Blog

By Dr. Bill Lawrence 

president of Leader Formation International 

The first Christmas was not like Christmas as we know. it There were no parties, no trees, no cards, no dinners, no gifts, no carols, literally no nothing. Just a new mother named Mary, an earthly father named Joseph, and a new born named Jesus. Three unknowns who didn't matter, who barely got to the manger before the baby was born. The mother had question after question after question. And there were angels. Real angels. Not little children in the fourth grade. There were true celebrations, but only Mary and Joseph joined them until shepherds, the lowest of the lowest, came to honor the new born baby. Nobodies lower than the nobodies came to celebrate. That was it. The first Christmas.

And then there was Luke. Do you really think that Luke, the medical doctor, chemist, scientist researcher, really knew what he was doing when he drew his conclusions for all the intellects he sought to convince that Jesus really is the Son of the true God? Luke told the people he was seeking to reach that Jesus truly is worthy of trust in Him for eternal life. Do you think he realized that he was writing about the first Christmas when he wrote of the coming of the wise men probably two years later? That he would be read more than 2,000 years later by people who believed in Jesus as well as scores who had not yet trusted Him for eternal life? And that scores of them would trust Jesus for eternal life because of what he wrote? Do you think that he knew that Christmas would ever exist? Yet all of this is true because of this medical doctor-researcher who gave up everything to travel with Paul from city-to-city and start churches and spread the word about Jesus throughout the Roman Empire. But it all started in a manger in Bethlehem according to the line of David as decreed by a command from Caesar who thought he was in charge and had no idea that baby Jesus had just left His throne and become one of us.

Think of it. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. Jesus in a crib as Matthew declared but headed to a cross. The first Christmas. First a crib. but eventually a cross

Yet there's more.

What must it have been like to have the three of them together? Confusion in their hearts. Questions in their minds. Confusion on their lips. Corruption from their past (Joseph and David). Interruption in their plans. Direction in their decisions.  Isolation in their lives. Conclusion in their plans. Restoration back home. Clarification in their lives finally. All of this was the first Christmas although it a lasted at least two years.

The first Christmas was followed by life as it should be with amazing events in Passover times in Jeru- alem and a business it appears as a carpenter in Nazareth, then disciple making in Galilee and Jerusalem followed by the cross. Certainly none of this made sense to Mary the mother who had strange messages from angels who suddenly appeared and then disappeared. And the cross! How could this be? The birth and the events in His life were confusing at best! But the cross!  What can you do with any of this? How can this be? Not only to His mother but to His men who gave up everything to follow Him!

He goes from a crib to a cross! What is all of this about? And what does this mean for His followers? His teaching makes greater sense than anything they had ever heard. Why is all of this happening? And we have the same question: why did this happen?

For one reason: so we who know Him can serve as disciples by living the Jesus way according to John 13-16 and by forming disciples to serve Him.

But now I want to go from this first Christmas as Jesus was on His way from the crib to the cross to the night before He was on the cross as Jesus focused on three realities that are the core of our lives if we know Him and grasp His key commands. After all, ultimately this is what Christmas is all about.

I turn to the first command He gave as the core of His way of life.

Love (John 13:36-37; 15:12-14))

In John 15 He repeated what He had already said before when He was interrupted because it is the essence of how Jesus wants us to live, so I want to make this the core of 2025.

In 2025 the Lord reminds us of the new commandment He gave to us just before He was crucified:   love one another, even as I have loved you. By this all men will know you are my disciples (13:36-37).

And This is my commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you (15:12).

He doesn't give this until the traitor is gone and the loyal are alone with him.

This love is a special kind of love, a love that we have for all who have trusted in Him and want to live His kind of life. And it is a command. Jesus is very serious about the love He wants us to have.

We live together.

We struggle together.

We learn together.

We support each other together.

We grow together.

We pray together

We must be willing to do what Jesus did: give up our lives to meet all believer's needs as we know them.

This is what love is all about and this is what the Christian life is all about.

