­des­tined to be con­formed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first­born among many broth­ers. And those whom he pre­des­tined he also called, and those whom he called he also jus­ti­fied, and those whom he jus­ti­fied he also glorified.

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Sep
10
2009

5 Common Great Commission Myths

categories Launch Movements, Learn for a Lifetime, Overview

I read this today and wanted to pass it along to you.  Great insight.  Jay Loren­zen bor­rowed it from Joey Shaw and I’m bor­row­ing it from him… enjoy

Joey Shaw, Min­is­ter of Inter­na­tional Mis­sion at The Austin Stone Com­mu­nity Church, recently pub­lished an arti­cle at The Net­work for Strate­gic Mis­sions. He seeks to cor­rect the fol­low­ing five com­mon myths about the Great Commission:

1. The Myth of Acci­den­tal Discipleship

The myth here is that merely “doing life” with oth­ers is an straight path to mak­ing dis­ci­ples. Like all per­va­sive myths, this con­tains a nugget of truth, but it is incom­plete: liv­ing your life with oth­ers is a part of mak­ing dis­ci­ples, but with­out inten­tional procla­ma­tion and demon­stra­tion of the Gospel, just doing life with oth­ers will not lead alone to mak­ing and mul­ti­ply­ing disciples.

2. The Myth that “Cross­ing Cul­tures is a Step Beyond The Gen­eral Man­date of the The Great Commission”

The model of Jesus man­dates cross­ing cul­tures. Jesus left his home (with the Father), his cul­ture, his lan­guage, his peo­ple (the trin­ity) to come to our home (earth), to our peo­ple, to speak our lan­guage, to grow up in a Jew­ish cul­ture, and so on. Jesus was a cross-cultural mis­sion­ary and he com­mands us to fol­low in his steps, cross any bound­ary, live incar­na­tion­ally and make disciples.

3. The Myth that Jesus Wants Converts

The most inter­est­ing thing about the Great Com­mis­sion is that it does not com­mand us to make con­verts of Chris­tian­ity. Instead, we are to make dis­ci­ples of Jesus. The dif­fer­ence between con­vert mak­ing and dis­ci­ple mak­ing is cru­cial. Con­verts change reli­gions. Dis­ci­ples change mas­ters. Con­verts fol­low a sys­tem. Dis­ci­ples fol­low a Per­son. Con­verts build Chris­ten­dom. Dis­ci­ples build the King­dom of God. Con­verts embrace rit­u­als. Dis­ci­ples embrace a way of life. Con­verts love the com­mand to “bap­tize them” in the Great Com­mis­sion, but that is all. Dis­ci­ples bap­tize oth­ers but only in con­text of “teach­ing them to observe all that I com­manded you”. Con­verts love con­ver­sion. Dis­ci­ples love transformation.

4. They Myth that says: “When I’m ready and able, I’ll start mak­ing disciples.”

Have you ever thought of some­one who is mak­ing and mul­ti­ply­ing dis­ci­ples as a super Chris­t­ian? Have you ever said or prayed some­thing like this, “We just ask you God to send out to the nations the best among us, yes, Lord, send out our marines!” If so, then you have fallen to believe the myth that mak­ing and mul­ti­ply­ing dis­ci­ples is for “elite Christians”.

5. The Myth that Mak­ing Dis­ci­ples is Great Advice

Cul­tural Chris­tian­ity loves this myth. Cul­tural Chris­tians love to sing the praise of dis­ci­ple mak­ers while them­selves simul­ta­ne­ously avoid­ing, through the most crafty cop-outs, actu­ally engag­ing in obe­di­ence to the Great Com­mis­sion. In other words, when it comes down to it, many view the Great Com­mis­sion as merely great advice.

Take some time to read the whole arti­cle with your team (includ­ing the com­ments where Joey dis­cusses cross­ing the cul­tural barriers–excellent.)

Ask you team: Is our move­ment really “mak­ing dis­ci­ples”? Again as we’ve argued over and over, there is no move­ment with­out “trans­form­ing dis­ci­ple­ship” and “mul­ti­ply­ing leadership.”

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Sep
3
2009

Pleasing God

categories Love God

Are you try­ing to please God?  It sounds like a sim­ple ques­tion but when you look under­neath the sur­face into your heart it may reveal some­thing that you did not know was there.  Think about Romans 8:5–8

For those who live accord­ing to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live accord­ing to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.  For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.  For the mind that is set on the flesh is hos­tile to God, for it does not sub­mit to God’s law; indeed, it can­not.  Those who are in the flesh can­not please God.

What is your mind set on?  If we are look­ing to what makes sense to this world we may be try­ing to serve two mas­ters.  Great lead­ers cast vision and help those they lead see a real­ity that doesn’t exist.  The real­ity of the world dif­fers from a bib­li­cal real­ity.  What real­ity do we look towards, spir­i­tual or worldly?

