Servant Leadership [STAR]

Introduction

Greet and thanks ps Teina for having me here

So many times when we do leadership workshops they are things to equip the hands of a leader - but what about the heart?

I would argue that when we teach the heart, we inform the hands.

When it comes to Christian leadership we have to recognise that it is unlike any other form of leadership in the world. Christian leadership is Servant Leadership - a completely counter-cultural phenomenon.

It’s important to understand it, because God wants us to lead radically different to the world. If we aren’t careful we end up bringing the methods of the world into the church - and that leads to worldly problems entering the church as well.

I think many times Christian leadership goes wrong because we don’t actually have biblical models. Like we don’t study the bible to find out what an ideal leader looks like - we don’t have handles, things that we can catch and implement. This is where I think we’ve gone wrong - it’s lazy leadership

It’s so important for us to have a model for leadership that comes from scripture - and since this is servant leadership, I want to take a passage that describes the ideal servant (Jesus) and break it down so that all of us can catch something from it.

Isaiah 42:1–4 ESV

1 Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. 2 He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; 3 a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. 4 He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law.

This is a workshop - so please feel free to ask questions. But first, let’s pray.

Reliant

Isaiah 42:1 “1 Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.”

Above everything - leaders must be reliant on God.

God must be the source of our strength, sustenance and gifts.

The reason there is so much burnout in the church today is not a complex reason - it is because our leaders have stopped being reliant on God. Everything comes back to this.

There is a HUGE difference between being self-sustaining and Reliant. We very often make the mistake of being self-sustaining, which looks just like reliance except that we trust in ourselves instead of trusting in God.

The difference is often only seeen at the end result - a leader who is bitter and burnt out, and a congregation that has learned to worship a person, and not God.

It comes down to a question as simple as this: Is your walk with God an unshakeable, sacred, non-negotiable in your life? Are you practising what you plan on preaching?

Vanilla, I know - but would you be surprised to tell you that this is where most Christian leaders go wrong? And that if we get just this ONE aspect right - I won’t even need to go through the rest. And yet time and time again, this is where leaders fail.

Many leaders can elaborate on their leadership strategy and plans to grow their area of influence. But what’s your strategy for protected the sacredness of your walk with the Lord? What safeguards do you have in place to ensure that you are maintaining your RELIANCE on Him? That you are being upheld by the Lord?

PRINCIPLE: Checking each leader’s spiritual walk

When I was a youth pastor I used to tell my leaders that if I asked you for what God was teaching you at any random point in time - you better have an answer for me. If I asked you which book of the bible, or which topic you were studying - you better have an answer for me.

I pushed for memory verses with all my leaders because of Psalm 119:11 “11 I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.”

Of course - I never policed it because I can’t force anyone into a relationship with God. But I always had a good idea whether a leader was just as passionate about walking with God than they were about leading based on the spiritual safeguards they placed in their life.

I take your strategy to safeguard your walk with God even more seriously than I do your strategy to grow your Connect Group. Because the moment a leader loses their reliance on God, is the moment a leader begins to go wayward. John 15:5 “5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

You know why else reliance is important? Because Leaders are able to imitate God through their reliance on Him. And people are imitating leaders through their relationship with them.

In other words what you are imitating is also where you’re leading people.

You’ll always lead out of who you’re becoming.

When we are reliant on self, then we end up creating people who are imitating us, instead of imitating Christ. But Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:1 “1 Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” We are only leading people in the right direction if we are imitating Christ through our reliance on Him.

Do you have a faith worth imitating? And if not - that needs to be the first thing that gets rectified.

The first follower you should have - is yourself.

When we aren’t reliant on God - we do not get replenished or restored.

John 6:63 “63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”

Matthew 4:4 “4 But he answered, “It is written, “ ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ””

Both of these passages are clear warnings to all leaders that Christians have a different source of nourishment than the rest of the world. So we cannot get caught nourishing ourselves like the rest of the world.

PRACTISE: Golden Hour

I actually used to have a practise called the Golden Hour - which started off as a 3 times a week regular thing but has become so key to my leadership that I actually removed it from my calendar and do it whenever I’m free at home - and on my Sabbath. And sometimes it’s not the Golden Hour, sometimes it’s the Golden 3 Hours.

