The Divine destiny connection, the chain that links us together.
Wednesday, August 28, 2024
PRESERVING YOUR LEGACY
John chapter 15
Today we are walking in: Preserving Your Legacy
Job 34:16
If now thou hast understanding, hear H8085 this: hearken to the voice of my words.
UNDERSTAND
Today we look to the word-UNDERSTAND- H8085 shama`--to hear with attention or interest, listen to understand (language)
The Torah testifies...............
Genesis 11:7
Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand H8085 one another's speech.
The prophets proclaim..................
Nehemiah 8:2
And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation both of men and women, and all that could hear H8085 with understanding, upon the first day of the seventh month.
The writings bear witness...........................
1 Kings 3:9
Give therefore thy servant an understanding H8085 heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people?
Chapter 2
Preserving Your Legacy
THE MAJORITY OF the experiences that most of us have had with leadership transfer came after somebody died. What follows usually is not a smooth transfer, but a conflict, a fight, a struggle. Many times brokenness, frustration, and, worst of all, a split will cripple or destroy the organization the leader built. How many of us have seen this in our families, churches, governments, or businesses?
When the “president for life” of the African nation of Gabon died recently after more than forty years in office, government leaders at first denied he was even ill and continued to dispute reports that he was in ill health only hours before announcing his demise. Due to fear of a coup as news of his death spread, national officials immediately shut airports, closed borders, blocked Internet service, and stationed guards in government buildings and at the utilities. Traffic was in gridlock as people sped home from work and rushed out to buy groceries, fearing stores would close.
That may be the extreme, but chaos is very common when a leader dies. Anyone who has lived long enough to experience leadership transition will agree that confusion, fear, uncertainty, and insecurity accompanied the change. All of these can be very debilitating, immobilizing, and dangerous to the organization, country, family, or business. They are a direct result of the leader’s failure to prepare for transition, products of the inability or un- willingness to mentor and prepare others to succeed him.
When the head of the family dies, children fight among themselves for the spoils. Jealousy and hatred destroy the love they might have shared in the past. Look at the infighting over the custody of Michael Jackson’s children and the disposition of his assets. To some, he was just a successful entertainer, to others an oddity, but he was also the head of a family and the leader of a billion-dollar entertainment enterprise generated by his music and rights to the music of the Beatles and others. The legal battles could go on for years and destroy what he left. Even in ordinary families, children, stepchildren, wives, ex-wives, and coinhabitants may fight so bitterly over petty issues and things of little worth that kinfolk do not associate with each other generations later.
“Measure leadership success by the success of the successor.”
I have seen the chaos of transition in corporations, churches, and other organizations as well. When one strong leader passes on, fighting takes hold. Followers resort to deception, deceit, and destruction. These are indicators of the failure to prepare and mentor successors. How does one leader transfer leadership to the next without destroying the organization and losing everything?
Beyond the Horizon
The greatest act of leadership is mentoring. It took me forty years to write this one sentence. I thought a great leader is one who built a big building or organized a massive campaign. I thought leadership was about building a corporation worth millions. This is not the measure of greatness. Greatness must be measured by the transfer of success to future generations. In this series, I want to talk about how to transfer leadership from one generation to another, from one leader to another.
I find it very intriguing that the first-century, young rabbi Yahusha Hamachiach built an organization at thirty years old that is now more than two thousand years old. It is the largest company on earth with upward of two billion clients. I happen to work for the company. He started the company with just eleven investors, to whom he gave shares. They did not have to buy them. The greatest leader of all time gave these shares to the partners by passing on knowledge, by mentoring. He told them they were no longer servants because a servant does not know what his master is doing. He had shared everything with them, so they were “friends.”
John 15:15 “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”
Yahusha was a secure leader. “I am going to give you everything,” He essentially said. “Why? Because I don’t plan to stay.”
That is not an attitude that we often see in leaders today. Yahusha never built a building, never opened a bank account, and never established a physical institution, yet His company is still expanding after two thousand years. That means greatness and leadership is not in buildings. It is in building people. We are so stuck on wanting our names on buildings, which can decay and fall down, that we forget the greatest investment any leader can make is in people.
Some leaders have their names engraved in their office chairs. They have that chair chained to the floor, and they have a seat belt on the chair. Every Monday they click it on and say, “No one is taking this. This is my position, my company, my ministry...”
True leaders do not hold on to the knowledge, experience, achievements, opportunities, or relationships they accrue in their positions. True leaders transfer knowledge. They cultivate the inquisitiveness of their mentees. Like the lioness, they encourage the mentees to observe them in action. The leader encourages them to ask questions. “Ask me how I did this and why I did this. I want you to know what I know. Because the sooner you learn this, the more quickly I can move on to my next position.” The greatest accomplishment of leadership is succession. Failure to mentor a successor is the cancellation of leadership legacy. Failure to mentor a successor is the cancellation of your own legacy.
Transfer of Ownership
Your influence will not continue in buildings or bank accounts. Your influence will continue in people. This is why the greatest leader of all time invested three and a half years in people—in a training program for people. He had this idea of living forever through them. Buildings are perishable. People live on. You last in those who remember your name. You last in those you mentor. You last in the leaders you left in your place and in the leaders that those leaders train to replace them and so forth.
I do not want my name on a building because a hurricane, a terrorist act, or an earthquake could wipe it out. I want people to remember my name by the continuing leadership of those I mentored and by the successor that I molded.
So we need to consider: what are our priorities?
