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!