Leading the Jesus Way

Dec 04 11:36 PM

Leading the Jesus Way

Dec 04 11:36 PM

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.