Month: July 2016

Ch-Ch-Changes!

One of the most important qualities of effective leaders, is the ability to address change. Change is a given in life, and the only things that don’t change are dead. While some personalities are more open to change than others, even those of us who like change, generally are more open to changes we consider positive and under our control.

I’ve decided to make a format change to my blog effective today, to see how you all do with change! It’s a minor change, but one I’ve realized is necessary if I’m going to live by my own leadership advice in the area of margin, and also provide you with quality posts over time. Not too many folks post to their blogs seven days a week, 365 days a year. I thought I was going to be one of them. The challenge is my weekends are the fullest time of the week, and Friday is supposed to be my Sabbath. That means if I’m going to have something of value to offer you in every post, I need to stop writing on the weekends, and focus on making Monday-Friday as helpful as possible for you.

I know my readership isn’t high at this moment, but believe the content will help you be and become better leaders over time. That means you’ll be receiving 25o posts per year: 5 posts each week for 50 weeks each year. We’ll rest on the weekends, and two weeks each year. I’m considering getting guest bloggers for the two weeks off each year, so you won’t come here and find nothing. Maybe some of you would consider writing a guest post once or twice a year?

Back to the importance of being able to change in order to be a great leader. Adaptability is one of the most important assets of a leader. While planning is vital, the challenge is that life tends to change our plans and change them often. I’ve been reading a great book Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy Seals LEAD and WIN. The authors make it clear than planning and execution are keys in leading and winning. They also point out that part of planning for them was to anticipate the changes that could happen to their plans. Anticipating change is the best way to lead through change. We can’t always anticipate a particular change, but we can certainly anticipate that there WILL be change.

As noted above, sometimes we see change as positive and at other times as negative. The truth is in a particular moment we can’t always know whether a change is positive or negative. I’ve noticed that many of the changes I would have called negative at the time, have actually defined me as a person. For example, one day many years ago when Kenn, my younger brother and I were at basketball practice at school, he was poked in the eye. The poke resulted in a torn cornea for Kenn. That was certainly a negative and unwelcome change at the moment. Kenn was taken to the hospital and scheduled for surgery the next day.

That night, our pastor and I visited Kenn at the hospital. Before we left, the pastor asked Kenn, “Do you mind if I pray and ask God to heal your eye?” How could you turn down a request like that?

Kenn said, “It couldn’t hurt, right?” More than right! the next morning when the doctor came in and removed the patch from Kenn’s eye to examine it before the operation, the eye was completely healed. The doctor was amazed. Kenn was happy. I was overwhelmed. I didn’t thing God was still in the healing “business.” I thought that was for long ago and far away. I went to our pastor and asked him to explain. After a couple of hours of working our way through the Book of Acts, I was convinced that my perspective of God’s activity through the Holy Spirit being a thing of the past was mistaken. I would soon find how mistaken, as God called me to ministry as an outgrowth of that new-found understanding!

Everyone would agree that Kenn having his cornea torn was a negative experience, and yet as a result of it I ended up discerning God’s call for my entire adult life. That’s amazing. Change is inevitable, and while we may think we know which changes are good for us, being prepared for them when they come, and turning to God in the midst of each one is the best way to discover how He can use any change we experience to advance His work among us.

The next time you experience change whether small or great, consider that God can use it in ways that you may not have considered. Lean into Him and let Him use the change to His glory and your blessing. As you do you will undoubtedly come to see change not only as the inevitable reality it is, but often the door to new opportunities to learn, love and lead in Jesus’ name.

Here’s to leading better by leaning into change–today!

(See you Monday!)

Life Management-Finances/Stewardship

Our final area of life management is finances/stewardship. We already mentioned this area when we talked about margin, but it bears discussing again. As many have pointed out, the Bible speaks about money more than 2,000 times, which would be enough for us to consider it fairly often. That Jesus told us money is the chief rival god in our lives to loving and serving the one, true and living God makes it all the more important for us to address. The key truth about money and every other material resource is everything belongs to God. He created it and He owns it. That’s why we speak of stewardship in the first place when we talk about money. A steward is one who is entrusted to manage another’s resources. In our case, God has entrusted us to manage His assets.

This is a hard reality for many of us to accept. After all, we work hard to earn the money and other assets we have. They sure seem as if they belong to us. When someone tells me everything is theirs and they just can’t understand how it is really God’s, I ask a simple question: Whose will it be in a 100 years? That puts it into perspective for most of us. We get to use the money and other resources we earn for the time we’re here on the planet and then someone else will use them. The Bible reminds us that even the ability to work is a gift from God, so once again we see that everything goes back to God when we look at the matter closely enough.

