Month: August 2016

The Three Things You Can Control–#3 Effort

As we conclude our brief series on the three things you can control as leaders: our allegiance, our attitude and our effort, we turn today to effort. Once we have determined who or what is going to receive our ultimate allegiance, and once we have determined the kind of attitude with which we are going to approach the situations we face in life, the final matter over which we always have control is our effort. How much effort are you and I going to put forth in the various tasks of life? We’re all familiar with the sport coaches who say that their players give “105%.” That’s statistically impossible. No one can give 105%, since 100% is the best possible effort. The truth is few of us give close to 100% effort in most of the tasks we engage in our lives.

Knowing I was going to be writing this post today, I have been taking an informal poll as I meet them by asking this question, “So far today, if you were to assign a percentage of effort you have put forth in your work, your relationships, and life in general what would it be? The answers I’ve received have been instructive. Most of the responses have been 80-85%. One person told me he had given 50% and another said he had given 9%. I was surprised by the 9% answer, because it came from someone I consider to be quite productive. He explained his answer by saying that his work was mainly sedentary, and he didn’t have to think that much in order to do it well.

What about you? If I asked, “What percentage of effort have you put forth so far today in going about life’s tasks and relationships?” What would you say? I’ve been reflecting on this a great deal in my life recently, because I’ve found myself not taking good care of myself in the area of physical care. I haven’t put much effort into exercise, or even selecting and eating the foods that will be beneficial to me. I did remove caffeine from my diet again a couple of weeks ago, but this past Saturday I succumbed to the temptation of an Almond Joy flavored coffee. It tasted good, but the following day, I experience one more caffeine withdrawal headache.

What does that have to do with controlling effort in my life? Everything! As leaders, we have the opportunity to set the example for others in the various areas of our lives that I wrote about during the Life Management series: rest, prayer, physical care, relationships, study, work and finances, when it comes to the amount of effort we commit. You may think it sounds strange to speak of extending effort in the area of rest, but let’s think about that for a moment. If you and I do not extend effort intentionally to stop our work, play, or whatever it is we’re doing to rest in adequate amounts, we won’t be able to be as effective in any other area of our lives as we could be. That means it does take effort to rest, and doing so is crucial.

In the same way we extend or fail to extend effort in each of the seven areas. When taken together the cumulative 100% effort we could give, makes all the difference in living and leading effectively. Perhaps none of us actually lives any day giving 100% effort, but the more intentional we become in extending effort in these important areas of our lives, the more effective we will become as leaders.

One more important question when considering this matter of effort is, “How do I know when I have given 100%?” The question will always be answered somewhat subjectively. After all, do any of us know our ultimate capacity in each of the seven areas? Would ten minutes of fervent prayer be a 100% effort, or would it be an hour? Would saving an extra $100 this month be 100% effort or would it be giving away an extra $200? At the end of the day only you can answer those questions for you, and only I can answer those questions for me. The key is that as we ask and respond to the questions in each area of our lives, we will become more intentional about extending the maximum amount of effort, and we will become more effective in life and leadership.

Why not take fifteen minutes right now to stop and evaluate your effort in each of the seven areas, and to set a new goal in each area that will push you to exert more effort? As we do that daily, or at least on a weekly basis, we’ll be examining our lives and making them more worth living, at least we will if we also act on those questions and responses. We know by now that the unexamined life is not worth living. That means taking the time to examine where we are and how we plan to move forward in any area, particularly in the area of effort, will make our lives not only more worth living, but also more effective in the living.

Here’s to leading better by examining our effort and extending more of it in the important areas of life–today!

The Three Things You Can Control–#2 Attitude

As we continue our Three Things You Can Control series, those three things being our allegiances, our attitudes and our efforts, today we turn to our attitude. Many years ago John Maxwell wrote a book about attitude. In it he said that our attitude determines our altitude. In other words, how “high” we go in life is dependent on our attitude. That’s because we can’t control what happens to us in life, but we can control what happens in us, how we respond to what happens.

We see this truth all the time when tragedy strikes a family, or a community or a nation. Some respond with fear, despair and desperation, while others respond with courage, hope, and determination. What’s the difference? At the base of it all the difference is attitude. Our allegiances certainly help in determining our attitude, but are also separate from them. I have seen folks who trust Jesus fall apart in certain situations, when others move resolutely forward. Once again, the difference is attitude. When any situation occurs we get to choose the attitude with which we respond.

That is not to say that each of us will always choose the same attitude in every situation, but over time our attitude grows and develops just as we grow and develop physically, emotionally and spiritually. The attitudes we “feed” grow stronger, and the attitudes we ignore grow weaker. That’s precisely why I say we can control our attitudes. For example, let’s say we live in a community that experiences devastating floods, and you and I lose our homes as a result. They are totally destroyed. How would we respond in that situation? Obviously, many variables determine how we would respond, but the three things we would be able to control in the situation would be our allegiance, our attitude and our effort.

If our allegiance was to our material goods, then such a loss would be absolutely devastating. If our attitude was one of despair, because we would lose everything, then we may not put much effort forward to move on with our lives. We may simply sit and grieve. On the other hand if our allegiance was to God in Jesus Christ, we would recognize that while we had lost every “thing” we own, we hadn’t lost anything of ultimate value. I’m not minimizing the inconvenience, the sense of personal devastation and loss, because in the flood we would surely have lost personal mementos of relationships we hold dear that could never be replaced. But at the end of the day our attitude would be one of hope. The reason I say that is because God gives us hope in such situations.