Four principles summarize my concept of succession in leadership:
1. Visionary leadership is generational.
2. Vision is greater than the visionary.
3. Mentoring is the highest responsibility of leadership.
4. Succession is the greatest measure of leadership success.
Leaders must focus not so much on fulfilling their vision as on preparing new leaders to carry it forward. Many leaders have great vision, but they think they should fulfill it in their lifetime. They do not think much about posterity. When a leader does not prepare the successor, the result is always chaos and destruction. Two major mistakes leaders make are to believe that they are the only ones who could and should fulfill the vision and to think that they should fulfill it in their lifetime.
Visionary leaders always possess a sense of destiny. Destiny forces one to think beyond a lifetime. Destiny is bigger than all of us. It is that massive, uncompromising eternalness of life. Visionary leaders always think of their mortality. They are not afraid of it. They interpret destiny as the privilege to paint in a small piece of history. This is why visionary leaders communicate the vision of the future effectively. They are able to paint pictures and give conceptual vision to the future of others. Visionary leaders transfer ownership of the vision to the next generation. Visionary leaders focus on training others to fulfill the vision even beyond their lifetime. Leaders lead beyond their own leadership. They go beyond what they are supposed to do. They are constantly thinking about what remains after death. These are true leaders.
Measure leadership success by the success of the successor. This means that true leadership does not use achievements or goals, programs and projects as measures of success, but looks to the quality, character, competence, and passion of people around the leader who can fulfill the vision. Leaders are not in the business of focusing on projects. To a true leader, people are more important than projects. People are more important than paper, personal ambitions, or pride. Leaders do not manage people. Leaders develop people.
Mentoring is the greatest and highest responsibility of leadership. It is not just a necessity for the operation. It is obligatory. Yet the responsibility for mentoring is usually not in the forefront of leaders’ minds. Most people we consider leaders focus mainly on themselves, their own achievements, and their successes. They focus on what they want to do, what they want to be known for, and what they want to build as a legacy. Most leaders build their legacy in their work and not in people. I encourage you to shift that paradigm. Your greatest legacy is not a product or an institution that you left behind, but rather a person or people. This approach is different from anything else I have read on succession and leadership.
Leaving your child a building or a house is not succession. That is inheritance. Whatever a person inherits, he can lose, but if you mentor a person, he cannot lose what you gave him. Mentoring is a transfer of things that are durable: vision, passion, intent, and character.
The average leader today has no interest in mentoring. He or she is preoccupied with defending a position and protecting turf. These are insecure, false leaders with titles.
You know people in your company who have been there for forty years, and you still cannot get rid of them. They do not even want promotions. They just want that position. How do you break that spirit? You teach them about mentoring. Teach this to your staff, those you are mentoring, because if they understand this early, they will not hold on to jobs too tightly. They will not develop the spirit of entitlement. That spirit of “this is my space” will be broken if they study and embrace mentorship.
Mentored to Lead
Mentoring involves encouraging another to serve in that person’s area of gifting. Through the opportunities for service that you provide, the mentee can discover, practice, and refine a gift. By serving that gift to others, the mentee discerns and fulfills purpose. At the same time, seeing you serve so willingly and joyfully influences the mentee. The mentee helps you carry out your vision and fulfill your purpose.
I have come to define true leadership as the capacity to influence others through inspiration, generated by a passion, motivated by a vision, brought by a conviction, produced by a purpose.
To lead people anywhere, you have to influence them. Your influence inspires the mentee to carry out your vision. No one will buy into your vision if you do not have passion for it. Your passion grows out of conviction that your vision is worth pursuing. That conviction grows out of finding your purpose. The mentee finds purpose in your passion for your vision. He or she catches the vision.
The secret to leadership is not the pursuit of power. Leadership is a pursuit of self. While you may delegate some authority and confer a position on your mentee, you demonstrate that leadership is not a pursuit of those things. You show your mentee that when you discover what you were born to do, your leadership is born. Thus, leadership has very little to do with people. It is about self-discovery. It is finding your passion and pursuing it, and then people will find you. This is why leadership really cannot be taught. It can only be mentored. You can teach people the principles for discovering themselves, and when they find their purpose, the leader is born.
Purpose is the beginning. Purpose is having a sense of destiny. Your purpose then fuels your conviction. Your conviction is a sense of significance. In other words, a leader is someone who discovered that he or she is important to the world. Your mentoring must endow your mentee with a sense of purpose.
That happened to me. I had an argument with my Creator. I said, “I cannot be that important.”
He said, “Yes, you are.”
I said, “No, I can’t be that important. Don’t you know where I was born? Who my relatives are?”
He said, “Look, you are that important.”
Do you know that the attitude I had is common to all the leaders that I have studied? When Yah spoke to Abraham, He got an argument (see Genesis 17:17). When Yah spoke to Moses, they argued (see Exodus 3:11– 14). When Yah first spoke to Gideon, He had to argue with Gideon just to make him believe (see Judges 6:13–24). In other words, we never believe the truth about ourselves.
You must help your mentees see they are that important, and the sooner they accept that, the sooner the third step develops, and that is vision. They begin to see how to fulfill their purpose. Vision is a concept of the future, and when the vision comes, passion comes. Passion is a deep desire and commitment to achieve the vision. That passion inspires other people. In other words, passion becomes what I call “contagious energy,” and that breathes air into people.
When your mentees become so passionate about something that they are willing to strive for it, it breathes life into them. You have become contagious. Think about great leaders. Most of them went to prison or in other ways demonstrated they were willing to die for their passion: Yahusha, the Apostle Paul, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mohandas Gandhi. They inspired people. Once you inspire people, you can influence them and attract support. You do not demand it. You attract it. People are attracted to passion.