Abide

There is only one way we can do this as branches dependent on the Vine, and that is through Christ in us because only He can do this. He commands us to love twice and He tells us to love each other the way He has loved us. Who can love His way? Nobody can love His way in himself. We can only do this if we are radically desperately dependent on Him. He lives in us through the Holy Spirit who enables us to act the way Jesus acts. And that calls for radical, desperate dependence. This is why Jesus tells us about the Holy Spirit and His enablement to bear fruit through us. To abide in Him is far more than to have peace in Him. We have peace because we are productive and effective as a result of the Spirit's enablement. To abide in Him is to have peace through Him but to have enablement we must be productive by bearing fruit through the Spirit.

This also calls for us to give up our interests and seek the interests of those around us. This what love for each other is all about. Here we have a call for us to be aware of the needs of others and to know how we can meet those needs so we can be fruitful branches as we have love for each other.

Pray

Prayer is the third reality we must pursue, the way Jesus pursued obedience and love for others. While Jesus spent much of His time teaching and discipling He also spent significant time in prayer.

During His last night on earth all four writers recorded His time in prayer, but John told us about how He prayed as they came into the Garden in John 17. John spoke the most about this as he told us of the Lord's prayer for Himself, His disciples, and us. Clearly prayer was a major part of His life and His death. He even prayed on the cross if you realize that prayer is simply conversation with one calling out to God. Certainly Jesus did that to His Father from the cross. John recorded His words to His mother and His friend, and while this was not a prayer in the truest sense of the word by any means it was action that only the Father could enable those addressed to accomplish. But It is finished was prayer, not a request but a declaration that informed the Father that He had accomplished the aim they had agreed on when He left heaven to come to earth.

How great it would be if we could have an aim that we and the Lord had established and finished so you could say It is finished. That is far greater than a budget or a deal or a struggle as significant as any of them might be.

Just remember that prayer is at the center of your life on earth as you move toward eternity even as it was in Jesus's life.

When you think about it that first Christmas is much greater than parties and cards and messages and thoughts and gifts and trees. It really is about love and abiding and prayer and ultimately the cross because while it started with the crib it inevitably led to the cross and redemption.

So I don't say Merry Christmas in 2025 as appropriate as this is in many way, because Cross Christmas is even more appropriate since that is what the crib is all about even in 2025.

Thus I say to you,

Cross Christmas--from the Crib to the Cross

by Bill Lawrence, president of Leader Formation International 

Philippians 2:6

who, as He already existed in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped

What if it's true that we want to lead Christ's way?

What must be true about us if we want to be Christ's kind of leader?

The primary point is quite evident.

To lead Christ's way we must live Christ's way.

We must be a model of the kind of men and women God wants His leaders to become.

The model will be evident so all can see and want to lead His way.

The model will be attractive and make others want to be like us.

The model will be desirable so all who see it will want to identify with it and grow to influence others.

The model will be clear and will inspire others to become to be like us.

So here is the kind of men and women we must be to influence His leaders and draw others to model us.

To live Christ's way we must learn Christ's way.

We must master the four special books--Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--that show us how He lived so we can model Him. Realize that He will live His way of life through us in the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus the point is very simple.

To live Christ's way we must think Christ's so we can lead Christ's way.

Our minds must be full of His thoughts so our speech can be full of His words, and our actions can be full of His love.

To lead Christ's way we must impact Christ's way.

Everything about us--the way we live, the way we speak, the way we act, the way we teach, the way we interact--everything about us must reflect Him.

To live Christ's way we must think Christ's way.

Our thoughts, the way we prepare to teach, everything that is true about our private life must be controlled by Christ. 

To be Christ's followers we must make Christ's kind of decisions.

The decisions to lead those we influence must be the result of prayer and the Word and come from time with our Lord.

To be Christ's influencers we must make Christ's commitments.

All that we are must come out of our commitment to Christ.

Paul wrote to the Philippians and he told them of the core decision Jesus made to be the kind of man He chose to be to accomplish redemption for all of us. This is the kind of choice we must make to be His kind of leaders. Look at the three decisions Jesus made to provide redemption for us and realize these are the decisions we must make to be used by Him to reach those around us.

