Paul, the apostle, the spokesman for Jesus, the one-time businessman, one-time Sadducee, one-time persecutor of Christians, was in prison for being a proclaimer of Jesus.

He was on his way to Spain, the one major part of the Roman Empire where he had not proclaimed the Gospel, when he was arrested and placed under house arrested in Rome for his faith. He was held there for about two years before he was released and then he did go to Spain as he had planned the Gospel before he was arrested a second time and executed for his faith. However during his first imprisonment he wrote Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians as he dealt with issues in those churches.

Thus it was that he wrote to the church in Philippi, one of the cities east of Ephesus that grew out of his time in that major city, the second largest city in the Roman Empire. It appears that Paul received word that there was a division in the church he started in that city. He doesn't say what caused that division, only that there was a division that he wanted them to overcome. It doesn't appear to be a theological difference of any kind, just a division that could only be overcome if they began to think together with the mind of Christ as they learned to think the Jesus way.

To have the mind of Christ they had to do what Christ did, which was to humble themselves, so they could empty themselves the same way He emptied Himself. Jesus is God, fully God, one with the Father and the Holy Spirit in every way. But He could not accomplish their purpose unless He worked together with them to redeem us. Each of them had a role in delivering us from sin. The Father over-sees the Son as He became one of us and lived on earth as His servant and made us one with Him and delivered us from ultimate and final judgment. The Son became one with us by becoming fully human and paid the price for our salvation through the cross, thus redeeming us. The Holy Spirit lives in us and enables us to live the Son's way even as He did when the Son was on earth, so we become one with the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Nothin could be greater than this.

To overcome the division that was in their church Paul wrote and told them they must

Have this mind in yourselves that was also in Christ Jesus.

This is short and simple until we begin to explore it and work to accomplish it. Then we realize that we cannot do it on our own. After all, consider what it meant for Jesus. At His very essence He is God, but He did not regard His core essence as something He should keep for Himself. He did not choose to grasp it, to hold it, but, as we have seen, He emptied Himself of His identity. He did not cease to be God because He could not cease to be Himself, but He could limit Himself and become a human being, a man, in order to redeem us.

To become a human being He limited Himself by laying in a manger and growing up as a child.

He who was sovereign over all authority put Himself under ultimate human authority, Roman rule, and became subject to a Roman declaration to be born in Bethlehm, a tiny, tiny village south of Jerusalem, in fulfillment of ancient prophecy. He was nobody born in nowhere. He went from a throne to a manger and He was going from a cradle to a cross. His first step in redeeming us and pay the price for our salvation and deliver us from the penalty of sin was to lay in a manger under His mother's care.

Yet even though He was the sovereign Lord, He was in danger as He was subject to attack from Herod. Thus it was that Jospeh and Mary took Him as a two-year old and they fled to Egypt until it was safe to return to Nazareth, an out-of-the way city where He grew up. This also fulfilled the Old Testament.

Thus it was that He grew up as a boy, a little boy who became a growing up boy who became a learner who was taken to Jerusalem, by Joseph and Mary, his godly parents, who went to the Passover where He could ask uncommon questions and impress the teachers and learn even more. So He had submis-sive parents who raised Him to know God's word and be God's man as well as be a carpenter in His home town of Nazareth in Galilee. He stayed there until He was thirty, and then He began an amazing ministry, first in Syria and then in Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem and even in Samaria.

Because He was totally human and did nothing as God, He was desperately dependent on the Holy Spirit who enabled Him to bear fruit. As He was dependent on the Spirit to be fruitful so He is calling us to be dependent on the Spirit. This is how we  live His way and bear fruit according to His will.

If you read through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and into John, you discover that Jesus was prayerful, even radically prayerful. There were times when He focused on prayer, especially when He made major decisions such as who would be the twelve men He trained to represent Him when He returned to His throne. As He approached the cross, John takes us into the depths of His very soul and His heart when He poured out His concerns. John knew that because he stayed alert and entered into the essence of Jesus's heart and wanted His readers to be there with Him. He opened up the door of our Lord's deepest being and revealed the essence of His heart to us. Nothing could be greater.

This is why the Living Prayer, the walking prayer, the prayer Jesus raised up to His father as He walk-ed into the Garden, is so essential for us to grasp. It was here that He poured out the depths of His being and prayed for Himself to reveal the Father's glory and ask for our well-being. John wanted us to know this prayer in addition to the prayer that the other three books wrote that Jesus had been made known. John knew that Jesus was totally obedient against His own desires. Calvary was something He wanted to avoid if he could, but something He would do if that was the only way to redeem us. He wanted to redeem Man, that is man and woman, but we had to be delivered from the penalty for sin, and He wanted to do that. So He prayed and so He confirmed: it meant Calvary and He learned to obey through His prayer. He obeyed even the cross! From a crown to a cross. From life to death. From condemnation to forgiveness. From temporal to eternal.

Thus it is that obedience for Jesus came through prayer, even as obedience for us comes through prayer.

He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Phil. 2:8

How do we make disciples in the age of AI?

It appears that AI is taking over much of the 21st century, and we need to know how to make disciples in our present time since that is why Jesus left us here on earth. To make  make disciples in the age of AI, we have to understand the reality that AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. It is just technology and nothing more. It has no soul, no spirit, nothing eternal, no relationship with the One who died for us. He strives to have a relationship with all who are open to Him. AI is a tool--a technical tool, different from a hammer or a screw driver but a tool just the same. It is to not a way of life but an instrument used to help us in our way of life. It is a useful tool, a great instrument, a creative method, but not a life in itself, even though many are thinking of it that way. This is a mistaken way of life. Many will treat it as a way of life only to discover that AI is actually a way of death. This is why we must make disciples in the age of AI and reach others to do the same.

Humanity doesn't change, so the way to make disciples doesn't change.

Satan's deception is the same as it was in Genesis 3 through his false promises.

Sin is the same as it was in Genesis 3 because the way of sin is always the same.

Salvation is the same as it was in history because of the cross and resurrection.

Our frailty is the same as it was in Genesis 3 on and continues until now.

Desperate dependence is the same in our hearts as it was in Peter's heart.

Our need for the Spirit is the same it was in the disciples' limitations.

Our fruit bearing is the same as it was in the lives of the all believers before us.

Our need for a team is the same as it was in Paul's ministry.

We continue to have God's blessed gifts.

We continue to have God's limited gifts.                                                                                      

We continue to have God's effective gifts.

 Our need for prayer is the same as Jesus needed.

Our need for the Word of God is the same it was when Jesus taught.

AI is a limited solution within an unlimited reality. The most we can do is use it to arrive at limited solutions that enable us to take useful steps and move forward through the enablement of the Holy Spirit to give glory to the Holy God in a Satan owned world.

My fear is that a large number of 21st century people don't see it this way because they don't believe that men and women have souls. They don't believe in souls or eternal life or any accountability or how we live. Or they may never consider the reality of eternity and what that means for them so they fail to consider what death means for them and don't realize that it is an entry into darkness rather than the door way to eternal life and the glory of heaven. Or they simply don't want to think about eternity.

AI is a profound instrument that can provide a lot of truth, but in itself cannot speak to someone's soul, as AI itself does not have a soul. Only humans who use it have souls. It can be used as an instrument to communicate soul to soul, but only a soul can reach another soul, and that's the only way to reach the lost. When we are discipling people, we have to make sure they understand that AI works without a soul. Once they know that AI is words without a soul, they will turn to a human rather than AI for relationships and forgiveness and the joy of making disciples. AI is useful to put thoughts together, but not to put souls together. Only my soul can reach other souls through the Holy Spirit, and that demands a relationship. And the only kind of relationship that forms disciples is the Jesus kind of relationship that the Holy Spirit creates and makes fruitful, the same kind of relationship that He has created across centuries since Calvary.

This is a vital point that many can miss because they only think about words to words rather than the way Jesus works as man to man or woman to woman. Jesus worked hand to hand and foot to foot as He became a man and worked man to man, mind to mind, heart to heart as He walked through life with His men and women. Unless we work foot to foot we can never work soul to soul, and that's our core as a disciple who works to form disciples, which is the essence of disciple formation. So we must work our souls to other souls. That's what our lives are all about.

We must also realize that YAHWEH is the ultimate Father, our Father, who is maturing us and teaching us and patiently training us to become the adult He wants us to be so He can turn His business over to us as the Spirit works through us. And what is His business? Making us in His image, which is His purpose in creating us, and working with Him to create others in His image. 

AI must be seen as an instrument rather than a solution, as many see it. Rather it is one of many instruments that we can use to pass through the process of transforming our-selves into becoming the image of God as He created us to be.

AI cannot think for itself, resolve for itself, or answer questions for itself. Those who control it can know themselves, face themselves and realize that they do have a soul and a heart and also realize that Jesus died for their souls and their hearts and their eternal lives. In light of all that we have said we must make disciples in 2026 as we

Make AI a productive fruit-bearing tool for the glory of God.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

President of Leader Formation International

I am the Door; if anyone enters through Me,

he will be saved and go in and out and find pasture

John 10:9

For many believers the Christian life is a life of turmoil, confusion, and distress, not at all what they hoped it would be or expected it to be. They had great promise and anticipation. Every Sunday they go to church, listen to a sermon, and come out of church full of a commitment to live according to the message they just heard, but their life doesn't work out that way. Instead their lives are marked by struggle, confusion, distress, failure, and finally they simply accept the reality that life as they know it. It is an appearance, not reality, and the hope they thought it would be.

There are more believers like this than we want to admit. They know the truth, but they can't live the truth. And they are right. They can't live the truth. They simply can't live the truth. Jesus never ex-pected us to live the truth. When He commands us to live His way He doesn't expect us to live the way He commands us on our own. That is imperative. ON OUR OWN! He does expect us to live life His way, but not on our own. We cannot live the Jesus Way on our own. He never expected us to live His way in our own power. The problem is that large numbers are never taught this. Instead they are taught God's truth as if they can live it themselves and must live it on our own and they are failures because they can't. Of course they are failures. How could they be anything else? Everyone who tries to live Christ's way on their own will fail. Failure is inevitable. Such teaching is destructive and shameful. It is false and unjust. It is as shameful as the failure it produces. The problem is they do not teach the truth of what it means to have Jesus as our Shepherd, for Jesus is our Shepherd. You see as our Shepherd is more than our Provider for food and water. You must understand that He provides for us as our Enabler as well, as the One who enables us to live His way. He not only commands to live as He wants us to live. He also empowers us to live the way He lived because He lives it through us. The Good Shepherd takes us to food and strength, but food and strength are never just external realities. In fact they are more internal realities, the God-enabled strength and capacity to do what He wants us to do.

You see, those believers don't realize they are powerless apart from radical desperate dependence on Jesus. Apart from Him they are sheep without the Shepherd day-by-day. Instead they live among wolves who use them up at every turn, waiting for the right time to devour them, destroy them, eat them up, and move on to the next one they can take advantage of.

They think they are living the Christian life, serving the Lord, honoring Him and lifting up His name. Instead they are striving to obey Him and honor Him on their own, as if honoring Him is up to them. They truly don't know what it means to be inside the Door, to enter the fold constantly, to leave the fold on a daily basis and be led in green grass and to bear fruit His way by following Him while radically desperately depend on Him. But along they way they have much to do. They have business to do, conversations to have, wars to fight, struggles to face, relationships to build, service to carry out, gifts to exercise. So much to do. The reality is that no one of us is able to be fruitful on our own. It is not up to us to live the Christian life in our own. We need to pass through the Door, to become radically, desperately dependent on Him in all we do and He will work through us to bear His fruit through us.

What you may well realize is that, if you are one of these people I am describing, you may be following a false shepherd, one of the thieves, and not Jesus. So it is that you must turn from the false shepherd, but where do you go? What I want to do in this blog is to guide you through the Door into the fold of Jesus and then to follow Him constantly according to His word so that your life becomes alive with His fruit as He desires and not be pursuing emptiness with the death of fruitlessness. The evil one deceives so many even as he deceived Eve in Genisis 3, by promising her life only to give her death. You see it is Genesis 3 all over again. That is going on in so many churches in our time. These churches have beautiful buildings, wonderful music, full pews, busy committees, promising Sunday school classes, and fruitless harvests. Nothing could be more futile. Nothing could be less productive. So your life is empty and barren. Who wants to be like you? All you can reproduce is another Cain.

So when you realize that Jesus is The Door you know that you enter into His fold on a daily basis to be in touch with Him, to refresh your relationship with Him, to deepen your knowledge about Him, to grow in your radial desperate dependence on Him, to rest peacefully knowing He is for you and wants you to be close to Him. He will meet you in the fold to be refreshed in your awareness of His presence with Him and to sharpen your awareness of Him in your life. Certainly He will call your attention to sin and help you gain purity on a daily baseness. Then you get rest to get ready for a new day to follow Him and do His will as He desires. There will be new opportunities to serve Him and speak for Him and meet the needs of others and meet your own needs according to your challenges.

By doing this you will find the way to be strong in the Lord and to learn that by going through the Door you will learn to be desperately dependent on Him and that will lead you to abide in Him and to find the amazing ways He enables you to follow Him and be productive, to delight in His presence not only to lead you but to use you to enable you and to make you fruitful to accomplish His purposes. Nothing could be greater.

My hope is to guide you through the Door on a regular basis as you go in it and then out of the fold so you will learn to live His way according to radical desperate dependence on the Lord and to find peace, joy, fellowship, and accountability on a regular basis. I also hope you will find rest and peace on a regular basis as you live in His presence, experience His joy, and have fellowship with Him.

Yes, He is The Door and the One who guides us to His productive pastures, His peaceful fold, and His fresh water as we learn to experience the fulness of His power.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Philippians 4:13

President of Leader Formation International

God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Bill Bright

God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life?

You're kidding! You have to be kidding if you think I'm going to believe that God loves me.

Think of how my life began and then tell me God loves me. I don't think He even knew I existed. I don't think He ever cared I existed let alone that He loves me. And He has a plan for me? Think about how I began and then tell me that He has a wonderful plan for my life. Do you know the story of my life? Tell me how great a plan He had in all of that. You're nothing but a joke if you're even that! God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life! Huh! What a joke that is! That's not even funny. It's weird, wacky, off the wall! Do you think I'm that big a fool to believe that? Do you think I have money to give you or a way to honor you or a platform to exalt you? I'm not that big a fool that I'm going to fall for your little game!

Do you know where my life began? I'll tell you so you'll leave me alone.

It wasn't in a palace or a mansion or even a nice house. No sir! It was in north Philadelphia, in a row-house just off Girard Avenue not far from downtown, not too far from the colonial part of the city, but it definitely was not part of that or even a nice part of the city. Just part of rowhouse Philadelphia where the rowhouses are all small, ugly, alike, and unwanted. You only live there because you're on your way up (you hope) or because you're on your way down (too bad) or you're on your way to nowhere  (wherever that is).

That's where my life began. A winter night in mid-February 1938 when a man and a woman got to-gether for sex. Why? For fun? Or joy? Or money? As best I can tell it definitely wasn't for me! At least as it turned out it wasn't for me! But Me is what they got! Or at least Me is what she got.

She was Martha. Martha Heintzelman. She was beautiful from what my half-brother, Donald, told me. He knew her much better than I did since he was with her until he was about twelve years old and knew her, not only as the birth-woman I knew, but as a kind of mother. I never knew her that way, but I knew of her through him when I was twenty-one, so he told me about her long after I was adopted.

But let's go back to when I began, not when I was born, when most life stories start, but when I was conceived, because that's when my life really began. Yes, I was conceived in mid-February 1938 and born on November 19, 1938.

Now tell me God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life when all you have about me is an un-wanted newborn taken to a rowhouse near Girard Avenue close to downtown Philadelphia, probably cared for much of the time by Martha's mother in Allentown about fifty miles north of Philadelphia. It makes sense that Martha went up there at times, but it appears she was a nothing mother. She got baptized and had me baptized at St. Peter's and Paul's Roman Catholic Cathedral close to the Art Museum near downtown Philadelphia when I was two years old. Along my  to adoption I was lost in Atlantic City and rode the trolley car to Willow Grove with Martha and a girlfriend in suburban Philadelphia and then Martha made her final statement when I was four moving toward five. If this little boy isn't adopted by the time he's five I'm going to put him in a Roman Catholic orphanage!

A Roman Catholic orphanage!

Are you telling me that God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life when I'm headed to an orphanage? Are you telling me that I should believe that?

You know what?

You're right!

God does love me and does have a wonderful plan for my life--and for your life as well because God loves you as much as He loves me, no matter what is true about your life.

That's what I want to tell you about in this blog, From the Most Unwanted to the Most Wanted.

I want you to know what I discovered more years ago than I can count. Even though it looked as if God doesn't exist let alone that He loved me and wanted to be involved in my life or that He knew my name let alone cared about what is happening in my life, He truly wants to work in all that I do. I want you to know that God is alive and that He is engaged in all that is taking place in my life--and in yours. Nothing develops in us apart from His grace and His purpose even though we cannot see it until He makes it clear. And that can take more time than we can understand.

In my experience there were years before I could see what He was doing, years of time for me to grow, years of experience before I could teach God's purpose through others, decades to pass until I could put it all together and help others grasp God's grace in those they influence.

This is what I want to share with you as we work on this blog to grow from being the Most Unwanted to Becoming the Most Wanted. This will take time and thought and prayer and sharing with other's who know us as well as those who may not know us now but who may have insight into the grace of God and how He is working in our lives. Just remember that what we can read in a few verses took years for the writer to grasp. That is true in the lives of men like Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah, and more. Step back, cry out for peace and patience, reach out for support from those around you, and endure with the strength that comes from the Holy Spirit.

Remember,

The only way to become the most wanted is to endure the

struggle over being the most unwanted through God's grace.

President of Leader Formation International

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus . . .

                                                                        Philippians 2:6

You know what it's like to be deep in trouble, when you are divided from those you want to be one with but you can't be because the differences are great and the demands you face are too much to over- come. That was the division that marked the church in Philippi, one of the five vital cities that formed a semi-circle east of Ephesus, one of the unique, cultural, and commercial cities where Paul started churches as part of his evangelistic efforts before he was arrested by Roman authorities the first time. There would be a second and final time, but that was yet to come, and Paul had letters to write and churches to plant and many to reach before he was finished.

He had impacted Philippi with the gospel, planted a church, established leadership in that church, reached other cities, and then determined to go to Spain, but he was imprisoned before he could get there. While he was in prison there was a division in the Philippian church and he wrote a letter to the leaders of that church who read it to the whole church.

So it was that he exhorted the church in Philippi when he said,

                                             Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ . . .

                                                                                                Philippians. 2:6.

Let this mind be in you . . . This was a present tense imperative that was the only solution to their division and their differences. It was not a discussion or a debate or a difference that Paul supported. It had to be resolved, and it could only be resolved if it was done with careful consideration the Jesus way.  That's why Paul directed them to think it through wisely and effectively by sharing Jesus's mind.