The key, then, if we’re stewards is to be effective ones. Particularly if we are leaders, we need to set an example in this area for others to follow. The best stewards are generous, faithful, and diligent. You might be thinking, “How does generosity come first, if we’re going to be good stewards? Wouldn’t a good steward preserve as much of the resources as possible?” That would be a good process if God intended for us to keep as much as possible in order to be faithful to Him, but His desire is that we use what He entrusts to us to advance His work in the world, and His eternal Kingdom. When we give first, which is what generous stewards do, it reminds us to hold loosely to “our” resources since they aren’t ours in the first place. After we have given the first portion of what we’ve earned or received to God’s work in the world through the church and other good causes, the Bible teaches us that we are to use the remainder faithfully and diligently to meet our own needs, to provide for our families, to provide a reasonable amount for the future, and to always look for opportunities to do good to others.

Some of us have more natural skill in the areas of diligence when it comes to money and material resources, and the Apostle Paul tells us that some of us have the spiritual gift of giving. All of us are called to faithfulness, though, regardless of our natural inclinations or our spiritual giftedness. In order to be effective stewards we must keep track of what we earn, give, save and spend. As John Maxwell has said, “If you don’t tell your money where to go, you’ll wonder where it went.” A budget or spending plan is crucial to being diligent and faithful stewards of God’s blessings, and even of being generous. After all, if we don’t keep track of how much we earn and spend, we will almost surely have nothing to save or give.

Always remember that money is a dissatisfier, that means it can never bring us satisfaction. We can certainly be dissatisfied if we don’t have enough money to meet our needs, but no amount of money or other material possessions will ever make us truly happy. The sooner we learn these lessons of faithful stewardship, the sooner we will be able to use money as a tool in our lives and our leadership. As it has been said, “Money is a great servant, but a terrible master.”

If you have misused your finances to this point, and find yourself in a great deal of debt, many effective programs are available to help you recover from that. Whether you use Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University, or Joseph Sangl’s I Was Broke, Now I’m Not, or Crown Financial Ministries, the key is to remember that God’s principles regarding money always work, whether you are follower of Jesus or not. It may take more or less time to see them impact your financial bottom line, depending on where you are when you start applying them, but being a generous, faithful and diligent steward is something every person can attain, and a reality that each of us must attain if we are going to be leaders worthy of following.

Here’s to leading better, by becoming better stewards of all that God has entrusted to us–today!

Life Management–Work

As I noted in introducing the concept of Life Management back on July 7, work is not listed sixth out of the seven areas of Life Management, because it’s not important. I list it sixth, because most of us want to address it first. Work is an extremely important part of a leader’s life, some would say it is the main area of leadership. The reason I list it sixth is because we can so easily jump to the topic of work, and forget the first five areas. We must rest, pray, take care of our bodies, build relationships and study if we are going to come to our work in our best possible state.

So here we are. The world often defines us by our work. We often define ourselves by our work. We say, “I’m a teacher,” or “I’m an engineer,” or “I’m a contractor,” or “I’m a _______,” and we fill in the blank with our occupation. The truth is most of us spend or invest a great deal of time at work, but we are not what we do. We are not human doings, but human beings. Who we are is more defined by how we live out the first five areas of life management, and by where we place our primary allegiance.  My primary allegiance is to God in Jesus Christ. Therefore, my first understanding of myself is “I am a follower of Jesus.” What I do is defined in relationship to Him.

I am a pastor. That’s my work. I’m a lead pastor, which means I am the one who started New Life and is responsible for casting her vision to others, and for the overall organization and living out of our life as a church family. Many others work with me in that endeavor. For some it is their full-time work, for others their part-time work, and for most it is a “volunteer” endeavor. In our lives, each of us invests ourselves in a full-time work, or a part-time work, and in various volunteer endeavors. As leaders, we must make our full-time work that which fulfills our “call” in life. The idea of call is a biblical concept and comes from the reality that God extended specific calls to various biblical characters. This became their work. For some that call was a new type of work. David of Bethlehem started out as a shepherd, and then God called him to be a king. For others, their calling was something they grew up and did from the time they were children. Joseph was a carpenter, who became Jesus’ step-father, but he remained a carpenter.

It’s important to know that whether we get paid for our work or not and how much we get paid is often a determining factor in the world’s eyes of whether one’s work is significant. The truth is sometimes the work we do for which we don’t get paid can be more important and significant than the work for which we do get paid. A parent who stays home to rear her or his children, for example, doesn’t get paid, but the work is extremely important. Sometimes, the volunteer work we do carries with it more eternal value than our day jobs. As we weigh the value of our work we must make certain that we use more than our paychecks as the metric of its worth.