He Gave Up All His Rights   2:6

He existed as God

He is fully God but He chose to become fully human and He had to give up all His rights, throughout His life, but undoubtedly at Calvary. But even though He never stopped being God, when He became fully human He had to give up all His rights on a daily basis but specifically as He hung on the cross.

Paul struggled to say what he wanted to say when he declared that Jesus became fully human, and he had to avoid saying that Jesus ever ceased being God. So Jesus, the One who was fully divine, also became fully human while continuing to be fully God.

We are fully human as well, fully what the Lord wants us to be. We are the real thing--totally indwelt by the Holy Spirit--the transformed, fully the kind of men and women God wants us to be and fully able to do what the Lord wants us to do.

We can forgive those who sin against us, fully able to give up the offense of those who failed us, able to honor those who dishonor us when it's right to do that.

As He was fully God and gave up His rights to become one of us, so we must follow His lead and give up all our rights as necessary to become the kind of men and women the sovereign God uses to the fullest in order to reach those Jesus died for.

He gave up all His authority

He is Lord, Lord of all, over all, the ruler of all. There is nothing that He doesn't rule over, whether it is good or evil, whether it is physical or non-physical. There is nothing that He is not Lord over.

His authority was recorded in the four books written for followers. Two were written by two men who personally knew Him, one was written by a significant researcher who never knew Him, and one was written by His closest earthly friend. Those four books declare His authority. 

He faced men who were Pharisees and Sadducees, who knew the Old Testament and constantly challenged Him. He constantly faced demon possessed men and women who wanted to be deliver-ed and were set free. He consistently taught the word of God in synagogues, on plains, and on mountain sides as well as privately to His disciples. And He had private times when He met indi-vidually with people like Nicodemus and the woman at the well.

In every case He demonstrated His authority whether it was through truth or through delivery from demon possession. He never lacked authority.

But He never acted from a throne. Never.  He only acted through radical desperate dependence on the Holy Spirit.

He was by nature God and Lord of all, but as a man He was human, dependent, and only effective through the Holy Spirit.

He had all authority, but it was radically desperately dependent authority.

He did gave up all His possessions.

Jesus is fully equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and that means He possesses all that the three of them own--all the universes, all that they own, all that they can create, all that the sovereign Lord could own or create or ever desire. He owned everything.

Yet He gave all of that up when He became a baby in a manger and continued as a baby taken to Egypt to be safe and then moved to Nazareth where he grew up and went into business before He went up into Syria to start His ministry and then settle in Capernaum which was His personal capital for the three years of His ministry.

But He had no independent possession but was dependent on women who met His earthly needs through human service.

The creator of all that exists had no earthly possessions but was dependent on His followers to meet His needs.

To say that this is amazing is a great understatement, yet it is true.

Conclusion

So He had no rights, no authority, and no possessions because He had given them up and made Himself dependent on followers to meet His needs.

One observation I must make is that Jesus never trained His disciples in any leadership skills—

He never taught them how to develop a vision or write a vision statement.

He never showed them how to build an organizational structure or instructed them in the steps needed to raise money.

Instead Jesus focused on one primary reality with His disciples and there were times when He hammered away on this, making this very pointed.

Why did He do this? 

Because He knew this was the one thing that would stop them from laying the foundation of His movement.

He knew He had to overcome this one element or His movement had no future. 

What was this reality?

His leaders’ hearts. 

Leadership is broken because leaders' hearts are unbroken.

More than anything else we must follow our Lord's lead and strive to transform the hearts of all that we influence.

We must strive to transform the hearts of those we lead the Jesus way so they lead the Jesus way.

 by Bill Lawrence 

president of Leader Formation International 

Have the mind among ourselves which was also in Christ Jesus . . .

