Transition and Process

There is a natural progression to life that leads from one thing to the next.

Crawling, Walking, Running, Driving
Milk, Puree, Soft Foods, Steak
Playing, Learning, Helping, Teaching

The principle of Shift says that at some point there will come a time in your life when what you are currently doing will need to change in order for you to grow. God is always leading us into a new dimension of growth that we may not have even known was possible. Being aware of the shift is critical.

It’s kind of like an exit on an interstate highway. You can’t wait until the last second to recognize your exit. Preperations have to be made to successfully arrive at your destination

Here are some ways you can miss the shift in your life.

Falling in Love with Past Success:

There are some things that brought you this far that will not take you the next leg of the journey. Recognize what you have to stop doing. The hardest thing is choosing between God’s plan and a good idea.

Unsurrendered Relationships:

My Dad always tells me there are two things that can destroy your life and sabatoge success…(1) The way you handle Finances and (2) the way you handle Relationships. God led Relationships are discovered not chosen. Many of the most significant relationships in my life would not have made the top 50 people I’d like to hang out with. Nevertheless those very people became critical for me in reaching the next assignment for my life.

Failure to Recognize Transitions:

There are all kinds of clues coming our way to indicate what needs to happen next. Like road signs on the highway, we have to pay attention or we’ll end up lost and in danger. A mentor in my life once patiently listened to me describe a scenario where I was being misrepresented and attacked. The facts were clear…I was in the right. When I got done with my dicertation she asked, “So what is God trying to deal with in your life?” I didn’t take the challenge well immediately but later realized that in every emotionally draining process of my life there are road signs indicating changes and adjustments that need to be made. Failing to recognize and adjust will lead to unhealthy cycles.

Parenting…a One Time Decision

Duality can be very dangerous. There are many things in life that must be entered into fully committed with no element of faltering. Parenting is one of those areas.

We are so driven by personal ambition and self gratification that we often gloss over the gravity of choosing to steward a family. We drink in the joys of life and then stumble through parenting.  While we are focused on success, ministry and entertainment we are missing the opportunities along the way to be faithful in our primary stewardship.

The weight of primary stewardship has lost its grip on popular culture and often on many Christian parents as well. The hard truth is you don’t get a second chance on today’s choices. My son is 6 now and no matter how hard I might try, I cannot stop the days from passing by.  All I have is today.

What choices will I make that will leave a lasting impression on his life?

What will I say to him when we are all back home for dinner?

What will my attitude and words to my wife communicate to his impressionable mind?

What will I decide is important for our family to do before we are all in bed asleep?

Primary Stewardship is about hitting the mark, not just getting close. If you are stewarding a family then you can rest assure God will empower you to hit it dead on.

Leadership Capacity Pirating pt.2

Continued from Leadership Capacity Pirating pt.1

Increasing leadership capacity is a process that takes time and dedication.  There are many different opposing forces waiting to shipwreck your journey.  Identifying these Leadership Capacity Pirates can help navigate through.

Familiarity

Familiarity can hijack your perspective and rot away the foundation of significant relationships.  Familiarity often begins in seasons when we are insecure about our place or position.  Our expectations of God’s timing  will inevitably be met by the reality that God does not move based on our suggestions.  During this time of wrestling with God its easy to shift the blame for our disappointment and discouragement onto team partners and authority figures.  You can easily become convinced that these people are the very reasons why you are not advancing forward.  Humility and surrender are the order of the day.  The sooner you begin to acknowledge the God in the people around you, the sooner you will find that God is repositioning you to continue in His Grace.

Opportunism

There is a difference in carpe diem and jumping ship.  If you have signed on for something worth fighting for then there will come a time when the bullets start flying.  Its in that moment that you may be tempted to look for relief.  Often times young leaders believe the strain and heat of the situation are a sign that God is pointing them away from the fire.  In fact just the opposite it true.  The only way to know you are moving in the right direction sometimes is when you experience the resistance of the culture and of the carnal nature inside.  Jumping out of relational, vocational or ministry tension is simply opportunistic.  You will find yourself facing the same situation again in the next place or worse you could be aborting the very process for growth that will lead you further into the purposes God has for your life.

Leadership Capacity Pirating

Pirates are notorious pillagers and hijackers.  They roam the seas preying on innocent victims carrying valuables and supplies.  In recent months, pirates off the coast of Somalia have made international news as they terrorize the vessels along the coast of Africa.  These water way terrorists strike fear in the hearts and minds of mariners and bring productivity and progress to a screeching halt.

In similar fashion there are emotional and mental blind spots that can play pirate to your personal growth and to the expansion of your leadership capacity.  These dark and secretive terrorists notoriously hold hostage your ability to advance along the sea lanes of destiny and purpose.  They board your ship, pillage your cargo and commandeer your mind, will and emotions rendering you incapacitated.