Your work will be most meaningful and make the most difference from the frame of reference of your allegiance. If you follow Jesus, for example, your work will be most meaningful when you listen for His call, and do what He leads you to do. I know businessmen who serve Jesus faithfully by leading their businesses, or serving as a vice-president, or as an HR director. I know factory workers who do their work as if they were doing it for the Lord and not just for their bosses. I know teachers who do the same. Any type of work can be offered to the Lord, so long as it is work that contributes to the benefit and welfare of others.

As leaders, we approach our work as we do everything else–with commitment, perseverance, integrity, an eagerness to learn, and an appropriate rhythm of work and rest. God told us we are to work six days and rest one. As I noted when we focused on rest, we often think that rest is a luxury rather than a necessity for our lives. Leaders are often told they lack commitment if they won’t work all the time, or put in five more hours of overtime this week. Indeed, there are times when leaders will work those five more hours, and there are times when rest must be honored. A consistent commitment to our work over rest leads to work becoming the master of our lives. As Jesus reminded us no one can serve two masters, so we must not let work become that in our lives.

Much could be said about work in addition to what we have already said, but I leave us with this: when we have committed our lives to serving God and others through our work, we will make the most lasting impact as people and as leaders. When we filter what we do and why we do it through the lens of our commitment to God, and our desire to benefit others, we will make wise choices when it comes to our work. We will also add value to those around us. Our influence will be used for good, and since leadership is influence that means our leadership will be used for good.

Here’s to leading better, by working more effectively for God and others–today!

Life Management–Study

Perhaps one of my favorite areas of Life Management as a leader is study. I have always loved to learn. Whether it was trying to figure out how to put a puzzle together, how a toy worked, or reading my latest Dr. Seuss book as a child, I wanted more information, and I wanted to know what I could do with it. Perhaps that’s why as an adult I developed these formulas: Information – Application = Information, but Information + Application = Transformation! The end goal of study is not to be the best informed leader around, but to see ourselves and our teams grow and change. The Apostle Paul reminded us not to be conformed or molded to the patterns of this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Therefore, if we’re going to lead we must always be gaining the transformation that comes from the renewing of our minds.

As leaders we must be intentional about the process of study, which as Rick Warren once said is reading with a notebook in hand. While reading is important, reflection is the key to turning our reading (or watching or listening) into transformation. For example, right now I’m reading the book Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy Seals Lead and Win. The book is ideally structured for study and learning, because each section contains a real-life situation from the authors’ time of serving as active duty Navy SEALs in Iraq. Then they draw a principle from the situation as well as a business application for the principle. Typically, they also offer examples from their lives as business consultants for how the principle was applied or NOT applied by businesses with whom they worked. I often use the front and back “white spaces” in books for my initial study notes as I read, noting key quotes and page numbers. Then I return to them after I’ve read the book, and transfer those notes to notes I will use for applying in my own life, teaching other leaders, or as fodder for a leadership post, or book I’m writing.

I’ve found that studying for the sake of personal growth is one of the most important quadrant II activities of my life. Many of us miss out on this opportunity because we “don’t have the time.” As with all quadrant II activities–those that are important, but not urgent–it doesn’t seem that we have the time to do them. After all, they don’t scream for our attention when we don’t. What I’ve found over the years, though, is when I don’t schedule time in my calendar to read and reflect (or watch/listen and reflect) I lose my edge as a leader. While most of the deepest and most profound leadership truths come from the Bible and are simply repeated in different ways in the books we read, podcasts we hear, and videos we watch, I find that the old adage, “repetition is the mother of learning,” to be true in my life. While I read the Bible daily and return to it often for the leadership principles that last, the other input I receive from books, podcasts and videos helps me to see everyday life applications as well.

In reading Extreme Ownership, I have been reminded of one of the most important truths of all by their statement: It isn’t what you preach. It’s what you tolerate. I’m a preacher so that statement caught my attention immediately and really hit home. It’s a succinct way of saying that we can talk all we want about principles and standards, but the behavior we accept is the level of behavior we’re going to get. We can say our company’s motto is excellence, but if we accept any effort an employee puts forward whether strong or weak, weak becomes the standard and excellence goes out the window. As we study whether in books, videos, podcasts, or by life observation, the key is to reflect so we can draw out the principles, the standards, and the repeatable processes that will make us and those we lead people of greater integrity and effectiveness across the spectrum of life management and across the spectrum of culture and behavior, whether in our families, workplaces, or whatever environment it is that we are leading at the time.

Study is a building block for every area of life management, as well as for every growing leader. Unless we are learning and growing ourselves we can’t expect our teams to be growing, because it isn’t what we preach. It’s what we tolerate! We must set the standard of lifelong study and learning AND application in order to continue to be transformed ourselves, and in order to see those around us continue to grow and develop. As Bill Hybels has often said, “The speed of the leader, the speed of the team.” Nowhere is this truer than when it comes to study and application in our lives.