Here’s something to catch - I have a rule, if it’s not in your calendar, it will never become a habit. If you’re serious about Reliance then this will be in your calendar.

The golden hour is a time where I sit in my room, or a special devotional place (I’ve got a few around the city) and it’s just me, my bible, and a notebook. And I create time to intentionally receive from God. God reveals to me people that I should meet, agendas for meetings, things I need to address in my own walk, in my church, topics I need to preach on. I write it all down, I receive.

This is a time of INTENTIONAL receiving - and I protect it like I do my time with Sharon, nothing gets in the way of it. I rarely ever move it - and if I do then it’s always moved, it’s NEVER cancelled. It took around a year of this before I realised that it had moved to something I do as a routine - to a part of my leadership that became indispensible.

The amount of problems I’ve been able to solve BEFORE they became problems, because God dropped me a Word in my Golden Hour? Uncountable. The amount of themes that I’ve preached where people have been like “that’s the perfect message for this season”? Golden Hour. The amount of times I’ve prayed for meetings and they’ve gone far better than my measured expectations? Golden Hour. If you’re serious about reliance - then make this a non-negotiable.

I’ll even tell you right now - that many leaders fail because there is no such practise in their life. My devotion is a part of my Golden Hour, by the way. And they’re not the same thing - my devotion is personal. To me - the Golden Hour is God dealing with me as a pastor and leader of His church. I don’t think that needs to be the way if you don’t want but that’s just how I do it - the point is INTENTIONAL creation of space to receive.

You know what I think the easiest way is to spot someone who is reliant on God? (Not just leaders)

People who have a deep reliance on God treat their calling as a gift, not a goal.

It’s not something that they have to ACHIEVE, it’s something that they RECEIVE.

There’s no striving for God’s favour, no clinging on to it as if it’s their entire world, no insecurity when things don’t go their way, there’s much less demand for clarity and assurance - and instead they just have trust that in God all things find their place.

I’m striving for the God that loves me, not for God to love me

There’s a restedness that can only come from Reliance.

And that’s when leadership becomes a privilege and a joy. Leadership becomes something that we GET to do, not something that we HAVE to do. There’s a HUGE difference between a leader who thinks that they HAVE to lead, as opposed to a leader that realises that they GET to lead.

The difference? Reliance on God.

ILLUSTRATION: God Laughing

There’s a story that a pastor in the US told that sticks with me about this topic: When I started a new church in Los Angeles County, California, I found that I was overwhelmed with pressure and stress. I was working more than seventy hours a week. My wife would ask me to take a day off, and I would say, "I can't." I wasn't sleeping at night, and I started to take sleeping pills. When the church was about a year old, I woke up in the night, and I had this strange sense that God was laughing at me. As I lay in bed, I wondered, Why is God laughing at me?

It would take five years before I finally got an answer to that question. Here's how it happened: when we moved into our current house, I saved the heaviest piece of furniture for last—the desk from my office. As I was pushing and pulling the desk with all my might, my four-year-old son came over and asked if he could help. So together we started sliding it across the floor. He was pushing and grunting as we inched our way along. After a few minutes, my son stopped pushing, looked up at me, and said, "Dad, you're in my way." And then he tried to push the desk by himself. Of course it didn't budge. Then I realized that he thought he was actually doing all the work, instead of me. I couldn't help but laugh.

The moment I started laughing at my son's comment, I recalled that middle-of-the-night incident and I realized why God was laughing at me. I thought I was pushing the desk. I know that's ridiculous, but instead of recognizing God's power and strength, I started to think it all depended on me.

Secure

Isaiah 42:1 “1 Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.”

This is something that I find less and less common in leaders - maybe because we are always taught to push hard and to have high expectations.

And this is to be Secure in your calling.

Very closely linked to Reliance, it’s about knowing that God has called you to this role and EVEN more important than that it’s to know that God delights in you fulfilling this calling.

You may have heard the saying “God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called.”

And obviously this is trying to stress the importance of operating out of a sense of calling - which I do agree is important.

However I think the phrase stops short because it misses the fact that I believe that we are meant to thrive on the fact that God actually DELIGHTS in us.

And the reason I say that is because I see so many leaders go astray when they start to seek approval or security in others. In their pastor, in their peers, in their followers, even in their critics.

The pattern is always the same - when we lose a desire of God’s approval, then we are destined to search for man’s approval.

