Perry asks, “What would you be willing to attempt for God if you knew you couldn’t fail?”
Rindy gets right to the point in a short post entitled “Faith.”
Perry talks about courage and Rindy talks about motivation.
Two good posts worth reading.
Leaders will be criticized.
Many leaders will spend inordinate amounts of time trying to explain and vindicate themselves. Stop it.
Watchman Nee in his book Authority and Submission writes, “Authority and vindication are incompatible. Whenever we try to vindicate ourselves before someone, it means that the person is our judge. Whenever we vindicate ourselves before those who criticize us, we are telling them that they are higher than us.”
He continues…
“A vindicating person is a person who is under the judgment of others. Those who vindicate themselves have no authority whatsoever. Whenever a person vindicates himself, he loses his authority. God may have committed His authority to us, but if we vindicate ourselves before men, we have lost our authority because we are begging them to be our judge.”
A discipline that I’ve found helpful in the face of criticism and opposition is the spiritual discipline of silence.
Silence in the face of accusation. Silence in the face of criticism. Silence.
Think about it… why do you usually speak up when criticized or accused? SELF-DEFENSE! Bottom line = vindication is most often a form of self-protection.
But what if God has called you to something bigger than yourself?
What if in doing what He has called you to do you encounter criticism?
Will you allow that criticism to distract you from the calling of God?
Will you stop the journey to answer the critics?
For every decision, and particularly every leadership decision, there will be tons of critics, naysayers, detractors, etc. The question is will you allow the critics to set the pace or will you allow God to set the pace?
Self-vindication allows the critic to set the pace of the journey. Every time you slow down to respond to accusations… time is lost on the journey.
Silence in the face of criticism, on the other hand, allows the journey to continue at its God-determined pace.
You CAN do this and you must if you are to achieve the goal that God is calling you to.
Jesus did it. (Matthew 26:62-63; Matthew 27:12-14)
And St. Peter gives us words of encouragement as we live in the face of opposition, criticism, etc. “…if you are suffering according to God’s will, keep on doing what is right, and trust yourself to the God who made you, for he will never fail you” (1 Peter 4:19 NLT).
It is a funny thing to see how people find this blog!
One of the cool things about this blog is that I can see where people come from and what words they were doing a search for when they stumbled on this blog!
For instance, if you are on Rindy’s blog and click on the link to my blog, I can see that someone came to this blog from her blog… make sense?
Another example, if you do a google search for “Paul Peterson” I can see that a search for “Paul Peterson” led you to my blog.
While I can’t tell who is coming, I can generally tell how they got here.
Today I noticed something that I may take as a sign.
Someone googled, “Dr Paul Peterson sex god” and ended up at my blog.
Hmmmmm…
OK, I’ve gotta go tell Sherri… see ya!
(No comments necessary…)
“The one thing that unhappy families have in common is how little effort they expend investing their time in others.”
Tim Kimmel (Raising Kids for True Greatness)
“Life is more than just reaching our goals. As individuals and as a group we need to reach our potential. Nothing else is good enough. We must always be reaching toward our potential.” Max Depree
That first line shoved me up against the wall! It’s possible for us to set our goals to low or in the wrong context and completely miss becoming what we were created to be!
God, don’t let us miss our point of maximum effectiveness… our potential!
One of the keys to effective implementation of an idea, plan, etc. is the connection of the new to the old; the unfamiliar to the familiar.
Max Depree teaches that we should, “Establish something and then connect it to something else. A new situation requires another connection because things appear in a new way and need relationships to what I already know.”
You may know that the velcro effect (i.e. “stickiness”) is the result of hundreds/thousands of hooks and loops! One side of the velcro is all little hooks, while the other piece is all little loops! When the hooks and the loops come together… they stick!
Imagine how our leadership effectiveness would increase if we created multiple “hooks” for people’s “loops”! In other words, rather than presenting an initiative in one way, we creatively presented it in a variety of ways… the more ways an idea is presented, the more hooks it has… the more likely it is to stick!
A few thoughts on effective connection…
Effective leadership depends largely on how well you present and sell your ideas, and your ability to sell your ideas depends on how well you make connections.
As of today you can now access this blog at www.paulpetersonlive.com
This does not change the access point it just provides an easy more memorable point of access.
This weekend at Mountain Lake Church we had a first… our guest speaker was Shelley Lubben, a former porn star who discovered the love of Jesus!
As I sat and listened I was moved to tears. It is INCREDIBLE what God can do with broken people!
It is amazing how He loves and uses the “castaways” of society.
Shelley gave us an “under the hood” look at the porn industry… it’s sick! Right now she is leading a ministry to help porn actresses exodus with this nasty business.
I sat and listened, again overwhelmed at the grace of God!
Some of you know my story… a high school dropout (at age 14), a pothead, and such a loser that I couldn’t even kill myself (though I tried). But then Jesus showed up… and loved me… and crazy enough, He saw value in me!
Shelley, a porn star… Paul, a pothead… both were written off by many but NEVER by Jesus… NEVER!
I was reading this morning in the Scriptures and found these words that kind of sum up what I’m talking about, “In this man Jesus there is forgiveness for your sins. Everyone who believes in Him is freed from all guilt and declared right with God – something the Jewish law could never do” (Acts 13:38-39 NLT).
Thank you Jesus for not writing us off! No matter what we’ve done, been, seen, or had happen to us… there is forgiveness, love, and life in you! You embrace us at our worst and make us something beautiful and useful. Thank you Jesus.
You’ve heard it too… “The speed of the leader determine the speed of the people.” This is particularly true with regards to attitude.
A couple of quotes that support this line of thinking:
Rudy Guiliani gets to the heart of the effective organization when he says,
“I believed both in having a highly organized system and in subverting it whenever the right idea or situation presents itself.”
