“Leadership training cannot be done on a mass scale. It requires patient, careful instruction and prayerful, personal guidance over a considerable time. “Disciples are not manufactured wholesale. They are produced one by one, because someone has taken the pains to discipline, to instruct and enlighten, to nurture and train one that is younger.”When a person is really marked out for leadership, God will see that that person receives the necessary disciplines for effective service. When God wants to drill a man And thrill a man And skill a man, When God wants to mold a man To play the noblest part; When He yearns with all His heart To create so great and bold a man That all the world shall be amazed, Watch His methods, watch His ways! How He ruthlessly perfects Whom He royally elects! How He hammers him and hurts him, And with mighty blows converts him Into trial shapes of clay which Only God understands; While his tortured heart is crying And he lifts beseeching hands! How He bends but never breaks When his good He undertakes; How He uses whom He chooses And with every purpose fuses him; By every act induces him To try His splendour out—God knows what He’s about!” — Author unknown
Day: March 27, 2015
From John Stotts’ “The Cross””
“In Matthew’s words, ‘He knew it was out of envy that they had handed Jesus over to him’.There is no reason to question Pilate’s assessment. He was a shrewd judge of human character. Besides, the evangelists appear, by recording his judgment, to endorse it. Envy! Envy is the reverse side of a coin called vanity. Nobody is ever envious of others who is not first proud of himself. And the Jewish leaders were proud, racially, nationally, religiously and morally proud. They were proud of their nation’s long history of a special relationship with God, proud of their own leadership role in this nation, and above all proud of their authority. Their contest with Jesus was essentially an authority struggle. For he challenged their authority, while at the same time possessing himself an authority which they manifestly lacked. When they came to him with their probing questions, ‘By what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you authority to do this?’(Mark 11:28), they thought they had nailed him. But instead they found themselves nailed by his counter-question: ‘John’s baptism –was it from heaven, or from men? Tell me!’(v. 30). They were trapped. They could not answer ‘from heaven’or he would want to know why they did not believe him. Nor could they answer ‘from men’, because they feared the people who were convinced that John was a true prophet. So they gave no reply. Their prevarication was a symptom of their insincerity. If they could not face the challenge of John’s authority, they certainly could not face the challenge of Christ’s. He claimed authority to teach about God, to drive out demons, to forgive sins, to judge the world. In all this he was utterly unlike them, for the only authority they knew was an appeal to other authorities. Besides, there was a self-evident genuineness about his authority. It was real, effortless, transparent, from God.” — John Stott (pp. 53-54)
nycshepherd.com 