LEADING YOURSELF 1.0
“Play Your Own Piano”
I am pretty sure that you prefer I not to preach to the
choir or tell you what you already have been told time and
time again. So can I begin with a few dangerous assumptions?
I assume that you pray, that you trust God, that you walk by
faith, that you are accountable to someone who can look you in
the eye and ask the tough questions, that you practice a
Sabbath among your other spiritual disciplines and that you
believe that the Bible is really true and that God is truly real.
If you are missing one or two or three of these, what follows
may not be of much help to you. But if most of those are in
place, even in a fragile way, what follows may indeed help you
some in the task of leading yourself.
BE CONTENT
Do you remember Schroeder from the old Charlie Brown
comic strip? He was the one who played the tiny, toy piano
that had about 12 keys on it. Well, here is the straight truth:
when it comes to ministry, some people have more keys on
their piano. Jesus said in the parable of the sower in Mt. 13
that the seed was good and the soil was good but some
produced 30 fold, some 60 and some 100. For whatever
Kingdom reason it is, some people seem to produce more. It is
like they have more keys on their piano.
The answer to that? Be content to play the piano you
were given and leave the outcomes to God. Paul wrote in 2 Cor.
10 that “… when they (read: we!) measure themselves by
themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are
without understanding.” Comparison with others is a trap.
Good self- leadership is finding your security in Christ and
how he has gifted you. Play your own piano.
BE YOURSELF
The poet Oscar Wilde once said: “Be yourself. Everyone
else is taken.” Never more true than in Kingdom work. In the
weeks and months ahead, we will look at what that looks like.
Come on back to find out.