75 words devotional only!!

I Corinthians 4:6-7

Workshop Two focuses primarily on personal attributes of successful leaders and managers.  One of the main points of Workshop One’s devotional was the dangerous notion each of us possesses to be self-focused on what we can do and achieve.  If we’re not careful, we’ll find that we don’t like having to rest on God’s grace, because that means that God, not us, receives the glory.  As it relates to leadership, this heart attitude can rear its ugly head when we focus on our own leadership skills and traits in a couple of ways.

The first way is wanting a leadership position because we want to be liked, viewed as important, and/or we want power.  This can cause us to compete with others rather than living for eternity and serving others.  It can cause us to resent those who are more successful than us, rather than trusting in God.  It can cause us to lament our own lack of perceived leadership skills.

The second way is more deceptive: even if we can get past the obvious sin of seeking fame, promotion, and self-glory through our work, even if we truly want to do great things for the Lord, we still can stumble on the lie that validation and recognition on the job is proof that we are living meaningfully and doing great things for God, and that if we aren’t receiving recognition, we must not be doing anything meaningful.  It’s not that we shouldn’t work hard, but rather that we shouldn’t work hard motivated by the fear that if we aren’t recognized as successful in what we do, then we therefore are failures.

Recognition for what we do is a tricky thing.  As mentioned above, I Corinthians 4:7 already takes the wind out of the sails of pride when it comes to our gifting, because they are gifts from God, rather than our own doing.  The discussion on traits and skills in this workshop emphasizes that there are certain leadership “traits” like extraversion, charisma, big-picture thinking, etc., that not all of us possess.  Does that mean that we are deficient?  Should we resent God for not giving us those gifts?  We were not self-made beings.