Here’s to leading better, but study consistently and effectively–today and into the future!

 

Life Management–Relationships

A leader’s relationships are one of the most significant and important areas of his or her life. As you would expect, I believe the most significant and important relationship any of us have is our relationship with God through Jesus Christ in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Since I follow Jesus that relationship must be solid and growing in order for me to lead anyone else. As that relationship is solid and growing, I become more filled with the Holy Spirit and demonstrate the “fruit” He gives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control more fully and more effectively. Those traits are vital for effective leadership. When I am impatient, or undisciplined that impacts my leadership in negative ways. When I demonstrate the nine aspects of the fruit of the Spirit, my relationships, and thus my leadership with those around me, grows more and more effective. I could say much more about that, but let that suffice for this post.

Once my relationship with God is on solid ground, I must make certain that I am on solid footing with–myself. You may not have expected me to write that, but Jesus told us to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves. If you and I are going to have healthy and effective relationships with others, we must have healthy self-love. I am not talking about self-esteem, or thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought. I am talking about understanding that we are infinitely valuable to God, which makes us infinitely valuable. It means knowing that despite our hurts, hang-ups and habits that tend to derail us from living healthy and growing relationships with God and others, we are moving forward as human beings, because we know our worth. We all have our deficiencies, and that is why our relationship with God is so important: Jesus died to pay the penalty for our sins and to overcome all our deficiencies. If we do not have appropriate self-love, we will not build deep, healthy and meaningful relationships with others.

Building deep, healthy and meaningful relationship with others takes time, effort and a belief that such relationships are a major priority in our lives. While nearly everyone would say that relationships are important, building relationships is primarily a quadrant II activity, that is an activity that is important but not urgent. Yesterday, Nancy and I invested the afternoon and early evening with a couple with whom we want to build a deeper relationship. We were together for nearly seven hours. The four of us could have spent or invested those hours far differently, but because we invested them together our relationship grew significantly. All relationships need both a QUANTIFY of time and QUALITY time in order to grow. We have fostered the myth of quality time in this culture, which contends that if we spend small snippets of quality time we can foster deep, abiding, healthy relationships. The truth is quality time is a product of quantities of time. Woody Allen once said, “90% of life is just showing up.” I don’t know exactly what he meant by that, but I take it to mean that when we “keep showing up,” whether at work or in our relationships life grows and develops. Consistency and persistence are vital in developing relationships.

Another key truth about relationships is: I cannot be everyone’s best friend. Some contend that we need to be “fair” in our relationships and invest equal amounts of time with others. Jesus is our example when it comes to relationship building and “sharing” time. He invested time in thousands of people during His brief ministry, but He focused time in a 100 or so of them, devoted time to twelve “disciples”, and invested particularly in three of them. If we’re married, we need to invest more time with our spouses than with anyone else in relationship development. Many assume that if we’re in love our relationships will grow “automatically.” They don’t. Every relationship needs investments of time, love, truth, grace and more in order to grow. If we have children who are still under our influence we must invest time in them. Then come our work or school relationships, our friendships, those we have made conscience choices to mentor or receive mentorship from, and even acquaintances. We will not spend and invest the same amount of time with each, nor ought we to do so. As with all matters of life management we must decide and then make commitments in order to grow.

I would encourage you to take some time today to sit down and ask this question: Who are the most important people in my life right now? As you respond, write down their names. Then ask yourself: How much time am I investing in growing these relationships? Is it enough? How can I be intentional about growing these relationships? As you respond to these questions it may well raise more questions. After all, leading isn’t always about having all the answers, but about raising the right questions, then addressing them with increasing intentionality. The time you invest in deepening your relationships with God and others will increase your capacity for leading in ways that few other things you can do will.

Here’s to leading better by investing time in people–today!

Life Management–Physical Care

When I first developed the seven areas of life management, I decided to list physical care third, not because it is more important than relationships or study, but because it is so often disregarded by Americans, whether we’re leaders or not. Perhaps nothing is more discussed and less done than caring for our bodies through diet and exercise. When I first commented on physical care, diet and exercise were the sole focus. I have since added addictive behaviors and television viewing as part of physical care, because so many of us have challenges in those areas as well when it comes to taking care our bodies. Let’s take a look at each of those areas now.

Americans talk a great deal about exercise. In fact if we exercised as much as we talked about it, we’d all be in great physical condition. Every January  we buy gym memberships, exercise equipment and videos and some of us even start exercising as part of New Year’s resolutions to get in shape. For some, that’s as far as the physical conditioning goes. For others, we start the program, but for most it never becomes a habit. We work out for a while, and then we give up, or we get bored, or we get injured, and that’s that. We gave it a try, but that’s it.