Therefore, if you want people to follow you, find your passion, and if your passion takes over your life, people will run after you. A leader does not look for followers. Followers are attracted to the leader’s passion. If you say you are a leader, but no one is following you, you are simply taking a walk.
Your mentee must see from your example that following is a privilege that people do not have to give you. They can leave your ministry or resign from your company at any time. To keep people submitted to your passion, never let them see your passion waning. Keep your passion. Share it with your mentee. You can become tired, but you must maintain and renew your passion.
New and Improved!
If you are going to be successful in producing a successor, you must make mentoring your priority. Mentoring is hard work. You serve as a model, an advisor, a counselor, a guide, a tutor, an example for another. Your goal is to produce one greater than yourself. That may come as a shock. When you are mentoring someone, you are not trying to produce a person who is like you. You are mentoring to develop someone better than you. Mentoring is about replacement with a better product. Always leave in place someone who is better than you were. A true leader is always training a replacement, and the goal is to make that person better than the mentor is.
The greatest leadership challenge is establishing the priority of selfreplacement. Leaders do not clone others in their own image. They help others discover themselves, deploy their own abilities, reach the height of their own capacities and refine their unique personalities. Mentoring is not about making a person you—making someone talk like you, act like you, or dress in a suit like you. That is not leadership. That is personality worship.
The greatest leader of all time taught me so much by His attitude. He would say something like this: “If I do not leave you, you will not be able to do greater works. But if I leave you, knowing how well I trained you, then you will do greater works than I have done.” In other words, a successor should achieve more.
John 14:12 “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”
Succession is the greatest measure of true leadership. Most leaders define success in leadership as what they achieve, but if everything dies with them, they are failures. If everything you achieve stops when you stop, you are a failure. We have many examples in the world where we can visit relics of old organizations, the building projects that died with the leader. Thus, the challenge of true leadership success is to ask, “What will die with you?” The goal of leadership should be to answer confidently the question, “What will live after I die?”
Succession protects the value of history. Succession uses the foundation of history to make history. Succession guarantees the value of effort. For example, you work for twenty years building something. If you have a good successor, they will protect all the work that you put in. In the absence of proper planning for succession, someone else can tear down something that you built for twenty years in twenty minutes. Your successor can just wipe it out.
Effective succession is the only way to secure desires from the grave. What did that dead person desire? Only succession can secure that. Succession is the only way for a leader to live beyond the cemetery. The bottom line is that it does not matter how great your leadership was in your lifetime. Will it survive beyond your lifetime is the greater question. The answer lies in how well you have prepared the heirs to your domain.
Tuesday, August 27, 2024
THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP OBLIGATION IS PREPARING YOUR REPLACEMENT
Matthew chapter 20
Today we are walking in: The Greatest Leadership Obligation Is Preparing Your Replacement
Today we look to the word-LEADER- H5057 nagiyd-- leader, ruler, captain, prince; excellent thing, (chief) governor, leader, noble, prince, (chief) ruler.
The Torah Testifies.............................
*****
The prophets proclaim...............
Isaiah 55:4 - Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader H5057 and commander to the people.
The writings bear witness.............
2Chronicles 32:21 - And the LORD sent an angel, which cut off all the mighty men of valour, and the leaders H5057 and captains in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he returned with shame of face to his own land. And when he was come into the house of his god, they that came forth of his own bowels slew him there with the sword
Chapter 1
The Greatest Leadership Obligation Is Preparing Your Replacement
HUMAN OBSERVERS HAVE designated the lion “king of the wild” or “king of the beasts.” Lions are the largest creature in the cat family and of all African carnivores. These large and powerful creatures have the loudest roar and are the leading predators in their ecosystem. The lion is fierce, courageous, and cunning. Yet even the lion knows it will not be “king” forever. The lion is constantly working to prepare its replacement to run the kingdom.
Lions are the only cats that live in groups. Lions travel in prides. A pride is essentially a family of lions and lionesses that live and work together to create an environment in which to “mentor” cubs, the next generation of “kings” and “queens.” Before the cub is a year old, the lioness meticulously begins to train her young to hunt and to survive.
Lions are visionary leaders.
First, Get Ready to Leave
Whether you are the head of a family, captain of a football team, chair of a women’s organization, president of a company, the CEO of a corporation, the pastor of a church, or the pilot of an aircraft, you are the responsible leader. In your domain, you are king. You are a visionary leader. Your gift has taken you to the top.
Congratulations! You have arrived. Now, find your replacement. The first act of a true leader, a visionary leader like you, should be to identify your replacement and begin mentoring that person to eventually succeed you. You might identify several individuals and groom each of them for leadership.
You may ask, “Why? I have other things to do first. I just got here, and I have all these plans. That can wait.”
It should not wait. Perhaps if you knew just how long you might remain healthy, active, and effective or how long you might live, it could wait. None of us knows these things. We must prepare someone to follow us. We will have mentored and trained this leader-in-waiting so carefully and thoroughly that he or she could step in at a moment’s notice to take our place and run on without stumbling. That person would preserve what we have built and take it to new heights.
“The first act of a visionary leader like you should be to identify and begin mentoring your replacement.”
Our successors can do that only if we have groomed and trained them to the best of our abilities for the day they take over. It was our duty to bring them into our inner circle, expose them to our contacts, and instill in them all the wisdom we can offer.
The greatest obligation of true leadership is to transfer the deposit of knowledge, wealth, experience, influence, relationships, and understanding to the next generation. The word obligation means a responsibility you have to the future. Perhaps you have been measuring your success by the trappings, as I once did. You see it in terms of the size of a building you built, your salary, a house—or the car. Remember all of those things are decaying daily, and if you built your success on those things, it is eroding daily.
