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Posts from the ‘Leadership’ Category

Jun 9

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Woe is Me: Three Ways we humble ourselves before God.

“Woe is me, I am Lost!” These are the words Isaiah cried when he first gazed upon God. There is a something to be said for the Glory of God and the lowness of man. Humility that must exist in every relationship begins with a right concept of humility before God. Jerry Bridges says:

 

“We cannot begin to experience humility in any other relationship until we experience a deep and profound humility in our attitude toward God.” (2)

Below are three ways we can humble ourselves before God.

  • Trembling at his Word: When a man is truly humble before God, we are also humble before his Word. Acknowledging that scripture is God’s word, and that God’s word contains “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for faith in life”(1) we are acknowledging that only through God’s word can we live as we should. It throws off man’s ability and allows us to focus on God.
  • God’s Grace: When man has humbled himself before God, he is acknowledging that only through God’s Grace can man do anything. Everything in and out of the world operates solely by the Grace of God. When a man realizes and understands this, he will be humble about the gifts and talents he possess.
  • Serving Others: 1st Peter says, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” When a man is humbled before God, he will know that the talents and abilities he possess come from God for the purpose of serving others and Glorifying God. Humility should manifest itself in the serving of others.

Pride is one of the toughest sin to conquer and yet, humility before God is essential. Isaiah’s attitude towards God is the attitude we are to have. When we are compared to God, we are lost, but when we are with God, we are saved.

How do you find that you show humility?

(1) The Fruitful Life by Jerry Bridges.

(2) Westminster Confession

May 17

Spiritual Leaders vs. Natural Leaders

#Leadership. When writing this blog post, I searched for #Leadership in twitter and got the following results:

“Leadership is not about income. Its about impact.”

“If you don’t sculpt who you want to be, you will be at the mercy of the carvings of others.”

“Be friendly with your former peers. Do not focus on creating new friends”

And of course, no leadership post would be compelte without a quote from Seth Godin:

“…if you stopped actively sabotaging your own work.
We must be talented, powerful and resilient creatures indeed given how much we manage to produce despite the constant undercutting, ridicule and needless censorship we aim at ourselves.”

I’m not really sure what any of these quotes mean and I’m not sure what they are supposed to tell me. What I can gather from these quotes, is that these people seem to be what J. Oswald Sanders calls “Natural Leaders” as opposed to Spiritual Leaders. Sanders defines the difference between the natural leader and the spirutal leader as follows:

Natural Leader:

  • Self Confident
  • Knows Men
  • Makes own decisions
  • Ambitious
  • Created methods
  • Enjoys command
  • Seeks personal reward
  • independent.

Spiritual Leader:

  • Confident in God
  • Knows God
  • Seeks’s God’s Will
  • Humble
  • Follows God’s example
  • Delights in obedience to God
  • Loves God and others
  • Depends on God

The main difference between the natural leader and the spiritual leader is this: The spiritual leader finds everything in God and his word. As christian we should seek to be a Spiritual Leader and we should seek to follow spiritual leaders. As Christians, we are to be fully relient on Christ and his word. What the world needs (and the church even more so) is not more “Natural Leaders” who are self relient, but more Spiritual Leaders who are completely relient.

“A true and safe leader is likely to be one who has no desire to lead, but is forced into a position by the inward leading of the Holy Spirit and the press of circumstances…There was hardly a great leader from Paul to the present day but was drafted by the Holy Spirit for the tas, and commissioned by the Lord to fill a position he had little heart for…The man whois ambitious to lead is disqualified…the true leader will have no desire to lord it over God’s heritage, but will be humble, gente, self-sacrificing and altogether ready to follow when the Spirit chooses another to lead.” A.W. Tozer