The key when it comes to every area of physical care is to move beyond trying to training. The Apostle Paul reminded Timothy 2,000 years ago that physical TRAINING is of some benefit. Training is an ongoing, intentional process that gives us the ability to accomplish something over time that we can’t do today. Trying is making an attempt, giving it the “old college try.” An extreme example of the difference between trying and training is: if you and I decided to try to run a marathon–twenty-six miles, 385 yards–right now, most of us wouldn’t make it a mile. Some would get two, or four, or perhaps six and that would be it. But, if we would train for twenty weeks, any of us who are in average physical health could start and complete a marathon. I know, because I did that.

Over the years I have gone thorough cycles of training and then getting bored. During the cycles of training I got ready for and ran a marathon, swam a mile a day six days a week, completed P90X twice, PR0X2, and P90X3. Consistency over time is the key to training in every area of life, but particularly when it comes to exercise. Depending on our age, interests and general health, the type and amount of exercise we need will vary, but the key is to train rather than try.

When it comes to diet the challenge is to be consistent in eating what is good for us. There are many types of eating plans on the market today. Each tells us they are more “natural,” more “healthy,” and gain better results than the others. We live in a culture that can market anything to seem like it’s good for us, and one that offers INSTANT results for just about everything. There is no instant eating plan or pill that will bring us health. As with exercise, consistency over time is the key to good health in the area of physical care. At the end of the day eating well and exercising regularly contribute to good overall health and weight. I’m not a medical doctor, but I know from decades of personal experience that eating well and exercising regularly lead to the most lasting results. If you’re 50 years old or older I recommend a book titled Younger Next Year as a great practical guide for taking better care of yourself and feeling better into your sixties, seventies and eighties. It was written by a lawyer and a medical doctor who have discovered what I have said: exercise and eating well, combined with positive relationships and pursuing meaning goals contribute to better overall health.

Addictive behaviors disrupt the physical, social, emotional and spiritual arenas of many people’s lives. In particular, addition to alcohol and other drugs derails countless people’s lives. Having led a Bible study at a halfway house for those in recovery from such addictions for the past six years, I have realized that while many factors contribute to these addictions one factor is prominent: a desire to feel good in the moment. People consume alcohol and other drugs because they work–until they don’t. Whether the drug is consumed to fit in, feel good, forget pain, or because it was part of one’s upbringing, at first it does what it was intended to do. Then over time the drug takes over the physical and emotional systems of the drug taker.

While the debate about whether abstinence or moderation is the solution to such addictions, this much is sure: one cannot become addicted to a substance one never ingests into one’s body. I have found that abstinence is the better option for me, because I am an “all in” kind of personality. You may find that moderation is a viable option for you. The key is not to let alcohol or any other drug become the “solution” to your problems, because they are NOT the solution.

Finally, I list television watching as a part of physical care, because so many of us “numb out” in front of a tv set at the end of our days or at other times. Television isn’t evil any more than alcohol or food is evil. Each has its place. The challenge with television for many is that it becomes a default mode for free time. The more time we spend in front of a television set, the less time we invest in quadrant II activities: reading, prayer, exercise, relationship-building, etc… Nancy and I have found that the less time we spend watching television the more effective the other areas of our lives become. We have only had cable for a couple of years in our entire married life, because we know that the more options we have, the more likely we are to mindlessly surf through the channels to find something to watch–and not having cable helps in the area of finances, too.

Physical is so crucial to our overall well-being, because when we are physically healthy we are more likely to pursue the other six areas more effectively. I haven’t been emphasizing this area as much as I need to over the past couple of months and I ‘m feeling it in every area of my life. I know the solution is INTENTIONALITY. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” I urge you to take some time today to reflect on where you are in each of these areas of physical care and then determine what you are going to do to TRAIN to improve in each area if you need to make changes. Remember that nothing happens instantly in this area, but over several months you can establish new patterns, or reestablish healthy habits, and doing so will pay dividends for the rest of your life!

Here’s to leading better, by taking better care of yourself–today and for the rest of the days ahead!

Life Management–Prayer

If you are a follower of Jesus and you’re thinking of Life Management, you would most likely think of prayer as the first in a list of seven areas to manage. No argument from me. As I mentioned yesterday, the only reason rest came first in my list, is because unless we rest we won’t do the rest.

I’m coming off a two-day vacation I took in Ohio to celebrate my older brother Tom’s birthday. The time gave me a much needed rest after an extremely full time at New Life with the preparation for and execution of the fifteenth anniversary celebrations. On the second morning I woke up early feeling rested. That’s a great sign. As I noted yesterday when we need an alarm clock to wake up it’s a sign that we’re sleep deprived. As I was lying in bed, knowing that I was the only one in the house who was awake, my natural response was to pray.