He doesn't take a side in this division. He never stood with one side or the other. It seems that Paul did not see it as important for him to be for one perspective or the other. In other situations he does correct  untruth, but here his concern is only for the mind of Christ. He wanted the mind of Christ to be important for all. What he was saying was Think this through and grasp what Jesus would conclude based on His teaching. Humble yourselves and arrive at a decision after carefully consider-ation.

Realize that you can only arrive at Christ's conclusions if you study His teachings carefully, thoroughly, and completely, talking calmly, speaking to one another gently while abiding in Jesus and living according to John 15:1-15. You see, nothing captures the mind of Jesus like John 15:1-15, and that's the mind that He passed on to His men in the Upper Room, the mind that He passes on to us on the night of His arrest, the very mind He wants us to have.

The core of that mind is Love another. Ultimately the key summary of all His commands, the essence of all His commands, is that we should love another, and love even those we dislike. I repeat it even as He repeated it, because it is neither natural nor possible for us to love everyone, especially those who are unattractive to us.

The problem is that we are least likely to seek Christ's mind when we most need to have Christ's mind.  We are often convinced we are right and don't want to consider the possibility that we could be wrong. Or we may be unwilling to seek Christ's mind because it will cost us greatly. It may well be that we will lose recognition or have to face the reality that we have been wrong or unjust or made a mistake because we don't want to face a humbling failure. We would rather assert our success or be honored in some way even when we don't deserve it.  

If you have the mind of Christ you are also willing to die for those who have no righteousness because that's exactly what He did--and that's exactly what Paul faced. Even though he would be released and go on to Spain, he would be arrested a second time and taken back to Rome and finally be put to death for the Gospel. His faith would cost him everything, but only after he wrote several key messages to those he served throughout the Roman Empire.

So he wrote to the ones he reached in Philippi and his word was kept and kept and kept across cen-turies, and we read it today. Thus he exhorts us to have the mind of Christ. Learn the mind of Christ so we can Live the Christ way as He thinks and lives in us and through us. This is John 15:1-15 made real through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and all of John's Word.

The mind of Christ is the way He thought, He learned, He taught, He lived, He discipled, He died, He rose from the dead, He commissioned, and He enables us through the Holy Spirit today in the 21st century to live His way. It is how He works through us today. It is His work through all who serve Him now. And He does this all over the world. What Paul commanded from a Roman prison is still in force today through you. Think His way so you can live Christ's way.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ . . .

Philippians. 2:6.

President of Leader Formation International

To Learn 'n Live the Jesus Way we must honor the One who said " Let there be Light"

Let there be Light.

Let His light shine through you brighter and brighter until all who know you know that He lives in and shines through you.

He is Jesus and I am Bill Lawrence  and I want His light to shine through me and all who learn from me. My aim is to introduce a blog to you that I am calling Learn 'n Live the Jesus Way in which I teach biblical truth from both the Old and New Testament. Each blog will have a specific title based on the passage I am covering  . In each blog I want you to understand how Jesus lived so you can live the Jesus way and shine the Jesus light through you because He lives in you and through you if you know Him. And if you don't know Him I want to introduce Him to you through this blog and those that follow so you can have eternal life and begin to live His way through the Holy Spirit.

First I want you to know that Jesus learned the Word God,

He learned the Old Testament as He quoted it, proclaimed it, taught it, and behaved as it commanded.

He modeled what became the Gospels as He taught His men and seekers like Nicodemus (John 3) and the unexpecting questioners, like the woman at the well (John 4).

He demonstrated it in the book of Acts as He worked through the proclaimers in the Roman Empire.

He inspired the Epistles as He worked through Paul, Peter, James, and John as well as the writer in the book of Hebrews.

He dictated The Revelation to the Apostle John when he was on the island of Patmos, in his final word to us, recorded in the last book in the Bible.

This means that these writings are all  biblical truths, and the Christian life is an expression of God’s grace. And through God’s word I want you to experience what it is to know the total fullness of God’s grace because the Bible is all about God’s grace.

But I want to speak now of what I call Learn ‘n Live, that has a two-fold emphasis.

That is why I must focus on teaching biblical truth that you may already know or will be learning and at some point soon, I hope, teaching truth as marked by great insight, content that relates to life and reality as we know it. This is the truth that Jesus learned as a boy and lived in His daily life first as a carpenter and then as a disciple maker when He was one of us and learned  to understand life through His radical desperate dependence on the Holy Spirit.

Learn this insight, the core knowledge, the reality we need to mull over in our minds over and over again as we consider what the facts are and what they mean in our thinking from what these facts mean as they go deep in our thinking.

The second vital emphasis I want is for us to live according to the Old Testament as we face our deepest fears, the truth about us that we keep secret, especially from those we lead, because we cannot live the Jesus way unless we are free from our fears. We don't want anyone to know the struggles we wrestle with and won't face that we must face if we are to be used by Jesus. This is why Jesus called Peter Satan because Satan was having an impact in Peter, and Jesus wanted to deliver him from the evil one. The problem with this reality in our lives is that when we keep it secret we also commit sin, and it is keeping us from being used by the Lord as His leader, so we must face it. Otherwise He must make it known so we will desperately turn to Him and discover the freedom that is ours in Him. Thus He will treat us exactly the same way He treated Peter whom He called Satan, not because he was owned by Satan but because the evil one could use him unless he faced the struggles in his life. Thus the Lord, who sees, all will make our secrets known, not for our shame, but because Calvary was a public reality and the resurrection became public, and His grace is public, and He wants all He has done for you to be known by all to be public so He can use you publicly in powerful ways to make the difference He wants to make in the lives your influence. So it is that He treats us exactly the same way He treated Peter.

This is true because you are the are the ones who work to Learn ‘n Live the Jesus Way in

Satan’s World because living the Jesus way is the only way we can make a difference for Him in our generation.

Thus it is that I am introducing this blog to you.

Learn and Live the Jesus Way--and we do this in Satan's world

These two realities will constantly be in our thinking as I make them central to all I say. Thus it is that

             You are nothing becoming something by God’s grace.

             You are nobody becoming somebody according to God’s purpose.

             You are unvaluable becoming valuable through God’s enablement.

And the cross is at the center of all that our Lord does in our lives as He is working in us and blessing us and preparing us for eternity because He is coming to take us to be with Him forever.

So what else can we say but what we all want? We want Jesus to come. Think of what He said:

I am coming quickly!

 Amen.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

President of Leader Formation International

The greatest crisis in the world today is a crisis of leadership

and the crisis of leadership is a crisis of character.

                        --Howard Hendricks

The greatest crisis in the world today is the heart of all that I am dealing in leaders now.

I am Bill Lawrence, once a pastor in San Jose, CA, then a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, and then an international mentor in multiple countries around the world. I have struggled to learn as much as I could and I now seek to share  some aspects of truth with all who will join me through three kinds of Blogs that I am calling Learn 'n Live the Jesus Way, From the Most Unwanted to the Most Wanted, and The Open Door.

Along the way I have discovered that the best way to lead is to stand and walk and talk on your knees. Prayer is the greatest weapon you will ever have, and I ask you to join me in prayer as we consider these three blogs designed to strengthen your weakness--the weakness you share with me because I too am weak--through the strength of Jesus as we are enabled together by the Holy Spirit. I will overview each of my blogs as I introduce them and then present them one-by-one as the Lord guides me in the indefinite future.

Learn 'n Live the Jesus Way

This is a serious Bible study done as I believe Jesus must have done, verse by verse, paragraph by para-graph, situation by situation related to life as we live it with an emphasis on the thorough consideration of multiple portions of the text in both the Old and New Testaments. I will introduce it in an overview blog and then go to Philippians 2 where we can focus on thinking in light of Paul's exhortation to think as Jesus thought. Nothing could be more relevant to leading the Jesus way of leading than to think as He thought. From there we will go to many different passages and see life and the needs we face as we consider the specific issues we face and strive to approach them His way and determine to carry out His will as we see it. We will study how He related to His men as He exhorted them, comforted them, confronted them, taught them, even pleaded with them to be His disciples. Lead those you are directing in the same way He did as you Learn 'n Live the Jesus way--and never forget you do this in Satan's world. He is clever, implying that he is giving life to each generation as he actually influences them to receive his reward of death.

From the Most Unwanted to the Most Wanted

I can never escape from the fact that I was once the most unwanted, a child with neither mother nor father, although it seemed that I somehow might have had both unseen in the silent Lord. Yet the only option for me was either adoption or an orphanage. Could there have been a worse fate than an orphanage? And then I had wonderful adopted parents who did not want me to grow up. They wanted me to stay the little boy I was when they brought me into their lives and they did everything they could to keep me that way. But the sovereign God who was silent through adoption remained publicly silent in my teen age years only to show up in power and impact in my twenties and demonstrate that He had been worked behind the curtains all along. And I know the same is true for you even though so much is missing in your life right now. I want you to know about God's grace and His faithfulness and the One who said, Let there be light, is working now even when you can't see Him to bring Amazing Grace in your life. My passion is for you--and my blog will say this over-and-over. Just remember that the rush by word now is often the introduction of the amazing action of the sovereign Lord YAHWEH.

The Open Door

Despite all that we know about God, there were times when life is senseless and confusing, and there is no word for anything that is going on. You just get up and go on through the day doing what you need to do with no insight or understanding of what YAHWEH is doing, just another day. How do you make any sense out of this? That's when you need to walk through the open door, close the door, move into the small room or down be-side your bed, and get down on your knees or at least sit down and wonder, Is there any reason for this? Why am I alive? What is the reason for all of this? Is there a in the word for any of this?

I will try at least to give you something to think about. Something to consider. Something that may give you some perspective that will help you or find someone close to you or even a stranger who has great needs you can meet and you discover that the greatest way you can meet your needs is to meet someone else's needs.

So I say to you go through the Open Door and see what need it meets or where it takes you. After all a new discovery often overcomes all your old needs.

A dark moment in life may take you to a small candle light or a sudden bright brilliance or a kind of insight or a question that you can think about or even an answer that meets your needs in a new way. Something done differently any way.

So those are the blogs that lie ahead for you. These are thoughts to mull over. Plans to consider. Ideas to brew over. Actions you can take for others. Maybe you can start blogs for yourself and those you influence in different ways. YAHWEH can use these insights and hopes you that could fulfill. Get started. Why knows how God can bring blessings in your life.

President of Leader Formation International

I am rather startled when I hear believers ask, what would Jesus do, as if we don’t already know what He is doing.

How can we not know what He is doing when He made it more than obvious by His very actions what He does? What He does is exactly the same as what He did when He was here on earth.  All we have to do to know what He is doing is to read the Gospels. The issue is not what He would  do, as if that is uncertain or unclear or indefinite or some kind of a mystery. The reality is that is more than clear. All we have to do is to look at what He did on the cross with two sinners and realize that this is what He will do with all sinners. After all, a sinner is a sinner, and His response to those two sinners is exactly the same as His response is to all sinners.

There were two sinners who died with Him, two sinners and those two sinners represent all sinners. They were not special sinners. They were simply ordinary sinners, two men condemned to pay the price for their sin on that day with Jesus who represent all sinners because they were like all other sinners. They sinned. That’s all there was to it. They did what sinners do. They acted out of their own interests the way all sinners act out of their own interests. They acted for themselves. Only their actions were above the ordiary everyday sin. Undoubtedly they started out in small ways, as we all do. But their sin got bigger and bigger and bigger. At some point they got caught in extra ordinary sin. They paid some kind of penalty, but the penalty must not have been big enough that the only way to stop them from sinning was to take their life away from them. They faced the death penalty. And they hung on across, one on the right and the other on the left side of the sinless Jesus.

It is at this point that we see, not what Jesus would do, but what Jesus does. He offers forgiveness to both of them and gives it to the one who accepts it.

So we see that forgiveness is available for all, but is only given to those who accept it.

Thus it is that I give you two steps as we stand before the cross of Jesus.

The first is to offer forgiveness to any who have not accepted it.

Even though you may not be as sinful as the thief on the cross, all of us have sinned, and none of us is as righteous as the Lord Himself. Thus we need to trust Jesus for eternal life. It’s amazing how overtly Jesus dealt with sin on the cross. Yet to see it directly confronted and at the same time completely overcome is still overwhelming. After all, that’s why He was there. But we must still realize that con-demnation was replaced by forgiveness for all who will receive it. This is why I plead with you if you have not yet received it to accept forgiveness now and know what it is to have eternal life.

There were two men on the cross with Jesus, and both of them, like us, deserved the penalty they received. One was bitter beyond belief, but the other knew they deserved to be there and said so (Luke 23:39-42). He said to Jesus, Jesus, remember me when You come in your kingdom. Jesus responded to him, Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in paradise. So it is with you. If you confess your sin and acknowledge the reality that you, like all of us, are a sinner, you are in a place to be forgiven. The Lord who died for you wants to cleanse you if you will call on Jesus to redeem you now and forgive you, you have eternal life, and He lives in you and enables you to bear eternal fruit in temporal form. So now I plead with you to trust  Jesus for eternal life. If you refuse to make this decision all you have is eternal death. All your wealth, all your position, all your power, all your fame, everything you have is gone the moment you leave temporal life and enter eternal reality. This is why I plead with you to realize that Jesus died for you, that He now lives for you, that He wants to give you eternal life, and that is yours if you will trust Him.

Thus I ask you to join that thief on the cross who recognized Him as the one who offered Him eternal life and invite Him to be your Savior, the one who will and give you the forgiveness that He died to give you.

The second step I ask you to take is for you who have accepted the forgiveness given to you, even if you have just done it now. That means you have also been given eternal life. The fact that you have been given forgiveness and eternal life means you have freedom, great freedom from hiding sin in the corners and closets of your life. That in turn, means you don’t have the fear that anyone will find out things about you that you don’t want them to know. You don’t have to hide anything from anyone any more. You do have privacy, but that’s different from secrecy. You have a right to privacy, the right to have well selected leaders who share the truths that make you who your are. That’s very different from the secrecy of sin. You have a new privacy that builds you and strengthens you as a leader to step forward with confidence as you lead the followers the Lord gives to make a difference through His insight and grace.

Now live eternal life even as you continue to live temporal life. Everything you do now bears His fruit if you trust Him and live life His way through the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus it is that you need to grow through the power of the Spirit and bear the fruit of the Spirit and have the impact of Jesus through you as you fulfill His reason for being here on earth. While you are here to have your family, be part of your church, pursue a career, impact your community, and influence the part of the world the Lord gives to you, you bring all of this together and make disciples.

You see, we are here on earth to Jesus’s place. Thus He works His way through us as we

Love each other—even those we don’t like

Abide in Jesus—through radical, desperate dependence on Him

and

Make disciples

President of  Leader Formation International

. . . and it was night.

John 13:30

Have you ever thought of how much Jesus loved Judas Iscariot, His apparent disciple, the treasurer of the twelve, the betrayer who sold Him to the Jerusalem persecutors?

Think of how John remembered that night sixty years later. He wanted the world as he knew it to grasp how amazing the love of Jesus is. He loves even those who reject Him. I cannot help but reach out to any who read this who have not yet received our Lord as the One who died on Calvary for you. His death is your death; His life is your life; His offer of salvation is your opportunity to receive salvation.

Read on and know that there is Light, special, unique, spiritual Light. Don’t stumble in the darkness. Turn to the Light and find the Life that is yours while you still can.

I am now going back to a man named John who was one of twelve men who were in the Upper Room, in a house in Jerusalem, gathered together for the Passover supper with Jesus 2,000 years ago. Jesus was their leader, and they had been together for nearly three years traveling in northern Israel, then south to Jerusalem, then back up to Galilee. When they gathered together for this Passover meal Jesus took off His outer garment, wrapped a towel around himself, and washed their feet, which was very uncommon for a host to do. 

One of the twelve was named Judas Iscariot, who was about to become the betrayer, the one who had been with them for virtually three years, and who appeared to be so committed to them that he was totally trusted by all to keep their money as their treasurer. He was one of them, one who took care of the funds that impacted every one of them. Jesus was about to die on Calvary for all of them. Including Judas Iscariot, the treasurer-traitor.

He heard Peter ask a question all of them had, but only Simon the fisherman asked. He heard Jesus say they were clean, but He had to know Judas wasn’t clean. How could he, who was about to sell the Carpenter and their Leader to the Roman authorities, possibly be clean? Still Jesus died for him. And John made that point for all who read his word, a point that he will make clearer in just  a few words.

He first states the vital truth that Jesus declared Himself to be the amazing I AM, the YAHWEH of the Old Testament who became the flesh of time and eternity, who is available for all who want Him.

Having made that point Jesus continues revealing Himself.

He is troubled in spirit, deep in Himself, and He expresses the intensity of His inner self by declaring, Truly, truly (absolutely it is true, it is true), I say to you (I TELL you absolutely), one of you will betray Me.

From the very core of His being He tells them—and us—that one of them will betray Me.

None of them could figure this out. They would never do this. They just can’t believe that any one of them would ever betray Him. He was their Leader, the One who was going to make them powerful over Rome and give them the Empire. It doesn’t make sense. So even though he is not identified by name John is called on out of his unique relationship with Jesus to ask Him who could that possibly be? And Jesus identifies him, but they still don’t grasp who it was.

Thus he tells us at this point in his writing what he did not grasp in the darkest moment of one of the most brilliant Light in the Upper Room. 

At this point I call on all who pray for those who live in darkness that they will turn to the Light. There are many who profess to belong to the Light but who only offer darkness, and those who have known them have been impacted by them and hear about the Light but only see the darkness. As a result they have rejected the Light and do not respond to the Light at all. This is tragic for them, and the evil one is having his way, which is a tragedy for all involved. The only solution to this is a life of gentleness, kindness, gracious words, and much prayer. Let prayer shine the Light through your lives and look for the opportunity to shine the Light through unstated actions rather than useless lectures, speeches, and sermons. Don’t drive the unreachable away. Be gracious, kind, and supportive, and pray your way forward. Lectures will only drive you further away until you are unwelcome at every turn. Though the evil one often masks the Light he cannot turn Him away if we radically and desperately—and gently—bear the fruit of John 15 that is the mark of His love, and our lives will make a difference in ways we don’t realize. All of this is seen in the amazing love of Calvary and the Light of resurrection.

Jesus loves me. Jesus loves you. Jesus loves even the most sinful you ever know. How do you know? For the Bible tells you so. We are weak, but He IS strong, and He will exercise His strength through us to strive to reach even Judas Iscariot. Jesus did all He could do to reach Judas before He sent him on his way to do the evil he was committed to do. Even he could not live with it and in the end and he ended his life with shame and self-imposed death.

So I say to all who have turned from the Light, Come back. Come back.

Let there be Light

The Light shines in the darkness—let the Light shine to you and then let the Light shine through you

President of Leader Formation International

Greetings.