There must be a SECURITY that can only be found in knowing that God delights in us - and that is a deep revelation and understanding that comes out of our personal journey with Him.

The first step to becoming an insecure leader is always losing sight of God’s favour and delight over you.

Only when we understand that God delights in us, will we reciprocate it by delighting in Him and doing His work.

1 John 4:19 “19 We love because he first loved us.”

Without a revelation of God’s love, it is impossible to love others to the extend that the Lord desires.

ILLUSTRATION: Wreck Sermon

When I first joined Kinetic as a young pastor - I remember one of the first things that God asked me to do was to deliver a scathing sermon (Jonah-like) to the youth group which would effectively clear out all those who weren’t there taking things seriously. It would undoubtedly create a whole bunch of haters, and doubters as well.

I went to the Lord with this multiple times - God maybe this isn’t the smartest thing to do, God this is career suicide. But the conviction never left me.

And so I did it - my first sermon in Kinetic was a scathing sermon about how we have turned this youth group into nothing more than a social club, and that going forward - we were going to build a youth group that only had one purpose, to love God and to love people. Anyone who didn’t want to do that had my full permission to leave the youth group.

The results from that sermon were instantaneous - we lost almost all of our year 12s. From the starting number of 80 my first sermon got us down to 60 the next week. But God knows what He was doing - by the end of that year, the youth group had reached 150 - which was the biggest it had ever been, and the growth quite literally never stopped all through my season there.

What’s my point? My point is that there is no way I would have been able to do something as brash and obtuse as that if my focus were to please people.

There is a simple formula every Christian leader needs to know: Pleasing people always comes at the expense of obeying God.

Go read the bible if you want to find out more about that. When leaders take a wrong turn into disobedience, many times it is because they are seeking the approval of man, or acting out of the fear of man.

And this is why being secure in our identity as a leader is so important. You were not called to please people - you were called to obey God. And that is impossible to do as a leader without their security and delight in the Lord. It is impossible to do without desiring ONLY the delight of the Lord.

Everybody has an EGO - and the ego will only ever do one of two things:

Exalt God Only

Edge God Out

Leaders who’s ego Edges God Out always exhibit the same symptoms. They will either lead out of a sense of insecurity - doing anything they can to please man and often being paralysed by their decisions, leading to inaction or misled action. OR they will lead out of a place of pride - where they insist on their way or the high way, which leads to cultlike, churches that burn people.

Anointed

Isaiah 42:1 “1 Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.”

You know the longer that I spend in leadership the more I become aware that our secret weapon is the Holy Spirit.

So many leaders have the habit of almost removing the supernatural from their leadership - and I don’t understand why. That’s like choosing to fight without your most powerful weapon.

There must be a supernatural element in everything that we do.

Ephesians 6:12 “12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

If we know that our wrestle is not purely against physical things then why do we only use physical conventions to beat them? This is almost asking for failure as a leader.

The amount of times we as leaders miss things because we don’t operate spiritually is quite frankly, alarming.

The amount of times we don’t pray before meeting our members, the words of wisdom and insight that is only obtainable from the Spirit that we miss, the miracles that we forego because we don’t have the faith to pray, the breakthrough that isn’t received because we don’t practise fasting, the conflicts that can be avoided because we failed to ask for divine Wisdom.

There are just countless times that I have seen leaders neglect the Holy Spirit as a counterpart in their journey of leadership, but this can’t go on - not if we want to see REAL change in our churches.

A leader’s outer walk is always a reflection of their inner life

What I mean by this is that a leader that is filled with the Spirit will pour it out into their ministry. They willl move in the Spirit in their ministry. But a leader who does not have a healthy relationship with the Spirit and abandons spiritual things personally will lead purely through their own strength and ability; which is always finite and can often be mistaken.

We would all do well to remember that it is called the fruit of the Spirit - not the fruit of your effort.

ILLUSTRATION: Ang

Just last week at church - someone returned to church after not being back for such a long time. And I know that they had been clubbing and all that sort of stuff. Just the weekend prior I was planning to message them and get them to step down from all their ministry positions because of the lifestyle that they had been leading, and because of the fact that it had caused them to not come to church for 4 months straight.

I remember seeing them walk through the front door and praying for God to give me wisdom with what I was about to do.