                                                            Philippians 2:5

Join me on the night when Jesus was with His men, at one point all twelve of them, but then one betrayed Him, and at that moment Judas was accepting thirty pieces of silver to turn Him over to the Pharisees and Sadducees for an illegal trial and crucifixion. Only Jesus knew this, but He taught the eleven in the Upper Room, then walked to the Garden of Gethsemane--the Garden of Pain, having taken His three key disciples, Peter, James, and John, to His personal place of prayer and poured out His heart to His Father. It was here that He was as human as He could be apart from the cross itself. And it was here that He cried out to His Father,

... if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not as I will, but as You will.

                                                                                                                                                                     Matthew 26:39

What He was praying was If it is possible, deliver Me from the price I must pay to free men and women from the penalty for sin. Tell Me, and I will pay that rather than the cross. Nevertheless,

. . . not as I will, but as you will.

That is the mind that Paul wants all leaders, not just the Philippians in their differences, but us in our leadership, to have. He is saying, Don't pursue your will but pursue the will of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Come together in the unity that the Lord God desires for you. Jesus first, you last!

You see, leadership is followership first, and that always means Jesus first and us last. That's what being a leader is--followers first, leaders last.

I will say this over-and-over again: to be a leader for Christ you must first be a follower of Christ.

You cannot be a leader for Christ unless you are first a follower of Christ.

If Jesus could not be a leader for the Father unless He was first a follower of the Father through radical desperate dependence on the Holy Spirit, how can any of us be an exception? There are no exceptions.

It's interesting to realize that the first task of a leader is to be a model of Jesus, to show your followers what Jesus is like in everyday life, in being holy, not like a high or superior priest, but as a very real nitty-gritty hands, task accomplishing, caring, a sacrificing leader who supports those who suffer and have great needs. The primary responsibility of a leader is to meet your follower's needs and help them grow in Christ and so model Jesus to all followers.

To do this you must have knowledge of God's word at the very core of your thinking and your way of life. In the battle with Satan Jesus used God's word as His sword, His weapon of defense and assertion. Even in a surface consideration of the war between good and evil you see the exchange of the Word as the way Jesus inserted Himself and proved to be superior to His enemy. What He did to defend Himself He also did to advance Himself during His time leading up to Calvary. For Jesus knowledge meant more than the thoughts He knew; it meant His way of life, the way He applied His knowledge to all that His did, the very essence of all that He was, His model of life.

For us this means that our knowledge leads us to Calvary as it did for Him, so that as leaders we become living sacrifices even as truth was for Jesus. Of course only He could be the living sacrifice for our sin and the One who paid for our sin so we could have eternal life. But as leaders we deny our-selves take up the cross and follow Jesus, as He directed His disciples to do. This means our entire way of life is the Jesus way of life as Jesus showed us when He led His men to Jerusalem and the Upper Room and to the Garden of Gethsemane and then to Calvary. We are willing to lose our lives for Christ's sake whether that is physically real or spiritually true. While He alone can pay for sin we can serve Him by sacrificing ourselves by denying our interests and taking up the cross and following Him in a desperate radical way, but to do this we must sacrifice ourselves in the death of the cross.

Taking up the cross, however, always leads to the resurrection. As a leader and the model of the Jesus way of life, you must show your followers the resurrection way of life. Think of what it was like first for the women who sought to complete Jesus's death and then for the men who rushed to see if resur-rection could be true to realize that the unbelievable was utterly real. No one could believe it, but He was raised from the dead and was introducing the reality that He expected His followers to live the new way of life that He had been demonstrating to them for three years through the Holy Spirit. It's  your responsibility as a leader to desperately radically depend on the Holy Spirit to model the resurrection way of life, the Jesus way of life for all who will follow you.

And there is a reality I have been saying over-and-over: you cannot do this on your own. You need en-ablement. As Jesus said in the Upper Room Discourse the Holy Spirit would come, and He did come on the Day of Pentecost. He came and empowered all who believed in Jesus and  He has done that throughout all of time from Pentecost to today. We have enablement through the Holy Spirit who lives in us and empowers us to do what the Father and the Son wants us to do.