It is not good enough to transfer a title, a facility, or a building to the next generation. It is more important to transfer your knowledge, your experience, and your values—the things that have helped you to succeed. Giving those to the next generation is more important than giving money and wealth. Leadership includes taking what made you who you are and giving it to someone else. That cannot happen without mentoring.
Every leader wants to be successful, but we rarely think about succession as proof of success, the final measure of our own success. We think in terms of projects, products, the bottom line, and profits. We do not think in terms of people. Buildings do not succeed you. Equipment does not succeed you. Only people can succeed you and carry on your vision. People will remember your name and perpetuate your legacy. As we age and consider our frailties and our mortality, it is time to start doubling up on the time spent on mentoring and preparing for a smooth succession.
The first act of true leadership is to identify, train, and develop a replacement. To put it another way, the first act is to begin mentoring this new leader. If I can get this point across, I could help save many organizations, departments, ministries, and countries.
The first thing that many leaders do when they enter a position of power is to get rid of opposition. They try to annihilate threats. You see this in Third- World countries and leading industrial nations. It is the spirit of “kill or be killed.” You see it in businesses, where those who are threats to corporate power are fired. I am recommending the opposite. Your first act should be to begin surveying the horizon, looking around you to identify the potential replacement/successor, and mentoring this prospect.
What Is a Leader?
Before we go on, it might be helpful to share with you (or to review for those who have read my previous seriess) my philosophies about what leadership is. You have to understand and appreciate what you have before you can pass it on. You have to be the right kind of leader to produce leaders for the future.
I have spent decades studying the issue of leadership from the time I was an undergraduate at Oral Roberts University and a graduate student in leadership administration at the University of Tulsa. I have studied the theories of many business leaders, economists, and scholars on leadership. The many theories and perspectives offered by the early and contemporary leadership gurus addressed multiple issues and principles on the subject of leadership. However, I was still unsatisfied in my pursuit of understanding the essence of true leadership, and I continued my search and research. It was not until I discovered the leadership philosophy and school of thought of the young Jewish rabbi Yahusha Christ that I felt I had found the answer to the leadership dilemma. It was His introduction and demonstration of the philosophy of “servant leadership” that provided the context for the type and style of leadership that brings value, worth, and dignity to all humankind. After many years of study and implementing this philosophy of leadership in my life and organization, I have seen the superior advantage and benefits to both the individual and the corporate effort. This “servant leadership” philosophy forms the foundation of all the content of the leadership training programs, seminars, and consulting projects that I have facilitated around the world. I have written dozens of seriess and spoken hundreds of times on this leadership philosophy and model exemplified by Yahusha Christ.
His standard for leadership was that of serving your gift and energy to the followers for their benefit. He modeled the behavior of a servant leader and urged His protégés to do likewise. In His final “working dinner” with them, He demonstrated and later explained the concept.
Matthew 20:25–27 Yahusha called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—”
Then He goes on to say:
Matthew 20:28 “Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Yahusha’ concept of the leader as servant and not as one to be served was demonstrated by Yahusha Himself, and He urged students (the disciples) to achieve greatness through the same spirit of leading through service, not by controlling or oppressing others. Servant leadership, as I define it, is the discovery of one’s purpose, gifts, and talents with a commitment to offer them in service to humankind. In other words, servant leadership is the discovery of what you are supposed to serve to the world.
Servant leadership is being prepared to serve one’s gift at every opportunity. Now, I want to emphasize the last part of the statement: every opportunity. To become an effective leader, you have to take advantage of each chance to serve. Do not wait until you are great to be great, or you will never be great.
If the bathroom needs cleaning, that is an opportunity to exercise your gift for attention to detail and high standards to those in your organization. If they need help with the youth organization, that is an opportunity to demonstrate your gift for empathizing with and commanding respect from young people. If the leaders need someone to clean the building after every session, volunteer and display your gift for organization by recruiting and supervising a team to do it quickly and efficiently. That is an opportunity to serve. If the organization needs someone to type and you can do that, then submit yourself. While serving, you can show off your speed, devotion to accuracy, and mastery of computer skills.
Maybe your vision is to become a great speaker, teacher, pastor, or CEO. That opportunity has not come yet, but the opportunity to park the cars presents itself. Park the cars. If nothing else, you can demonstrate your loyalty and your people skills in handling the owners. Servant leadership is serving at every opportunity.
In a previous series In Charge: Finding the Leader Within You, I summarized my thinking about servant leadership. These are the key points:
• Every human being was created to lead. Your desire and disposition to lead is inborn.
• Every human possesses leadership potential. You have the ability to lead in an area of gifting.
• Trapped in every follower is a hidden leader. If you accept false ideas about who can or cannot become a leader, it can smother your potential.
• Though everyone was born to lead, most will die as followers. If you do not identify and tap into your giftedness, it will be wasted and buried with you.
• Leadership is your history and your destiny. You were created to be a leader and designed to fulfill your assignment.
• The world needs your leadership. You exist to meet a specific need on earth that no one else can meet.
What Is Succession?
Succession is an amazing word. It begins with the very concept of success. Success has to do with movement. It has to do with continuity. Successful succession guarantees continuity. Succession means to “follow after,” but the definitions of “succeed” in some dictionaries even put the sense of “following” before the idea of doing well. Etymologists tell us that the word succeed comes from ancient terms that mean to “follow” or “go under.”
Success itself has to do with advancing toward something, and for the most part, people think of success as “I establish a goal. I move toward the goal, and I accomplish the goal. I am finished.” In a very simplistic sense, that is true; you decide you want to build a house, and you start the design, you build it, and now that it is finished, you receive the key. You could call that success, but succession preserves success.