That attitude may not be the first one to surface. I have been through a number of devastating circumstances over the years, both personally and vicariously through the families I have served as a pastor. Depending on the depth of the loss, and the era in my life when the loss occurred, my first attitude may have been anger, or despair. But those have always been replaced by hope, gratitude, determination, and other attitudes that have permitted me to move forward. Even the great prophet, Elijah, succumbed to an attitude of despair when Queen Jezebel told him she was going to kill him. While that may seem rational, he had just experienced the greatest demonstration of God’s presence and power in his life just hours before. We would think Elijah would have heard Jezebel’s claim and laughed, or at the very least have responded with calm confidence that God would protect him.

Instead, Elijah ran. He ran for 40 days, and all that while he asked God to take his life. He forgot that because of his allegiance to the one, true and living God, he could face any threat with the assurance of ultimate victory, even if that victory meant an eternal one after this life ended. Elijah shows us what James told us about him in chapter 5 of his book: Elijah was a man like us. I’ve alway found great comfort in those words. Elijah wasn’t made out of some special genetic material. He was a common, ordinary man like us. He served an extraordinary God. His allegiance is what made him great. The same is true for each of us. As leaders we must always remember who we serve, then we will gain an ability to serve with humility, confidence, assurance and hope regardless of the situation.

So how is your attitude toward life in general and toward difficult times in particular? Do you see life as a long series of unwinnable obstacles, or as an experience set in front of us by God? Are you ready to face this day with confidence and hope, because you know God is leading you as you lead others? Or are you just hoping to get through the day? Whatever attitude you bring to this moment the good news is you can change it or keep it. It’s up to you, because we get to control our attitude.

Here’s to leading better by choosing attitudes that will overcome the obstacles we’ll face-today!

The Three Things You Can Control–#1 Allegiance

On Friday we started a four-part series titled: The Three Things You Can Control. I overviewed those three things on Friday: Our Allegiance, Our Attitude and Our Effort. Today, let’s take a deeper look at what it means that we can control our allegiance. First, some would say, “I don’t have one allegiance, I have many. At a certain level that is most certainly true. For example, I have allegiance to God, to my family, to the United States of America, to New Life Christian Christian ministries and so on. But at the deepest level, we all have one primary allegiance, and that primary allegiance determines how we respond in all our other areas of allegiance.

Jesus stated this clearly nearly 2,000 years ago when He said, “No one can serve two masters. You will love the one and hate the other, or be devoted to one and despise the others. You cannot serve both God and money.” Jesus didn’t say it was challenging to serve two masters or to have two ultimate allegiances, because ultimately we are servants of our ultimate allegiance. He said it is impossible to have two ultimate allegiances. How interesting that nearly 2,000 years ago Jesus saw that the two primary allegiances that would vie for our ultimate allegiance would be God and money.

Two millennia later that is still true. While a handful of folks may hold family as their ultimate allegiance, most people boil it down to whether they are going to pursue God first in their lives or money and material goods. As leaders, our primary allegiance determines everything about how we will go about our leadership. For example, if God is our master, our ultimate allegiance, then we will seek to understand what that means at the deepest level, so we will know how to live out the allegiance. If I am a follower of Jesus Christ, I will understand God quite differently than if I am a Jew, a Muslim, a Buddhist or a Hindu, for example. Jesus revealed God to be personal in a way no one else ever has. After all, He was and is God in the flesh. His teachings, while reflected in other religions, since truth is truth, are quite unique in their characteristics from the way they may be represented in other religions.

The point here is not to debate religious differences, but rather to say that what I believe about my ultimate allegiance will determine how I pursue my life and leadership. Since I follow Jesus, my leadership will always have a servant nature to it. Jesus told His followers that even He, who is the King of kings, and Lord of lords, came not to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. If I am going to lead as a follower of Jesus, then I will think of the needs of those I lead first, because I am their servant as well as their leader.

On the other hand if money is my ultimate allegiance, then I will pursue my life in a different way. The “bottom line” will be my bottom line. I will always be thinking about how I can produce more income, more product, more material goods, and I will count my success or failure in life based on whether I have the most. We may not be that crass about it on the surface, but if our ultimate allegiance is the bottom line we will put things before people, while if Jesus is our bottom line, we will put people before things.

You may be thinking, but what about atheists, who serve no god, and also don’t seem to pursue money? Such folks exist to be sure. Their number is in question, because when a person claims not to believe in God, that person’s ultimate faith is by definition in the material world. Such folks may align themselves with a pursuit of what is best for them, or best for others, or they may not have a particular concern about ultimate allegiances, since they don’t believe in anything ultimate.

My goal here is to help us understand that we have control of only three things in our lives, and the first is our allegiance. We get to decide whether we will devote our lives to God, to our families, to the pursuit of well, or even to pursue nothing as our ultimate allegiance. We can certainly change our allegiances over time, but only when we are intentional about determining our ultimate allegiance and then aligning the rest of our lives to pursue it will we ever be strong leaders. The greatest leaders in human history have had a clear vision of what they made their ultimate allegiance. They pursued it, because they thought it was best for them, and often, because they thought it would be best for everyone else, too.

Once we determine our allegiance and align our lives to its pursuit we can become effective leaders, and only then. People who are drifting through life from one allegiance to another, or without any particular allegiance may well be happy, many are. They won’t be leaders. So, what is it you are seeking to lead? Is it just your own life? Is it your family? Your company? Your church? Your cause? Whatever it is, when you stop and take the time to get crystal clear about your ultimate allegiance, you will be able to align all your subordinate allegiances to pursue that ultimate allegiance and your leadership we become exponentially more effective.

Here’s to leading better by making certain we define our ultimate allegiance and pursue it diligently–today!