Yet there is even more to realize about the mind of Christ and the reality that He is living in us through the Holy Spirit. Ultimately His mind forced Him to obey His Father against His will. He made this more than clear when He declared Abba! Father all things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will but what You will! Thus it was that Paul wanted the Philippians who opposed each other to seek the mind of Christ together through the Holy Spirit to arrive at a mutual agreement and overcome their differences. They would become one through the oneness that Jesus would create in them. The fact that they had differences was not an issue from Paul's point of view. The problem was that if they sought to become one through Jesus who lived in them through the Holy Spirit they would become stronger and they would make a greater impact for the Gospel. Their oneness will show to all around them what the truth about Jesus will do for all in the city what they can never do for themselves.

Leading the Calvary way brings eternal life and delivers us from futile emptiness.

Think as Jesus thought. Will as Jesus willed..

Pray as Jesus prayed. Cry as Jesus cried. Then you will obey as Jesus obeyed.

By Bill Lawrence

President of  Leader Formation International

Have the mind among ourselves which was also in Christ Jesus . . .

                                                            Philippians 2:5

Go to the night when Jesus was with His men, at one point all twelve of them, but one was betraying Him and was at that very moment accepting thirty pieces of silver to turn Him over to the Pharisees and the Sadducees for a false trial and crucifixion. Only Jesus knew this, but He taught the eleven the Upper Room discourse, then walked from the Upper Room to the Garden of Gethsemane, having taken His three key disciples, Peter, James, and John, to His personal place of prayer to the Father, and poured our His heart to His Father. It was here that He was a human as He could be apart from the cross itself. And it was here that He cried out to His Father,

. . . if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not as I will, but as You will.

                                                            Matthew 26:39

What He was praying is, If it is possible deliver Me from the price We must pay to deliver men and women from the penalty for sin tell Me what it is, and I will pay that rather than the cross.

Nevertheless, . . . not as I will, but as you will.

That is the mind that Paul wants all leaders, not just the Philippians in their differences, but us in our leadership to have. He is saying, Don't pursue your will but pursue the will of the Father, Son, and the Spirit. Come together in the unity that the Lord God desires for you. Put Jesus first, not you!

You see, leadership is followership first, and that is always first.

I will say this over-and-over again: to be a leader you must first be a follower.

You cannot be a leader for Christ unless you are first a follower of Christ.

If Jesus could not be a leader for the Father unless He was first a follower of the Father through radical desperate dependence on the Holy Spirit, how can any of us be an exception? There are no exceptions. Period!

It's interesting to realize that the first task of a leader is to be a model of Jesus, to show your followers what Jesus is like in everyday life, in being holy, not like a priest or some high up superior, but as a very real mitty-gritty hands on task accomplishing caring individual who supports those who suffer and have great needs. The primary responsibility of a leader is to meet these needs and help them grow in Christ and so model Jesus to all followers.

Knowledge

Sacrifice--take up the cross

Resurrection

Enablement

Obedience

Discipleship

Repeated over-and-over again

I can never learn because every age has different demands

You never learn if

You only learn it in a new way

By Bill Lawrence, President of  Leader Formation International

My God, My God, Why have You forsaken Me?

                                                            Mark 15:14

Jesus, the Most Unwanted Son, forsaken by the Father. He was also. The most Unwanted Man in history. No one could ever be more unwanted than when the Man on the cross, as well as through His life.

But why? Why was He on that cross between two evil thieves? The answer is very simple: He did nothing.

He was not forsaken for what He did. He was forsaken for what I have done and for what you have done. For what we have done. For what all humanity has done. He died for our sin.

He took our place on that cross. That is where we belong, and that is what He prayed about on the night of the Upper Discourse when He taught His men--and us--how He wants us to live now that we are in His place on earth through the enablement of the Holy Spirit. But we could not do that if He had not become the most unwanted man in all of history.

