Wednesday, February 29, 2012

A Gifted Man

This is the second post in a series called “Leadership in the Crucible”, a profile of leaders trained for a special anointing.  

I went to high school with a guy who was just a natural.  He was a multi-sport athlete, good looking, and smart.  He just had it all.  And he knew it.  Girls loved this guy.  We all have these types in our high schools.  But we know a good percentage of them struggle later in life.  In the movie Friday Night Lights, the star athlete Boobie Miles is injured in a career threatening injury and life stops for him.  If you have ever seen the movie, you remember this touching scene (forgive the brief language).

Moses was that type of person.  And he was anointed and protected.  The first part of Moses’s life, you would almost swear was on the path to greatness.  He had it all, like Boobie Miles.  A complete natural.  Further, the Bible tells us in Acts 7:22 that he received all of the benefits of being educated as an Egyptian aristocrat.  It says he was “a man of power in words and deeds”.  Yet, he had not forgotten his roots.  He knew that he was a son of Israel.  He knew that he was lovely in the sight of God.  He knew he had been anointed for leadership for a purpose.  You know guys that know they are good.  They know that they have special talents, skills and abilities.  Moses wasn’t cocky – in fact he was an admirable man.  And as we see in the next post, he is even contemplating the big picture.  God wants to use him in a special way. 

Each of us are special creations made in God’s own image for a purpose.  God wants each of us to be used in that special way for him.  We naturally want to be part of that larger purpose.  Who wouldn’t?  God wants us to be a part of something big.  He really does – don’t you believe it?  I do.  I greatly anticipate how God will speak to me next, how he will use me.  Moses was indeed anointed and I think you and I are as well.

But as Boobie Miles, our anointing is not based on any special gifts God gives us – the gifts are the means to the end.  It is God who works in us and through us so that He can receive the glory.  Moses needed to learn that lesson.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Leadership in the Crucible–Introduction

I have to admit I have a fascination with leadership characters in the Bible.  I particularly have a fascination for characters that God has put through the crucible, whom God is preparing for something big.  These are characters that spent a large part of their life as complete nobodies but all of the sudden come onto the scene.  Characters like Joseph who was sold into slavery as a seventeen year old and emerges as a thirty year old man of character.  Paul meets the Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus and spends some 14 years in obscurity before going out on his first missionary journey.  Moses spent a third of his life as a nobody as a shepherd in Midian.  What was God teaching him?  What did he have to learn?

imageWhat does God intend to teach those of us who aspire to be leaders?  I know the risk of presuming some intent by God to mold character.  You have to draw some before and after pictures.  Moses flees to Midian and we pick up the story 40 years later.  What was he like before and what do we see after?  Like the before and after pictures of weight losers, we see a different person.  What changed?

We see many in leadership crash and burn due to their sin.  These people render their leadership and ministry ineffectual.  Yes, they can emerge from it, but they are mostly tainted.  That is not the case with Moses and many characters in the Bible.  Yes, Moses committed murder but that was the symptom that put him in the desert.  It was pride that put him in the desert crucible.  He was not useful until God caused him to look upward.  We will look at this in the coming weeks.

The crucible of God’s leadership training program is painful.  It can also mean long periods of ineffectiveness, almost boring monotony.  Do you aspire to be a leader in God’s program?  You will go through it, I can almost guarantee it.  Why?  Because as flawed human beings, we want the glory.  It is only when we become weak that we discover the unbelievable strength that God provides.  To be successful in sports, you must pay the price for training.   The gymnasium is painful, but it produces fitness.  So we see how God will train these leaders to be godly.  I hope by looking at their stories you will appreciate the opportunity to go through the same program knowing it will make you a better leader at the end.  Stay tuned!

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Memories From the Heart

As most of us know, Whitney Houston died this past week.  But what fewer of us know is an author by the name of Jeffrey Zaslow died also tragically in a car accident in upstate Michigan.  Zaslow was the award winning author of a number of books including “The Last Lecture” and books on Gabriel Giffords and Chester “Sully” Sullenberger.  His most recent book was on the passage of our daughters into marriage called “The Magic Room”.  it was incredibly fresh because Deb and I had just finished reading it.  It was about a bridal shop in Fowler, Michigan that imagesells dresses to brides all over the Midwest and in the book he not only chronicles the history of the multi-generational bridal shop, but also the individual stories of the brides.