Here are a few blind spots that become Leadership Capacity Pirates.

Unrealized Expectations

The gap between unrealized expectations and your current reality can become a very lonely and isolated place.  Everyone else has moved on and you are left wondering why the people you loved and were committed to became distant while you struggled to create momentum in your life.  It is very likely that you set out with a set of expectations that were either unrealistic or simply shaped by your personal experience and paradigm but were not matched to the reality that you entered into.  People were never meant to be the avenue for your personal growth and success.  The real work of progress happens in the heart and mind of the individual.  No person can impede your progress unless they are allowed to.  God will often use these moments of unfulfilled expectation to reveal an inward hurt, faulty paradigm or un-healed event that needs to be addressed in your life.  Stop asking the  question “Why did they…” and start asking yourself  ”What is causing me to…”

Performance Mentality

Seeking out validation can be a dangerous road.  Mostly because our carnal nature is prone to look in all the wrong places.  Looking for validation by way of our performance is a very common bind spot.  The real catch to performance validation is described best by Solomon in Proverbs 30:16…it “never says, Enough!”  A performance driven attitude will (1) always leave you wanting and wondering for more approval, (2) keep you busy doing things that are unproductive and off course and (3) keep you stuck in old cycles and old paradigms, steering you away from breaking into new dimensions of growth in your life.

Integrity Gaps

We often make the mistake of ignoring character flaws and integrity gaps that do not seem directly related to our public face.  The mistake is assuming the areas of my life that are private and personal are just that…private and personal.  The truth is that although they may be very personal they are also very public.  The level of your personal/private discipline and integrity is directly proportionate to your capacity to lead and influence in a public setting.  Everything from spiritual disciplines, to financial decisions, to relational and personal purity contribute to the “You” that people interact with and experience on a daily basis.  The “issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23) serve as the rudder to your ship.  In what direction is your life rudder taking you?

Continued…

Seed, Bread and Welfare

Continued from pt.1 & pt.2

5  Benefits of Seed Sowing

1. Makes room for the New.

When you give of your time, energy and resources you are emptying out what’s been given to you.  In that way you are making room to receive more.  Much like Israel’s quail & manna from heaven (Exodus 16) that went stale, when you hoard God’s gifts in your life they spoil and lose their ability to nourish.

2.  Gives hope for tomorrow.

Just like a farmer, when you sow seed out of your life you have a hope in the coming harvest.  If all you ever have in your hand is bread to eat, you are hopelessly dependent on someone else’s harvest to supply your needs.

3.  Increases your receiving capacity.

Seed sowing builds wider and deeper vessels.  When you are willing to sow the handful of seed you can expect the return to be much larger than what you released.

4.  Creates/ Strengthens Accountability.

Our sinful tendency is to selfishly consume everything we get our hands on.  Sowing reaffirms the principles of accountability and boundaries.

5.  Establishes Lordship over money.

Money and resources ARE NOT your divine inheritance.  Hoarding and lording over resources leaves you empty because money can never fulfill what PROMISED INHERITANCE was intended to fulfill.  Seed sowing gets resources out of your hand and forces you to trust the true SOURCE.  In that way God is established as Lord over every resource and you become the obedient steward.

Seed, Bread and Welfare

Continued from pt.1

Welfare is not just a government assistance program.  Its a mindset that can paralyze an individual.  One definition  for welfare is “for the benefit of all.”  Thats really what makes it so deceiving.  It begins with good intentions of aiding and assisting those in need.  But welfare was meant to be a BRIDGE, not a DESTINATION.

3 Debilitating Results of Welfare Mentality

1. A Welfare Mentality provides ONLY BREAD and NEVER SEED

If you have no seed you will be in a constant state of need with no hope of supply outside of further assistance.  Seed is the only vehicle that will allow for an individual to reap a supply that will be sufficient for the needs at hand.  Welfare doesn’t hand out any seed, it just supplies bread.  When a man believes welfare is his supply then he will forever be dependent on the produce of someone else’s field.  He can never learn to rely on the God of the harvest because he will never have seed to sow for the coming harvest.

2. A Welfare Mentality enslaves a man by removing any hope for Expansion

With only bread in your hand you have nothing to sow.  Sowing is the avenue that God uses to bring increase.  Grace has assigned increase for every one of God’s children.  God is committed to supply the increase (1 Corinthians 3:7) but it is up to me to place the seed in the grown and allow God to supply.   Welfare makes me a slave to limited supply because I am reliant upon the grace of men rather than the Grace of God.

