Lead With Your Life

1 Tim 4:16  Keep a firm grasp on both your character and your teaching. Don't be diverted. Just keep at it. Both you and those who hear you will experience salvation.

One of the most difficult things for any leader is to live a life without any errors or mistakes. Paul is writing to Timothy and states to him, in order to make a real impact on those your teaching, we must live what we preach.

Paul himself states his own struggles in Romans 7:15 NIV   "I really don't understand myself, I want to do what is right, but I don't do it, Instead I do what I hate." There will always be within each of us a war within our flesh. There is only one man who has a perfect record and that is the Jesus Christ.

Like you, I am very thankful for God's abundant grace and mercy. The mercies of the Lord are new each and every morning. Many have never stepped up to lead because they have allowed Hell to beat them up with their past. WAKE UP, there is life beyond your blunders and mistakes.

There is a true story of a football player that picked up a fumble and ran the ball in the wrong direction. He came within a couple of yards of scoring for the other team, but one of his buddies ran him down and tackled him prior to his actions.

He was so ashamed of what he had done in front of thousands of fans, at half-time he heard the coach say, "The team who started the first half will also start the second half." The player said "coach there is no way I can go back out there and play" The coach said "get up, your going to play the greatest second half you have ever played." You know what, he did.

God is the one that picks each of us up with our blunders and errors. Now that we have settled that there are no perfect people. We must also realize that in order to lead, we must strive to walk right, to live right, to talk right, to act right, to lead right. We must learn from our taking the ball in the wrong direction.

The only way to be an effective Mom or Dad is to lead with our example. It would be very hard to convince your son to get up and go to church and worship the Lord on Sundays, if you yourself are spending your time on the river fishing each Sunday, or working in the yard while you put them on a bus to go to worship.

Paul is telling Timothy to lead by example. Teach believers with your life: by word, by demeanor, by love, by faith, by integrity.

God sets the bar high for each of us to live to the best of our ability. I truly believe that God puts within each of His children an incredible desire to be like Christ.

If we are to be effective in our leading, we must live the life. We must lead and teach with transparency. Often I have shared with our people my own blunders and mistakes. I don't believe that people can relate to someone who has never has their own struggles.

Come on get real, take the mask off. Look at the word of God and you will see that within every leader in the word of God, blunder after blunder. Thank God perfection was not  a prerequisite for credentials to be used by God.

Let's step it up in leading by example. To be effective we must grow from our blunders and our fleshly ways, and press on to the mark and the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.