My name is John, and I was once the youngest of the Apostles whom Jesus chose to be with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem for nearly three years, but now I’m the oldest of His men, just over ninety, the only one left after the cross. However, I am still able to communicate His truth and make Him known and write about Him. I have already written three short letters, now known to you as I, II, and III John, and I am also writing the Gospel of John, though it’s different from the other three Gospels, as you know. They were biograhies, all very accurate and uncommonly well done, but mine is focused on a set of signs and I want you to know that I remember very well and that I taught about in Jerusalem, Roman Asia, and now in Ephesus. I have just written them and now I am focused on our last night together when we were in the Upper Room as we gathered in Jerusalem and I am communicating about the cross, the resurrection, and our Lord’s commission.

Step back now as a reader and think of John the Apostle who became an elder in Ephesus. He remem- bered back to the Upper Room and what happened that fatal night sixty years before he wrote these wrods when Jesus spoke to them from His heart to His men, even the betrayer. Jesus had great passion for them as He worked through the struggle and tension of the opening words recorded for us in chapter thirteen when He dressed himself as a slave and strove to reach the betrayer only He had to give him up. Once He was forced to release him to his evil task, Jesus sought to reach the hearts of His men. Yet first He had to go to His own heart and give His passion to His men as He taught them to the depth of their beings. He starts with RADICAL Love as He washes His men’s feet and reaches out to them.

I wonder if John struggled as he wrote about that  painful night sixty years after Jesus, his best friend on earth, was very different than He had ever been. The host never took off his outer garments and put a towel around himself and got on his knees and washed his guests’ feet, yet this is exactly what Jesus did. Peter said what all of them surely felt, but only impetuous Peter had the impulse to say it. Lord, do you wash my feet , . .?

John had to struggle as he wrote his Gospel so long after his youth. His Gospel was different from the other three with seven signs and then an intense word in what we know as the Upper Room Discourse followed by Jesus’s prayer for a different way for Him to pay for sin. No, not the cross. No horrible suffering and pain. Surely there is another way to pay for sin!

The Apostle was thinking back to his youth when he was wrestling with tension, stress, and distress all at once. He would not have understood what he faced with his Friend as he was so intimate with him at the Passover meal the third time that they were together. He could not grasp what His Friend meant when He took off his outer garments and wrapped Himself with a towel and washed his feet. This was Jesus the promised Messiah who would overthrow the Roman Empire and rule the world, and he, John, along with the other twelve, would rule in Rome’s place. He remembered the stress that came upon him and he feels it once again even though he understood it sixty years later.

Think of what it must have been like to discover that a traitor was in your midst, that a man whom all of you trusted totally and you gave all of your funds to him and made him the treasurer of your move-ment, a man who shared your vision and your values and for whom you had high regard

I now ask you a question. Have you faced such a situation in your life?

It is impossible to think that you faced a situation like the cross, although some live in places where the government turned on you because you are a Christian. Some of you are in places where being a Christian has cost you more than anyone can possibly imagine.

Attack. Shame. Persecution. Hatred. Rejection. Even death.

We know that this is what the early believers faced starting with Jesus Himself and going to the first apostles and moving to early believers, known and unknown, and continuing to our very time. It has never ceased.

But there have been other struggles.

Rejection. Divorce. Mockery. Deception. Dishonesty. Cheating. Bribery

How does this impact you? Do you have memories from the past caused by someone you loved and trusted who turned in you and let you down? What do you do with such a person now? Do you dwell on those memories and allow them to be the center of your life?

Is there someone in your life who has had a profound role and has distorted your life? Has there been a Judas in your life who took advantage of you and took truths that matter to you and turned them against you so you had to pay a great price just to hang on to your life? That does happen to many when there is no just reason for it.

Or can it be that you have entered into uncertain leadership, and you’re not sure what you are going to actually accomplish? You’re like John, on the edge of loss more than gain and you don’t understand what God is allowing to happen to you? You do your best, but everything is uncertain and you’re not sure what you should do? Why isn’t life clearer? That can happen. Paul did trust the Lord, but surely he wanted to strengthen churches in Spain rather than be beheaded in Rome, yet he trusted Jesus.

John, like the early church’s leaders, had to deal with much uncertainty as they had to face overcoming attack and resistance as they made Jesus known. They took their risks, established their churches, built their elders, wrote their Gospels and epistles, and, eventually, The Revelation,  equip their elders, proclaimed their message, expanded their numbers, and while they were constantly resisted, they grew.

What about you? Are you seeing God work through you? Can you join John, even at ninety, and see the Lord of the cross and the grave work through the darkness of what looks like defeat. Can it actually be the resurrection of triumph? So it is that I finish with this question.

Is the darkness of defeat actually your resurrection of triumph through the resurrected Lord Jesus?

Think about it.

Have you ever thought of what it takes to become God’s kind of leader? I mean a truly great leader, a leader with an intense relationship with God, a leader who trusts God when it makes no sense to trust anyone let along God, except that He keeps His word when you can’t see how He’s doing it. Let’s say you become a leader like Abram who became Abraham when trusting God made no sense at all. He’s often like that, you know. He makes no sense. His promise is strange at best. Abraham, who was Abram originally, gave up every position, every achievement, every opportunity, every future, he didn’t even know where he was going, and he didn’t have anything when he got to Canaan in obedience to YAHWEH. Why go from everything to nothing? That’s what it looked like when he when he went from Ur of the Chaldees to Canaan. God promised that He would have a nation, but all he had was a cave where he buried Sarah and himself in their deaths. It was centuries before the nation came into being, and then only after slavery and battles and desert and tribes and utter trust—and long after he died. Only then did YAHWEH keep His word.

Consider a few of the men who became God’s greatest leaders and look at the struggles the Lord took each of them through. Men like Moses and Samuel and David and Jeremiah and Peter and Paul. And women too. Ruth or Deborah or Mary or Elizabeth or Lydia. Then consider the questions that will help you understand how you can go through the same struggle that a man like Joseph went through to learn how to become a great leader. My hope is that you can form growing leaders to become the kind of men and women who become more effective for Jesus.

To become one of God’s greatest leaders Abraham had to turn from any opportunity to have a great position in Ur and Babylon and emigrate to a little-known territory known as Canaan where he settled in a place near Bethel. He owned no land of his own until Sarah, his wife died, and he finally obtained a cave, where he buried her and where he also was buried. Hardly a great achievement, and that was all obedience to God brought him. There was only loss for him—no profit. If you were looking at Abram’s Wall Street chart, his profit line was red, yet God sees him as one of the greatest profits He ever had. It appears that it was costly to become God’s kind of leader. After all, following YAHWEH moved him from having everything to having nothing. Maybe God doesn’t know now to make great deals. Or maybe what we think of as a great deal isn’t as great to Him as it is to us. And what looks like a loss to us is actually a profit for YAHWEH.

It cost Abram what position and power he might have had or hoped to gain in his home country. It meant that he lost what his heritage promised him from his family and possible influence offered to him and his wife.  He lost all possessions, all recognition, everything that was theirs. They had nothing but the word that a strange God they chose to trust promised to give them. Their trust was radical and total, and they acted on it and followed His direction no matter what they faced.

Consider this question. How do you respond as you decide to be His kind of leader? How much could you raise and consider? Think of this and then think about what you face as you form others to become the leaders God is calling you to influence.

While the text doesn’t tell us what Abram felt when God directed him to leave a place of prosperity and move to an unknown territory. Abram had no knowledge of where he was going, yet he obeyed God anyway. Perhaps he had already lost everything in Ur. How would you feel in such a situation? Would you do what he did? Why? Could you obey the way Abram did?

Are you facing such a situation now?

If you are, what does this mean for your family and your followers? How do you plan to answer the questions you know they must have had? What questions have you answered for yourself?  What biblical passages have helped you at this time?

Notice that his name was Abram, not Abraham. What does that tell you about him? Consider yourself at this time in your life. Have you made the same progress as Abram? What steps must you take to be an Abraham rather than an Abram?

Consider your family. Would they go with you if God called on you to make the same kind of decisions Abram made? What would your wife say to you if you told her God had directed you to do what Abram did? And how would your children make that kind of decision? How must you change to become that kind of man? Do you want to be that kind of man? What if you don’t want to be that kind of man but God does?

These are primarily the implications for your family. What about the implications for your followers and those you influence as you seek them to grow as leaders? What steps must you take for them to become the kind of leaders God wants them to be? How much of a price are you willing to pay to form them into the kind of leaders the Lord wants them to be? What about the people around you? How many of them are willing to become the kind of followers and leaders it demands for there to be God’s kind of movement through all of you? What steps must you take? What kind of prayer do you need? How much sacrifice must you make? How much influence have you earned to make the difference God wants to accomplish through you?

In the past 4,000 years, Abraham has been God’s everything through his nothing. All he ever had from the hand of God was a small cave, a grave for him and Sarah, yet he has influenced millions of people for thousands of years. A leader.

God’s leader—His everything through your nothing!

O, LORD, our Lord,
How majestic is your name in all the earth
Psalm 8:1
  

There is much that we know about God—all the Old Testament writers, the Gospels, the epistles, the Revelation of Jesus—tell us about God, yet there is so much that we do not know in our relationship with the LORD God because many of us don’t know Him personally in the same way David did. Many of us do not know YAHWEH intimately as David knew Him as a shepherd when he walked through the meadows and along the streams and in the canyons and over the hills near Bethlehem, or as he lay on the plains during the dark nights and through the brilliant dawns or in the beautiful sunsets. In those moments he heard the howling of the wolves, the roaring of the lions and the growling of the bears. Still, consider what it is like when we sense His presence with us as He reaches out to us and wants us to know Him in the deepest way possible. Oh, how great that is!

What was it like for shepherds as they listened to the baas of sheep and the cries of the just-born lambs and the calls of the ewes as they gave birth to their barely alive little ones? How wonderful it must have been at the marvel of Yahweh, the eternal YAHWEH, who gave new life to all who responded to Him. And to know that He is my shepherd, that He cares for me with all my flaws and all my needs and all my struggles and all my lacks. Still He cares for me. I matter to Him. Despite the useless stress, the arrogant pride, and the waste of self-promotion, Jesus is committed to me and has redeemed me and will deliver me from my emptiness to His eternal purpose for His glory. What could be more amazing? 

It is no wonder that David wrote his awesome words so long ago that are still great beyond our imagination.
 

O, LORD, our Lord,
How majestic is your name in all the earth,

Stop this very moment, no matter what you face, no matter what you fear or hope or celebrate, whether you have joy or struggle or sadness or shame or rejection, no matter what it is, stop and think of the fact that YAHWEH, the One who formed you and made you who you are and designed you to be His leader has a plan and a purpose for you. And it is not small or unimportant or unessential. Not at all. It is in fact eternal. The tasks He has assigned for you will bear eternal fruit in His time. It may be a decision by your board or a discussion by those who disagree with you or a debate by some who want to advance you. These are very critical considerations, but Yahweh is involved, and His name is at stake and you are involved.

Yet there is more at stake, more reason to focus on Him and His greatness, more than your fears or your success, is essential to Him. There is integrity, truth, holiness, the salvation of men and women, for the well-being of children, this and more is always at stake for Him. Nothing of your success matters as much to Him as who He is and what He is working to accomplish as Lord. First He is YAHWEH, the great I AM. But He is also Adonai, the Lord, the creator of all that is in Genesis 1, the All-Powerful One who will demonstrate that through you. Isn’t that amazing?! That the All-Powerful One will demonstrate His power through your weakness. How can this be? Yet He does, even as He did through David, the boy becoming a lad, a harper becoming a warrior, the warrior becoming His ruler the King.
 
Bow down before Him. Honor Him. Exalt Him. Humble yourself before Him. Lift Him up. Praise Him. Worship Him. He can reveal His greatness through you if you will worship and trust Him. 

Stop thinking about the issues you face. Stop thinking about those who are against you. Those who oppose you and resist you. Those who work to replace you or have plans to limit you or hinder you. Didn’t Jesus realize that you must take up the cross? Don’t you know that everyone who wants to be a Jesus kind of leader must take up the cross daily, must enter the grave daily, must rise from the grave daily? We never escape from the reality that the resurrection is not a one-time event in our lives but a daily struggle. Sin has a very deep root in our hearts, a daily depth of understanding and awareness that we must face to be God’s kind of leaders. We do lead to accomplish amazing achievements for the LORD who is Lord, that is, He is YAHWEH who is Adonai. To be aware of this, live out this awareness, demonstrate this struggle, strive to be desperately dependent on Him, express His power through your weakness and accomplish His purpose daily for His glory.

YAHWEH is Adonai
I AM is our Lord!
 
What could we greater?
 
Worship Him daily, Trust Him daily, Depend on Him daily
 
He will reveal Himself daily

Today I am asking you to pray for a special leader among leaders in Ukraine.
 
I have served with this leader, a pastor of pastors, a trainer of both current and future Ukrainian pastors throughout and now in non-Russian Ukraine. I am choosing not to identify him for fear that the Russians may seek him out at some point in time, which is their pattern, and that would be harmful for him. However, he is a leader among leaders, a shepherd under the Shepherd, and I want you around the world to remember him in prayer and hold him up before the Lord. I have worked with him in Ukraine in the past, have known him as a strong leader, and want him to continue to make a difference for the Lord according to His will. For this reason, I ask you to pray for Him.
 
Spiritually
 
That he will be desperately dependent on the Lord (John 15:5)
That he will influence other leaders to be desperately dependent on the Lord.
That he will constantly be in God’s word and influence other leaders to know the word
That he will consistently call those he influences to walk with the Lord
 
Personally
 
That he will grow in his walk with the Lord in these painful times of Russian intrusion
That he will have discipline in these seasons of uncertainty
That he will have peace and confidence when all he has planned is radically threatened
That those he influences will find the truth of God’s word to be the hope they need
That he will have the strength he needs to lead others forward for the Lord
That he will have the ability he seeks to guide with the certainty of God’s truth
 
Physically
 
That he will have the health he must have to be the husband, father, and leader in these days
That he will have the strength he must have to be the man his people desperately need
That he will have the discipline he must have to be the leader everyone wants
 
Family
 
That his wife will find strength and stability to stand in this uncertain time
That he and his wife can serve together in courage and confidence to honor the Lord
That his wife can be a source of stability to stand with him in these overwhelming moments
That his growing children can speak with him matter what they must bear
That all of them together can be one with the Lord at this time
That they can be one no matter what they must experience before the sovereign Lord
 
Ministry
 
That he can support those who must pay the Russian price, especially in eastern Ukraine
That he can train those who are in seminary to learn to serve the Lord today and in the future
That he an equip those who are writing material so they can stand for the Lord
That those who are primary leaders can guide those they lead in vital ways
 
There is much more I could say, but this is adequate for our purpose at this time. The demands are overwhelming, and I simply want to encourage all I know that there are many who are with you and want to support you in these overwhelming days. Please stand with me as we stand with you and want to support you in your struggles. You are paying prices we can never begin to understand, and we join with you in facing the burdens you must bear. This is the cross Jesus carried up Calvary’s hill. We pay this price with you and want you to know that you are not alone in carrying His cross. Remember, the only way up is down, but the glory of the resurrection only comes this way if we follow the Lord together His way and find His glory through Calvary.
 

Exodus 3:14

YAHWEH attracted Moses through the burning bush and directed him to go to Egypt, an overwhelming, impossible task. It is possible that you also have an impossible task for the Lord. Perhaps you have the same question of the Lord the Moses had. Read on and see what he asked and what YAHWEH answered to him.

All right. This makes sense. I guess. You are the God of my fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I am afraid of you because you have an overwhelming fire that you have ignited to attract me. There are many ways you could have called me, but this is the greatest. I couldn’t resist. I am here. Yet you want the Israelites to trust You and follow me as their leader and shepherd. It’s been 400 years since Israel heard from you. How could they trust a man who had to run for his life forty years ago and a God they haven’t heard from in for- ever?  We all know your name, but what does it mean? Who are you? How can we trust YAHWEH for the future whose history is a story from the past and is not present at all? What kind of a future does this promise mean to us? How can this overcome Egypt and get us through the wilderness to a land we haven’t seen in forever?

The answer that Moses received is that YAHWEH is I AM. That’s it. He never was, He never will be. Everything about Him IS. He is not like any other so-called god, no other power, not one that once was nor one that will be. He is the only God who IS, the only one who is eternal, the only one who can meet our needs, the only one with an amazing plan for us. Nothing is greater that He is and nothing ever will be better than He is. He can do everything He says He will do. He does all He says He will do. He overcomes all His enemies because He is all that they are not. There was a time when they never were and there will be a time when they never will be. He has no weakness, no illness, no failure, no darkness, no shame, no evil. He is totally truly trustworthy. He IS I AM. Do you know anyone else who is like Him? Why do you trust anyone else? How can you possibly trust yourself? Can anyone else do for you what YAHWEH did for our fathers when He delivered them and no one else would? Can we at least trust Him and see what He will do? We can try anyway. Anything else is better than slavery!

Besides,

Who is like our YAHWEH?

David first knew God as Elohim YAHWEH, the LORD God from the beginning, from Genesis 1-2, because that is how Moses revealed God to Israel and to David—and to us. We know Him from Genesis 1-2.
 
In Genesis 1 Moses revealed Him as Elohim, the Creator of all in seven days, the Maker of what exists from the heavens and the earth to man. There were states of reality, the core essence that first came into being with no detail, nothing about how we relate to Him or to each other, only that we are.

In this reality God is the Maker of all, the All-Powerful Sustainer of all, the Ruler of all. At this point, there is no relationship, only simple facts of existence. So we worship Him in His power and honor Him in His glory and depend on Him in His resources. He means everything to us.
 

Yes, He is the all-powerful One, the Sovereign Lord, the One who is over all, the One who created universe after universe, Thus it is that we are radically desperately dependent on Him, over us, but distant from us, not really engaged with us.
 
Then in Genesis 2 we learn to know Him as YAHWEH, the One who relates to us, who reaches out to us, who sustains us, who gives us our very lives, who is sovereign over us, but in a close, , engaging, relating way. He knows us and wants to relate to us in a reach and warm way. That’s what being LORD means to us; not the Boss but the One who cares for us and wants to relate to us, who meets with us at the end of a demand-int day and talk about our lives with us. So David knew Him as the One who worked in his life, who sustained him, who directed him, who protected him, who loved him and had a plan for him if only he would obey him. And He is the same for you.
 
Though He is our Boss, He is far more than that to us. Lord means superior, over us, ruler, in charge of us, the one who tells us what to do and expects us to do what we’re told to do, what we should have done, who holds us accountable, and who comes down on us when we fail to do it. While that is true, the concept of LORD, YAHWEH, as found in the Scripture is far more than this. It is superior, but it is also relational, caring, passionate, compassionate, full of understanding, patient, and also demanding, accountable, expecting, and requiring. Yet it is also providing, meeting needs, understanding, Patient yet holding accountable. There are no excuses yet there is gentleness and long kindness. There is an amazing thoughtfulness as well as a firmness that ultimately refuses to accept excuses. There is patience but also utter expectation when explanations are simply coverups for willful laziness.
 