We normally think of success as having to do with pursuing, achieving, and concluding something, but success implies moving, advancing, continuing. Succession is the perpetuation of purpose. Purpose is your assignment. Succession is protecting your assignment beyond your lifetime. Succession preserves all of your hard work after you retire or die. Succession is the transition of the leader’s purpose, content, character, standards, values, morals, and qualities to succeeding generations. Succession first involves transferring your vision to another generation of leaders. That is a hard thing to do. It means you must transfer your way of thinking to another person. That requires a lot of intimate time together. To effect the vision transfer, the mentor must devote time to the potential successor.
The vision must live on even if you die. If your vision dies with you, you failed. I have seen unfinished churches overgrown with grass. Why? Because the leader failed. Crowds came to his services and people shouted at his sermons, but no one carried on and completed his tabernacle. The weeds that choke the unfinished dreams will always expose failure. Unfinished monuments are a sign of failure, telltale signs that you did not mentor and invest in the right thing, the people for whom you were responsible.
Success is not what happens while you are alive. Success is what happens after you leave. This is why the word successive is so important. The terms successive or succeeding generations suggest continuity. We want to be successful, so we accomplish a project. We are proud that we did it and want everyone to remember what we produced in our lifetime. That is not success. Success is knowing someone will continue the work after you leave.
You are successful if your vision outlives you through another person. If we forget you after you die, no matter how great your accomplishments were, you are a failure. You measure your success by the people you leave behind. Someone who comes after you can destroy every goal that you achieved. If you are sixty, seventy, or eighty years old and you have done wonderful things, will they outlast you? The only way to guarantee they will is through succession. True leadership is about continuity.
Succession is not just achieving success. Succession is preserving success. What you achieve, you need someone to preserve. Can you imagine building your family business all your life and then some untrained son sells it after you die for half the price, just so he can buy some golf clubs? All your life you worked hard, invested and built a building, built a business, or built this massive empire. Then a son, daughter, cousin, or your wife’s next husband sells it on the market for half the price to buy something that provides immediate gratification. We have seen this happen very often.
When it is time for leaders to transition, many have not prepared a successor, so there is a conflict, a fight, or a scuffle for leadership. When a new leader emerges from that, the winner may be committed to destroying everything you have built to prove that he is different or better. This has been the modus operandi of most leaders. If you have studied developing countries, you know that in most cases when a leadership transition occurs, a coup breaks out. Often people are killed and the country experiences tremendous turmoil. A similar thing happens in corporate board rooms, political parties, and church organizations when it is time for these transitions, generally without the violence though.
This is why succession is so critical. It preserves success. Greatness in leadership is measured by its continuity. It is not about you. It is about the next generation. You do not want anyone to destroy, misuse, or redirect your organization from its original intent. You want it to advance and develop beyond what you have done. You keep your purpose alive through a successor. You do not want all your dreams, plans, and ideas to go into the casket with you. Keep them alive in someone you mentor.
My definition of succession is the effective transfer, conveyance, and transition of the leader’s vision, passion, purpose, intent, dreams, character, standards, values, morals, and qualities to succeeding generations of leaders.
Succession perpetuates purpose.
Monday, August 26, 2024
INTRODUCTION: PASSING IT ON
Genesis chapter 1
Today we are walking in: Introduction: Passing It On
Today we look to the word-LEADER- H5057 nagiyd-- leader, ruler, captain, prince; excellent thing, (chief) governor, leader, noble, prince, (chief) ruler.
The Torah Testifies.............................
*****
The prophets proclaim...............
Isaiah 55:4 - Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader H5057 and commander to the people.
The writings bear witness.............
2Chronicles 32:21 - And the LORD sent an angel, which cut off all the mighty men of valour, and the leaders H5057 and captains in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he returned with shame of face to his own land. And when he was come into the house of his god, they that came forth of his own bowels slew him there with the sword
Passing It On
Introduction
The Lions
TEN THOUSAND PEOPLE rose to their feet, filling the convention center in the quaint South African city of Bloemfontein with thunderous applause on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. I had just completed three days of motivational and inspirational training sessions with one of the largest multilevel- marketing distribution companies on the continent of Africa. My host, Charlie, the president of the company, hugged me with a deep expression of appreciation as he asked, “Dr. Munroe, how would you like to spend a few extra days here in Africa and go on a safari cruise?” I had no idea what he meant, but I was ready to take a break and experience an adventure.
“Of course I would,” I answered. Thus began one of the most memorable vacations I ever could imagine. The next morning a driver picked us up and took us to a marina where we boarded a forty-foot yacht. On board, a pleasant, middle-aged man greeted us and introduced himself as our captain and cook. Just my wife, two other couples, and I would take the journey along a river that ran through five southern African states, including Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, for a five-day safari through wild country. I was excited as I thought of all the National Geographic episodes I had seen on television. I was about to embark on a similar experience in reality.
After settling in, we began cruising up river, astonished by the untouched beauty of nature and the virgin forest filled with birds, reptiles, and other animals in their natural habitat. The captain, perched in his seat high above the cabin, pointed out the many species of animals and plants, warning us of the dangers surrounding us and emphasizing that we must not leave the boat at any time during the trip. The whole setting excited me, waking up the sleeping child inside of me. It was a boyhood dream come true.
Suddenly, I heard a blood-chilling sound coming from the bush on the right side of the river. It was like nothing I had ever heard. Animals and birds became restless and began moving nervously about, responding with their own sounds. We were also uneasy and asked the undisturbed captain what that sound was. He simply responded, “They are going to make a kill tonight.” Then he explained that the sound came from a pride of lions organizing for the hunt.