Still, pleas­ing God requires that we need walk in a man­ner wor­thy of the call­ing which we have been called (Eph­esians 4:1) with gen­tle­ness and humil­ity.   Liv­ing this out should lead to bear­ing fruit in every good work and increas­ing in the knowl­edge of God (Col. 1).  So we act hum­ble and treat peo­ple kindly, but it appears that we are not “bear fruit in every good work”.  We some­times have days, weeks, whole sea­sons of life that we seem­ingly don’t grow and the work of our hands does not seem to have much of an impact.  Why is per­se­ver­ance nec­es­sary to please God?  It seems that God con­forms us to His will to allow us to please him through per­se­ver­ance and endurance.

Let’s dig deeper.  How do you act when you are stressed out verses relaxed?  There is a dif­fer­ence right.  There is a dif­fer­ence in me.  Rela­tion­ships are a great mea­sure of how we han­dle pres­sure.  Do we nat­u­rally set­tle into the “peace that tran­scends all under­stand­ing” when we encounter seri­ous stress?  Not likely for most of us.  We have to learn this one through expe­ri­ence.  We have to learn to trust God and rely on Him.

Pleas­ing God is an impos­si­bil­ity out­side of the enabling power of God through a daily depen­dence on the Lord.  After all, He as qual­i­fied you and he will refine you and equip you.  The per­se­ver­ance nec­es­sary to press on to matu­rity is nec­es­sary to please God.

God help us to live lives wor­thy of you.  Allow us to give up more con­trol and gain a greater depen­dence on You.  You sup­ply our every need.  Help us to please you.  Amen

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Aug
24
2009

Surrendering to God

categories Love God, Transformational Discipleship

I wanted to share a chap­ter out of a book I am cur­rently read­ing.  Lead­er­ship as an Iden­tity, by Craw­ford W. Lorit­tis, Jr.

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Sur­ren­der is the leader’s response to his bro­ken­ness.  Sur­ren­der demon­strates that he always and for­ever needs God.  God delights in sur­ren­der.  It is foun­da­tional, fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple of the Chris­t­ian life.  In fact, you can’t truly be a Chris­t­ian with­out sur­ren­der.  Turn­ing from your sin and self-reliance and putting your trust in Christ for His love and for­give­ness is a pro­found act of sur­ren­der.  And God wants you to keep turn­ing from your­self and con­tin­u­ally be turn­ing over to Him all that you are and all that He has placed in your hands to work with.

It is from this place of sur­ren­der that your life is trans­formed and you become the expres­sion of God’s unique mis­sion for your moment in his­tory.  Pay close atten­tion to what the apos­tle Paul says in Romans 12:1–2: “I appeal to you there­fore, broth­ers, by the mer­cies of God, to present your bod­ies as a liv­ing sac­ri­fice, holy and accept­able to God, which is your spir­i­tual wor­ship.  Do not be con­formed to this world, but be trans­formed by the renewal of your mind, that by test­ing you may dis­cern what is the will of God, what is good accept­able and perfect.”

Notice that your abil­ity to dis­cern God’s will is directly related to pre­sent­ing your body as a “liv­ing sac­ri­fice.”  But it’s also impor­tant to note that you don’t sur­ren­der to Him just because you want insights on what His will is; you sur­ren­der pri­mar­ily because He has been mer­ci­ful.  As an act of wor­ship dri­ven by grat­i­tude, you give your life to Him.  He then gives you the abil­ity to know what He wants to do though your life.  Your very life has been sac­ri­ficed to God to do what­ever He wants to do.

LEADERS WHO STOP FOLLOWING

Effec­tive Chris­t­ian lead­er­ship is sus­tained by sur­ren­der.  When a Chris­t­ian leader stops yield­ing to God, he or she has ceased to be a Chris­t­ian leader.  It’s really quite sim­ple.  When a leader gets to a point at which he or she trusts more in skills, abil­i­ties, or expe­ri­ences to accom­plish God’s assign­ment, then he has just walked away from the place of God’s bless­ing and His enabling power.

Dr. Joseph Stow­ell, an out­stand­ing Chris­t­ian leader, served for many years as the pres­i­dent of the Moody Bible Insti­tute in Chicago.  Joe is a dear friend, and recently we were min­is­ter­ing together at a pastor’s con­fer­ence.  As he addressed these lead­ers, I heard him say some­thing that was so very sim­ple and yet so pro­found.  He said that “lead­ers fall when they stop fol­low­ing.”  Think about that.  When a leader shifts his focus from depen­dently fol­low­ing Christ and begins to think that it is his vision, his idea, and his mis­sion that must be advanced, then he has ceased to be God’s leader.  And, frankly, it’s dan­ger­ous to fol­low such a per­son.  At this point there is noth­ing super­nat­ural about what he does; he is merely a strong per­son­al­ity who can get things done by the force of his will.  He may try to cam­ou­flage it with a few Bible verses and Chris­t­ian clichés, but pride and self-determination are what dri­ves him.  And this, in turn, affects the orga­ni­za­tion or ministry.