Many have been unwanted throughout history, especially unjustly put on trial, condemned, and their lives taken from them as was the reality of Jesus. But only Jesus could do this for all humanity, in the place of all of humanity, and for the redemption of all of humanity. He is the only one who could give His life in our place and pay the price for all of us and make us pure before the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

But you must see Him as the utterly Unwanted One who willingly identified with us and became one with us. Consider what He did to be unwanted the same way we are unwanted and became wanted the same way we are wanted. He identifies with us as the Unwanted One and strives to make us the wanted ones if only we will trust Him as the One who died for us and now lives in us.

One of the realities that was unique about Jesus is the fact that He loved to, in a sense, "hang out" with the unwanted. For example consider the event John, His earthly best friend, described in chapter 4 of his Word in which he tells us about the event know as The Woman at the Well. It was a very unique moment in our Lord's life in which He deliberately met with an unwanted woman. He and His disciples were going up the west side of the Jordan River on their way from Jerusalem back to Galilee after a Passover, and they stopped in the city of Sychar. The disciples had gone into the marketplace to get some food for all of them, but Jesus hung out at a well, a public place where people came to get water and discuss what was going on in their lives, because Jesus wanted to establish a relationship with an unwanted person.  It was a natural place to connect with an unwanted one since that was all who would come to the well at that time of day. So it was that one of the most unwanted women came in mid-day, the only time she could come because of her lifestyle, since she had five husbands and a doubtful way of life and was well known by the leaders of the city. Thus it was that by establishing a relationship with the unwanted woman He could build a relationship with many in the city, even those who would naturally think they were righteous, when in fact they may well have not been.

It's amazing that this unwanted woman influenced many to trust in Jesus, as Johe wrote: many believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified (4:39). An utterly disqualified woman caused many to believe in Jesus under her impact. Little wonder that Jesus loved to hang out with the undesirable woman--she affected many, many, to put their faith in Him.

The Unwanted reached the unwanted. This should encourage you if you are one of the unwanted. It does encourage me.

There is one other place for the Unwanted I wish to go, this time in Galilee called Capernaum, where there were people who were not valued by the religious leaders but that valued so greatly that He called one of the men to be His disciple.

The man was Levi, regularly known as Matthew, the author of a book about Jesus written specifically for Jews. Once again Jesus was kind of "hanging out" with them, this time reclining at Levi's table during a meal with tax collectors and, sinners, hardly the kind of people that the synagogue leaders or the primary thinkers from Jerusalem would approve. His disciples were with Him even as they were influenced by His actions in Sychar. The point is that a large number of them were following Jesus. Levi presented it in his declaration of the life of Jesus as He wrote to make Him known.

Jesus called for Levi to follow Him, and he immediately left his tax booth and became a follower of Jesus. Amazing! A man well known--and hated--in Capernaum as a tax collector was now a follower of Jesus. This did not make sense. Further Levi had a gathering of all his friends--fully known of  as sinners--dining with Jesus and His disciples. The Pharisees simply could not stand this. No righteous man would ever do this. This was not acceptable. They asked Jesus's disciples how this possible. Why was He doing this they asked. Jesus heard what they asked and answered them directly.

This is why I came He said. Love cannot be a theory but only be a relationship. I came to hang out with sinners because the only way to reach sinners is to make your love for them clear and show them how this love can transform their lives and meet their needs. The life they have seen is really empty and ineffective and results in barren death and I want to show them what true fruit is and how what I offer them will meet their deepest needs and go to the deepest emptiness in their hearts. I want to show them that I will meet their most painful struggles and deliver them from futility and free them from the bondage that has chained them to eternal death by giving them eternal life. I want to give them the joy and fruit I created for them to possess. This is why He says I did not call the righteous, but sinners. So it is that He did not call those who think they are righteous but those who know they are sinners.

Jesus knew He was headed to the cross, and He knew this every day of His leadership. That's why He knew He was unwanted in every way: by the self-righteous who did not need His sacrifice, by the unaware who did not understand the true nature of sin, by the Father whose heart was broken by His sacrifice on the cross. But He is wanted by all who know of their need for His sacrifice.

It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those two are sick.