My heart started racing and my palms sweating as I felt the adrenaline rushing through my body. It was as if I were going to join the lions for the kill. I asked the captain if we could observe the action, and he indicated that he would try to position the boat so we could watch the unfolding drama of nature in safety. By now the sleeping child within me was wide-awake! Could you imagine having front-row seats to a lion kill?
The sun was about to set as a family of elephants who were obviously the target of the lions emerged from the bush. These giants of the animal kingdom began to trumpet warnings to each other as they moved like tractors through the trees and grass, which fell like twigs in their wake. Like ghosts, the masters of the wild appeared from nowhere—lions, the majestic cats that rule the world of animals. I had seen them in still pictures, movies, and television documentaries, but here they were in real life, in real time, with real power, about to prove their kingship.
Everyone on board grabbed their cameras and focused on the lions and the elephants, but I noticed something—a lioness holding two cubs in her mouth, gently carrying them to a small mound, and setting them under a tree not far from the action. One by one, she placed them in full sight of the elephants and the rest of the pride. My first reaction to was to think, “What is she doing? She is placing them in danger, exposing them to the force and authority of some of the most powerful creatures on earth.”
However, I was about to observe one of the most valuable lessons I would ever learn as I wondered about this aloud to the captain. “Why is she doing that?”
The captain quietly answered, “She wants to make sure they see everything.”
I was confused. In the midst of all this danger and power, why would she want to make sure they saw it? The captain, noticing my bewilderment, eased my confused mind, showing me not only why the lion is the king and ruler of the animal kingdom, but also why it has been a successful leader for so long. In fact, the secret to the longevity of the leadership legacy of the king of beasts was in that act of the lioness placing those delicate, little cubs on the mound under the tree to watch. The purpose of this act was to teach the cubs how to hunt by allowing them to observe those who had mastered the art. The lioness teaches by example.
This was the lesson leaders of humankind fail to learn or even consider. This was the lesson of mentoring and the art of preparing for succession. The lions did not leave the continuity of their pride’s leadership supremacy up to chance, but rather carried out an intentional, planned, purposeful program for transfer of power and skills to the next generation of leaders.
I sat there in the African bush staring at the solution to most of the leadership challenges of that continent and the world—mentoring and training successors intentionally. I thought of all the coups, dictatorships, infighting, suspicion, and distrust among leaders, especially in developing countries. I saw on the mound under the tree the answer to unstable governments and broken economies. There, staring me in the face, was the least-practiced art of leadership. There, in the wilds of this great continent, was the lesson of leadership that inspired the research that resulted in the birth of this series.
The greatest act of leadership is mentoring. No matter how much you may learn, achieve, accumulate, or accomplish, if it all dies with you, then you are a generational failure. The act and art of mentoring are the manifestations of the highest level of maturity and self-confidence. The spirit of insecurity, low self-esteem, poor self-concept, and devalued self-worth always will focus on self-preservation and self-protection—a defensive perspective in life. This spirit of insecurity breeds the attitude of fear, suspicion, and distrust. These words describe the mind-set of many of the leaders serving in our governments, political parties, corporations, departments, religious organizations, churches, families, and civic organizations.
When many people rise to positions of power, influence, notoriety, and celebrity in our society, because they lack the character and maturity necessary to manage that power effectively, their first order of business is to secure their position, extinguish any opposition, and erect a defense mechanism that others would not dare violate. They see colleagues as enemies and partners as competitors. This creates an atmosphere of schism, friction, suspicion, distrust, and low productivity. Individuals with this attitude toward power and position never will mentor others and actually see the prospect of mentoring as personally unwise and threatening to their own survival.
This lack of willingness, desire, understanding, and interest in mentoring is the greatest curse and weakness of our twenty-first century leaders. The majority of leaders at the controls of our political machinery, economic empires, and massive social or religious structures all seem to be preoccupied with protecting their occupational lives and not their generational legacies. We need leaders who think more of the next generation and not merely of the next position in the organization. We need leaders who feel they owe a debt to the future and who are committed and willing to securing it by intentionally preparing the future stewards of our world. We need leaders who are more dedicated to history than they are to money. We need leaders more interested in investing in people than in pursuing private ambition.
The highest manifestation of true leadership is to identify one’s replacement and to begin mentoring him or her. Life is really a generational relay with each succeeding generation responsible for passing the baton safely to the next with all the distilled knowledge, experience, and wisdom intact. All leaders should strive to execute their duties, reach milestones, achieve major progress, and fulfill the vision for their families, businesses, corporations, ministries, and nations. However, they also should work to produce the next generation of leaders who will value, protect, preserve, and build on those achievements.
Too many times we have seen great works, sacrifice, and hard-fought victories squandered and devalued by the irresponsible, insensitive abusive acts of a succeeding generation of leaders who have little or no appreciation for the blood, sweat, and tears expended by those of the former generation. Should the new leaders bear the blame for this abuse of history, or should we place the blame at the feet of the former leaders who failed to prepare, sensitize, and mentor future leaders? Should we consider failure to mentor the next generation of leaders generational suicide? Could it be a divine paradox that the very word succession comes from the root success?
The most important responsibility of leadership is to prepare for succession. The most valuable goal of leadership is not to succeed in the present, but to secure the future. You are only truly successful in leadership if your accomplishments and achievements are preserved and perpetuated for posterity. It is not what leaders achieve that counts. It is what they transfer. Building people to protect and preserve our institutions is more important than building institutions.
