We live in a frenetic culture of performance. We love to prove that we are bigger or faster or quicker than the competition. Our business world thrives on it; our sports is built on it; our lives are saturated by that attitude and motivation for life. If we can prove our worth and strength by showing we are better than others it fuels a sense of self-worth and prestige.Part of this is driven by our sense of independence and freedom. We love to demonstrate our self-sufficiency and our being self-contained. We hate the thought of being needy, weak, having flaws and being dysfunctional. We desperately want to be … okay.

But the greatest landmine undermining the power of Christ working in and through us is this same attitude in us. Not that we are saturated by this in everything we do; we don’t have to be. We only need to be selfish enough to neglect prayer and forget about the Word. We don’t have to be cruel, we just need to be indifferent. We don’t have to be rudely insensitive, only apathetic. We just need to shift our reliance from the Lord to anything else and we have abandoned the idea of “denying self, taking up our cross daily and following Him” – Luke 9:23.

Leadership in God’s kingdom is not like the world; Matthew 20:26-28 makes that clear. Instead of exerting authority and manipulating people God calls us to be slaves of Christ and servants of those around me.  The beginning of all this is complete reliance on Christ and a willingness to lead on our knees – so here is a couple of questions:

1)  How much is your life saturated in God’s Word? Are you hearing it, reading it, studying it, memorizing it or meditating on how you should apply your life to it’s truth?

2) How is your prayer life? Is prayer a simple religious exercise, or are you energized by the power of connecting with the God of the universe?

May we continue to discover complete reliance and dependence on the Lord and may our best leaders lead on their knees.

Pastor Brad