The LORD is your Shepherd even as He was David’s Shepherd. He has a purpose for you, a plan for you, a hope for you, even when it appears that there is no purpose or plan or hope for you when you are confused and uncertain about your life. Trust Him today. YAHWEH is your Shepherd. Trust Him for your life even though you may not know where you are going or what you are going to do, when all you can see is darkness and even death He is still for you and with you and most of all He loves you. Know that He loves you no matter what you face! After all, Jesus died for you. Yes, and rose from the dead as well. And remember, only the shadow of death and not death can itself can ever touch all of us who trust Him.

Exodus 3:1-9

How do you respond in times of struggle and stress? Do you turn to YAHWEH in moments of tension and fear? Are you facing such times in 2023? Do you trust the LORD or do you complain to Him and resent Him because you feel He fails you and believe He has deserted you? Is YAHWEH truly your Shepherd or do you feel you have to take care of yourself? Perhaps you are like Moses having run for your life and have no way out or maybe like Israel caught up in slavery in some unescapable control. You may even think He has failed you and you are on your own. Yet this could be the time when you discover the amazing sovereign LORD is for you because He has come to deliver you if only you will trust Him!

Turn now and seek Him to discover if He has come to set you free and give you a new life.

Stop! Stop complaining. Stop crying out to those around you. Stop griping to God. Be silent. Be still. Realize that you are approaching the Holy God, the sinless LORD, the pure Sovereign Spirit, the Son of God who took up the cross for you. It is time to be still and listen through His word. Do not even confess. Just be silent and still and listen for what He has to say when He speaks. It is enough that He will speak to you. Who are you that He would say a word to you? Why does the Creator of all that is bother with us? Yet He does if only you will be still and listen. Could there be a burning bush in your life? Some way YAHWEH is striving to get your attention? Is there anything you have missed? Look and see.

Think about that. Be still. Listen. There might be.

That’s all. Be still. Listen.

Think of it.

YAHWEH is MY Shepherd.

The Creator of the universe, the Covenant maker, the Cross bearer is MY Shepherd.

How can it be that the One who made multiple universes, who created Man, who brought nations into being, who established major covenants, who lay in a manger, who bore the cross, who arose from the dead, is MY Shepherd? He cared for me when no one else cared for me. I, had neither mother nor father until I was five years old, had no money, and possessed little or nothing for many years of my life. I had no possessions, those who cared for me only had what we needed from week to week, yet He guided me through green meadows and along still waters and even through the valley of the shadow of death in and out again into wonderful meadows and canyons into blessed places of life. That is still true even now during these many years. How can that be? How can the sovereign YAHWEH be MY Shepherd? And YOUR Shepherd too. No one is greater than OUR Shepherd.

Yet He is.

He is radically committed to me and is guiding me through time into eternity. And He does the same for you if you have put your faith in Him. Do you know that? Do you live with that reality in your heart? Are you seeking His guidance? Are you trusting Him for eternal life? Are you calling for His wisdom through His word and from others who seek Him out?  Do you count on Him as YOUR Shepherd? Do you say,

YAHWEH is MY Shepherd?

Is this true of you today?

by Bill Lawrence, President Leader Formation International

Psalm 23:1; Ex 3:14

YAHWEH is His name.

I AM is from eternity to eternity. He has no beginning and no end. He simply is I AM.

No one has formed Him. He has neither mother nor father. He created all mothers and fathers. They didn’t create Him. No one created Him. As He said to Moses, I am who I am. I am I AM.

He is the Maker of all His covenants. That is how we know Him. This is how we depend on Him. He never changes. He is holy. Righteous.  Pure. Without evil. What He says He will do. He never breaks a promise. He never fails a covenant. He keeps His word. I AM is ours. He is always with us. At times He may wait until the last minute, even the last moment, even the last mili-second, but He will do what He says He will do without holding back or turning aside or failing to keep His word. Count on Him  even when you can’t see what I AM is doing. He will deliver. He is always acting for your benefit. Trust Him always.

The biggest problem you have with Him is that you want Him to do things He never said He would do. You become ANGRY when you expect Him to do what He never planned to do or said He would do. You demand that He keep promises He never made and you become furious when you claim He failed you when I AM is doing everything He promised He would do for you and never does anything He did not promise to do. Learn to know what His promises are, not what your desires are. There are major differences between His promises and your demands. It’s interesting that your demands often mean more to you than His promises. Why is that?

Trust Him! Yahweh—I AM—is His name. I AM is who He says He is. He does what He says He will do. ALWAYS!

There’s only one LORD who is my Shepherd today and every day. That is a decision I have made and a decision I believe you must make the same decision today.

There is no other LORD. There’s no other lord like THE LORD. There may be many Lords in many places, but only one LORD in time and eternity!

You cannot look at any other LORD that you can point out as my Shepherd. It’s not like there’s some other lord that’s like this LORD. No other lord matches Him. There are other lords who claim to be equal to Him or that you make lord over you, but you cannot point to another lord and say he or she is my LORD and speak the truth. That is a false appointment. When we do that we am creating another LORD, an idol, a false leader who meets false needs and makes us successful only to lead us into eternal emptiness. That lord will fail, and your—our—commitment will fail. There is only one who can be THE LORD, and we must turn to Him and Him alone.

When Jesus called Peter Satan He wasn’t merely saying words. He was making a serious statement. He was saying that Peter was blinded by Satan and missing our LORD’s true identity. If Peter could be blinded by Satan in a moment of darkness, couldn’t we or some we serve?

So how are you doing with this false claim if you have done this? Are you giving yourself to some false LORD? Why are you doing this? Does this false LORD claim to give you some form of success, some wealth, some position of power? When that happens, and that does happen, sooner or later you will have emptiness and futility and failure and shame. Do you recognize this and turn from it to THE true LORD? Or hide it and act is if it’s not there? Know what you have done before it’s too late.

What about today? Who is your LORD today?

Is THE LORD your LORD today?

Sometimes the common can become too common. Certainly, this could be true of Psalm 23, one of the best-known passages of God’s word among us. Unless you consciously live with this psalm as your wisdom, your resource, your insight, and your daily desperate dependence on the LORD, it could become so common that it will lose its vibrancy. The LORD is the Covenant making, Covenant keeping LORD, the One who will meet every need in your life as you trust Him daily in radical and desperate ways. You must make this psalm alive in your life because you will have personal realities you never faced before, relationships you never experienced before, business deals you never made before, shortcomings you never struggled with before, hopes you never considered before, growths you never wrestled with before, even failure you never confronted before.

Life will be different, ups and downs, opportunities that challenge you which are new and you won’t know how to respond to them. But your Shepherd will guide you through it all. If you walk with Him you will be in green pastures beside still waters, yes, yes, and the shadow of death will cover you at times, but your cup will overflow before the full tables of bounty before your enemies, but always in the presence of YAHWEH. He never leaves you. He is only gone from you if you leave Him. Be certain to keep this psalm in your heart in fresh ways constantly.

This is your daily way of life if you make Psalm 23 in the heart of your life.

It’s still early in 2023, the start of a new year with the left-overs of old commitments, old obligations, old problems, old factors from 2022 and earlier years. There’s a new and fresh walk with the Shepherd that has challenges and calls and opportunities and options before all of us. The great question we must answer is what will we do to serve as His shepherds when we lead His flock?

Do we have plans for these realities? Do we have solutions for past pains? Do we have plans for vital opportunities? Do we have supporters for our challenges? Do we have resources for all of these demands? How do we face all that is before us? Are we just going to walk away from the painful struggles before us—only to realize that they are not going to walk away from us? What will we do with the issues we don’t want to face but won’t go away? Have we even thought about them? Do we have goals for them? Or did we suddenly discover we have one problem—one big one—we weren’t even aware of until we received an unexpected call at the start of the year. How unfair can life be? Bad news during a fresh time. Give me a break! But life doesn’t give us breaks. Life only gives us reality.

Life is unfair. That’s why we must think of Psalm 23, a psalm that David wrote as a description of his experience. His life certainly was unfair with a father and brothers who did not care for him or King Saul who turned on him so he had to run for his life, and when he was king he faced war after war as well as a son, Absalom, who turned on him. He lived in constant turmoil and knew little peace, but he knew YAHWEH, his Shepherd. Think of how beautifully he described his walk with the Lord in Psalm 23 and see how this relates to your life. Do you realize how the Shepherd works in your life when you walk with Him? He spoke of green meadows and still waters and how his needs were constantly met, of fearing no evil because he always had his Shepherd with him, so death was never more than a shadow for him. His enemies never overcame him because his Shepherd had a celebration banquet in the very presence of his enemies, so they could never touch him. And he had the eternal reality of living in his Shepherd’s house forever. What could be greater? And that is true for us too.

Come with me and live this psalm and different passages also in 2023 with many leaders in God’s word as we learn how the Shepherd guides His flock in the reality of time into the certainty of eternity.

Let’s walk together through green pastures, beside still waters, in the shadow of the valley of death, before the table of our enemies, into the house to His very eternal life.

                        YAHWEH is MY Shepherd . . . I will dwell in the house of YAHWEH forever.

The Twenty-third Psalm is The Leader’s Psalm, David’s psalm, one he may have created as a shepherd, that he sang over and over again throughout his leadership as the King and when he was a warrior. It must have been a vital verse for him.  For that reason I offer it to you as a word for all who lead in these seasons of injustice as Jesus walks beside you in your season of darkness.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death

 I fear no evil, for you are with me.

Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

                                                Psalm 23:4

For our brothers and sisters in Ukraine under

the attack of the evil one from one who walks with you

Today I speak to you as a pastor to pastors.

If I could be with you as you serve your frightened sheep, the suffering, the crying, the questioning, the suffering—all who wrestle in the most difficult times of their lives—I want to tell you what the ultimate Shepherd is saying to you. You have so many overwhelmed hearts, so many who carry such terrible weights, who have such penetrating pain and face such undeserved injustice. You must bear all of this with your sheep. And yet as pastors you have your own families, your wives, your children, and even your aging parents. Still you are their shepherd, the one who turns to follow the Chief Shepherd.

So I come to you to support you in some way, with words that I hope will encourage and help you and give you strength from the One who gave all for you. May it be that the sheep you lead can find a way to follow His word as you follow Him, the Chief Shepherd who walked the same path of pain for us and paid the price for sin that we will never have to pay. We will pay for following Him, but never for our sin, and through us we trust Him that many others will know the forgiveness He has given us.

What you must understand is that the evil one who attacked Him now attacks you who follow Him who enter the valley of death with Him. The Lord walks alongside you and protects you now. He can never take you down even if the shadow takes you from the struggles of life into the glory of eternity without ever actually taking you down into the damage of death. This is what the death of Jesus on Calvary and His resurrection brings to us.  This is what I would say to you if I could be with you and what I say to you now. Read my word to you as I take you to Psalm 23:4. There is no word greater than this, no certainty truer, nothing more absolute, nothing more certain.

So I say to you no matter what you face that you must do what this verse says.

Follow the Leader

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death

On our way to eternal life as we follow the Leader, we will enter into the shadow of death.

This is not a way we would choose, but it is a way we will all face. Many of us have already walked through the valley of death with Him as we have walked with Him even when we didn’t know it. I certainly have. When I was five years old I entered this valley when I had pneumonia and lived on the edge of death for three weeks, but the Good Shepherd took care of me through the desperate prayer of my parents and the newly created sulpha drug that delivered me and brought me to health. And once again, only five years ago I had a fall that took me to the edge of death, yet God delivered me from death to life through prayer and the amazing wisdom of medical experts enabled by God.

Many of you have had the same experience in very different ways.

Now large numbers of you face this same risk as the Russians rush in on you. They come to take you and those you shepherd. They tear upon your fold, strive to destroy your safe place, tear apart your secure life, and destroy all you have built. What must you do? Can you take as many as possible to a safe place, perhaps in Poland or Romania or even further? What of those who are weak and in deep need? Can you protect them? The answers to these and other questions are confusing and uncertain.

But we must remember that we experience only the shadow of death, not the destructive grip of death. Yet if death takes you, He takes you to the banquet of glory He has prepared for you that lies ahead of you as He promised.

Those who know Jesus will never know the true grip of death, the choaking grasp of death, the tear that takes us down and rips life out of us. We are never torn away from life. Death never grips us or holds us or rips us away from eternal reality. We are never dead. Our bodies are, but our hearts, our souls, our spirits, our eternal realities never ever take is into any true loss of any kind. Instead, we are transformed from the temporal to the eternal. And those who follow Jesus with us must know this. He walks beside us, in the shadow of death, between death and us. He is always real to us no matter what we face. Call upon Him and lead them to call upon Him, and they will know His presence and His protection.

This is why we only enter the shadow of death and never death itself no matter how real it appears to be. We die, but we are never dead. Our bodies die, yet our selves are never dead. We only know eternal life through the grace of God.

Those who follow the Shepherd with us must know this. You must constantly tell them this.

This is not a false truth. This is the greatest truth we can ever have and give to those we shepherd. There is a dark valley, but there is a brilliant celebration for all who trust Him. Putin can never take this away from us!

Fear no Evil

I fear no evil, for you are with me.

Fear will come upon us when we first face death.

You cannot help but feel fear. It is all around you. The reality of what you face will come upon you and you cannot avoid the reality of what is happening. I have spent days thinking about what is happening and I have seen the events become worse and worse until now I see buildings where you have lived being destroyed, beautiful buildings being reduced to ashes, hospitals twisted into places of pain rather than sources of strength, husbands and wives weeping as they are crammed onto trains and separated, perhaps forever. I see places where I have been now attacked, men and women whom I have served being threatened, all because of one evil man. Just one evil man! One sinful evil man! How amazing can the evil one be. Perhaps you have noticed that I have not capitalized the term “evil one.” I choose not to dignify this term nor that demon. I will not honor such an evil person in even such a small way. No evil person is worthy of even a capital letter.

Yet it is a battle not to fear the evil of our world, especially the evil of our time that would destroy this great country of Ukraine that has become the strongest testimony for Christ in Europe in our day. The country has grown to become a major center for the cross of Calvary, the core of the good news of Jesus of Nazareth, the proclaimers of His message, so strategic that the evil one has acted against its true greatness.

So we must turn from our weakness in ourselves to radically dependence on the Shepherd we follow, the One who walks beside us in the shadow of death. We carry the cross even as He did and bear His fruit for so many who face His sacrifice. Pray for them as they walk untouched through that dark, dark valley of death to the glory that awaits them, whether it is the glory of time or eternity.

Find all Comfort

Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

How can we have comfort as we struggle in the days of darkness?

We share many days of darkness as I write this, the valley of the shadow of death. Still, Jesus is beside us. While we are full of fear, we must trust Him, and He frees us from the fear of death. So we can be free from fear because have His rod and His staff. Yet you have never needed the Shepherd’s tools and the Shepherd’s comfort so much. What else can you count on? How can you count on it? The Russians are all around you! All you have are the weapons of the Cross and the tools of the Shepherd. All that Jesus carried on His back is now on your backs and all that He used are in your hands, as you remain radically dependent on Him. I cannot be physically with you, but I am prayerfully with you, and I call on scores and scores of brothers and sisters around the world to join with you to support you and walk with you as you carry that Cross on Calvary’s road, even on the Ukrainian Way. But remember, you walk on the Resurrection Way also, the Jesus way, the way Jesus walked as He went to the Cross and then was carried to the grave and then rose to the resurrection and finally arose to His throne. He rules even over Russia. He rules over Russia, and He will carry you with Him either through life or through death to resurrection, but always to worship at His throne and His glory. In this darkest valley you must be full of hope even as we are for you and with you.

What weapons do you have?  Some rifles, some grenades, perhaps some artillery, maybe you will get some fighter planes or some rockets. Who knows? But maybe you will have none. Remember that David was often without weapons in his battles, or at least with adequate weapons or enough weapons, but God always out weaponed by His enemies, even when He had no weapons. We do not know what He is going to do, only that prayer is one of the greatest weapons of all. And who is greater than the Holy Spirit? We do not know what Jesus is going to do and we do not know how He is going to win, but we do know that He will defeat His enemies in His time, yet at great cost, the cost of the Cross.

David, the poet, knew much about battle. After all, he was a warrior, a king who fought many wars. The first one we know of was for few short moments with the giant Goliath, whom he defeated with apparent ease because his giant faith overcame the giant’s armor. Yet he faced many other struggles, some of which were in himself with his pride and his lust, even greater than with Goliath. And some of them he lost because he didn’t face them the same way he faced them with the Philistine because he lacked trust in the sovereign Yahweh who was always on his side. How tragic it is not to remember that God is constantly on our side, especially when we suffer. It is then that we learn about resurrection.

There is suffering at this time and Calvary is always more than we want to pay, but His triumph is always resurrection, yet at great cost, but only through Jesus, who walks in this dark valley with us, and we have His weapons, the weapons of the Cross that brings us to resurrection and prayer.

The chief weapon is prayer, our cry out to the Lord who also cried out in prayer to His Father from the cross. But now we have what He has finished. His work is done. He not only has the weapon of prayer but also the weapon of His very resurrection, His defeat of the evil one, the triumph over death and the eternal victory of lasting life. He has won the war! No matter what battle we face, if we cry out to Him and fight with the weapons of prayer and resurrection we will have His presence, even when the battle is overwhelming.

You walk through the valley of the shadow of death. You didn’t choose it or cause it or create it, you just suddenly enter into it with those who unexpectedly enter it. Actually, I have not entered into this. My far away friends, my brothers, my fellow pastors, those I served but never knew except as I spoke to you when I met with you at Kiev and in other parts of Ukraine, those men whom I taught from God’s word, you are the ones who are now in the valley of the shadow of death, and I enter it with you as I can. If I could, I would walk with you against the evil one and his agents in this time. I want to walk with you as best I can, which is not very much, but God’s word takes me there, and I want His truth to sustain you. What little I have I give you, but while I have little, He has all, and He gives all to you. May His weapons and His tools be your strength in this terrible time

As He said,

I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.

P.S. This is a message of the word I sent to the pastors I served in Ukraine to support them in their effort to help those who struggle so much from the injustice of Putin in Ukraine. It is all I can do to stand with them in these overwhelming days. Please pray for these pastors and make every effort you can to stand with the Chief Shepherd to stand beside the shepherds of the suffering sheep in that terrible nation. The evil one has done all he can to attack the Cross and overcome the Resurrection, but no one and nothing can overcome what the human Jesus did, the One who now reigns eternally on His divine and holy throne. Cry out for them even as He did from the Cross and has commissioned us to do from the mountain in Galilee. He rules over Putin. No one can overcome Him! Go and live The Leader’s Psalm in His will.

Short cuts along zigzag lines over wilderness wanderings to Christ’s will

Jesus, the Leader, was real. Radically, totally, absolutely real. This means He was fully God and fully man in the same person.

