Word of the Day (10-28-11)

Good Morning Everyone

Today is Friday October 28, 2011

The word of the day comes from Joshua 1:3-5 New International Version (NIV)

³ I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. ⁴ Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates—all the Hittite country—to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. ⁵ No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.


My Interpretation

2-     God’s Promise

***You Are Going to Go Deeper in God***

Reflect on the training you received from your Moses. The reason that God has chosen you for to move up in leadership is because you have received training from the man/woman of God who previously walked in God’s ways and had access to God. The knowledge that you received was not by mistake. The time and preparation put in was not in vain. The things that seemed tedious or minute, the background things that were done should not be devalued. That is a good place to take a look at this quote taken from John C. Maxwell “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.” There is an old saying: champions don’t become champions in the ring- they are merely recognized there. If you want to see where someone develops into a champion, look at his daily routine. Former heavyweight champ Joe Frazier stated, “You can map out a fight plan or a life plan. But when the action starts, you’re down to your reflexes. That’s where your road work shows. If you cheated on that in the dark of the morning, you’re getting found out now under the bright lights”. Boxing is a good analogy for leadership development because it is all about daily preparation. Even a person with natural talent has to prepare and train to become successful. 

You have to study to show yourself approved. The same training, the same good study habits and methods that your Moses used, you want to use, continue and enhance for everyone that you are in a leadership role over. 2 Timothy 2:15 Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. We don’t want to disregard what was taught but what we need to do is see what was done by our predecessor. Look at the good and bad of how they led and make our choices accordingly based on that. Sometimes we can be quick to want to “move the cheese” and in the process, the principles we lose. The principle needs to be that we are studiers of God’s Word. We are continually in God’s Word. We are continually hearing from God. There are times (I am guilty of it as well) where we don’t read like we should, study like we should, pray like we should and we know those times. We know when we fall in that trap. But we also have to know when the Holy Spirit is urging us to get back on track. When the Holy Spirit is urging us to pick up our bible and look at the word. We know when the Holy Spirit is trying to ingrain scripture in us. We have to be what we want others to become. Meaning, I can’t want and expect you to study and read and I won’t put forth that effort. It doesn’t work that way. I have to lead by example. People do as you do, not as you say. So if I want you to study one hour, I need to study 2 hrs because remember if we are doing the same thing, why do I follow you? I follow those who I see something in them and recognize that I don’t possess but want to have.

Discipline yourself to obey God and deny flesh. This is a tough one. Cause the flesh wants what the flesh wants but we have to rise above our desires and our own selfishness (cause that is really what sin is…Showing I Need). It is really when we start putting our own needs and our own wants and our own desires above God, family, etc that we fall into sin. I want what I want regardless of the consequences, regardless of who I hurt, it has to be all about me. (Look at Romans 7 & 1 Corinthians 9:27). Every time and  I mean every time we take this road (you and I…I’m right there with you struggling with my own flesh and what it wants) we will wind up hurting our relationship with God, delaying our purpose in God, potentially destroying our relationships with those closest to us and eventually push those we are entrusted to lead further away from where they are supposed to be if they follow us in our sin. The ends don’t justify the means.

Have a wonderful, blessed, productive, stress free day!