And as I was praying - God did exactly the opposite; He softened my heart. I gave them a big hug instead, which was almost weird because it felt like a reflex - since it wasn’t something I was planning on doing.

After the message, they responded at the altar, and I remember God pointing them out to me so clearly and speaking to me - go and welcome them back home. And so all I did was kneel down next to them and hug them and after I prayed for them I said “welcome home. It’s so good to see you.” and immediately - they started crying and crying. And I let the Lord minister to them at the altar.

After the service, the next day, they messaged me and told me - thank you for everything you said to me. I was so scared that I would not be welcome back to church. But you said everything that I needed to hear. I’ll see you next week.

And just like that - the Lord changed my actions 180 degrees because He knows the heart, and He knows what we don’t. The Spirit guided my actions to yield a FAR better result than if I had just gone of my natural reflex.

The thing is that this incident isn’t isolated - these happen nearly every week. And so they should; because we should be guided wholly, completely by the Spirit in our lives.

You know what the key to leading in the Spirit is? Brokenness. The profound realisation that there is an end to your abilities and your gifts.

2 Corinthians 1:8–9 “8 For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”

I pray that ever leader quickly gets brought to this place where they realise that in order to bear fruit that lasts, we are called to be ministers of the Spirit and not of our Selves.

I think we need to get practical about this element of being anointed - and it really can only come out of our time with God. We need to discern and desire more of the Spirit in our walk - be willing to explore and express the gifting that the Spirit deposits in our life.

Scripture tells us in 1 Corinthians 14:1 “1 Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.”

Modest

Isaiah 42:2 “2 He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street;”

I do another leadership workshop on leadership selection - which is just a matter for another day, but one of the things that I really find so important is that Character should always be valued above Competency.

In other words we must work on our hearts before we work with our hands.

However modesty in this day and age of the celebrity leader is tough to find. The fact is that in almost all positions of leadership, modesty is difficult, simply because as leaders - we are often elevated in the church.

The whole principle of modesty is to realise that we are not here to build a name for ourselves, we are not here to draw attention to ourselves.

In fact the premise of servant leadership is exactly the opposite. We are here to serve others - to lift others up, to give our attention to others. Philippians 2:3 “3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.”

Just like Isaiah says - it is not about crying out loud, or making ourselves heard, it is about using our voice and actions to lift up the people that we are here to serve. A message that it so forgotten in this day and age.

We have to consciously go against the attention grabbing ways of the world that are so often brought into the church.

And here I just want to say that it’s incredibly important that we as leaders catch the proper meaning behind modesty/humility. Humility is not thinking LESS of yourself - it means thinking of yourself LESS.

Catch that? To think of yourself less means to neglect the gifting and the calling of God in your life, to almost hide and choose to play down the role that you have as a leader in the church. We don’t want this - we want leaders who are empowered to step up and into the calling that God has for each of them.

We want leaders who thinking of yourself less - meaning that you don’t place the attention on yourself, you place the focus and the attention on the people that you are serving - and ultimately you draw all attention to Christ and not yourself. It is not neglecting a gifting or talking down a calling, but it is fulfilling those things in the greatest way possible - with Modesty. Think about yourself less. Less of what people think about you - more of, are people thinking about God?

STORY: The Whale Shark

So I’m really not that adventurous - I’m born and raised aussie but this is one thing that my asian genes won out in. I really am not an adventurous person - my idea of camping is like a 4 star hotel sorta thing. But my friends are insane, they love going diving with sharks and jumping out of planes and all that nonsense. Anyway - they told me this story of how they went up to Exmouth one day for a dive. And there are apparently all sorts of exorbitant creatures up in the water over there, which I have absolutely no interest in.

So two of my friends are in the water - when one of them starts to do a weird dance in the water, sorta like Saturday night fever. And he keeps going at it - my other friend is confused at first but this other guy is making such a show that he’s just laughing in the water at him. So this mate keeps doing this dance and the other mate eventually figures out that he’s actually pointing - and he turns around and almost immediately gets headbutted by a whale shark that was trying to swim past him and must have got fedup of waiting for him. Turns out that other friend wasn’t dancing - he was desperately trying to signal my other friend to turn the other way.

