Leadership Matters

“I have set before you an open door, and no man can shut it…” (Revelation
3:8).

What determines the ability of a leader to function? What is the difference
between a Pastor, Song Leader, Sunday School Teacher, Deacon, Youth Leader,
or a Church Member who is successful and others who are unsuccessful. Is it
their genetics? Is it their family background? What about their birth? What
makes a leader succeed? Is it their giftedness or personality that makes for
success.

No, none of these. The single most factor that makes a successful leader
from an unsuccessful leader is their persistence. No matter the obstacles,
no matter the differences, it is the ability to pursue their God-given goals
by moving forward. The heart is devoted, the face is set, and to do or die,
is not to reason why.

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  • Get In Shape

     

    “So the wall was finished in the twenty and fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty and two days” (Nehemiah 6:15).

      The enemy doesn’t mind if you are spiritually active. He just doesn’t want you to be spiritually effective. One may be active in church, doctrinally pure, serving on the church board, teaching, etc…. but if one is not involved in the spiritual disciplines of the Christian life then that life is at a minimal. Minimal in church and minimal in the family.

         “What are the spiritual disciplines?” you ask. It is the reverence for God’s Word and the power of effective praying. We owe to Scripture the same reverence we owe to God. The Bible is revered but it is not read. There is low reading of the Bible by believers.

          “Sine qua non” is a Latin phrase which means “without which, nothing.” Without a good diet of Scripture and an exercise in the effectiveness of praying, you’ve got nothing. You and I cannot finish the Christian marathon without true prayer. We cannot even enter the race without the Word of

  • Revival and Integrity

    “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?” (Psalm 85:6)

    Authenticity is a product of integrity. Integrity is defined as “wholeness, completeness, soundness.” A person with integrity is not divided (that’s duplicity) or devious (that’s deception) or merely pretending (that’s hypocrisy). People with integrity have nothing to hide nor anything to fear. Their lives are transparent. Though, and it is very unfortunate, they are also somewhat rare.

    There is a shortage and a crisis of integrity today. The church has blemished itself with integrity issues. The church is more like a defeated army, naked before our enemies, and unable to fight back because they have made a frightening discovery: the church is lacking in integrity.

    Warren Wiersbe said, “For nineteen centuries, the church has been telling the world to admit its sins, repent, and believe the gospel. Today, in the twilight of the twentieth century, the world is telling the church to face up to her sins, repent, and start being the true church of that gospel.”  Wiersbe said this back in the early 1990s.

    We boast that we are not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, but perhaps the gospel of Christ is ashamed of us. It seems as if ministry and life does not match our message and lips. The salt has lost is potency. It has become good for nothing. The world has influenced and contaminated the message of the messenger. And now the world walks upon the church.

    The integrity crisis has infiltrated the church and it involves the whole church. In the body of Christ, we belong with one another, we affect one another, and we can’t escape one another. When one member suffers, all the other members suffer with them (I Cor. 12:26). What the church needs today is not a quick fix that touches only the surface, which is only cosmetic; what we truly need is a surgeon who cuts deep and removes the cancer.

    Remember this: God is wanting to make integers and Satan is wanting to make fractions. God’s purpose is to “gather together in one all things in Christ” (Ephesians 1:10). God does not accept neutrality. Let us look up, look around us, and look within.  The Christian whom God wants to bless and use must have the courage to be different and the conviction to keep going in the right direction, come what may.

     

     

  • The Saints Go Sleeping One by One

     
    “And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15).

    We live in a twisted society. It is perverted and twisted sexually. People no longer honor God’s plan for marriage. They no longer find fulfillment within the confines of “man and wife.” They indulge their lusts, they prize experimentation, and they treat sexual encounters as base bodily functions instead of honoring them as God-given gifts to prize.

    What once embarrassed and shamed us now does not faze us. What used to slink down back alleys, now struts in openness, and walks upon man’s hearts freely. May God have mercy on us all. May God have mercy on a people who do not blush or repent.

    This type of living produces a society that is twisted spiritually. We indulge in our wickedness long enough, and we eventually become anti-God. We glaze over the gospel good news – that Jesus’ blood really does cover our every sin. We step away from the truths of salvation, figuring we’re better off going it alone. We eye the Bible with foolhardy skepticism, finding it to be a book of fables and nothing more. We do our dead level best to get rid of God, even as our very nature cries out for Him. We waste away our days and lives, chasing counterfeit answers to God, but in the end, business and vain pleasures can do nothing to scratch the angry itch in our souls.