3. A Welfare Mentality Paralyzes an individual from Action

Welfare draws a distinct line between the “haves” and the “have nots.” After a period of time this corrupts both those who are the givers and the recipients of the welfare.  The givers come to believe that somehow they have risen to a self sufficient place of wealth when compared to others.  They become the masters of their own fate.  The recipient also believes that their circumstance is due to some cosmic prejudice or at the very least an unlucky lottery.  They see the world as dealing them an unfortunate hand therefore no action she takes will change her circumstances.

This leads to the constant war we see played out in American culture today.  The “haves” distance themselves from the plight of those in struggle and the “have nots” cry out for more bread “for the benefit of all.”

I Found My Pants, Now What?

Great practical advice for young men from Deacon Preston McGee over at http://blog.marshillchurch.org/

Congratulations. You got a job, moved out of your parents’ basement and discovered that there is a time in the morning when the clock only has three digits on it. So you may be asking yourself, now what do I do?…

Your New Task List

• If you pick up clothes off your floor, put them in the hamper not on your body. Women will respect a man who’s put together.
• Balance your checkbook, pay your credit card in full each month. If there isn’t money in the budget for rims, don’t get them.
• Tithe. Just because you don’t have a lot of money, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be giving anything. Check your couch cushions, there should plenty there.
• Spend time with older, godly men; learn from them.
• Clean your toilet. Make it so that a girl isn’t scared to use it. Then go clean the church’s.
• Serve. You have talents and you know what they are. Use them to the glory of God. If you don’t know what that is right now go to your campus’ clean-up day and pick up trash.

Seed, Bread and Welfare

What is a culture of prosperity? Focusing our faith heavily on prosperity can have some pretty nasty effects.  The most debilitating is a skewed outlook on sowing seed.  Instead of focusing on the command and joy of giving, the focus of prospering turns to “the getting.”  Before long we forget why it was so important to give in the first place.

At the heart of human redemption is the principle of seed sowing…the seed of God sowed into humanity. “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God (1 John 3:9).”  There can be no redemption for anything or anyone without the sowing of seed.  Seed sowing brings to life something that was otherwise dead.  So then, the farmer plants seed not so that he can be rich, but so that life can be born out of that which was once dead to him.

Not understanding this principle is debilitating.  Misunderstanding it brings perversion.

Complimentary

By nature we all have a narcissistic bend. Our carnality would prefer if life was about making us happy, fulfilling our desires and catering to our wants and needs. That is probably why we are so heavily swayed by compliments.

A few strategically placed compliments can cause an individual to do things she would not ordinarily do. Compliments have the ability to create an alternate reality that can be a powerful force. That power can grow even more intense during seasons of particular vulnerability or insecurity.

It’s important to learn how to deal with compliments. There is nothing wrong with being encouraged by another, but our self-esteem boost should never come at the expense of Godly perspective.

Compliments come in one of two ways.

1.  A Locating Tool

The value of a compliment has much to do with the one giving the compliment. Consider the source. When you receive a compliment from someone with perspective it can be a great insight into how you are progressing forward. The compliment becomes a locating tool. Often God uses these moments of encouragement to spur us on in the right direction. In this situation the compliments are productive as they help us to understand what we are doing right and how our life is benefiting others.

2.  Deceptive Flattery

Then there is the manipulative face of a complimenting spirit. When compliments come from people who don’t have a sound perspective of you or where you are in life they can be misleading and even manipulative. This can be a very serious dynamic. If your hope and security is not found in Christ then you will find yourself looking for security in the words of others. Often times people give out compliments with attachments and expectations. When you allow those compliments to move your emotions you obligate yourself to that person’s expectations. Even worse, you begin to read your own press from public opinion. This can be both deceptive and demoralizing. You will find yourself either blind to the realities of your need for growth or overcome by discouragement.

Culture of Honor vs Culture of Fear

Continued from Opposing Forces in Leadership: Developing People vs Training People & Micro-Managing vs. Empowerment

Do the people you lead feel less than honored after partnering with you in your vision?  It’s a question that can catch a leader off guard.  Isn’t the most important thing that we get the job done, effectively minister to people, serve and give our lives?  Not really.  I like the way one budding entrepreneur put it to me one day…

“Your most important sell of the day is the one you pitch to your team.”

If you can’t win their hearts and respect then the goal is already lost.

There are opposing forces at work as daily we attempt to win and lead the people God has granted us to steward in leadership.  You are creating either a culture of honor that garners the respect and energies of your team or a culture of fear that cultivates an environment where everyone gives the very minimum requirement to survive another day.  When you leverage your power position to motivate people you are creating a culture of fear in your leadership team.  Leveraging your power is the LEAST EFFECTIVE method of motivation.

1. Leveraging Power creates insecurity amongst the team and stifles creativity.

2. Leveraging Power teaches people to FEAR you rather than REVERE you.

3. Leveraging Power stunts personal and corporate growth.

4. Leveraging Power will eliminate the possibility for healthy, productive conflict resolution.