Now - why do I tell you that story? Because in a weird way - we’re not meant to be like my friend. Gesturing all elaborately and drawing all this attention to ourselves - when my friend was actually meant to be the sign; what he was really trying to do was point my other mate at the real attraction, this huge whaleshark. But yet so many times - I find that because leaders lack modesty, people end up looking at them doing the whole song and dance - and we miss the truly important thing: God’s presence.

And I think this doesn’t just apply on a personal level - but this applies on all levels of our church. Especially things like our service. Are our services so elaborate and so riddled with games and all these other fun things that we miss the presence of God as He passes us? Like we’re so busy gesturing wildly with our lights and sound and epic games and intricate structures - but then that’s what people are focused on, we’re drawing attention to ourselves and away from God.

I think modesty is, at it’s heart, about making sure that we are the SIGNPOST, not the CENTREPIECE.

It is about keeping God as the centre of it all - and shaping our character AND our leadership strategy around this principle of modesty. It’s all a balancing act, but making sure that Modesty is there is key.

add accountability point

Empathetic

Isaiah 42:3 “3 a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.”

I say Empathy and not love because I find that love can sometimes be too generic to and hard to act on. Whereas Empathy is a very measurable and real action - it’s the act of not just understanding others, but taking on their feelings, sharing the feelings of others which requires time and intention.

Romans 12:15 “15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”

I was once asked at a leadership panel in Singapore - if I could implement one rule in leadership, what would that rule be? And it was a simple answer - which remains the same today: Leaders must learn to love before they lead.

People don’t care about how much you know, they want to know about how much you care.

Here is a sad but necessary truth that we all have to operate under: Everyone you meet is fighting battles that you know nothing about.

The more I do pastoral ministry - the more I find this to be true.

Just like the passage says - many of the people that we’re dealing with are broken people. Bruised reeds, people whos fire is fading.

You know when I talk about empathy - I’m not just talking about being nice, I think anyone can be nice.

When I talk about empathy I’m talking about always keeping the posture of people before programs. I’m talking about keeping people as the core business of the church. I’m talking about having intentional ministry for the 1 just as much as we have intentional ministry for the 99.

It’s almost a willingness to be inconvenienced for the sake of loving a person. This is an art that the church has lost over recent years.

I think many churches focus so much on growth - that we build ministries that are catered for drawing in the 99 but aren’t catered towards serving the 1.

Our programs and strategy engage the mind and the senses but it’s Empathy that ministers to the soul of the individual.

There have been many times in ministry where I’ve had to stop and catch myself - I got so aborbed in building and growing ministry that I forgot to actually minister to people, people began to just be a number to me. I stopped having time for the people that I used to always make time for.

I think there are so many people who walk into our churches with sick hearts and sick souls that require healing. And the worst thing we can teach them is how to hide it - and yet this is what a church without empathy will do. It doesn’t minister and heal the sick, it teaches them how to effectively hide their illness so they can integrate into community properly.

STORY: Struggling to be a pastor

When I first became ordained as a pastor back in FCC, I was young - and a truth that not many people know is that I really struggled to pastor. I am definitely more of a leader, someone who is far more comfortable naturally with strategy and big speeches and charting direction. I am not naturally gifted as a pastor, I do not naturally come by empathy. You know in youth ministry they just come up to you with the most menial small issues - “Oh pastor, I got a B in my exam, how am I going to survive?” “Pastor, this girl doesn’t like me”, “Pastor I just feel so bored all the time - I’ve got nothing to do” it may sound dumb to you but I was always aware that I just could not see these kids as God sees them. Honestly - it never bugged me that much, I was a pastor, they should know I was too busy for this kind of stuff; and I had leaders who were incredibly empathetic so problem solved - you’re welcome.

One day a youth came up to me, same kind of problem - “Pastor, I didn’t do very well in my tests.” I remember that I was writing a sermon at the time they bugged me so I dismissed them the same way - “well buddy better try harder next time.” I remember looking up after around 30 seconds of silence to realise that they had walked away. Later that week I had a leaders meeting where one of my leaders came up to me and told me that one of her kids had reported he was being physically abused by his parents and that we may have to call the police to intervene. I asked who it was - it was this same kid. Turns out that his parents would beat him when he got anything below a B, but as someone who was learning challenged - he struggled to do better than that; that kid was so scared to go home because he effectively knew he was always going home to a beating - and I had just told him to try harder next time.