Mr Zaslow was the father of three daughters and it was the interview clip that I have posted below that prompted me to read the book.  As the father of three daughters and one recently married, the book tugged at my heart strings.  His premature death prompted me to again think of my own daughters and how much they mean to me.  What Mr. Zaslow was able to accomplish in his books is the kind of matters of the heart that each of us take for granted.  Yet he was not able to experience any of the weddings of his three daughters.  In his death he leaves a legacy of these types of insights that each of us need to contemplate.  I strongly urge you to read “The Magic Room” particularly if you have daughters.

Wall Street Journal This Morning

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Is It In You?

Have you ever felt completely incompetent?  I certainly have..often.  Many times as a CEO and as a professor at a major university, I am expected to be competent.  Kind of goes along with the territory.  I have found over the course of my career that there are days where I just feel completely incapable of rendering a rational thought let alone make a solid decision. 

I know there is an absolute difference between my ability to lead according to my own merits and when I am operating out of the overflow of a spirit-filled life.  Those of us know the difference when we are acting out of confidence that God gives us.  I believe the Holy Spirit puts in us a spirit of abject dependence on God.  I know if I act out of the flesh, what you will get is at best pure gibberish.  I can’t explain it, but I live it.  There are other days where I know I have given wise counsel and acted as a leader and I know that it is coming as if God were using me as a mouthpiece.  It is not as if I lack confidence in myself, but I recognize it for what it is.  I know true leadership is an ongoing dependence upon God that I could never have on my own. 

I am reminded of the Gatorade commercial.  This one is particularly appropriate.  The runner is about at the finish line but he lacks the fluids to finish.  It takes the presence of those fluids to allow him to finish.  Along the way, he may look good, maybe even strong, but in the long run, he must have those fluids to compete and finish.  The presence of the Spirit in the life of the Christian is the essential body fluid needed. 

In Genesis 41, Joseph is summoned before Pharoah as an interpreter of his dream.  Pharoah says “I have heard that you are the ultimate dream interpreter” (my paraphrase). What a great opportunity for Joseph to puff up his chest and say, “Why yes, I am quite good at dream interpretation”.  But what Joseph says causes me a second glance.  He says “It is not in me, God will give Pharoah a favorable answer”.  By me, Joseph is saying in his flesh, there is no talent to solve the problem.  But God in him could provide the answer.  Context is important – Joseph has had more ups and downs than a roller coaster.  Yet, his confidence in God is unwavering.  He recognized that God was the source.  It came from Him.  God would provide the answer – through Joseph! 

God provides the necessary wisdom we need each and every day.  Yet so many of us lead out of our own resources not recognizing the power that lives in us each and every day.  Is it in you?

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Watching Out For False Counterfeits

We have a reclining chair that sits in our living room.  On the occasional evenings where I can just relax, I like to read in this chair.  The problem is unlike my wife who can read for hours on end, this chair just sucks me in and before you know it, I am asleep.  The snoozing is great, but the problem is if I take a one hour or so nap on this chair, I have trouble getting to sleep at night in bed.  The chair looks good on the outside, feels good once I ‘m in it and before you know it, I am Reclining in Chair_2caught in its grips.  The bed on the other hand was designed for my maximum, long-term comfort over the full course of the night.  The bed is the real thing – the chair is the false counterfeit. 

I am reminded that so many things in life are designed by God for our real enjoyment.  Things like sex in marriage or even eating healthy.  Along comes our crazy culture and it magnifies sex as attractive in its own right but used out of the context of a healthy marriage.  It is the equivalent to the chair – alluring, maybe even attractive for the short haul, but definitely menacing for the long haul.  The average consumer eats 1200 calories during the Super Bowl which starts in three hours.  I know all of my hard work of trying to get my weight down may go out the window in the three plus hours of the Super Bowl.  There are many false counterfeits out there that look and feel great in the short haul but rob us of enduring pleasure and joy.  We have to look at them in the light of the real thing and be able to tell the difference.  The long haul is always best.