Leading beyond your leadership is the ultimate accomplishment of true leadership. No matter how great your accomplishments may be, if they die with you, then you are a failure.
Therefore, the greatest obligation of true leadership is to transfer your deposit to the next generation. Leadership success is measured by the success of your successor. It takes a lifetime to accumulate the knowledge, wisdom, skills, insights, and experience that make you an outstanding leader. It would be a tragedy to see the wealth of that life deposited in some cemetery and marked only by a tombstone, which can speak to no one.
True leaders must focus on investing in people more than buildings. Their priority should be to make deposits in the banks of human spirits and souls, not just in the financial institutions of Wall Street and Switzerland. Mentoring a successor is the most valuable investment a leader can make because it could guarantee preservation of all the other investments. Losing a lifetime of leadership achievement to an unprepared generation is the highest violation of leadership responsibility. It is imperative that mentoring successors becomes as much of a priority as fulfilling vision. In essence, a vision is only successful if it is durable.
Be ever mindful that you are a link in a long chain of purpose that was designed to fulfill the divine desire of the Creator. Thus, life is not about you, but it is about preparation for the next phase.
History is replete with sad stories of great leaders who accomplished outstanding social, economic, military, political, or spiritual feats only to witness an unprepared succeeding leadership dismantle most of what they spent a lifetime laboring to create. It is a true tragedy to see one generation’s work destroyed, ignored, or devalued by the one that followed.
I am certain that every leader throughout history desired to see a vision, work, programs, projects, mission, and passion continued beyond his or her tenure. No generation wants its hard-fought leadership success to be swallowed up in a whirlwind of neglect, insensitivity, and lack of appreciation for the sacrifice expended on that achievement.
We must mentor! No greater measure of leadership success exists than the ability to protect, preserve, and transfer the accomplishments of the present leadership to the next generation. This is the heart of the principle of succession and must be a priority in our twenty-first century leadership challenge. This series is about this challenge, and I invite you to join the adventure and the journey. It is my hope that this series will inspire and equip you to think beyond your own leadership and motivate you to leave a legacy, not in institutions or on tombstones, but in people. May you always remember that your success depends on your successors.
-Dr. Myles Munroe
Today we are walking in: Introduction: Passing It On
Today we look to the word-LEADER- H5057 nagiyd-- leader, ruler, captain, prince; excellent thing, (chief) governor, leader, noble, prince, (chief) ruler.
The Torah Testifies.............................
*****
The prophets proclaim...............
Isaiah 55:4 - Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader H5057 and commander to the people.
The writings bear witness.............
2Chronicles 32:21 - And the LORD sent an angel, which cut off all the mighty men of valour, and the leaders H5057 and captains in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he returned with shame of face to his own land. And when he was come into the house of his god, they that came forth of his own bowels slew him there with the sword
Passing It On
Introduction
The Lions
TEN THOUSAND PEOPLE rose to their feet, filling the convention center in the quaint South African city of Bloemfontein with thunderous applause on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. I had just completed three days of motivational and inspirational training sessions with one of the largest multilevel- marketing distribution companies on the continent of Africa. My host, Charlie, the president of the company, hugged me with a deep expression of appreciation as he asked, “Dr. Munroe, how would you like to spend a few extra days here in Africa and go on a safari cruise?” I had no idea what he meant, but I was ready to take a break and experience an adventure.
“Of course I would,” I answered. Thus began one of the most memorable vacations I ever could imagine. The next morning a driver picked us up and took us to a marina where we boarded a forty-foot yacht. On board, a pleasant, middle-aged man greeted us and introduced himself as our captain and cook. Just my wife, two other couples, and I would take the journey along a river that ran through five southern African states, including Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, for a five-day safari through wild country. I was excited as I thought of all the National Geographic episodes I had seen on television. I was about to embark on a similar experience in reality.
After settling in, we began cruising up river, astonished by the untouched beauty of nature and the virgin forest filled with birds, reptiles, and other animals in their natural habitat. The captain, perched in his seat high above the cabin, pointed out the many species of animals and plants, warning us of the dangers surrounding us and emphasizing that we must not leave the boat at any time during the trip. The whole setting excited me, waking up the sleeping child inside of me. It was a boyhood dream come true.
Suddenly, I heard a blood-chilling sound coming from the bush on the right side of the river. It was like nothing I had ever heard. Animals and birds became restless and began moving nervously about, responding with their own sounds. We were also uneasy and asked the undisturbed captain what that sound was. He simply responded, “They are going to make a kill tonight.” Then he explained that the sound came from a pride of lions organizing for the hunt.
My heart started racing and my palms sweating as I felt the adrenaline rushing through my body. It was as if I were going to join the lions for the kill. I asked the captain if we could observe the action, and he indicated that he would try to position the boat so we could watch the unfolding drama of nature in safety. By now the sleeping child within me was wide-awake! Could you imagine having front-row seats to a lion kill?
The sun was about to set as a family of elephants who were obviously the target of the lions emerged from the bush. These giants of the animal kingdom began to trumpet warnings to each other as they moved like tractors through the trees and grass, which fell like twigs in their wake. Like ghosts, the masters of the wild appeared from nowhere—lions, the majestic cats that rule the world of animals. I had seen them in still pictures, movies, and television documentaries, but here they were in real life, in real time, with real power, about to prove their kingship.
Everyone on board grabbed their cameras and focused on the lions and the elephants, but I noticed something—a lioness holding two cubs in her mouth, gently carrying them to a small mound, and setting them under a tree not far from the action. One by one, she placed them in full sight of the elephants and the rest of the pride. My first reaction to was to think, “What is she doing? She is placing them in danger, exposing them to the force and authority of some of the most powerful creatures on earth.”