I schedule most of my days to start in prayer, but it was good to know that when I had a “day off,” a day without a schedule my natural response was to wake up early and pray. That only happened because I was rested, and because my relationship with God has grown to the point that prayer has become my “default” mode when I have free time, or face challenges, or when I am feeling blessed and want to say, “Thank You” to God for those blessings. The point here, though, is because I started with rest, I was ready to pray.

Prayer ought to become more and more a natural part of leaders’ lives as we grow older, and as we mature. Since God created us, redeemed us and sustains us, the more aware of those realities we become, the more natural it becomes for us to pause and relate with Him. I have found over the years, that the more intentional I am about prayer, the more likely it is that even my unintentional moments will include prayer. By that I mean when I schedule prayer into my daily routine, starting the day with prayer, asking God for guidance before I start to write a weekend message, and taking time to thank Him intentionally before meals and to pray with Nancy before we go to sleep, the rest of the day is filled with natural moments–and sometimes nearly sub-conscious moments–of prayer as well.

The Apostle Paul reminded the believers in the Thessalonian church to pray without ceasing. That becomes more and more a reality as we grow in our relationship with God, in and through Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit. After all, every healthy relationship grows when meaningful communication is central to it.

Just a brief word about the process of prayer. One of the keys for me in growing in the area of prayer in my life has been to remember that prayer is both talking to God–which is more natural for most of us–and LISTENING to and for His responses. That part of prayer is much less likely to be natural for most of us. My tendency in a time of need, for example, is to ask God for His input, help, or power, but then to start immediately to attempt to solve the problem or overcome the obstacle myself. There’s nothing wrong with doing our part when it comes to solving the problems and overcoming the obstacles in life. God expects that. We find a clear statement of that truth in Philippians 2:12-13.

But the second half of those verses reminds us that God works within us to will and to work for His good pleasure. That’s God’s part, the part we can’t do. When we pray we must wait and listen. If we get an immediate response that’s great. When we don’t, it’s important to continue to keep ourselves open to God’s response throughout the day, week, or whatever period of time we’re going through the problem or obstacle.

Henry Blackaby made a powerful observation about the way God communicates with us in his book Experiencing God. Blackaby wrote that God communicates with us through four primary means: The Bible (His written word); through prayer as the Holy Spirit responds to our prayers; through circumstances, when we pray for a specific situation and the ensuing circumstance or circumstances in our lives lines up as a response to it; and through other believers, when someone comes to us and offers us wise advice as we’re going through a problem, or even comes to us and tells us that God has told them something that is for us.

Blackaby pointed out that each of the four means God uses to speak to us is in a descending order of probability. After all, when we read the Bible we know it’s God’s word, but sometimes when we “hear” God’s voice in prayer, it may be God, or it may be our desires speaking to us. In the same way a circumstance may simply be a circumstance and not God’s word to us. Finally, people will occasionally play the “God told me” card to get us to do what they want us to do. This can be particularly true for those of us who serve as pastors. What better way to get the pastor to agree with my position than to tell him or her that God told me my position was what He wants to have done in the church?

Making time in our lives for intentional prayer is vital to developing this area of our lives, as is the increasing process of including God in our daily conversations whether self-talk or conversations we have with others. Indeed, prayer isn’t just one area of Life Management out of seven, but rather a vital part of every growing leader’s life.

As we reminded ourselves in a recent post, the unexamined life is not worth living, so take some time right now to ask yourself what part, if any, prayer plays in your schedule and in your day? Whatever the response, remember that a life well-managed will include an increasing awareness of God’s guidance and leadership, which means an increasing intentionality and participation in prayer.

Here’s to leading better by talking and listening to God–today!

Life Management–Rest

Most American leaders pride ourselves in getting as much done as we possibly can. That often means not getting enough rest. By nature, I’m in this group. I remember once when I was a teenager, and I was keeping an extremely hectic schedule. My Mom said, “You can’t burn the candle at both ends.”

Without hesitation I replied, “It depends how long the candle is!” In other words, “Don’t worry, Mom. I have this. My candle is longer than other people’s and I have so much to do that I can’t worry about it anyway.”

Many years later I heard Pastor Rick Warren say, “Those who burn the candle at both ends aren’t as bright as they think they are.” Whoa. That caught my attention. Pastor Rick wasn’t just making a catchy statement. He was dispensing wisdom that’s backed up by the Bible, the colloquial sayings of famous Americans, and science. We need rest. In fact, the reason I put rest first in the list of the seven areas of life management is that without rest we won’t be able to do the rest well.

