A Serving Leader

In today’s Leadership talk, Pastor Priji enlightens us on the main characteristic of leadership; serving. He talks about the significance that service holds in our calling and leadership. Tune in to receive and align your leadership!

Transcript:

Today let us desire to grow in the ability to lead the people around us. Leadership is about influence and about how we can impact the people around us and how we can bring them into the experience that we have had before. The best example we have on earth is Jesus. He was the only one who had ever walk with the father and yet he was still able to bring others into the same relationship with the Heavenly father. Praying that in this season, we will represent everything that Jesus did in our lives. Whichever position of leadership we have, we have to be willing to be good stewards over what God has entrusted into our hands. God expects us to fight tooth and nail to ensure our lifestyle matches up to that of Jesus Christ.

How did Jesus teach us to lead? He mentioned that we have to first serve. He showed this by washing the feet of his disciples. In Jesus’ understanding of leadership, he portrays that if you serve then that is when you are truly leading. Let us keep aside everything in this season and focus on how we can be servants to our family, brethren, churches, people around us, and even to other churches. If we can articulate all these and how we can change our words and attitude, then we are already on our way to becoming better and proficient leaders. If we are going to lay down our lives to serve like Jesus then we will be effective in our leadership. There certainly will be obstacles to becoming self-sacrificing leaders as no one is naturally so but it requires for us to have an understanding of how Jesus came to the point of sacrificing himself even though he was equal with God.

How often do we let our selfish ambitions get in the way of our ability and willingness to serve others? Pride can subtly be about how we want to be served, treated or taken care of. If our world revolves around that then we are completely out of touch on how Jesus wants us to live. Jesus doesn’t want our lives to be all about us but to be self-sacrificial ones towards our brothers and sisters. We may think it’s only an outrageous act of pride that shows our pride but that’s not all even when we show we are dependent on ourselves, that in itself is pride. In this season we can pray for the grace to overcome pride and sometimes it may not be internal pride but one which we say to ourselves that we are unsure of our ability to be self-sacrificing.

In the life of Jesus, we can see how Peter didn’t allow Jesus The best help that we have is the presence of the Holy Spirit. Today, we have the access to the Holy Spirit and we need to allow Him to empower our willpower, emotions & physical bodies.

In our service, we need to pray to God for Strength to become a servant and secondly pray for Wisdom especially in dealing with people while in service because we cannot serve all people the same way. This comes by asking the Holy Spirit to empower us and as leaders, we need grace and abilities that we can become the Kind of servant that God intends for us to be. The more we yield to the Holy Spirit, the more we will have wisdom. We also need to pray for Grace to become the Kind of servants that God wants us to be.

Another thing that we will need to understand is our Assignment and what God wants us to do. *If we don’t have the perspective of our assignment, we will go about serving everyone and everything*. There were times when gentiles asked for Jesus for healing or prayer but He was clear about His assignment and so He made it clear that he was sent to the Jews.

If we are unsure about our assignment, then we will keep serving without any direction and serving places or people which God has not ordained for us to serve.

As Jesus stuck to his assignment, that kind of focus on our area of service makes for purposeful service and that will also require that we depend on God daily asking him to show us where and whom to serve. In this season, let us ask God for where he wants us to serve, put in our resources and efforts. We are serving. We know this is the will of God that even when it gets discouraging or challenging because we are aware of our assignment.

When we have an understanding of things from God’s perspective, it becomes so much easier to serve.

We also need to be careful to not be expectant of rewards here on earth for our service. Many times we feel discouraged and disappointed because those who we serve do not seem to value or notice what we are doing but it is very necessary that as servants we will have no rewards from people but our expectation should be solely from God and it becomes so much easier to serve. The devil will constantly bring discouraging thoughts showing us how much we have done in the Church and point out physical rewards we should receive but the kind of servants God wants us to be are not those who seek applause or rewards but stay and serve. You cannot serve with an expectant heart or hope for an award or anything tangible, all of these are temporal but the real rewards are those which we will receive in heaven and never fade away.

Praying that we will work towards and for those heavenly rewards.

When you serve, serve with the heart of a king and rule with the heart of a servant.

Jesus knew the authority that had been given to Him and he knew who he was and he was about to be glorified and therefore he was extremely secure about who he was. When we are serving, we must make sure that we are not insecure, we should have our identity in the right place. Let us not be as those who serve and expect. Praying that we will serve with a selfless and secure heart knowing that we are cared for and known by God.

May our service bring sweet fragrance to the heart of God and light up heaven. May our hard work notice and recognized in the eternal books of heaven. May this word today go deep into our Spirit and bring life-transforming actions.