Leadership Daily: "Do you provide God-honoring leadership and point to truth even in tough times?" -Barry Werner

Do you provide God-honoring leadership and point to truth even in tough times? (157-1)

Written by Barry-Werner on January 17th, 2011. Posted in Commitment, Core Truths, Initiative, Jeremiah, Leadership Principles, Old Testament, Persistence, Personal Development, Servant Leadership, Values.

Leaders must cling to their God-given vision even when their team doesn’t comprehend. Read Jeremiah 7:27-28.

Without question the prophet Jeremiah received one of the toughest assignments of any leader in the Bible. God called him to lead a stubborn people, then God informed him in today’s verses that the people would not follow his lead. Jeremiah spent nearly five decades, from 626 BC to 585 BC, urging a rebellious people to repent of their rebellion against God without seeing any significant positive response to his messages. In spite of his frequent discouragement and pain, Jeremiah is a model of a faithful leader who demonstrated endurance in the face of extended opposition. 

Jeremiah was called by God near the mid-point of the reign of King Josiah, the last good king of Judah. Jeremiah’s leadership came at a time of moral, political, and religious decline and ended when the Babylonians captured Jerusalem and exiled the people of Judah to Babylon. Jeremiah was an embattled leader whose personal core values were based on God’s laws and principles, and even though he served a people who did not share his core values he never lost his love or compassion for the people. Jeremiah’s heart did not grow cold despite the calloused hearts of his listeners.

Some of the leadership lessons we will study from the book of Jeremiah:

• When God calls a leader, He will empower that leader.
• Leaders will be criticized and at times must confront those who criticize them.
• Leaders must lead positive change.
• Leaders must hold their team to a standard and be able to determine when the team has drifted from that standard.
• Leaders must always maintain an ability to empathize.
• There is more than one way to communicate truth. Often leaders must find creative, memorable ways to communicate the same truth several times.
• Leaders maintain the vision and stay the course even when others lose vision and drift from the course.

Jeremiah provides an example of a leader who continued to provide leadership and point to truth even in tough times. Like Jeremiah, effective godly leaders learn early to rely on God’s sustaining grace.

Posted via email from Christian Issues Digest