“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
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)
From John Scott’s “The Cross”
“Three tell-tale expressions in Luke’s narrative illumine what in the end Pilate did: ‘their shouts prevailed’, ‘Pilate decided to grant their demand’, and he ‘surrendered Jesus to their will’(Luke 23:23–25). Their shouts, their demand, their will: to these Pilate weakly capitulated. He was ‘wanting to release Jesus’(Luke 23:20), but he was also ‘wanting to satisfy the crowd’(Mark 15:15). The crowd won. Why? Because they said to him: ‘If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar’(John 19:12). This clinched it. The choice was between honour and ambition, between principle and expediency. He had already been in trouble with Tiberius Caesar on two or three previous occasions. he could not afford another. Sure, Jesus was innocent. Sure, justice demanded his release. But how could he champion innocence and justice if thereby he denied the will of the people, flouted the nation’s leaders, and above all provoked an uprising, thereby forfeiting the imperial favour? His conscience was drowned by the loud voices of rationalization. He compromised because he was a coward.” — John Stott (pp. 51-52)
From Oswald Sanders’ Spiritual Leadership – Chapter 19
“Only one Leader holds office forever; no successor is needed for Him. The disciples made no move to appoint a replacement for Jesus, tacit evidence that they were conscious of His abiding presence, their living leader and Lord. At times the church has lost a vivid sense of Jesus’presence, but there has never been a panic cry from a leaderless army. The perils and distress of the church weigh deeply on Jesus’heart. “We tell our Lord plainly,”said Martin Luther, “that if He will have His Church then He must look to and maintain and defend it, for we can neither uphold nor protect it; and if we could, then we should become the proudest donkeys under heaven.” Since our Leader conducts His work in the power of an endless life—He is the same yesterday, today, and forever—changes in human leadership should not shake or dismay us.” — J. Oswald Sanders
From Oswald Sanders’ Spiritual Leadership – Chapter 18
“It is a big mistake to assume more duties than we can discharge. There is no virtue in doing more than our fair share of the work. We do well to recognize our limitations. Our Jethros can often discern, better than we can, the impact of all our duties, and we should listen to them. If we break natural law—humans must sleep as well as work, for example—we cannot be exempt from repercussions. If we succumb to human persuasion and take on more than we should, God will accept no responsibility for the outcome.” — J. Oswald Sanders
From John Scott’s ” The Cross”
“But Christian messengers of the good news cannot be silent about the cross. Here is the testimony of the American missionary Samuel M. Zwemer (1867–1952), who laboured in Arabia, edited The Muslim World for forty years, and is sometimes called ‘The Apostle to Islam’: The missionary among Moslems (to whom the Cross of Christ is a stumbling- block and the atonement foolishness) is driven daily to deeper meditation on this mystery of redemption, and to a stronger conviction that here is the very heart of our message and our mission…. If the Cross of Christ is anything to the mind, it is surely everything –the most profound reality and the sublimest mystery. One comes to realize that literally all the wealth and glory of the gospel centres here. The Cross is the pivot as well as the centre of New Testament thought. It is the exclusive mark of the Christian faith, the symbol of Christianity and its cynosure. The more unbelievers deny its crucial character, the more do believers find in it the key to the mysteries of sin and suffering. We rediscover the apostolic emphasis on the Cross when we read the gospel with Moslems. We find that, although the offence of the Cross remains, its magnetic power is irresistible.” – John Stott (p. 41)
From Oswald Sanders’ Spiritual Leadership – Chapter 17
How a leader handles failure (or simply feelings of failure) will set much of the agenda for the future. Peter appeared washed up as a leader after his denial of the Christ, but repentance and love reopened the door of opportunity, and Peter’s leadership touched all the rest of Christendom. “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.”Most Bible characters met with failure, and survived. Even when the failure was immense, those that found leadership again refused to lie in the dust and bemoan their tragedy. In fact, their failure led to a greater conception of God’s grace. They came to know the God of the second chance, and sometimes the third and fourth. The historian James Anthony Froude wrote: “The worth of a man must be measured by his life, not by his failure under a singular and peculiar trial. Peter the apostle, though forewarned, three times denied his Master on the first alarm of danger; yet that Master, who knew his nature in its strength and in its weakness, chose him.” Successful leaders have learned that no failure is final, whether his own failure or someone else’s. No one is perfect, and we cannot be right all the time. Failures and even feelings of inadequacy can provoke humility and serve to remind a leader who is really in charge.
The People we Meet on the Journey to the Cross – Part 4
Today’s sermon at Calvary Chapel:
Riches to Rags – Luke 18:18-30
For the outline click here – The+People+That+We+Meet+on+the+Journey+to+the+Crosspt4
For a pdf of the powerpoint click here – the+People+we+meet+on+the+journey+to+the+cross+-+pt4ed
From “The Cross” by John Stott
John’s commonest designation of Jesus, consonant with the symbolic imagery of the Revelation, is simply ‘the Lamb’. The reason for this title, which is applied to him twenty-eight times throughout the book, has little to do with the meekness of his character (although once his qualities as both ‘Lion’and ‘Lamb’are deliberately contrasted (5:5–6)); it is rather because he has been slain as a sacrificial victim and by his blood has set his people free. In order to grasp the broad perspective from which John views the influence of the Lamb, it may be helpful to divide it into four spheres –salvation, history, worship and eternity. The redeemed people of God (that ‘great multitude that no-one could count’), who are drawn from every nation and language, and stand before God’s throne, specifically attribute their salvation to God and the Lamb. They cry with a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’By a very dramatic figure of speech the robes they are wearing are said to have been ‘washed…and made white in the blood of the Lamb’. In other words, they owe their righteous standing before God entirely to the cross of Christ, through which their sins have been forgiven and their defilement cleansed. Their salvation through Christ is also secure, for not only are their names written in the Lamb’s book of life, but the Lamb’s name is written on their foreheads. In John’s vision, however, the Lamb is more than the Saviour of a countless multitude; he is depicted also as the lord of all history. To begin with, he is seen ‘standing in the centre of the throne’, that is, sharing in the sovereign rule of Almighty God. More than that, the occupant of the throne is holding in his right hand a seven-sealed scroll, which is generally identified as the book of history. At first John ‘wept and wept’because no-one in the universe could open the scroll, or even look inside it. But then at last the Lamb is said to be worthy. He takes the scroll, breaks the seals one by one, and thus (it seems) unfolds history chapter by chapter. It is significant that what has qualified him to assume this role is his cross; for this is the key to history and the redemptive process it inaugurated. Despite their sufferings from war, famine, plague, persecution and other catastrophes, God’s people can yet overcome the devil ‘by the blood of the Lamb’, and are assured that the final victory will be his and theirs, since the Lamb proves to be ‘Lord of lords and King of kings’. Pages 37-38
From Oswald Sanders’ Spiritual Leadership – Chapter 16
A leader must initiate. Some leaders are more gifted at conserving gains than starting new ventures, for maintaining order than generating ardor. The true leader must be venturesome as well as visionary. He must be ready to jump-start as well as hold speed. Paul constantly took calculated risks, always carefully and with much prayer, but always reaching for what lay beyond. The leader must either initiate plans for progress or recognize the worthy plans of others. He must remain in front, giving guidance and direction to those behind. He does not wait for things to happen but makes them happen. He is a self-starter, always on the lookout for improved methods, eager to test new ideas.
