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Yearly Archives: 2017
When Servant Leaders MUST Fire Someone
There is no better way to help people achieve at their highest potential than servant leadership. Servant leaders, committed to the mission, the organization, and their people, work to find more effective means to achieve, strengthen their organization, and build up their people. When the leader’s concern for people is sincere and trusted, expectations can be discussed openly and problems corrected. Occasions when someone has to separated from the organization and the team are few.
An Inescapable Responsibility
However, there are situations where a servant leader must take action to remove someone. Some of these situations are — or should be — easy decisions.
Confession Meets Forgiveness
I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt. . . .
Then he threw his arms around his brother Benjamin and wept.
Genesis 45.4,14
When sincere confession meets deep forgiveness, amazing things can happen. Consider one, truly amazing case. The case of Judah.
(more…)Crossing the River of Fear
In three days, you will cross the Jordan River. This is my command—
be strong and courageous! For the Lord your God is with
you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9-11
The river was dark with fear: hesitations, doubts, timidity. On this side the people of Israel. On the other, the land of God’s promise. Just step in. Walk across. Easy! Right?
Wrong!
There were two problems: the first physical, the second spiritual. The Jordan was at flood stage: wide, deep, fast, dangerous. God worked a miracle. The waters stopped. The river dried up. Problem one solved.
(more…)Break Free from Your “List”
Just as Death and Destruction are never satisfied, so human
desire is never satisfied. Proverbs 27:20
As a boy, I had a painful longing for a certain baseball glove. When my father gave it to me, I was ecstatic, but a week later I discovered that I wanted a new bat. After that is was a certain pocket knife. And then more. It seemed that taking one thing off the list inevitably meant one more thing—usually several more—were added.
Sometimes shorter, most often longer, the list of things I wanted was never empty. Sixty years later what I want has changed, but my list still is not empty. You have a list too, and it’s not empty. It never will be.
“Human desire is never satisfied,” the Scripture says. Why? The answer may surprise you.
Our desires and longings were never meant to be fully satisfied by things or relationships or anything else within the circle of this earth. We are incomplete. We long for more and always will, because only the joys of heaven will fully and finally satisfy our deepest needs.
Really? Are we inescapably chained to unsatisfied longings that will forever gnaw at us? No!
Full satisfaction of our desires awaits arrival in our forever home. It is a promise for the future and hope for today, but we do not have to trapped in our desires. “Rejoice always,” the Apostle Paul writes, “gives thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:16-18).
(more…)Courage to Continue
We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold
our original confidence firm to the end.
(Hebrews 12:12-13)
175 meters from the finish, searing pain shot down Derek Redmond’s right leg. He fell in agony to the ground, his Olympic dream over. To everyone’s amazement, he struggled to his feet, determined to finish the race. On one leg, he began to hop forward.
Suddenly, a man jumped from the stands. Pushing past the security guards, he ran to Derek and put his arm around the injured athlete. They crossed the finish line together. 65,000 fans stood and roared approval. Courage!
The man who helped him across the finish line? It was his father.
This Scripture encourages us to hold fast to confidence in Christ. Along the course of our race there are many obstacle, not the least is what Hebrews calls “the sin that clings so closely” (Hebrews 12.1).
It takes two things to continue. The first is courage. We may stumble, fall, suffer hurt and setback, but then we must get up again. If we can’t run, we can hop. Can’t hop? We crawl. Can’t crawl? God carries us.
(more…)Spread It Out Before the Lord!
After Hezekiah received the letter, he spread it out before the Lord. And Hezekiah prayed. (Isaiah 37:14-15)
One day your life is running along in its normal way, and then, without warning, arrives a worry, a demand, a threat, perhaps frightening, possibly overwhelming. What do you do?
Hezekiah had a day like that. He received a letter from the King of Assyria. The scroll contained a demand and a threat. If the demand was frightening, the threat was terrifying. Hezekiah would either surrender Jerusalem to the Assyrian king or he and its entire population would be destroyed.
Today we unfold letters. In the ancient world scrolls had to be spread out flat. Hezekiah took the threatening scroll up to the temple and “spread it out before the Lord.”
Can you picture Hezekiah hands moving from side to side as he unrolls the scroll on the altar? As Isaiah says, he “spreads it out before the Lord,” placing the entire situation into God’s hands.
This is a powerful moment we can learn from. Faced with death and destruction, Hezekiah’s immediately goes before God and spreads it out before the Lord in prayer.
(more…)Improve Your Storytelling
It’s an ancient art. A storyteller has captures his listener’s with voice and gestures. As the tale unfolds people learn the heritage of their people, weep over their tragedies, rejoice in their triumphs. The stories express deep longings and fears, cherished dreams and hopes, values and behaviors to imitate or avoid.
Would you like to improve your storytelling? Peter Guber can help. Guber is producer of films such as Rainman and The Color Purple. His films have earned over $3 billion dollars worldwide and earned over 50 Academic Award nominations. This is man who knows a lot about story telling.
Great Storytellers Are Great “Truth Tellers”
At the core of every great story is a great truth, Guber explains. At root storytelling is “truth telling.” Great stories point to truth about the meaning of our world and our lives. Effective storytellers, Guber believes, master the four truths of storytelling.
1. Truth to the Storyteller
A consummate storyteller “knows his own deepest values and reveals them in his story with honest and candor. When a story is congruent with the teller’s own values and beliefs it bears the hallmarks of authenticity. Authenticity is important because the storyteller wants to “enter the hearts of his listeners,” Guber says, “because he must enter the hearts of his listeners. Because people know the power of their heart to move them, people guard access to this part of their soul. The storyteller uses the truth of a well-told story to bypass these guards and speak deep truth to the heart. “So although the mind may be part of your target,” Guber says, “the heart is the bulls-eye.”
Scripture gives a marvelous example. Filled with pride and sin David sits with the confidence of absolute power on his throne as Nathan tells the story of a wealthy and unscrupulous man who for his own pleasure stole the treasured lamb of a poor family. His story slips past David’s defenses, speaks directly to his conscience, and breaks his heart. Such behavior is an outrage, David proclaims before all in his court, and, “The man who did this deserves to die.” Within seconds the powerful king is reduced to a sinner, crying out in shame to God: “Against, you, you only, have I sinned.” Nathan has hit the heart’s bulls-eye. His story is consistent with his own deep values, and he has become a truth teller to God’s king.
(more…)Guy Saffold
