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" Reaching The Harvest One Person At A Time "
International Ministries of Last Call, Inc
8311 N E Zac Lentz Parkway Unit
Victoria, TX 77904
ph: 601 324 1240
Psalm 51:10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Father since I fall short so many times, I need you to renew my desires daily to be a servant and a leader. Help me take time out of a busy day to spend time so that I may draw near to you for strength for myself as well as strength to serve others with Great Love, Humility, and Patience.
We’re going to begin this second series with a powerful revelation from the Lord:
Haggai 1:3-11
Then came the word of the Lord by Haggai the prophet saying: “Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses, and this house lie waste?
Now, therefore thus saith the Lord of host: Consider your ways.
Ye have sown much, and bring in little.
Ye eat, but ye have not enough:
Ye drink, but are not filled with drink:
Ye clothe you, but there is none warm:
And he that earneth wages, earneth wages to put into a bag with holes.
Thus saith the Lord of hosts: “ Consider your ways.
Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house, and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the Lord.
Ye looked for much, and lo it came to little, and when ye brought it home I did blow upon it. Why? Saith the Lord of hosts. Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man to his own house.
Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit. And I called for a drought upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the corn and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men and upon cattle, and upon all the labour of the hands.
Here in this scripture God is bringing judgment on His children because they have left His house in ruins…now I want you to look at this a different way for just a moment. The bible plainly teaches us that we are the temple of God.
Paul says; know ye not that you are the temple of the Holy Ghost…Now let me ask you this question, what kind of temple are you? Take some time and really think about that question…because in the first series I told you the first thing we would do is look inward, search our heart, our ways and our motives…now lets start by asking ourselves this question, as the temple of God, what do you allow inside your temple? How well do we guard and protect what our eyes see, our ears hear, and what envelopes the atmosphere of where we spend most of our time? The world today is full of demonic movies and t.v. shows, it’s the norm to watch t.v. shows full of sex and violence, cursing and pornography… are these the kinds of things we would indulge in if Jesus Himself were sitting in our house?
Let me ask you again, What kind of Temple are you for the Lord Jesus Christ?
Are we guarding our temple from the magnitude of demonic forces that have infiltrated our heart and mind through a world that has lost respect and fear of a most Holy God.
The first and foremost thing that must take place in us as leaders is being brutally honest about our own standing in our relationship with our heavenly Father, and when this truly happens we will fall on our face and ask forgiveness for we as His temple are in ruins, and we go about living our lives on our own, fulfilling our own desires and not even spending the time we need to spend with our heavenly Father to know that our heart has gone astray.
But God in all His sovereignty will bring revival and fulfillment to our soul if we will come to Him in true heartfelt repentance and allow ourselves to seek His guidance again on guarding our heart and our temple so that we do not grieve His Holy Spirit any longer.
Romans 6:20-22
For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from allegiance to righteousness. And what fruit was produced then from the things you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, since you have been liberated from sin and become enslaved to God, you have your fruit, which results in sanctification…and the end is eternal life! For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
As we consider this we understand that as we look at the deeper heart issues of leadership, the primary question we will continue to have to ask is:
Am I a servant leader or a self serving leader?
It is a question that, when answered with the same brutal honesty we have targeted to reach in ourselves, will reveal your true motivation as a leader.
Let us pray to our heavenly Father to bring our heart, our thoughts, our words, and our actions into alignment with His desire for us, so that we may demonstrate His character to those that we lead.
Servant leaders look at leadership as an act of service, self serving leaders are addicted to power and recognition and are afraid of loss of position.
In my tenure as a store manager I quickly learned to identify those who truly worked for the good of the team and those who only worked to make a name for themselves. I myself have been on the bottom in comparison to others on my team, and it was not because I had the wrong motive but because I simply didn’t have the knowledge that some of the others had, but over time, and even sometimes learning the hard way or by my mistakes I gained the knowledge I needed and that knowledge coupled with the right motives allowed me to soar pass some who had been with the company a lot longer than I had, but something I learned early in my career was to seek God daily for His divine wisdom and direction in managing my stores, this at first was because of fear and insecurity, but even as my confidence in my knowledge grew I found something to be profound, God’s wisdom in helping me to lead my team brought me more success than I ever dreamed.
This realization drove me to become more dependent on Him and less upon my own knowledge or how others thought I should lead. This kind of strength is what leads us to our greatest results. Because when we find we can truly trust in God to impart to us what we need daily to lead then it brings us a freedom to focus outward on those we are leading.
When Jesus walked on earth He spent a lot of time teaching those He would eventually leave behind but equipping them to carry on, Jesus lived in close relationship with those He empowered with His words and taught them through His example. He modeled the role of a true servant leader by investing almost all of His time in training and equipping His disciples for leadership for He new His mission would soon be over.
We too must understand that our time in leadership will eventually be over and we must always be preparing leaders of tomorrow to take our destiny and make it live on.
So in doing this we must understand that our journey is to transform self-serving hearts into hearts ready to serve and it’s about teaching those around us that life is about what you give rather than what you get.
However, in our obedience to serve we bring about the most fruitful blessings in our life, as God our heavenly Father, bestows upon us favor and blessings in abundance.
For we truly cannot out give God, and we truly find success in learning these valuable principles.
As we as leaders learn to model these behaviors, you will find those around you, those you have chosen to walk by your side, your team… they will learn from watching you, listening to you, and believe me they are watching and listening.
As a store manager, even though I was “ The Boss “ and really I didn’t have to physically work, my job was to run that store and my responsibility was to drive results, I mean I was responsible for everything about that store, it all fell on my shoulders, but as a leader, I never asked any of my associates to do anything I would not do myself and listen I always took time to help them, I might give them a job to do but a lot of times I would get right there beside them and help them do it and as I did I was teaching them how it should be done…I was investing time to teach and train, then the next time they had to do it, I entrusted it to them, and they did it exactly how I taught them.
This is exactly what Jesus did…This is why Jesus demonstrated servant leadership.
If you want to understand what it’s going to take for you to fulfill your place in God and the destiny He has for your life, quit trying to get there on your own… stop relying on your own abilities and your own self-centered motives and learn to lead by giving yourself away to others.
So let’s recap:
#1. God is always first, in order for us to have a true heart to serve, we must always spend the time necessary in prayer and seeking God, and digesting His word, this allows us to clearly define where we are in our relationship with our heavenly Father and allows us to see our own weaknesses and flaws.
#2. This one act above actively prepares our heart to be a heart to serve and teach, it imparts the divine wisdom and gifts from God to make us successful in leading others.
#3 Learn to prayerfully seek God's wisdom and guidance in all you do and do not rely on your own talents and abilities alone, open your heart up to recieve direction from your heavenly Father, for it's in these moments of God given revelations that we gain the most success.
#4. The servant heart of giving ourselves away, in turn, releases favor, blessings and much success in our lives and sets us on the right path to reaching our God called destiny.
All of these things together can make us a True Leader driven by passion for helping others as we ourselves succeed in the dreams and visions God has given to us.
Our God is such as AWESOME God!!! He's so worthy of our praise...He opens our heart and mind to recieve His divine truths, and as we utilize them in our everyday life they bring us one step closer to Him...
One step closer to being the Leader He has called us to be.
Please come back for Leadership Series 3,
It will be power packed with the leadership of the Holy Spirit, and I know you don't want to miss it.
International Ministries of Last Call, Inc
8311 N E Zac Lentz Parkway Unit
Victoria, TX 77904
ph: 601 324 1240