This is a very com­mon pitfall.

Power and influ­ence can change peo­ple and not always for the good.  When you are aware of your inad­e­qua­cies and very few peo­ple pay atten­tion to you, it’s not dif­fi­cult to pur­sue a sur­ren­dered life.  But the more recog­ni­tion you receive from that suc­cess, the more dif­fi­cult it is to embrace humil­ity and to remem­ber your con­stant need for His grace and mercy.

My heart aches even as I write these words.  Flash­ing across my mind are friend and col­leagues who stopped fol­low­ing; peo­ple God had used in mar­velous ways until they for­got that it was God who used them.  I have felt the temp­ta­tion myself to for­get that.

I’m think­ing of a man who started out with a heart that was pure and undi­vided.  There was a sweet humil­ity about him and a pas­sion to do what­ever the Lord wanted him to do.  And God blessed his life and min­istry in tremen­dous ways.  It was mete­oric.  His min­istry was grow­ing so fast that he couldn’t keep up with the demands and requests for his time.  He was like a mag­net.  Peo­ple and resources were drawn to him.

But some­where along the way some­thing hap­pened to him.  Sadly, he hasn’t han­dled the promi­nence and the vis­i­bil­ity too well.  If you had known him in the early days of his min­istry, you’d almost want to say that this isn’t the same per­son!  There’s an arro­gance and swag­ger about his that’s not very invit­ing.  I am pray­ing that he will go back to that place of sweet sur­ren­der before God deals with him.

This sort of reminds you of King Uzziah, doesn’t it?

The demise of King Uzziah in my mind is one of the most tragic sto­ries in the Bible.  I am con­vinced that God wanted all of us, par­tic­u­larly Chris­t­ian lead­ers, to see the dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences when a leader allows his pride to make assump­tions about God and the work He has given us to do.

2nd Chron­i­cles 26 describes how Uzziah was only 16 when he became king of Judah and he reigned for more than 52 years (26:3).  God used Uzziah greatly for most of his tenure as king for one sim­ple rea­son:  He sought the Lord.  Verse 4&5 say: “And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, accord­ing to all that his father Amaziah had done.  He set him­self to seek God in the days of Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear of God and, and as long as he sought the Lord, God made him pros­per.”  Verse 15 says that he was mar­velously helped (by the Lord)

A LESSON FROM UZZIAH’S PLAYBOOK

1. Uzziah Stopped seek­ing God when he became strong

God wants you to always remem­ber that you are being car­ried by Him each step of the way.  Always yield and sur­ren­der to Him because you know how eas­ily your flesh can deceive you.  If you don’t sur­ren­der your accom­plish­ments and suc­cesses to Him as an act of wor­ship and thanks­giv­ing, you will fool­ishly con­clude that what has been accom­plished is all because of your abilities.

It usu­ally is a grad­ual thing.  With a few suc­cesses and vic­to­ries, you begin to lose the awe and won­der of God’s bless­ing.  Praise and thanks­giv­ing slowly give way to the cel­e­bra­tion of strate­gies and prin­ci­ples and the per­son at the cen­ter of the suc­cess.  God fades from the fore­ground to the back­drop.  You now occupy cen­ter stage, and because of a track record of suc­cess, you start mak­ing dan­ger­ous assump­tions about God, lead­er­ship, and your abil­i­ties.  Inevitably you cross the line and God deals with you directly

2.   Because Uzziah stopped seek­ing God, he no longer sur­ren­dered his heart as well as the suc­cesses back to God as a state­ment of recog­ni­tion that it is always, only about Him.

His head got big and he lost per­spec­tive.  Humil­ity is an inten­tional thing.  It is a deci­sion, a choice.  When you fail to inten­tion­ally hum­ble your­self, pride will over­take you.  It’s just a mat­ter of time.  And God goes after pride every time, espe­cially when it raises its ugly head in lead­ers (James 4:6).

3.     In his pride Uzziah reached beyond the role and respon­si­bil­ity to which God had called him.

Uzziah was called to be the king, but he was not called to be a priest.  He appar­ently thought that, since he was so emi­nently suc­cess­ful, he had the right to do almost any­thing he wanted to do.  So he entered the tem­ple of the Lord and burned incense on the altar.  But his was the domain of the priest, and Uzziah knew better.

King Uzziah posi­tioned him­self for a hard, dev­as­tat­ing fall.  And that’s exactly what Hap­pened.  He allowed the lethal cock­tail of con­sis­tent suc­cess and unchecked pride to push him past the point of no return.  God’s judg­ment was swift, tragic and final.