I went straight home and prayed about this issue - God break my heart for what breaks yours. And that’s when I stumbled across what is today my favourite prayer. It’s by Mother Teresa: “O Jesus, even if you are hidden under the unattractive disguise of anger, of crime, or of madness, may I recognise you and say, “Jesus, you who suffer, how sweet it is to serve you.” Seeing Jesus in every person - God opened my eyes to see what He saw. And I started to see His youth group as He saw them. From that time on - any problem one of my youth had, I made time to listen, doesn’t matter how big or small. Loving people came before planning programs, or preparing sermons.

Empathy. So basic - something we think we’re always doing immediately because this is the church and why wouldn’t we be doing it? But we rarely pause to check whether this quality truly exists in our life, and whether it is genuinely expressed in our ministry.

We are building very cold churches if we’re building them without Empathy.

You know the old saying: Hurt people will hurt people, but healed people will help people. Empathy is one of the gifts that God has given the church to equip it for the ministry of healing.

Convicted

Isaiah 42:4 “4 He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law.”

Conviction is a posture of faith.

People who are convicted know what they have been called to do - and go about it in an intentional way.

When we surround ourselves with people of conviction - we build a climate of faith. It’s almost like you build a culture of movement, a culture of the miraculous, a culture of momentum. Because you’re now surrounded by people who are willing to pay the price, people who are willing to walk the distance, people who are willing to do anything it takes to get the job done.

There’s a great leadership principle here that says big movements put out small fires.

It’s the whole principle of Proverbs 29:18 “18 Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law.”

When there is movement in a direction - then people are kept focused, kept moving, kept active and less minor issues and small fires tend to pop up. But the moment we lose that momentum and that movement - people cast off restraint and begin to go their own way, create their own problems.

People with nothing better to do will always think they’re better off doing nothing.

And this is why conviction counts - we’re building people with an EXPECTATION to move, to get behind leadership, to build, to grow.

People who will do whatever it takes to get the job done.

And you know what else comes out of genuine conviction? Just like Isaiah says in this passage - conviction amplifies perseverance. Just like Isaiah says - he will not grow faint or discouraged until they have achieved their goal.

People who have a genuine conviction - they do anything to achieve that conviction. They remain positive against discouragement that’s thrown their way and against obstacles that threaten to set back again the vision that they know they have to accomplish.

Now it can be relatively easy to mistake conviction for selfish ambition (which the Bible warns us about). The inherent difference being in the source; Selfish ambition is what happens when we’re pre-occupied with prominence. When we are so full of ourselves that all we want to do is elevate ourselves.

Conviction comes, on the other hand, when we are empty of ourselves. It is something received from God.

STORY: Satan stays on topic

When I was a kid, I heard this story - which at the time scared me stiff but now I realise, had a solid point. An old legend states that Satan once called to him the emissaries of hell and said he wanted to send one of them to earth to aid women and men in the ruination of their souls. He asked which one would want to go. One creature came forward and said, "I will go." Satan said, "If I send you, what will you tell the children of men?" He said, "I will tell the children of men that there is no heaven." Satan said, "They will not believe you, for there is a bit of heaven in every human heart. In the end everyone knows that right and good must have the victory. You may not go." Then another came forward, darker and fouler than the first. Satan said, “If I send you, what will you tell the children of men?" He said, "I will tell them there is no hell." Satan looked at him and said, "Oh, no; they will not believe you, for in every human heart there's a thing called conscience, an inner voice which testifies to the truth that not only will good be triumphant, but that evil will be defeated. You may not go." Then one last creature came forward, this one from the darkest place of all. Satan said to him, "And if I send you, what will you say to women and men to aid them in the destruction of their souls?" He said, "I will tell them there is no hurry." Satan said, "Go!"

With the rise of leaders that have become more full of themselves - I find more and more we are losing truly convicted leaders.

And because of this - we are losing our sense of urgency about our mission.

Leaders without conviction can barely persevere - they give up the moment things get difficult, the moment the going gets tough, they get going. But this is a result of trying to do things out of our own passion and our own ambition - and not relying on the Lord for our convictions.

Conclusion

We need more leaders who are:

Reliant

Secure

Anointed

Modest

Empathetic

Convicted