However, He emptied Himself of His divine prerogatives and was absolutely free, not of His deity, but of His rights as God, His self-reliance and His own will. He limited Himself and accepted human limitations and human needs, yet without sin. He was fully man with no sin. He was Genesis 1 without Genesis 3.

He absolutely needed the Father and depended on the Holy Spirit. He was exactly what God expected man to be before man sinned. Now some may react to the word absolutely, and I understand if they do. I don’t mean absolutely as in out of control; I mean absolutely as in the deepest need possible. We must not be afraid to recognize Jesus as human, as one of us in every way but sinful. That’s what Christmas is all about; that’s what His humanity is all about; that’s what the incarnation is all about. Jesus was fully and totally identified with us. He was not like the father who plays with his children and pretends they are bringing him down to the ground, laughing with great joy that they can take this bigger than life figure down to their level, although both children and father know this is not the case. The incarnation was not a make-believe event for Jesus; it was the most real historical event ever. Thus we know that His infancy was real, boyhood was real, His need for prayer was real, His limits were real, His testing and temptation were real, His suffering was real, His pain was real, His death was real, His resurrection was real. Everything about His humanity was real. Period.

In fact, His testing and temptation not only were real; they were imperative. His testing and temptation are what made the wilderness imperative for Jesus, and if the wilderness was imperative for Him, how can it not be even more imperative for us? So it was that the Holy Spirit impelled (Mark 1:12) Jesus to go into the wilderness so He could prove Himself as the Messiah. Long after Moses built the tabernacle and Solomon built his temple and Herod built an even greater temple, the wilderness remained God’s original temple, the place where His worshippers went to meet Him in solitude and isolation. God’s presence made the wilderness holy, but where holiness is, evil is not far away because evil has a compulsive need to combat holiness and seek to replace it with its own destructive desires. As a result, Satan was not far away when Jesus entered the wilderness.

The wilderness was an awful place, the place most impacted by the curse of sin in the physical world, a place full of nothing that was holy, just as sin that promises everything ultimately is full of nothing that is holy. It was Jesus with the wild animals growling and roaring about; Jesus with the angels supporting and encouraging; Jesus with the Holy Spirit enabling and sustaining Him; Jesus with the Father praying and communing with Him; Jesus with Satan, testing and tempting Him. Forty days in solitary isolation without food, forty demanding days that tested Him as Messiah and led to intense temptation. Testing and temptation always go together, and at the end of those forty days, Satan came to tempt Him directly with three of the greatest leader temptations any of us can experience and all of us feel every day.

The first temptation—turn these stones into bread—was the temptation to self-reliance, to take things into His own hands and meet His needs apart from the Father. It was a temptation to doubt the Father and to act on His own because the Father was not acting quickly enough. In His response, “Man shall not live by bread alone,” Jesus says some things are more important than bread, even after forty days of fasting and trusting the Father, and obeying God is one of those things.

The second temptation was the temptation to self-protection, to take care of yourself and keep yourself safe no matter what you face. But Jesus said, “Put not the Lord your God to the test.” In other words, do not put yourself in danger, but know that Yahweh your Elohim will protect you at all times no matter what danger you face. Safety is never a matter of self-imposed danger but self-disciplined trust.

And the third temptation was the temptation of self-promotion. Make yourself successful, self-exalted. How common a failure this is among leaders in our day. So many fall into this failure. They seek self-recognition and actually want worship from others. No failure is more destructive than this shame. To lead you must model for all what it means to lead from your knees and cry for forgiveness from the cross and resurrection out of the grave. Then do as Jesus did and lead His way from His grave through Him out of death through His life into His glory. This is Resurrection Leadership.

Inevitably, we take short cuts to long ways that lead us to zigzag lines along wilderness wanderings. What looks like a short cut turns out to be the longest way possible. Taking control of life and relying on ourselves to meet our needs virtually results in a long wander, rather than a short sojourn. We turn into a confusing wilderness. For Jesus, it was far more important that He trust the Father’s good will than that He turn to the ill will of the Evil One. Often we fail to realize that when we take things into our own hands as leaders and rely on ourselves, we actually turn to the destructive will of the Evil One and reap his tares rather than the Father’s fruit. After all, a starved Messiah was of no use to the Father, even as a failed leader cannot glorify the sovereign Lord or lead His people. It’s all a matter of trusting Him and fasting a little while longer if that’s what is needed. By saying no to the self-reliant Evil One who tempted Him, Jesus trusted His Father and proved Himself worthy of being the crucified Messiah. And for us as leaders not to trust ourselves but to trust Jesus turns us away from self-reliance and proves us worthy to lead the Jesus way, the way that takes us to the cross and the grave, then through His resurrection to the glory of His purpose and His power. Nothing could be more demanding nor more effective.

The death of the leader means broken leadership, but broken leadership means resurrection leadership. What could be greater?

Matthew 28:18-20 Again and Again

All authority has been to Me in heaven and on earth,

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations . . .

Jesus commands us to be leaders who obey Him by reproducing His kind of leaders over-and-over again. In fact, our lives are all about doing what He tells us to do by using our opportunities to accomplish what He directs us to pursue. So, if you are a business leader or an educator or a politician or a pastor or an athlete or a coach or an artist or a draftsman or a factory worker or a husband or a wife or whatever your role in life is, you are most of all a disciple-maker, His kind of leader. In other words, you give yourself to the Lord to be used by Him to be His instrument to make those you influence His reproducers for Him. This is your constant purpose in all that you are doing with your life. You see, your task in life is to form everyone you influence to be His instrument wherever He puts you. This means it is our task to do what He wants done with His life in us: to make that man or woman we influence His kind of disciple-maker as a result of His life through us.

There will be many growing factors that will mark your life and make the way you relate the same way Jesus related to those He influenced when He was here on earth. That is exactly what He wants to mark us now, as He commanded. Consider the implications of His commands for you as His follower.

Jesus wants His followers to have growing relationships.

Just as He had growing personal relationships with those He called to Himself, so He wants us to have growing relationships with those we call to follow Him with us.  There was intense growth between the initial relationships of Jesus and the twelve, and that is what He wants between us and those we call to follow Him. Even though we do not leave our regular way of life as Jesus and His men did, we will often be together as friends or in meetings and business situations, engaged in ministry opportunities and individual contacts. In all of these we help them grow as disciple-makers.

You help them become more effective as Bible teachers.

You will enable them to become increasingly more useful as Bible teachers by attending their classes if that is what the Lord wants them to do, seeing them teach, evaluating them in appropriate ways, identifying their strengths and pointing out their limitations, helping them understand how they could be more effective, and equipping them to become the kind of communicators God wants them to be. This would be a great encouragement for them.

Prayer, prayer, and more prayer.

As nothing was more important than prayer to Jesus, so nothing can be more important than prayer to you and to the men and women you influence. It’s amazing, isn’t it, that prayer was so important to Jesus and was central in His life. After all, He prayed every time He had an opportunity to pray. When He ate, when He acted, but especially when He was going to walk on water and call His men to follow Him in an intense way, He spent hours praying. And when He knew He was about to die for our sins, He asked His Father if He could avoid death, but He could not. He taught His men to live and die as He lived and died: by prayer. Everything is built around prayer.

Have honest interaction, confrontation, and intense relationships as necessary 

If you consider the kind of relationships Jesus had with His leaders as He formed them, it will be more than evident to you that they became very intense and open. He did not hold back from facing them, from holding them accountable, from being confronted by them, from being questioned by Peter or John or even Judas who betrayed Him. It will be the same with all whom you influence to be the disciples of Jesus and you must strive to make them the kind of leaders Jesus wants to use.

Any leader who forms future leaders according to the biblical principles of His life will produce increasingly effective leaders who will equip even more productive leaders until the body of Christ will do what God created it to do and reach the world with the good news concerning Jesus. What happened in the first three hundred years after the cross will happen today, even in a resistant world, if only leaders will have the heart of Christ, a heart that desires to form leaders who lead this way.

So we must lead as Jesus led if we are to be the kind of disciple makers Jesus was. This is the Christian life and Christian leadership, and nothing else is. The Christian life is misunderstood in our day, as it has been in much of history. It has been taken more as a way of life than the purpose of life.  It is seen as the means of life rather than as the very purpose and end of life. That is not how Jesus saw His life. These other things—fishing, being a carpenter, earning a living, all the other ways of life—were just that: the ways of life. Life for Him was the way He formed His followers and made them the men and women who accomplished His lasting, eternal purpose: becoming His disciples, His ultimate followers, His different makers, those who carried out His purpose, accomplished His purpose, and achieved His aims, demonstrated His rule on earth. This is what we are about.

He is the King of Kings, the Ruler of All, the Lord of Lords, and we are His servants.

For this reason,

He sent us to do what He has done: Form Leaders! 

This is leadership.

Fear not, the prophet says to the leader.

Even when everything goes well, fear dominates so many leaders and they are afraid.

In seasons of prosperity, we worry that financial security will go away unexpectedly. In times of health, we constantly seek to avoid illness. We tend to think that good times will fail suddenly, and bad times will last forever. In moments of safety, we anticipate accidents. When things go badly, we expect them to stay bad. In those moments, if we own a company, we shrink it as much as possible, break the lease in any way we can, cut as many workers as we think must, and get rid of as much debt as practical. We may not be very effective, but we’re safe.

It makes sense to think this way because our fears are often true, and fear is God’s way of calling us to seek His faithfulness. But why is it that we focus on what we cannot do, rather than what God can do? Is there another way to respond to the struggles of life beside fear? How about faith? Remember, it is one thing to be sensible, but it is another thing entirely to be fearful. We become fearful because we think everything is up to us. Silent trust is more valuable than self-trust.  It’s up to us to solve our problems, it’s up to us to overcome our struggles, it’s up to us to make everything right. That’ what we say—and that’s how we fail.

Isaiah’s point is that nothing is up to us. Everything is up to the One who is with us and who works in and through us. We trust ourselves while we talk about God, but God wants less talk about Him and top trust in Him. Fear is either uncontrolled by us or totally in control of us, but it’s not trust in God. When we give up to it fear completely controls us, even when we pretend that we control it. Fear dominates everything, decides everything, and destroys everything. Fear, fear, fear, nothing but fear determinates everything and defines everything. Fear is the worst reality we face, much greater than the reality of God when we give into it and fail to trust our Lord.

Yet God says, “Fear not.” Why shouldn’t we fear? Because just as God restored ancient Israel when the nation changed its mind and repented, so He will restore us if we turn from going our way to living His way by trusting Him.

As leaders, we must face the tensions of life without fear and learn to see fear as a reminder that life is bigger than we are but not bigger than God is. Understand that fear has two dimensions, one that harms us and one that helps us. The harmful side of fear assumes that life is up to me, and I, as a leader, must overcome the struggles that we all face, but it’s more than we can overcome, and that’s why we are so afraid of being a leader. However, there is the other side of life and leadership, the side in which we must worship God as we fear Him because He is out to deliver us. This is the side we must show our followers as leaders, the side that moves all of us forward and takes us into deeper and deeper joy and fulfillment. This is when we discover that God acts on our behalf to enable us to overcome our struggles through His resources.

I AM is with us.

This is where God makes Himself known as the great I AM, and we can be free from fear when we remember that the great I AM is with is. Because of this we can think of the fear of God in a radically different way from how we often think of it. When we realize God is the great I AM we worship Him and recognize His greatness. We realize how much He is for us. When we truly recognize God’s greatness, fear does not relate to the hard times of being a leader, but to the greatness of God that helps us lead His way. He can guide us through the hard moments and use us to lead His followers—His followers—to move effectively through His intended hard ways. Or even the unnecessary but avoided hard ways we bring on ourselves. This means that fear refers to our reverence or awe that results in righteous behavior and the exaltation and wonder that brings to our lives. God is on our sides and His greatness is for us, so fear does not mean terror but triumph. Thus, when we say, “Fear not,” we do not speak of terror because it is against us but of confidence because God is for us, and we have nothing to doubt since this is true. We have no reason to fear life or what causes uncertainty in our lives. Remember that to fear God is not to be afraid of Him but to honor Him, to exalt Him, to praise Him, to raise Him up—and to depend on Him when we are utterly powerless. That is fruitful fear.

No matter what you face as a leader I AM is with you, beside you, behind you, under you, around you, and for you. He leads us out of the darkness of our sin and into the brightness of His grace You will never be on your own because the Jesus who died on the cross for you now lives in you and works through you as you trust Him. This is what makes all of us one of His leaders, one of us who leads His way in His will in all He does through us.

So, we say to all the Lord’s leaders,

Fear not for I am with you—but that means He is with

you, behind you, under you, around you, and for you.

Matthew 28:18-20 Again and Again

by Bill Lawrence, President of Leader Formation International

Jesus commanded us to be leaders who obey Him by reproducing leaders over and over again. In fact, our lives are all about doing what He told us to do by using our opportunities in life to accomplish what He directs us to do. So, if you are a business leader or an educator or a political leader or a pastor or an athlete or an artist or a draft man or a factory worker or whatever your task is, you are most of all a discipler and a disciple maker. In other words, you give yourself to the Lord to be used by Him to be His instrument to make those you influence His reproducers for Him as well. This is your constant purpose in life, all that you are doing with your life in all that you do.

This means that there will be many growing factors that will mark your life and make the way you relate the same way Jesus related to those He influenced when He was here on earth. That is exactly what He wants to mark us now, as He commanded. Consider the implications of His commands for you as His followers.

Jesus wants His followers to have growing relationships with our followers.

Just as He had growing personal relationships with those He called to Himself, so He wants us to have growing relationships with those we call to follow Him with us.  There was intense growth between the initial relationships of Jesus and the twelve and that is what He wants between us and those we call to follow Him. Even though we do not leave our regular way of life as Jesus and His men did, we will often be together as friends as well as in meetings and ministry and individually.

You help them become more effective as Bible teachers

You will enable them to become increasingly more useful as Bible teachers by attending their classes, seeing them teach, evaluating them in appropriate ways, identifying their strengths and pointing out their limitations, helping them understand how they could be more effective, and equipping them to become the kind of communicators God wants them to be. This would be a great encouragement for them.

Prayer, prayer, and more prayer

As nothing was more important than prayer to Jesus, so nothing can be more important than prayer to you and to the men and women you influence. As His relationships and Bible teaching were to Jesus, nothing was more important than prayer to Him. It’s amazing, isn’t it, that prayer was so important to Jesus and was central in His life. After all, He prayed every time He had an opportunity to. When He ate, when He acted, but especially when He was going to walk on water and call His men to follow Him in an intense way, He spent hours praying. And when He knew He was about to die for our sins, He asked His Father if He could avoid death, but He could not. He taught His men to live and die as He lived and died: by prayer. Everything Jesus accomplished was built on prayer.

Have an honest interaction, confrontation, and intense relationship as necessary

If you consider the kind of relationships Jesus had with His leaders as He formed them, it is more than evident to you that they became very intense and open. He did not hold back from facing them, from holding them accountable, from being confronted by them, from being questioned by Peter or John or even Judas who betrayed Him. It will be the same with all whom you influence to be the disciples of Jesus and you must strive to make them the kind of leaders Jesus wants to use, but only as they know prayer is the core of your life.

Any leader who forms future leaders according to the biblical principles of His life will produce increasingly effective leaders who will equip even more productive leaders until the body of Christ will do what God created it to do and reach the world with the good news concerning Jesus. What happened in the first three hundred years after the cross will happen today, even in the most resistant parts of the world, if only leaders will have the heart of Christ, a heart that every Christian leader is to needs leaders who lead this way.

He sent us to proclaim what He has done—reedeem a dying world, yet only as a result of prayer!

President of Leader Formation International

Philippians 2:5-11

1. To be Christ’s kind of leader we must become followers, something few of us do naturally.

Few of us realize that Jesus was the ultimate follower.  We may know this theologically because the Bible speaks on many occasions that He submitted Himself to the Father, especially in the Garden when He accepts the cross when He would rather not be crucified if He could escape that awful reality (Mt. 26:39, 42, 44), but it was God’s will that He drink the cup. Yet, many fail to realize that He was the Lord of all because He was always in total submission to the Father, and that He could only be Lord of all by being submitted in every way.

Jesus is our Leader because He was God’s follower, and we can only be His leader if we are His followers even as He was.

2. To be a leader we must do what Jesus did (Phil 2:5-11):

     Empty ourselves

     Humble ourselves

     Sacrifice ourselves

We only know His resurrection as we know His death.

We must turn from our longings for power, control, recognition, and all the other elements that drive us and trust Him to raise us up according to His will even as He trusted the Father to raise Him.

Ultimate humility alone meant radical exaltation.

3. To be a leader we must be a seeker, pursuing Jesus at every turn through His word and desperate dependence on Him.

The amazing reality is that Jesus knew the word—the very word He fulfilled, the very word He taught and obeyed, the very word He declared and proclaimed.  The very word His listeners knew to be the word of God was His word. in every way and God’s word made Him a leader. It is when we treat the word the same way He did that we become His kind of leaders.

4.To be a leader we must be a worshipper of Jesus, bowing before Him, exalting and honoring Him, always focusing consciously on Him in every relationship I have, every decision I make, and every action I take.

It’s amazing that the Son of God became a man of God, a human being in the most human way possible, an active worshipper of God. It’s not only that He went to the synagogue, although He did that.  Jesus also maintained the rituals of God, the Passover and Yom Kippur and all the other Jewish annual events. He fasted and feasted, He prayed intently, and He sought the Father whenever He could and did not lead without praying.

Worship was at the very heart of His leadership. If He did not worship, He did not lead. If worship is not the core of all you do, you are not His kind of leader. You may say what He said, you may do what He did but if you do not seek to influence others as He did and do not worship as He worshipped, you cannot lead as He led.

5. To be a leader we must serve Jesus in every way by being focused on His commission no matter where He puts us or what it costs us.

Jesus came with a commission. He was sent by the Father to keep the Father’s word. He was empowered by the Spirit to fulfill the Father’s will. He came to accomplish the Father’s love by redeeming us. He has given us the same commission He had to fill the world with His good news: God loves you and offers His eternal life to all who will trust His beloved Son.

We now have the commission that Jesus had, and He acts to accomplish it through us.

This is why we are leaders.

Thus, I am His kind of leader when I am His kind of follower, a humble person committed to His word, His will, and His ways. Stunning that to be His kind of leader I must be His kind of follower. That is contrary to everything we know about leadership in our world. Those around us think that to be a leader is to be in charge, to be over others, and this is true in many ways, except for one way. It is not God’s way. To be God’s kind of leader we must be the Jesus kind of leader: under Him the same way He was under God. Constantly under Him even to the point of carrying a cross and dying to everything but the Father’s will. This means that the humility of God’s kind of death results in God’s kind of life.  And this makes you the Jesus kind of leader.

How are you doing?

Answer these Questions

What overwhelming situations do you face that you cannot overcome and that your followers know you cannot overcome but that Jesus can through your leadership if you trust Him?