As I considered the idea of life management and started reflecting on what would be included in a well-managed life, I was living one of those times when I wasn’t getting enough rest. I never woke up without an alarm (which is a sign of sleep deprivation, by the way–if you need an alarm to wake up each day), and I would often start dragging by the middle of the afternoon. As I thought about that something came to my mind that I had never considered before: When God created the universe He started at night.  What do I mean? The Genesis 1 account of creation tells us at the end of each day of creation, “There was evening and morning day ____.” (The blank is filled with the number of the corresponding day.” Why does the day start at night? Why do Jewish days start in the evening to this day? I don’t know the biblical answer to that question, and am not sure there is one. I thought of a practical answer: We often think life centers around us, so of course the day “starts” when we wake up–in the morning. But life actually centers around God. He is always awake. Could it be that He ordered the days with evening first so we would START with rest, and then wake up in the “middle” of the day, and join Him in His work?

Whether that’s the case, I have operated with that concept and it helps me in a couple important ways: 1) it reminds me that life centers on God, not me. 2) It reminds me that rest comes before activity. Yes, it seems that rest comes after activity if I’m self-focused and see the day starting when I wake up, but if I remember that I started the day with rest, and then I join God in His work, it helps me to recognize that my contribution is important but not nearly as important as God’s. It helps me to remember who I am and whose I am.

When it comes to rest, I am learning that not only do I need to start each day with rest (science tells us the average adult needs 7-9 hours of sleep each night), but that in order to function as well as I can when I’m awake, cheating rest is unwise.  In addition, to getting enough sleep, rest includes taking time to stop and reflect on who we are and whose we are daily, weekly and annually.  We talked about the first hour of the day in a recent post, and we could say that as we invest the first hour of the day in prayer and planning we are resting in God, and determining His plan and purpose for our lives. In addition to that daily time, God ordered that we would exercise Sabbath on a weekly basis, that is we work six days and rest one. On the one we rest, we stop our work, and reflect on Him. This includes worship, and renewing our relationship with God and others. The rhythm of working six days and resting one is good for us, since God established it. Jesus reminded us that the Sabbath is not a rigid, religious observance, but rather a blessing from God.

Finally, I have added a week each year, when I get away to pray, reflect, read and plan. I have done this for two years in a row, and while I am an extreme extrovert for whom the time is a great challenge, I have gained so much from making the commitment to get away and be with God. To be honest the first year was much more “exciting” than this year. Last year, it seemed that God spoke to me throughout the week in clear and compelling ways. This year, it was more a time of rest and reflection, but it cleared my mind and helped me to plan the year ahead much more intentionally than I am able to do with just a daily or even weekly time of reflection.

Your schedule may not permit the week of rest once each year, but getting enough rest each day is so important for long-term physical, emotional and spiritual health. I hope you’ll take some time today to reflect on how your are doing in the area of rest, and to make any necessary adjustments to giving it the priority AND time it deserves in your life. Rested leaders are much more effective leaders over the long haul.

Here’s to leading better by getting enough rest–today!

Life Management

Back in 2008, I was reflecting on how I could improve my leadership in every area of my life. I thought specifically of how I could become a better self-leader, so that I could become a better husband and dad, and a better pastor. As I was praying and reflecting on this matter, I realized that for me the concept of “time management” was too narrow. I needed to do more than manage my time. I needed to manage my life. Thus, I came up with the idea of “life management.” I realized that if I managed my life in key areas, life management would form the basis of effective leadership in all areas of my life. As I prayed and reflected on the matter, seven areas of life management came to me: rest, prayer, physical care, relationships, study, work and finances. (Of course you may come up with more or less areas as you consider your life and the need to manage yourself in order to become a more effective leader.) These seven areas have been extremely helpful to me and others with whom I’ve shared them in the past years in becoming more effective in caring for ourselves, and thus becoming more effective leaders.

Over the next week, we are going to invest a post on each of the seven areas of life management, but today, I want to say a little more about the importance of life management. If we don’t invest the time and effort necessary to manage our lives, everyone else will. We all recognize that we live in a media saturated culture. If we don’t plan our lives the sheer volume (both in the sense of loudness, and number) of those media messages will overwhelm us. I have heard various numbers as to how many media messages we are exposed to each day, but suffice it to say we receive thousands of messages through our phones, tvs, radios, computers, billboards, mail, and other avenues each day. They offer us “solutions” for every problem, challenge and opportunity we face. Unless, we have a filter for sorting out what we will permit into our minds, hearts and lives, we will drift through life much like a log drifting down a stream. When we pause to consider life management and to implement the seven areas we’ll be examining in the week ahead effectively, we will become much better at determining which direction we want to “float” through life, whether downstream or upstream, or whether we simply need to stay in one place for a while.