    The Lord Jesus said to His disciples on the side of a mountain, “You’re the salt of the earth.” God knows you’ll meet a lot of tasteless people, hear a lot of tasteless jokes, and see a lot of tasteless things, down here on planet Earth. But don’t lose heart. As you and I fulfill our mission to honor God with our lives, we’ll bring tastefulness back in style.

    One day this King will stop and step upon Earth and do away with that which defiles and decays. This earthly son of a commoner, Joseph the carpenter, raised his son in a two-bit town called Nazareth. And yet the Lord Jesus possessed more influence than any man who every walked this world. The Master empowers and shapes the lives of those who have an encounter with Him. We can be average Joes and Janes, and yet God lays His hand upon us and declares us fit to utterly change the world. The most powerful agent of change is Christ’s church, people committed to doing His will.

  • The Christian Faith Entrusted to Us

    “As for you, speak the things which are fitting for sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1).

    Biblical knowledge is meant to be both intellectual and experiential. There are two sides to the same coin and it is meant to be enjoyed together. Knowledge without response is like an incomplete sentence or a song without a chorus. We have to go beyond merely quoting the truth….to obeying it.

    Why are we to contend for the faith? Because there are false teachers, wolves in sheep’s clothing, counterfeits, apostates in our pulpits across the church scene.  Theology was important to Jude and Paul. God takes the truth seriously. We must know what and why we believe. That is God’s call on every believer.

    Our faith is not primarily a feeling. It is belief based on fact. It is more about a grounded assurance than personal philosophy. We can not simply make up facts or imagine things about God and then base our lives on those thoughts.

    Faith fads, theological trends, popular contemporary thinking, is carrying an unthinking church away from strong historical beliefs and Scripture. Just believing something doesn’t make it true. It’s either true or not, independent of our belief in it. Everything that is not Scriptural and experientially defended in our daily lives sets up misrepresentation of the God of doctrine and truth. Just ask the woman at the well in John’s gospel chapter four.

    It may feel as if the Word of God is rocking back and forth, swaying to the fads of Christianity, but it is not…for the Word of God is stable, it is not changing, progressing, or emerging. We are called to stand for and proclaim what is true, and even when necessary to expose false teaching and heresy. Always ask, “What does the Bible say? And not “Does it make me feel good, happy, or accepted by others?”

     

     

     

     

  • We Close the Door

    “In the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them” (2 Chronicles 29:3).

    King Hezekiah began to reign at the age of twenty-five years of age as King of Judah. His predecessors failed to follow the Lord. The condition at the temple was so much like many churches today–closed. Closed doors speak of no access to God and no service for God. While God has set before us an open door (Rev. 3:8), yet we close it by the way we live.

    How do we close the doors of the church? We don’t witness. We don’t pray. The altar of prayer is cold. We don’t sacrifice. We think more of our lives then following the life God intends for each of us. When God looks around He sees plenty of rubbish in the church. No wonder the church of the Living God is so powerless.

    What must be done? There must be a way given–for God wants to prosper His work. God’s heart is to get us to the point of total sanctification-set apart for God. Sacrifice of one’s person to the Lord’s service and a song in the heart leads to the reopening of the doors. God must start with you and me-the preacher and the people. For if God’s servants are not clean, God cannot bless His work.

  • Authentic Praying

    “There was a man…whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and shunned evil” (Job 1:1).

    A little girl named Judy disobeyed her mother, she was sent to her room to think about her attitude and actions. Judy’s mother stood outside the door and listened to her child cry, then pout, and then began to pray. “Do you see, God, all the trouble you gotten me into? Last night I said my prayers and asked you make me a good girl, and you didn’t. So it’s really your fault, God, and it’s not my fault. You didn’t answer my prayer, so it’s up to you to make Mommy stop being mad at me.”

    This is childish praying prayed with a childish attitude. Yet it’s not so far removed from much praying that takes place today. When the bad choices we make bring bad consequences upon our lives, we are quick to blame circumstances or other people or God himself. We pray, “God, if only my husband,” Or, “God, if only my wife,” Or, “God, if only you had brought me up in a more loving home,” Or, “God, if only you hadn’t made me to be so easily tempted.” We pray and play in the blame game too many times ourselves. When we come to God in prayer, by the way that is not coming to God, when we come to God with an attitude of shifting blame instead of abject humility and contrition, we are being as childish as little Judy.

    God wants authentic mighty prayer, it begins in humility before our awesome and holy God. We are dependent upon God for our physical well-being, our emotional well-being, and our spiritual well-being. We are dependent for all. We have no power in prayer unless we learn to praise Him and recognize our complete dependence on Him.