2nd Chron­i­cles 26:16–21 tells us what hap­pened next.  Even after Azariah the priest and eighty other priests begged Uzziah to stop and warned him (“Go out of the sanc­tu­ary, for you have done wrong, and it will bring you no honor before the Lord”), he refused!  He became indig­nant and angry.  Didn’t they know his track record and hadn’t they wit­nessed his rise to promi­nence?   What right did they have to even sug­gest that as a leader he was account­able for his actions?  Didn’t they real­ize that he was beyond that?

As a result, God Him­self came after Uzziah.  When the king resisted the priests, he broke out with lep­rosy (verse 19).  Lep­rosy in the Old Tes­ta­ment was the epit­ome of what it meant to be unclean.  Lep­ers could not be touched, and they were per­ma­nently sep­a­rated from the rest of the pop­u­la­tion.  Peo­ple would not come near a leper.

Uzziah remained a leper for the rest of his life, “and being a leper lived in a sep­a­rate house, for he was excluded from the house of the Lord” (verse 21).  It’s almost as though God said to him “because you stopped seek­ing and sur­ren­der­ing to me, now oth­ers will no longer come close to you.”  God took away from Uzziah what He Him­self had given to him in the first place—prominence, pop­u­lar­ity, and influence.

All of us who are lead­ers should be sobered and gripped by the demise of Uzziah.  Don’t ever for­get that it’s God who is work­ing through you—your accom­plish­ments are not a state­ment of your glory but of the grace, power and glory of God Almighty.

The only way to main­tain this per­spec­tive is to reg­u­larly and joy­fully sur­ren­der all that you are back to Him.  One of the most impor­tant ways to do this is to take the com­pli­ments peo­ple give you and give them back to God as a praise offer­ing.  When God blesses you with the ful­fill­ment of a vision he has placed on your heart or with the accom­plish­ment of a goal, set aside a time to cel­e­brate and praise God for what He has done through you and for you.

When­ever pos­si­ble, do this pub­licly.  It’s impor­tant that those who work closely with you or who fol­low your lead­er­ship see you giv­ing glory to God.  This is a pro­found act of sur­ren­der.  And heart­felt, sin­cere praise is a pow­er­ful reminder that as lead­ers we are sub­mis­sive followers.

Remem­ber the words of Joe Stow­ell: “Lead­ers fall when they stop following.”

How’s your surrender?

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Aug
19
2009

Your Measure of Faith

categories Love God

pouring-water Faith is an inte­gral part of our godly char­ac­ter. Romans chap­ter 12 describes how God gives each a mea­sure of faith that has been assigned. Our faith should com­pel our think­ing and actions so that they align with God’s will.

So I ask myself, am I doing my part? Am I using the mea­sure of faith that God has given me (Romans 12:3–6). Am I asso­ci­at­ing with the lowly and not being pride­ful or wise in my own sight or in oth­ers? (12: 16) Do I love oth­ers? Do I rejoice in hope, am I patient in tribu­la­tion, and con­stant in prayer? Do I con­tribute to the needs of oth­ers? Ask­ing these ques­tions should reveal to us our heart and whether we live out our faith.

Ask God to exam­ine your heart accord­ing to Romans 12. Are you mak­ing your life the “liv­ing sac­ri­fice” Paul chal­lenges us with when he starts the chap­ter? Do you want to dis­cern the will of God in and for your life? If so, then we need to be trans­formed by the renewal of our mind to not be con­formed to this world. We must live above our cir­cum­stance or sit­u­a­tion and not only find the con­tent­ment that Philip­pi­ans 4:12 describes but put into prac­tice Christ’s exam­ple of humil­ity in Philip­pi­ans 2:1–8.

These sec­tions of scrip­ture encour­age me because I can lose focus on my pur­pose and get caught up in my assign­ments, my job, and the busy­ness of life. I can for­get that I have access to the faith that God has given me and I can live in His strength and pro­vi­sion and not my own. Liv­ing a life wor­thy of our call­ing (Eph­esians 4) requires much more than just get­ting by, doing the min­i­mum or try­ing not to be called out. It requires a trans­for­ma­tion of our heart, our atti­tudes, our mind, and our words. It requires us to agree that we must bear with one another in love and be eager to main­tain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace to act with all humil­ity, gen­tle­ness and patience all that we can offer in the power of the Holy Spirit.

We must lead in such a way that our faith is being employed. We must lead with zeal (Romans 12:8) in the con­fi­dence that comes from God who sup­plies our faith and causes all things to work together for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28).

Lord, strengthen my resolve to live for you and not myself. Help me to live out of the true faith that you have given to me. Help me to lead zeal­ously for your glory. Renew my heart and mind to trans­form my life and to be used might­ily for You.

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