How can you attract the kind of followers you must have to move forward in the vision you want to accomplish? Consider how Jesus attracted His followers through His teaching.

How soon can you implement the plan you have in view to get started with your aims?

Where can you gain the funds you need to move forward to success and what must you do to attract them?

What kind of facilities do you need to make the difference you aim to accomplish and what must you do to own it?

Consider These Thoughts

It’s time for you to embrace your inadequacy so you can become adequate in Christ.

Identify the “5,000” followers the Lord wants you to feed, the tasks for which you are totally inadequate, and consider your particular “five loaves and two fish.”

Consider those who don’t share your vision or have your desires or want to pay the price you know they must pay to accomplish God’s aims through your ministry.

Ask the Lord to do through your leadership what He did through His Son when He fed the 5,000 so He can influence your followers to do what He did in the lives of the original twelve and help them start to form them as His effective followers.

He is calling you to be a leader, not just to do wonderful things, which is what many of us think our aim is as leaders.

His first target in us is not for us to do great things and make us visible successes. That may be what He ultimately wants to do, but—as shocking as this is—His ultimate target is to show us and our followers how totally unable we are to do what matters so greatly. His aim is not to show others what we can do but what we can’t do apart from our desperate dependence on the One who died on the cross, who was buried in a grave as the victim of the Roman Empire and the priests of Jerusalem, but who rose from the utter weakness of death to rise from the dead in the power of resurrection.

Christ’s power of leadership is radically different from the power of political leadership or the self-advancement of business leadership or the healing of medical leadership or the insight of educational leadership or the power of any other kind of leadership, all of which is good at times and to be valued and honored in those times.

Resurrection leadership is the power of ultimate leadership, the leadership of the cross—the kind of leadership that passes through death to life and lasts for eternity.

This reality that you are facing is not a one-time challenge. It is a lifetime reality. Ask Him to help you become the kind of leader who will do what you cannot do with what you do not have for the rest of your life. Ask Him to never let you forget that your inadequacy is not the stopping point of your leadership. Your inadequacy is the starting point of His adequacy.

By Bill Lawrence, President of Leader Formation International

"without me you can do nothing (John 15:5)"

"You give them something to eat (Mark 6:37)"

How do you think the disciples felt when Jesus told them to feed 5,000 men plus women and children with virtually nothing?  How would you feel as a leader if He gave you this kind of a task?

What could they have thought when everything they had was five loaves and two fish? A boy’s lunch—that’s what it was. And that’s all Jesus had in that isolated location on the Sea of Galilee. He only had that because He sent His men on a search through the 5,000 looking for anything they could find, and they knew it was all they had a chance to find when they searched. Everyone who was there knew it.  What was Jesus doing?

Jesus was about to teach His men Leadership 101, the beginner’s course on The Jesus Way of Leadership. To say it was a beginner’s discovery is an understatement. To say it was crazy, useless, a waste of time, is also true to those who chose to follow Him. It was the first course.  To say we are going to learn to be leaders in the same way is also true because this is the only way we can lead the eternal way, the resurrection way, the way that takes us through Calvary, through death, through resurrection, and through life into eternity. This is Resurrection Leadership, the Jesus kind of Leadership.

For the disciples, this happened on a hillside where the disciples were fresh off a ministry assignment in which Jesus had sent them into towns and villages throughout Israel to show them what He could do when they trusted Him to lead His way. They returned with stories of great success, which drew large crowds to them and now they were ready for even more of the same kind of provision they already saw.

John the Baptist had just been beheaded, and Jesus knew His hour was coming. It was time for Him to focus on preparing His men for the supernatural tasks that lay ahead for them. He chose a solitary place to withdraw them where He could teach them more of what they had to learn, but the crowds kept coming. Because of what the disciples had done, more people than ever wanted to see and hear Jesus, so they followed Him by the thousands to listen to His teaching as He fed them with God’s word.

The hour was late, the day was long, and the people were hungry. Dinnertime was fast approaching, and the disciples were becoming restless. Most of the people had a long way to go to get to their homes and food. If they didn’t leave now, the old and the young, the weak and needy would never get home to eat. They were in a wilderness, and these people needed to be sent on their way for their own good. They could feed their spirits on the Lord’s words, but His wisdom could never feed their bellies. Only bread could do that.

The disciples must have conferred and decided to interrupt Jesus and point out the problem to Him. It was not like Jesus to miss seeing the needs of others—no one had more compassion for the crowds than He did (Mark 8:34). So, they gave Him a quick reminder that it was time to wrap things up and send the crowd home.

Jesus’ reply to their interruption startled and confused them. “’They don’t need to go away,’” he told them. “’You give them something to eat.’” (Mark 7:37. Note: Jesus did not say ‘We—or I—give them something to eat.’ He said, ‘YOU give them something to eat.’ What? How could THEY do that? They didn’t even have food for themselves. How could they give the crowd anything?

Why did He send them to discover the obvious impossibility of their situation? Nothing He was doing made sense. They knew they didn’t have enough bread to feed these hungry people, probably close to 20,000 in all, and so He gave them the impossible task to meet their needs. Did He issue this command to make them feel foolish and futile, calling attention to the problem by sending them through the crowd to ask if they had food? He sent them searching for something they could never find.

No. He wanted His disciples to discover how little they had. He wanted to make their lack of resources utterly undeniable. He wanted them to face their inadequacy square in the face. He needed them to see their reality.

Often, we are counting on someone to tell us what we should do or to do it for us. We look for all kinds of information that we record and maybe even go back and review, but it’s rarely the same as acting for ourselves. In our Lord’s case, we want Him to do something for us, but Jesus wants us to face it, to take it on and to trust Him to do it through us. On the Galilee hillside His intent was to teach them to trust Him to act through Him as they had to do for the rest of their lives, even as we must do today. Even as they had to learn to trust Him to do what they could not do, so we must trust Him as His leaders wherever we are.

Have you ever hit a wall like this—where everything you had to give was nowhere near enough for the challenges you faced? In these times He is teaching us that without Him we can do nothing, but with Him nothing becomes everything He wants us to do because Jesus always turns nothing into everything He wants us to accomplish. That’s what He does through us today and every day as He desires for the rest of our lives.

Remember 

Resurrection Leadership means nothing always becomes

everything when we trust Him no matter what we face.  

by Bill Lawrence, President of Leader Formation International

We frequently speak of the leader’s leader, of the reality that every leader needs a leader, even though many never admit it. Frequently leaders speak as if they don’t need a leader to guide them and hold them accountable, as if they don’t need someone to give them direction or help them sharpen their vision or offer them advice or tell them they’ve made mistakes. Just leave them alone, get out of the way,  move behind them, follow them, and move on toward the aim, don’t raise any questions, don’t make so many suggestions, don’t hesitate so much, just do what you’re supposed to do and move forward—that’s what they say. If anything is going wrong, it’s your fault. Do what you’re supposed to do and get going.  Either do what I say or get out of my way. That’s what they’re saying.

But whether they admit it or not every leader needs a leader.

Most leaders want to be in total control of those they lead. They strive to be in control. And there is a need for them to be in control. The question is, Who is in control of them?  More specifically, Who is in control of you? Even Jesus was under His Father’s will (not my will, but yours be done [Luke 22:22]). Even Jesus had a Leader.

by Bill Lawrence, President of Leader Formation International

Have you ever wondered why you are a leader? Can you answer this question? Why do I have the abilities and the opportunities to be a leader? You might even wonder at times if you have the gifts to be the kind of leader you must be to face some of the overwhelming demands put on you.

There is only one answer.

You are a leader because God called you to be a leader. It is not because of any decision you made, although you responded to His call and made that choice. God gave you the opportunity to be a leader, and without His hand on your life, even when you might be unaware of His presence, you would never be a so blessed—or have such a burden. All of this happened because of God’s grace. 

At times the demands of leadership may be so great that you long to be relieved of the responsibilities you have.  However, you play a vital part in God’s plan for those you influence because, throughout all of history, God has accomplished His purposes though leaders He has raised up, even when they are afraid and struggling. Consider Moses or David or Peter or Paul. None of them were qualified to do what they did apart from God’s enablement.  None of us would do what we do if God hadn’t called us to be leaders.

The greatest strength a leader has is weakness, then God will move us to dependence on His all-powerful omnipotence through us. Leaders look strong until we move into positions of responsibility and those who know us will realize that we are weak in ourselves apart from the power of God in us. Through us He expresses His power. He transforms our weakness into His strength by His grace as He has done in leaders throughout history.

Do you realize that God’s call to leadership is a holy call? It is a special call from God to you, and He wants to use you to make a difference in the hearts of those you influence.  You must remember that leadership is a movement from one leader’s heart to another and not just a matter of action from one vision to another or from one organization or government to another. The heart must be at the essence of one truth to a deeper truth or it fails. This is why leadership must be a holy call in business, politics or education, even when there is nothing religious about it. Those who lead must have spiritual drives or they will fail as leaders. That has certainly been true of effective business and political leaders who have made radical impacts without being overtly Christian.  

What greater privilege could you have? It doesn’t matter whether you have limited or major leadership responsibility. What matters is that you fulfill that responsibility according to the way God is forming you. The end result is that you make a difference in others whom He is calling you to influence.

We must realize that we see reality differently from the way God sees it.  He sees who we are as much more important than what we accomplish.  He can always get things done Himself.  However, getting us to be the kind of men and women He wants us to be is a much greater task from His perspective. He has the will, the plan, the love, the patience, the purpose, the endurance—all that and more to get one of us to be the kind of leader He can use to accomplish His purposes. He wants us to be His kind of people. That’s what Genesis 1 and 2 is all about and what He came to accomplish in Genesis 3—and at Calvary. And that is what forming leaders is all about.

The only way we can lead as God wants us to lead is to lead His way, which is with His kind of heart, so the change in leadership must begin in us.  Leadership is failing today because it has overlooked the heart. We’re good at the head and the hands, at thinking, developing a vision, planning, communicating, convincing, doing, all of the  elements needed to accomplish significant tasks. 

He takes us through our Gethsemanes to our Calvaries, through our graves and our resurrections into our lives with Christ in us so we can be His instruments, His kind of leaders forming even more leaders to accomplish His aims. What could be more than this? This is why you are His leaders. Subject yourself to Him and His purposes, accomplish His aim, be His difference-maker, and make His difference, whether you are in business, education, service, or as a parent—whatever God calls you to. Do it His way, lead according to His will, form His kind of leaders, make His difference, and express His glory.

Jesus calls His followers to suffer as He did and to follow Him to accomplish His mission. No opposition can overcome the followers of Jesus as He works through them to build ministries that change hearts.  Jesus accomplishes this through movements in every generation.  He takes ordinary men and women and transforms them to become His kind of leaders by loving them, modeling for them, and teaching them unique ways to form them through the cross, the grave, and His resurrection.

He calls them into His future and His mission, and no opposition can overcome the followers of Jesus as they pursue what really matters: His vision of building a movement that transforms cultures and unifies them as nothing else ever could. Jesus teaches every generation His truths and trains them through His process so they see reality as He enables them to see it.  He calls them to a new and better way that they could only learn through Him. He forms these wrestling and uncertain human beings and makes them into the next generation of His capable and amazing leaders. You are now called to be His kind of leader, the same kind of leader He is.

God desires to give you a heart that is different from the typical leader’s heart, a heart that does not desire individual success and recognition, but rather serves and  sacrifices to meet the needs of others through the cross. The kind of heart that He calls for looks on the genuine needs of others and puts the interests of the weak and needy and lacking ahead of their own. This is why the cross is at the center of leadership for Christ’s followers; their greatest needs cost Him His life because the penalty of sin is death and the way to righteousness is resurrection, and that is the price He paid for each of us.

The central reality of Christ’s kind of leadership is the cross. Jesus led the twelve men He called to follow to Him to take up the cross and then experience the resurrection and live His way. This is His kind of leadership, the daily way to lead His way. Understood properly we see it constantly in Acts in the leadership carried out by Peter, Andrew, James, Paul, and all others as the church started, and then as it is carried out by us, His followers, in our daily lives, especially in the way we conduct our businesses and our regular relationships.

So to be an effective leader you must be a faithful follower of THE Leader How are you doing?

Or

From My Way to the Jesus Way in the 21^st Century

In today’s world there is a great lack of leaders, especially in the church. Would men like Peter, James, John, Andrew and other apostles and early believers be thought of as successful in our day? Do we realize that the only way to be successful in Christ’s world is to serve, not to be powerful nor to be superior nor to be rich? Of course, these are forms of success God can both give and use to make us His kind of leaders as He desires. This is why many regard accomplishments such as fame, recognition, power, money and other achievements as success for leaders. However, the Jesus model of success for His followers is radically different today in the church, even as it always has been.  We must see them only as God’s instruments to accomplish His purposes as He chooses. Remember, these are His instruments and not ours, and we must use them as He wills and not as we will.

After all, our Savior’s instrument of success ended on a cross, hardly thought of as success in the Roman Empire, as we all agree. Just as He could never be thought of as successful to establish His kingdom, neither could the men He called to build the church in the Roman Empire be thought of as achievers. Yet today the same issues of the flesh are in force as they were during Roman rule, and the same solution is needed today.  This means we must become leaders of the cross even as the men and women of the 1^st century did. If we proclaim anything other than the cross we are biblical failures. They are instruments of communication, yes, keys to open doors, ways to enter major opportunities and talk to influential leaders, but not ends of success as seen in other settings.  This is why we need to proclaim the old message of the cross in a new way in our day. We must use the marks of the cross as the instruments of Christ’s truth, even as He did in the 1^st century. This is why the message of the cross of the 21^st century is the same as the message of the 1^st century, just stated in 21^st century language using contemporary illustrations addressed to current needs (the same as the needs of the Roman Empire, just stated in a different way), and addressed to the same sin lived in a new manner. At base, though, 21^st century struggles are the same as 1^st century struggles and solved in exactly the same way, the message of Jesus addressed to every age.

Some years ago, I was part of a team that created an ministry called LEAD, Leader Evaluation and Development. Our method is taken from the Gospels, the old way, formed in a new way.  We helped Leaders Evaluate their ministry And Develop new ways to become more effective than ever before. We did this very effectively with over a thousand leaders who moved forward in amazing ways. This ministry is made up of experienced ministry teams who helped other leaders learn to be more effective than they currently were and also helped them learn how to impact others so they could change their hearts.

We learned that the only way we can help anyone overcome their struggles in their lives is to face them, confess them, seek forgiveness for them, and turn away from the harm they cause. This is a painful process and most leaders are too fearful to carry it out, but those who act this way find that it brings freedom and builds greater leadership opportunities than ever. A large number of both men and women have participated in this message and have experienced great impact through it.

Because these are the most important elements of leadership to face and change, they the primary elements that are often ignored because the demands are so penetrating and distressful and leaders must face deep realities about themselves in moving forward. Thus the greatest leadership struggles are left unfaced and unsolved and become more demanding than ever. The greatest elements you must face in light of this reality is to answer these questions and to seek help from a few whom you trust to help you overcome these great struggles. Consider these questions as some you might need to face and consider with others who know you more deeply than you want to consider.

How well are you overcoming the most demanding changes you need to make?

What are you doing to make the changes you must pursue if you are going to grow as a leader?

How you are you choosing others to help need find those you must consider moving forward as a leader?

What changes are those who know you best seeing in you as an effective leader?

What are the three most significant changes they see that you need to make in you and why? What must you do to take these steps forward?

How willing are you to listen to others who care for you when they criticize you, especially when you have not asked them to criticize you?

Now is the time for you to face your old issues in this new way for God to bless your ministry as a leader as He has never blessed you before.

So says God who made him wise at his request.  God also made him wealthy and gave him great honor and promised him long life if Solomon would walk in His ways (I Kings 3:4-14).
 
His wisdom and wealth became legendary in the ancient world, so legendary that the Queen of Sheba came to see if all she heard was true and she was not disappointed (II Chron. 9:1-12).
 
Solomon became wise because, as a young man, he recognized his lack of wisdom and his inability to be king without God’s help, so he was a humble man who fully accepted his limitations and his need for God’s enablement.
 
In his wisdom Solomon recognized God’s greatness and exalted Him far above all others before his entire nation which gathered to honor God and dedicate the temple the king built.  He showed he knew God and he prayed to Him in humility and dependence as few men have ever done (I Kings 8:1-53; II Chron. 6:1-39).  What great insight!  How could a young man know God so well apart from His grace?
 
Solomon was also a brilliant writer who helped to create an entire genre of ancient writings called Wisdom Literature, writings that communicate insight into life and how to live in healthy and wholesome ways.  He wrote parts of the Psalms, most of Proverbs, and all of Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon, and his writings continue to be recognized as some of the wisest in all of history even to this very day.
 
Truly Solomon was the wisest man in the world—not in theoretical wisdom, but in living wisdom, in wisdom that teaches us all how to live well. Yet Solomon, in his old age, became an idolatrous man, a leader who worshipped many foreign gods, who turned his heart from the one true God to false gods. 
 
Amazing, isn’t it, that a young man who was so utterly dependent on God could grow to become an old man totally taken up with idols?
 
Solomon also was a murderous man.  When he became old and near death, God told him that He was not going to give the throne to his son, Rehoboam, but to another man, a man God never named, (I Kings 11:9-13), but a man whom Solomon knew.  It was not hard for Solomon to figure out who God’s chosen successor was because he himself had recognized the talent and dedication of the man and had promoted him to leadership in the kingdom.  He was Jeroboam, the son of a widow, who had grown up without a father, but who had proven himself through his courage in battle and industrious effort in service.  These attributes brought him to Solomon’s attention, and the king had appointed him as a leader over some very important projects (I Kings 11:26-27).  How ironic that the man Solomon discovered and appointed for his purposes became the man God selected and appointed for His purposes.  Jeroboam rebelled against Solomon, so the king set out to murder him, forcing him flee as an outlaw to Egypt (I Kings 11:40).
 
How can it be that a man who was radically committed to God in his youth, who became the wisest man in the world, and then became one of the most idolatrous men of his age, ended his life a murderous man, striving to kill God’s anointed?  What happened to set him on this disastrous course?  Could this happen to us?  Not that we would become murderers, but that we would seek to destroy others who threaten us. Haven’t all of us seen this happen to others?  What made Solomon do this and what might make us do the same thing?
 
It all starts with one simple word and progresses to the core reality of every leader.  As with many other simple words, it is very easy to overlook, though it introduces us to the key to Solomon’s life and helps us understand how the wisest man in the world became an idolatrous and murderous man, though he could still teach us truth about God.  And it should alert us to the reality that this terrible downward progression could happen in our leadership as well.  This word opens up the door to Solomon’s life and takes us into the essence of his failure as a leader.
 
To see this word look at II Kings 3:3 where we read, “Now Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of his father, David, except . . .”
 