In addition to all those media messages, people are constantly asking us to  do something for them or with them. While the people include our families, our bosses and coworkers, or our classmates at school, they also include strangers who have access to us through the multiple media venues mentioned in the previous paragraph. Unless we know what we are doing in a given day, because we are managing our lives, someone else has a wonderful plan for us. While we may well want to do what others are offering us, or in some case we may even be required to do what they are asking us because of their role in our lives, to the degree that we determine when we say yes and no, we will be effective life managers and leaders. That takes intentionality.

My hope for the coming week is that you will consider the seven areas of life management, and ask yourself, “What am I doing to be proactive in each area?” As you reflect on your answers to that question in each area, I hope you will take the time to plan and pray about any changes you need to make. (You may want to consider making your reading and reflecting on these posts part of your first hour activity for each day in the week ahead.) You may find that you want to add additional areas or combine one or more of the ones I offer to your life management plan. The key is to invest the time to address each area and to consider whether you are effective right now in that area, or whether you need to focus more time, energy and commitment on it.

You may have noticed that my posts play off of each other. In order to be effective life managers, we must invest the first hour (or some hour) of our day in planning and prayer. (That was the focus of the July 6, 2016) post.  We will certainly be examining our lives. (That was the focus of the July 5, 2016 post.) We will develop margin in our lives. (The focus of the July 1 & 2, 2016 posts.) All of this involves moving beyond the tyranny of the urgent. (The focus of the June 23, 2016 post.) Leadership is not one action. It is a life filled with many intentional actions all geared to helping us influence others for good. After all, as John Maxwell said many years ago, “Leadership is influence, nothing more nothing less.” When our lives are planned, managed and lived well we may influence others for their good. I look forward to sharing what I’ve been learning about life management in the seven areas over the week ahead. I pray they will help you to become better leaders in every arena of your lives.

Here’s to leading better, by managing your life more effectively–today!

The First Hour Of The Day

What do you do with the first waking hour of your day? Do you just try to get awake? Do you pray? Study (God’s word or anything else)? Exercise? Plan? If you study the lives of folks who have lead or are leading well in any area of life: business, politics, faith, or relationships, you find a common thread among most of them: they start the day strong. That start includes planning, prayer, and physical care. (I’m not generally an alliteration person, but it seemed to fit in this case.)

Planning first gives us the opportunity to consider what is most important in the short term: today and this week, and in the long term: this month and beyond. Steven Covey referred to it as “sharpening the saw.” I like this image, because I saw it put into action literally during my years working as a carpenter. Frank Fairman, my immediate boss during that time, always sat down at the start of each day and sharpened the blades on the circular saws we would be using that day. It would take about fifteen minutes, and he would always say that we would save much more than that during the day as we cut boards, because the saws would cut cleaner, faster and straighter. Without a doubt, when we start the day with planning, our days will be more effective. Even when those unexpected interruptions come, and perhaps particularly when they come, having taken the time to plan–and include margin–will make a major difference in our ability to handle and overcome them, and in living days that seem “cleaner, faster and straighter.”

Whether we plan then pray or pray then plan, the two actions go together for those of us who lead by following Jesus first. Prayer either guides our planning, or it takes what we’ve planned and filters it through the lens of God’s perspective. Either way it confirms or modifies what is truly important in our lives, and reminds us that if what we are planning to do is going to have ultimate significance it needs to flow from God’s guidance in our lives, rather than simply our own wisdom. When my life seems to be frazzled or disorganized, or just not as effective as I know it can be, I always pause and ask, “Am I praying and planning?” Generally, either one or both of those aspects of my life is out of alignment at those moments, and I need to put them back into the first hour of my days.

Physical care is one of those aspects of life that many consider a “luxury,” for which they don’t have time.  We say, “I’d exercise if I had time, but who has time for that?” Or “I know I need to eat better, but I don’t have time to PLAN what I eat.” Most of us have heard the saying, “Why is there never enough time to do it right, but always enough time to do it over?” The question applies both to the matter of what we do with the first hour of the day, and with whether we exercise physical care in our lives or we don’t. Planning and prayer ensure not only that we will be more likely to do things right, but that we do the right things in the first place. The aspects of physical care I mentioned: exercise and eating well, are things we either do right, or we will eventually “do over” in the sense of needing to lose weight, take medication, etc… In my experience, when I invest time at the start of the day to exercise (either before or after I plan and pray), and at the start of the week to plan what I’m going to eat (and do this with Nancy) my overall life is much healthier.

You may be thinking: That all sounds like a lot of work! Yes, it is. But as we’ve been saying all along leading is work. It’s hard to be effective leaders and will cost us making great efforts to be get there. But the cost of being ineffective leaders is far great for our families, our businesses, our churches, or whatever area of life we lead. Self-leadership is the beginning of all effective leadership. That’s why the first hour of the day is so important!

Here’s to leading better, starting with the first hour of the day–today!