There it is.  Solomon loved the Lord and for all outward appearances he was God’s man in every way with one exception:  he worshipped where he wasn’t supposed to worship.  Tragically that exception became the rule in Solomon’s life.  He had a heart for the true God, but there was room in his heart for false gods.  At first it was not a major concern in Solomon’s life, but ultimately it became the reality that brought him down.
 
Actually it was at a high place that God met Solomon in a dream to give him whatever he wanted as king.  Once Solomon asked for wisdom, God gave him an understanding heart and, even though he had not asked for these things, God also gave him riches and honor and promised him long life if he walked God’s way (I Kings 3:4-15).  And the very next thing Solomon did was leave the high place and go directly to the tabernacle where he offered sacrifices to cover his sin as he sought to deepen his relationship with God.
 
At that point in his life, Solomon was truly committed to God; idolatry wasn’t at the center of his life—but it was off to the side.  God occupied the primary place in all that Solomon did “except . . .”
 
Still that “except . . .” was in force.
 
What are the exceptions in your life, the high places of self-reliance and false worship that you hold back from God even though you appear to honor God?  What are the ways that you act independently of God and go your own way, even though, in most of your life, you are committed to Him?  We have Solomon-like secrets, the exceptions that lead us into idolatry and, if never faced, will bring us down in shame, even as they did Solomon.  You can see those high places in your fear and your anger, in your harmful competition and your personal ambition, in your drives and your longings, in your demands and expectations, in the times when you turn from God to self and mask it all in the name of Jesus.  And you can be sure that these high places will bring you down, even as they did Solomon. Be aware of the reality that the high places in your heart may be the low places of your heart.
 
So answer this question as a leader. What is the “except” that you hide in your life? Do you truly think you are hiding it? Do you really think God doesn’t see it? And how can you lead God’s people this way? Could it be that you are only hiding your idols from yourself and no one else? Idolatry is like that, you know. Only hidden from the idolator, but no one else. Think about this.

It can be someone who will solve our problems, meet our needs, free us from struggles, make us successful, resolve our problems, make life what we want it to be. That’s what a leader does, you know. A leader is a person who releases us to gain all that we want to accomplish and remove everything that holds us back. A leader arranges our situations, so we are free to live in peace, to be effective and fruitful, to be what we want to be, to live the way we want to live, and who never lets anything hold us back. You see, a leader is someone who wants everything the way we want life to be and who enables us to achieve our deepest desires. That’s what a lot of us think a leader does.

Many, perhaps even most, think that a leader turns the rugged forest of life into the smooth fields of opportunity and gives them in a smooth and easy form, so the followers have only to live them and all is well. That’s what the people of tribe of Joseph wanted in ancient Israel (Joshua 16:16-20). They desired to have them already done and take cared of so all they had to do was move in and take over. They didn’t even want to have to trust God to face resistance or earn their ownership; they didn’t want to have to resist those who were opposed to them or who were stronger than they were or smarter than they were or cleverer than they were. They wanted everything handed over to them. Leaders simply don’t work that way most of the time. Oh, they may at times, but very often they don’t because they can’t. They may have to plan, to negotiate, to make arrangements, to earn the opportunity, and then to hold on to the decision and even to face resistance. That’s leadership, and there’s no denying it. That spirit is at the very heart of leadership.

On the other hand, we may want to be in charge, the one who makes the decisions, gets others to do what we tell him or her to do and have us act without hesitation or protest or opposition. Just do it—and do it right! Which is our way, or course. We want to have followers because we’re the leader. What a great life that is. No questions, no hesitation, no resistance, no doubt, just do it. Listen and do it because I am the leader.

Period!

The problem is Jesus is not like that. In fact, Jesus is exactly the opposite of that. He is righteous, holy, forgiving, radically different, totally unlike us. He is kind, patient, long suffering, faithfully, clear, demanding, correcting, firm, demanding of us—all the things we don’t want to have or be. That’s the reason why we struggle so much to follow Him. We want to follow Him, but we struggle greatly when we discover what it means to be His follower, when we realize that it really means we follow Him and that means we trust Him to do what He wants us to do by doing He wants to do through us! Leadership means followership.

Either way we say I want a leader or I want to be the leader,  yet sooner or later we’ll discover that we have to face the reality of what this means for us: we will have to face our key issue, our hearts.

That’s exactly what Samul, God’s leader discovered when at God’s direction he came to Jesse to choose a man for Israel as a result of Saul’s failure. Saul was once God’s choice to follow as Israel’s leader but he failed, and God had chosen another man to be the country’s leader. So Samuel, God’s man to anoint His new leader for His people, was sent to the family of Jesse in the town of Bethlehem to anoint His new man, one of Jesse’s sons. Jesse’s oldest son was strong, well-built, handsome, obviously the right man, but God said no. The man looked great on the outside, but God looked at the inside for His kind of leader. As Samuel discovered,

. . . man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart (I Samuel 16:7).

It’s not what impresses us about the appearance or the skills or the gifts or the impression of a man or woman that makes someone a leader, but what’s in the heart, what we can’t see but God can and what He will make known when the time is right. So all of Jesse’s men met each of the qualified men he had for leadership but none of these men were qualified to be His kind of leaders, a reality they discovered when he went to meet them. They did not see the men protect the sheep from the wolves or the bears nor  sing the psalms or write the messages or know what any of them cried out from their hearts, but God could, and that’s what God said made him the leader He would grow Him into and deliver His people as a true leader.

He wanted them to be true leaders, protectors of those who had to take great risks for His sheep, who had to provide for water, give them nights of sleep and rest at night, guide them through times of peace and calm, take them through rough water to calm waters—provide of the care for sheep in seasons of provision of harmony. David knew these demands, the Father saw all of this in a very special way, and that’s what mattered to Him.

David saw all of this as a holy calling to leadership from God for His purposes and only His kind of man can carry this out. He wants His leaders—men and women—to carry it out in the lives of their followers in order to make a difference in their influence as leaders. The point is that they need to make a difference fulfilling His purposes the same way He is forming in them, so they become His kind of leaders. You have to understand that being the great successes you strive to be is not nearly as important to God and His kingdom as the actual person you become. The problem is that you treat the means as the end, success as the aim rather than the process to the aim. The Father wants our role as leaders to be the process to becoming like Christ rather than the purpose that the Father has for us. He wants us to grow in His image, not only to create what we do. What we do is His means; becoming like Christ is His end. Thus being a leader it is far more important to become the kind of person He wants you to be than to do what you think makes you famous or successful. Both are essential, and we must pursue both, but many of us strive to avoid the price we must pay to accomplish God’s purpose. God doesn’t.

While He made us to do the things He wants us to do, He made us to be men and women in His image, to serve as His leaders, to make a difference for Him. This is why our hearts are the vital reality of our being, the key to our minds and our hands. This is why Jesus came to transform our hearts, not merely to make us brilliant and talented. This is why who we are is the key to what we do as leaders.

This is why man looks at the outward appearance but God looks at the heart is the vital reality of being a leader and following a leader. Don’t ever forget it!

The greatest crisis in the world today is a crisis of leadership and the crisis of leadership is a crisis of character.

                                               --Howard Hendricks

No one put it better than Howard Hendricks when he said the greatest crisis we face today is the crisis of leadership. All over the world this crisis confronts us whether it be in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, or the United States. Only a leader can show us the way out of this struggle, and that’s exactly what a leader does. A leader is a man or woman who takes others through an opportunity or a struggle from the present into the future, to a vision that all deeply desire through a passion that produces growth, confidence, and purpose. This is what Jesus did for to His twelve followers and it is what He commands us to do today if we are going to take those who know Him forward in 21^st century leadership.

In the Jesus kind of leadership there is no drive for power, no striving for position, no reaching for recognition, and no attempt for self-promotion. This is not the drive of self-seeking hands, not the longings of those who pursue their own achievements, but the passion of Jesus who calls His leaders to sacrifice their hearts so they use their hands as He did to transform others. Jesus calls His followers to turn from self-focused hands and self-centered minds to transformed hearts.  Those who practice the Jesus way to lead have a goal to achieve His purpose.

To change the way the Body of Christ forms leaders from what

they do with their hands to what God is doing through their hearts.

Leadership as we know it is about to change from something we do with our hands to something we do out of our hearts. Of course, what we do with our hands matters and the way we think matters, but we believe what God does through our hearts is far more essential. A leader’s hands are only truly effective as a leader’s heart is transformed. That’s why the essence of Jesus’ ministry to His leaders was to form their hearts according to God’s will so He could use their hands and their minds to reach the world. What He did as a leader while He was on earth is what He does through His leaders on earth today. This why all who lead growing leaders must help them learn how He wants to work through them.

When Jesus had three years to create a movement that would reach the ends of the earth, He began by seeking out twelve unqualified men. His training regiment was something the world had not imagined. He did not expound on the keys of leadership and organizational development. He transformed their hearts and reshaped them to lead in a whole new way—in a way that would bring down kingdoms and transform lives. These leaders were not merely coached by Jesus, they were reformed by Him.

Leader Formation serves to introduce Christian leaders to the highly invasive process that Jesus used to form His disciples to fulfill their calling. In doing so, Jesus challenges them to seek beyond leadership skills and understand the deeper work God does in the hearts of leaders in order to accomplish His purpose through them.

The Lord shows us His aim through the way He worked in His men as He formed them by leading them to the cross, into the grave, then out of the grave, and finally into His commission. Our aim is to teach His followers how Jesus will act to accomplish His purpose through them. We strive to accomplish this through the 7 Core Realities of Leader Formation.

The 7 Core Realities of Leader Formation

1. Leader Inadequacy
2. Christ’s Adequacy
3. Hardened Heart
4. Misfocused Mind
5. Forgotten Cross
6. Redeemed Adequacy
7. Radical Sacrifice

These seven realities form the core of leader formation, the process of transforming men and women from being ordinary pew sitters to life changing leaders through the grace of God and the power of the Holy Sprit. That means that we are not about steps, lists, switches, or how I did it. It is not a self-help process. Rather, this is a discipline about how Jesus formed leaders, a process that is untried and untested by many in our time, but that is life changing by all who practice its principles. Not surprisingly, Jesus produced extraordinary and lasting results. Developing the Leader’s Heart echoes Christ’s ancient call for leaders to be shaped through the power of the cross. The principles that create leader formation than only be accomplished through dependence on Christ and His power and not by the practice of clever methods.

Jesus established a movement that has endured across cultures and generations. His methods take us into new depths of our own hearts as we advance His movement in the 21at century. In its practices we will see how Jesus worked in the hearts and lives of His first followers as He formed them into the founders of His movement—a movement that has moved across the globe.

Jesus established a movement that has endured through cultures and generations. His methods take us to new depths of our own hearts as we advance His movement into the 21^st century and beyond. In the truths practiced here you will see how Jesus worked in the hearts and lives of His followers as He formed them into the founders of His movement. Now you live as His instrument to form today’s leaders, instruments in a movement into your community and through it to impact the world.

Isn’t what you do as a leader important to God? Of course it is, but if you think it through carefully, you realize that what you get done is God’s means to make you like Christ. He uses the experiences of your life to make you into His image to accomplish His purpose and fulfill His will.

So, God is at work in you, forming you to become the kind of person He wants you to be, a ministry or business leader like Christ, a man or woman who does what Christ would do if He were the leader of your church or your business or your movement or your mission.

Therefore, everything He wants you to accomplish has another major aim besides success. He not only wants you to get a deal completed, a building built, a business organized, or a successful ministry established, He wants you to grow on your way to become like Christ. He is growing you to be the kind of man or woman He wants you to be so you can make a difference for Him—the kind of difference Jesus would make, since He is the One doing it through you. That means that your church, your career, your position, your marriage or your children can be His means of transforming you from who you are to becoming who He wants you to be. It is true that He wants things done through us, but that’s not the end in itself. His ultimate intent for every one of us is that we should become like Christ through the issues we face in life.

Only God’s kind of person can be God’s kind of leader. There is only one way to become God’s kind of leader and that is to serve as well as to live His way.

How can you live God’s way? Only by understanding the Jesus way to live which He taught in the Gospels. Don’t just study information. Study how to live, and then learn to depend on Him because that’s the only way you can live the Jesus way. It is not only a matter of performing miracles as He did, but a matter of truth and love, endurance and patience, sacrifice and trust, shame and glory, death and resurrection.

We take His place in the world today. Are you ready for this? Who could possibly be ready for this? That’s why God is putting you in situations that can be carried out only through resurrection resources.

This is why you must grow to become God’s kind of leader—a Christ-like leader. A real leader.

Quite a task, isn’t it? A real task to make you a real leader.

John 15:1

A long time ago, on the night before Passover, twelve men walked the narrow streets of ancient Jerusalem going from an upper room to the Garden of Gethsemane. 

All of them were from Galilee in the north—fishermen, craftsmen, one tax collector—ordinary men with no value in the Roman empire, except for the tax collector.  They were led by, of all things, a carpenter, though by the time they were together He was a recognized Teacher. He had attracted a handful of men who listened to what He said and debated it among themselves. They had a different understanding of what He was saying, but He was radical, and they were radical, so they listened to Him with expectation that He meant what He said. Eventually they would become as radical as He was, but not yet.  Nonetheless, we need to understand His words to them in that upper room, today as much as they did if we are going to be used to make the difference He wants to make through us. Consider these few words.

I am the true vine.

I AM

For us this has the ordinary meaning of who He is, a statement of identity, but He means far more than that. He means I AM YAHWEH, the God of the Old Testament, the One Who Is, the Ruler of All, the Covenant Maker and Covenant Keeper, who delivered the nation out of Egypt and gave them the privilege of being His people. He is the One who met them at Mt. Sinai and made them into a nation, and who has kept His covenants with them. What it must have been like to walk along the streets of Jerusalem with Him after hearing Him declare that He was the Maker and Keeper of the New Covenant through the Cross.

THE

He is the One who made the New Covenant, the only One who makes eternal covenants and keeps His word, the One who we can trust no matter what happens. Jesus, in John 15, is talking to His leaders, those who will speak for Him, equip others for Him, reproduce for Him, and who will prepare one generation after another for Him.  We, as His leaders, must also lay the foundation for Him, bear fruit for Him, and matter for Him.  These are the aspects that give us life, strength, and value, all the elements that make us leaders.  There are many claims, but He is the only one who does what He does. The, a small word with an amazing meaning that speaks to us, His leaders, in the 21^st century.

I AM THE TRUE

He is the true vine, the real thing, in radical contrast to all others who claim to be the true sources of life and success. Large numbers of leaders rely on false resources in the name of Jesus, and don’t even know they do that. The primary source of significance for many who lead is themselves. They do all the things they must do to become leaders, but what they produce is temporary, weak, without fruit, and then gone. Only Jesus does what is eternal, and He does this through us. No other vine can bear eternal fruit.

I AM THE TRUE VINE

He had to tell them this on His last night with them to prepare them for His departure and to get them—and us—ready for the Great Commission. This is part of the coming assignment.

Think about Jesus as the Stem in your life and ministry because He is the Source.

He is the Sustainer of your Life.

He is the Strength of your Life.

He is the Enablement of your Life.

He is the Stability of your Life.

He is the Fruit of your Life.

He is the Value of your Life.

He is the Identity of your Life.

He is the Reason for your Life.

He is the Hope of your Life.

All of this is what it means for Him to be our Vine.  As a leader, we must be radically dependent on Him because HE IS THE TRUE VINE.

The only way you can be effective as His leader is to be radically dependent on the Vine for life and fruit. You can have position, recognition, honor, authority, and all the other elements that are part of leadership, but you will never bear His kind of fruit without His enablement.  Draw on these truths and you will accomplish things you would never have otherwise. 

Mt. 28:19

This is the start of several resources designed to help you grasp how you can learn what Jesus did to obey the Great Commission. The one aim of these concepts is to enable you to form leaders in obedience to Christ’s command to make disciples­­—that is, to reproduce leaders who reproduce leaders. This is exactly what Jesus did with the men He formed during His time on earth, this was His intent in giving this commission in the moments before He ascended onto His throne at the right hand of the Father, and that is exactly what the intent of the following materials are designed to do.

Reproducing leaders is the impact of an effective leader who wants to make a difference for Christ. A constantly triumphant leader produces constantly effective leaders. This is the essence of the Leader Formation message. Any leader who forms future leaders according to the biblical principles found in this truth will gradually produce effective leaders who will equip even more productive leaders. As a result, the body of Christ will do what God created it to do and reach the world with the Good News concerning Jesus. Your church will grow, your community will receive Jesus, your city will have many new believers in Christ, and your nation will be changed according to His will just as the Roman Empire was impacted after the cross and the resurrection. The leaders of Israel and the rulers of Rome both tried to resist God’s truth and destroy the body of Christ only to be overcome by God and replaced by the gospel. What happened in the first three hundred years of this era will happen today, even in the most resistant parts of the world, if only leaders will have the heart of Christ, a head that is influenced by God’s truth, and hands that are empowered by the Holy Spirit. The purpose of every Christian leader is to form leaders who lead this way.

God wants you to equip others in order to build your ministry, strength Christians in your business, or lead an organization or church that impacts your world with the gospel. This is what you can accomplish through this thinking because this is what I have seen in fifty years of forming leaders. I have certainly not done this alone, but I have seen the truths found in these studies work in amazing ways as many have learned them and implemented them through radical dependence on Him.

How do we become all that God wants us to be this year? What can we do to live 2020 in obedience to God and thus become a blessing to Him? Scripture instructs us to Bless the Lord and to Bless His holy name. God is a holy God and we are unholy, yet He wants us to bless Him. What does this mean? How can we possibly be a blessing to God? Does He want ordinary sinful men and women like us to bless Him? Yes, He does or He wouldn’t command us in His word to bless Him as He does. How do we bless Him? After all, He blesses us, we don’t bless Him, or do we? Consider some of the ways we can bless God.

By thanking Him for all that He has done...

We first thank God for salvation by which we are delivered from condemnation. We have been given a permanent relationship with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. All three gave themselves to give us eternal life. The Father released His Son for us. The Son gave His life on the cross for us. And the Spirit gives us His power by living in us. How can we do anything but thank Him? When we thank Him for all that He has done and is doing in our life, we will bless Him.

By trusting Him even when we don’t want to...

Life is painful at times, so we may become resentful and not want to respond to God. But He still wants us to bless Him even when we don’t feel like it. We may deny our faith as Moses did. He attacked God and accused him of doing evil. Imagine that—he called the sovereign holy God evil. Yet God used him and He made Moses the leader of His people. We may not be able to see or understand what God is doing in our life, we may feel that He is failing us, but we must still trust Him, remembering that He loves us so much that He was willing to sacrifice His own Son on our behalf. When we trust Him we will bless Him.

By worshipping Him even when we doubt...

Worship is an act of exalting God and being dependent on Him no matter what our circumstances. It is relying on Him in the midst of facing a powerful opponent and keeping our mind centered firmly on God alone. Worship is crying out to God and turning away from ourselves to focus only on Him. It is praising Him for who He is—His character, and for what He has done—His actions. It’s amazing, isn’t it, that God wants us, unholy and sinful men and women, to worship Him and be His people. As worshipping our great God becomes more and more a central part of our lives, we will lead others to worship Him as well.

Plan to improve your vision this year so it is 20/20. Not with glasses but by seeing God in a new light. Do what God wants you to do by thanking Him, trusting Him, and worshipping Him. In this way you will bless His holy name consistently, remembering all that He has done for you and all that He wants to do through you in 2020.

Rome ruled the world for centuries. Armies marched, kings were defeated, territory was taken, an empire was established, Caesars ruled, and taxes were demanded. At the beginning of the first century AD a Roman ruler, Caesar Augustus, passed a decree that a census be taken of all who lived in the Roman world. This meant that everyone under Caesar’s rule had to return to their place of birth to be counted.  At that time a man named Joseph, engaged to a pregnant woman named Mary, lived in a town called Nazareth on the eastern edge of the Roman empire.  They were required to go to Bethlehem in Judea to be counted and eventually taxed for the empire’s benefit.  They were two common people who had no wealth, no power and who did not matter except for their value as taxpayers.  When they arrived in Bethlehem and found there was no room for them,  Mary gave birth to her son in an animal’s stall and laid Him in a manger.

No one knew, of course, that the One born in that manger was the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  No one knew that He would die for the sin of those who would take His life as well as for the sin of all who lived before and after Him, including we who live today in the twenty-first century.

It is at Christmas that we recall that the Light of the World was born into the kingdom of darkness in order to overcome the darkness of sin with the Light of God’s love.  No matter where we live, whether it be in Asia, Latin America, Europe, Africa or North America, whether in Arabia or the Islands of the sea, all of us are citizens of one of two Empires: the kingdom of darkness or the Kingdom of Light. Christmas is a time of remembering the grace, mercy, love, and forgiveness of Christ’s compassionate sacrifice, given to all who accept it.

Jesus, whose birth we celebrate, had an unknown birth in order to be offered as a well-known sacrifice so we do not have to pay the price for our sin.  If you know Him, praise Him and rejoice in His provision for you. Have joy because that’s what He wants you to have, as He said on the night of His arrest (John 15:11). Be thankful for all He has done for you and allow Him to bear fruit through you. Remember, He was born to die for the sin of all, from the beginning of time. Remember that He rejoices that we have trusted Him for what He has done for us.

And if you don’t know Him, now is the time to accept all He has done for you, for dying for your sin, for offering forgiveness for your disobedience, and for providing eternal life.

Christmas is a constant celebration of our deliverance from sin to the anticipation of eternity.  Rejoice with Him for what He has done for you and make Christmas your way of life.

Many of my wilderness experiences have been self-imposed. They grew out of drivenness within me; the fruit of selfish ambition, fear, and the anger that created unmet needs in my heart. And those needs should never have been met. That means that many of my wilderness experiences could have been avoided if only . . .

If only I were aware of my drivenness; if only I had realized my ambition—pursued, sincerely I believe in the name of Jesus—was mixed with the slag of my glory even as I sought His glory; if only I had understood that my fear actually was pride and my anger was anger. I carried inner anger without even knowing what it was. I gradually came to understand that these feelings within me were harmful and that prayer alone could bring me release. By then I had been a pastor for probably four or five years and realized I needed help from other leaders to be free. That’s when I asked the elders of our church to meet with me early every Sunday morning to pray because that’s how I gained some deliverance along the way.

So it was that I entered into burnout and edged toward depression for a period of time early in my pastorate. So it was that I struggled with comparison and competition and feelings of failure because I wasn’t as good as others or I hadn’t reached the standard of success I set for myself. Now I realize that that standard of success was self-imposed and not from God or anyone else; now I realize that it doesn’t make any difference whether I’m as good as others; now I realize that those wilderness experiences were self-imposed and unnecessary.

I don’t like to project myself on other leaders, but, as I have talked about these concerns in cultures all over the world, I have found many fellow leaders who identify with me because they’re in the same self-imposed wilderness. I’m just a little bit ahead of them. As I talk about these wilderness experiences, I find them responding, recognizing their own struggles and seeking freedom. So what can leaders do when they find themselves in the self-imposed wilderness?

Find the joy of the wilderness, the rugged beauty, the blooming wild flowers, the cooling shade, and the refreshing oases of flowing, refreshing water. How?

1. Stop denying the truth about you and fall on your face before God in prayer, acknowledging that virtually everything you blame on others comes from you.
2. Read the Bible in the light of your responsibility and God’s grace and make Christ your life, not only the One you talk about, but the One you depend on to live.
3. Find someone you can talk with honestly and tell him/her the truth about you and listen to what you hear back no matter how much it hurts, even if you must travel hours and hours to get to him.

While many, probably most, of my wilderness experiences have been self-imposed and unnecessary, they have been critical to my growth as a man, my sensitivity as a husband and a father, and my impact as a leader. I wish I could have avoided them, but I couldn’t make it without them. So, I encourage you to keep on wandering in your wilderness. Sooner or later you’ll get to an oasis of refreshing rest. But after you’re there a while, you’ll start over again with another season in the wilderness—and that will be the best place you can be if you want to be God’s kind of leader.

In between a good start and a great finish is one decision the leader must make over and over again—the decision of the altared heart.

I don’t doubt at all that you have made that decision. Your heart is on God’s altar—or at least it was when you put it there.

Mine certain was. I put it there when I was twelve years old, and I meant it when I did it. It was only later when I unexpectedly hit the wall of inadequacy that I realized my heart had outgrown my altar, that the altar of a twelve eyar old wasn’t big enough for a pastor and a seminary professor and I discovered that what I thought was an event was actually a process.

And that’s the difference between a good start and a great finish.

My start began in Philadelphia in the northeastern part of the US.

I have been in the UK on many occasions and I remember a time when I was standing In Hounslow, the borough in London, and I had one of the strangest feelings I ever had, a deju vu kind of feeling like I’d been there before, but I had never been there ever. Then it hit me. This feels like Philadelphia, like where I grew up. The row homes—that’s what we called them—with the front gardens so much like one of the homes my parents owned after I was on my own—it was all there. As it turns out, to me Philadelphia is one of the most British of cities in the US.

And it was there that I started my pilgrimage in Christ, a pilgrimage that has led me into ministry all over the world through which I have learned a great deal about ministering in cross cultural settings.

And I long ago learned how futile it is to export American methods into other cultures. In fact I learned three reasons why it’s so futile to do this.

First, it doesn’t work. It simply doesn’t work. It’s a waste of time. Worse than that, it’s an insult to the culture. What good does it do to bring American methods to solve problems British churches don’t have? That’s simply crazy!

Second, we tend to export our worst solutions, like the CEO model of leadership for churches, an ungodly model for churches if there ever was one. The CEO model works great in business when it’s exercised with care and concern for the well being of the followers as well as the prosperity of the business. But the biblical model of leadership is shepherd, not CEO, and that’s the model we need most to focus on.

But thirdly, our ministry, Leader Formation International, is a message ministry, not a method ministry. You have plenty of leaders in the UK who have developed all kinds of methods that are effective in your ministries. Our ministry, instead, is a message ministry.

Much to my amazement I have been invited to share my message, the message of the altared heart, the message of walking with God in the ways of wholeness, all over the world. I never sought this. I never planned this. I never expected to be making this video today. It ahs just happened through the sovereign grace of God.

Years ago, when I started as a pastor, the Lord blessed our ministry. Then, unexpectedly, I hit what I since realized was the wall of inadequacy, a season when nothing in my education or experience worked, when I struggled without success to break through to what I expected to achieve. It was through that season of brokenness that I came to understand to some measure what it means to walk in God’s ways of wholeness.

Across some time I realized the role of the cross in leadership, how the cross frees us from our expectations of power, success, and control, how death leads to resurrection, how power, success, and control no longer matter—not that they ever did—but how they no longer matter to real leadership, not personal power or

personal success or personal control. Instead what really matters is love, service, and sacrifice through the cross. That’s what great leadership is whether anybody hears of us or not.

Now we know what a great leader is, a leader whose heart is on God’s altar through the cross.

So that’s what we are at Leader Formation International: a cross broken altar focused message ministry seeking to walk in the ways of God’s wholeness as we strive to move from a good start to a God-glorifying finish.

So it’s surprising to hear Paul admit his fear up front, at the beginning of his companion epistles, I and II Corinthians. In both letters his authority is at stake, yet he puts his status on the line when he says, “I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling (I Cor. 2:3).” Later he states that he experienced “. . . fighting without and fear within (II Cor. 7:5).”

It’s little wonder that Paul was afraid when he got to Corinth. Driven from Philippi to Thessalonica to Berea and through Athens, he ended up in Corinth, the last stop in Greece before boarding a boat and sailing for home. Shortly after arriving in Corinth and proclaiming the Gospel there, he was in the middle of turmoil. Staring physical violence in the eye, he had every reason to be afraid until Jesus appeared to him and assured him that he was there to bring many to the truth. On this basis he stayed and persevered despite the overwhelming idolatry and evil of the city.

One of the many truths we learn from Paul’s ministry is that leadership is hardly a triumphal march to the mountaintop. More often than not it is a struggle through the darkness of a deep valley, even the valley of the shadow of death through which Paul ultimately walked.

In several places Paul acknowledged fear, inadequacy, and need, but he never pulled back from God’s call, no matter how overwhelming it was. Still he could only make the decision to stand against fear by being in situations where he felt out of his depth because he faced fear. God puts leaders in places where we are forced to confront fear so He can teach us to turn fear into faith. We not only see this in Paul’s life; we also see it in the disciples as they faced overwhelming fear and terror for their lives. How do you respond when you face such great fear? Can you stand against it by faith or do you give in to it by conforming to the demands of those around you?

To stand for the Lord you must first spend time with the Lord, lots of time, searching your heart and releasing it to Him, focusing on Him, releasing ourselves to Him, yielding ourselves to Him and His purposes and His will. We must be prepared to lose everything for Him so we can gain everything for Him. Anything less than this will cost us everything for Him. This is the decision of a lifetime, and we can only make it as we prepare ourselves by giving ourselves to Him in small ways over our daily lives.  God teaches us to face fear so we can overcome its attack by learning that it cannot overcome His faithfulness no matter how afraid we are.

Effective leadership is our aim, but we have learned that leadership collapses when competent leaders lack godly character. God has used leadership from the beginning of time, but time after time we see leadership fail because leaders fail. Look at Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, Peter, Mark and on throughout history, and you will see that leadership is flawed because leaders are flawed.  As one of our board members, Dr. Gary Wood, declared, “Skills are essential but not sufficient.”

Leader Formation exists to strengthen leadership by forming leaders. As we see it, the heart of the leader is the heart of a leadership and our aim is to form the hearts of leaders through the Holy Spirit. That’s why we call ourselves Leader Formation.

We accomplish our aim by focusing on the Scriptures. We are not interested in exporting American solutions to problems global leaders do not have, but we do know that biblical solutions to problems leaders around the globe do have will make them effective in leadership. The first of our emphases is the four heart factors of a leader, four factors that determine whether a leader serves God or self, found in

I Kings 11-12.

The Four Heart Factors of a Leader (I Kings 11-12)

The Power Factor—Leaders who pursue their power rather than God’s power achieve much but lose everything (I Kings 11:1-43).

The Accountability Factor—Leaders who have Nathans in their lives become Davids because they are transformed from shame to success (I Kings 11:4).

The Flip-Flop Factor—Leaders who rely on God for their convenience and on themselves for their accomplishments trade His greatness for their smallness.

( 1 Kings 12:1-15)

The Fear Factor—Leaders who strive to overcome fear by trusting themselves rather than God always fail (I Kings 12:25-33).

What role do these factors play in you as a leader? All of us long for power, seek to avoid accountability, use God for our own advantage and ourselves for our own advancement, and promote ourselves to advance our cause. This means at least some of the time we strive for our cause in Jesus’ name. If any of these four factors influence your leadership, God will do the same thing with you that He did with Solomon, David, Jeroboam, and Rehoboam. He will cause your drive to take down your leadership. Still He will take your repentance to restore your leadership. Repent early and often and God will restore you constantly and permanently.

Now he was king and established in Jerusalem with a new and beautiful house, a gift from a very dear friend, and seemed to have no desire to live the hard life of a military general any more. Besides he had a trustworthy commander and experienced troops he could rely on, so there was no need for him to live on rough ground in primitive shelters when he could enjoy the pleasure of his new home.

So David did not go into battle with his troops that spring. Instead he lived at ease in his new home overlooking Jerusalem, the capital of his kingdom.

Late one afternoon David went up to the rooftop of his home and looked down on his city. Unexpectedly he saw a beautiful woman bathing herself on the roof of her home, where she was purifying herself according to the Lord’s direction in order to obey God. Suddenly attracted, David discovered she was Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, one of his soldiers.  He sent for her and slept with her. Not too long after that she sent word to him saying, “I am pregnant.” Hardly good news for the king. He ordered Uriah to come to Jerusalem, obtained a battle report from him, and sent him home to his wife. Uriah, however, would not go home as long as the ark and his fellow soldiers lived in tents on the battlefield.  So David sent him back to war with a death warrant in his hand—directions for his general, Joab, to put Uriah in the most violent part of the battle where he was certain to die. And Uriah died.

When leaders stop leading they displease the Lord. When success becomes a leader’s greatest desire, when the comfort of accomplishment becomes a leader’s greatest drive, when a leader’s self-image is defined by his greatest achievements, he is facing his greatest danger.  David had committed the two worst crimes he could, adultery and murder, both subject to death by God. God spared his life, but David never had another spring when he could stay home. From this point on he was threatened by enemies and forced to fight battles he never wanted to face. No leader can become caught up in his success and remain successful—the leader who is caught up in success will crash in failure.

What dominates your thoughts—your success or God’s purpose? The leader who thinks about his success rather than God’s purpose is like David—staying home rather than leading in battle. And the leader who does this faces greater battles than he ever thought possible.  

If you are a successful leader, as David was and if you are caught up in your comfort rather God’s demands, as David became, or if you are enjoying your achievements rather than God’s call in your life, as David did, you are taking the greatest risk of your life, the risk of God’s discipline for as long as you live.

Rejoice in the blessing of God’s success through you, but when the next springtime comes, be prepared to lead in God’s battles for you lest you are forced to face God’s discipline in your life.

Samuel suddenly appeared at David’s home, demanded to see him, anointed him as king, and left, but everything was as it always had been. He was still the youngest child in his family and—it appears—the least respected member of all, and this was even after he had served Saul as a musician who brought peace to Saul’s soul. All of this was only the beginning of seventeen years of enmity from Saul during which David was forced to run for his life and live in the desert south of Jerusalem, mostly in a cave. Some throne room that was!

Think about David’s situation when his father sent him to take food to his brothers as they were fighting the Philistines for Israel against the Philistines, and he faced the giant Goliath. When he arrived, heard Goliath rail against God, and questioned who he was, his brother put him down and told him to go home. Hardly the way you talk to a king. God used the Goliath event to promote David, and David became the head of the men of war and earned the admiration of Israel but, after all of this, Saul became jealous of him and tried to destroy him. This is why David had to run for his life and live in caves most of the time while Saul was alive.

All of this was part of God’s leader formation process for David.

In God’s leader formation process, the first thing He did for David was to prepare him through his time as a shepherd boy. By giving him sheep to care for, his father and his brothers to hold him accountable, and wild animals to confront him, God taught David how to lead by trusting Him to face overwhelming danger and enemies. This prepared him to provide for his people, to be accountable to others who judged him, and to face great danger, three realities that he encountered all his life.

Then with Goliath, his time with Israel’s enemies, as well as his time with his personal opponents, God proved David was His man even in seasons of injustice when rebellious opponents sought to defeat him at every turn. While he was discouraged at times and questioned what the Lord was doing, David never wavered from God to trust himself and this gave him great recognition in Israel.

Finally God promoted David to be the leader of His people. David became the king of Israel, the unifier of God’s nation, and the ancestor of the Messiah. Amazing isn’t it that the least valued in his family and an unknown shepherd boy in Israel became the seed of Messiah who was born of the line of David, our Savior.

God does not intend to exalt us as He did David, but He wants us to be His leaders in these difficult days. He has been working through our lives to prepare us to lead for him. Consider what God did in your life as He used you and blessed you and prepared you to lead. Consider what God is doing now as He strengthens your trust in Him and builds your reputation as His growing leader. And, if you are a recognized leader in your era of influence, thank Him for preparing, proving, and promoting you and continually purify yourself to be His leader.  This is God’s leader formation process, His way of making you the leader He wants you to be.

If only I were aware of my drivenness; if only I had realized my ambition—pursued, sincerely I believe in the name of Jesus—was mixed with the slag of my glory even as I sought His glory; if only I had understood that my fear actually was pride and my anger was anger. I carried inner anger without even knowing what it was. I gradually came to understand that these feelings within me were harmful and that prayer alone could bring me release. By then I had been a pastor for probably four or five years and realized I needed help from other leaders to be free. That’s when I asked the elders of our church to meet with me early every Sunday morning to pray because that’s how I gained some deliverance along the way.

So it was that I entered into burnout and edged toward depression for a period of time early in my pastorate. So it was that I struggled with comparison and competition and feelings of failure because I wasn’t as good as others or I hadn’t reached the standard of success I set for myself. Now I realize that that standard of success was self-imposed and not from God or anyone else; now I realize that it doesn’t make any difference whether I’m as good as others; now I realize that those wilderness experiences were self-imposed and unnecessary.

I don’t like to project myself on other leaders, but, as I have talked about these concerns in cultures all over the world, I have found many fellow leaders who identify with me because they’re in the same self-imposed wilderness. I’m just a little bit ahead of them. As I talk about these wilderness experiences, I find them responding, recognizing their own struggles and seeking freedom. So what can leaders do when they find themselves in the self-imposed wilderness?

Find the joy of the wilderness, the rugged beauty, the blooming wild flowers, the cooling shade, and the refreshing oases of flowing, refreshing water. How?

1. Stop denying the truth about you and fall on your face before God in prayer, acknowledging that virtually everything you blame on others comes from you.
2. Read the Bible in the light of your responsibility and God’s grace and make Christ your life, not only the One you talk about, but the One you depend on to live.
3. Find someone you can talk with honestly and tell him/her the truth about you and listen to what you hear back no matter how much it hurts, even if you must travel hours and hours to get to him.

While many, probably most, of my wilderness experiences have been self-imposed and unnecessary, they have been critical to my growth as a man, my sensitivity as a husband and a father, and my impact as a leader. I wish I could have avoided them, but I couldn’t make it without them. So, I encourage you to keep on wandering in your wilderness. Sooner or later you’ll get to an oasis of refreshing rest. But after you’re there a while, you’ll start over again with another season in the wilderness—and that will be the best place you can be if you want to be God’s kind of leader.