However, I was about to observe one of the most valuable lessons I would ever learn as I wondered about this aloud to the captain. “Why is she doing that?”
The captain quietly answered, “She wants to make sure they see everything.”
I was confused. In the midst of all this danger and power, why would she want to make sure they saw it? The captain, noticing my bewilderment, eased my confused mind, showing me not only why the lion is the king and ruler of the animal kingdom, but also why it has been a successful leader for so long. In fact, the secret to the longevity of the leadership legacy of the king of beasts was in that act of the lioness placing those delicate, little cubs on the mound under the tree to watch. The purpose of this act was to teach the cubs how to hunt by allowing them to observe those who had mastered the art. The lioness teaches by example.
This was the lesson leaders of humankind fail to learn or even consider. This was the lesson of mentoring and the art of preparing for succession. The lions did not leave the continuity of their pride’s leadership supremacy up to chance, but rather carried out an intentional, planned, purposeful program for transfer of power and skills to the next generation of leaders.
I sat there in the African bush staring at the solution to most of the leadership challenges of that continent and the world—mentoring and training successors intentionally. I thought of all the coups, dictatorships, infighting, suspicion, and distrust among leaders, especially in developing countries. I saw on the mound under the tree the answer to unstable governments and broken economies. There, staring me in the face, was the least-practiced art of leadership. There, in the wilds of this great continent, was the lesson of leadership that inspired the research that resulted in the birth of this series.
The greatest act of leadership is mentoring. No matter how much you may learn, achieve, accumulate, or accomplish, if it all dies with you, then you are a generational failure. The act and art of mentoring are the manifestations of the highest level of maturity and self-confidence. The spirit of insecurity, low self-esteem, poor self-concept, and devalued self-worth always will focus on self-preservation and self-protection—a defensive perspective in life. This spirit of insecurity breeds the attitude of fear, suspicion, and distrust. These words describe the mind-set of many of the leaders serving in our governments, political parties, corporations, departments, religious organizations, churches, families, and civic organizations.
When many people rise to positions of power, influence, notoriety, and celebrity in our society, because they lack the character and maturity necessary to manage that power effectively, their first order of business is to secure their position, extinguish any opposition, and erect a defense mechanism that others would not dare violate. They see colleagues as enemies and partners as competitors. This creates an atmosphere of schism, friction, suspicion, distrust, and low productivity. Individuals with this attitude toward power and position never will mentor others and actually see the prospect of mentoring as personally unwise and threatening to their own survival.
This lack of willingness, desire, understanding, and interest in mentoring is the greatest curse and weakness of our twenty-first century leaders. The majority of leaders at the controls of our political machinery, economic empires, and massive social or religious structures all seem to be preoccupied with protecting their occupational lives and not their generational legacies. We need leaders who think more of the next generation and not merely of the next position in the organization. We need leaders who feel they owe a debt to the future and who are committed and willing to securing it by intentionally preparing the future stewards of our world. We need leaders who are more dedicated to history than they are to money. We need leaders more interested in investing in people than in pursuing private ambition.
The highest manifestation of true leadership is to identify one’s replacement and to begin mentoring him or her. Life is really a generational relay with each succeeding generation responsible for passing the baton safely to the next with all the distilled knowledge, experience, and wisdom intact. All leaders should strive to execute their duties, reach milestones, achieve major progress, and fulfill the vision for their families, businesses, corporations, ministries, and nations. However, they also should work to produce the next generation of leaders who will value, protect, preserve, and build on those achievements.
Too many times we have seen great works, sacrifice, and hard-fought victories squandered and devalued by the irresponsible, insensitive abusive acts of a succeeding generation of leaders who have little or no appreciation for the blood, sweat, and tears expended by those of the former generation. Should the new leaders bear the blame for this abuse of history, or should we place the blame at the feet of the former leaders who failed to prepare, sensitize, and mentor future leaders? Should we consider failure to mentor the next generation of leaders generational suicide? Could it be a divine paradox that the very word succession comes from the root success?
The most important responsibility of leadership is to prepare for succession. The most valuable goal of leadership is not to succeed in the present, but to secure the future. You are only truly successful in leadership if your accomplishments and achievements are preserved and perpetuated for posterity. It is not what leaders achieve that counts. It is what they transfer. Building people to protect and preserve our institutions is more important than building institutions.
Leading beyond your leadership is the ultimate accomplishment of true leadership. No matter how great your accomplishments may be, if they die with you, then you are a failure.
Therefore, the greatest obligation of true leadership is to transfer your deposit to the next generation. Leadership success is measured by the success of your successor. It takes a lifetime to accumulate the knowledge, wisdom, skills, insights, and experience that make you an outstanding leader. It would be a tragedy to see the wealth of that life deposited in some cemetery and marked only by a tombstone, which can speak to no one.
True leaders must focus on investing in people more than buildings. Their priority should be to make deposits in the banks of human spirits and souls, not just in the financial institutions of Wall Street and Switzerland. Mentoring a successor is the most valuable investment a leader can make because it could guarantee preservation of all the other investments. Losing a lifetime of leadership achievement to an unprepared generation is the highest violation of leadership responsibility. It is imperative that mentoring successors becomes as much of a priority as fulfilling vision. In essence, a vision is only successful if it is durable.
Be ever mindful that you are a link in a long chain of purpose that was designed to fulfill the divine desire of the Creator. Thus, life is not about you, but it is about preparation for the next phase.
History is replete with sad stories of great leaders who accomplished outstanding social, economic, military, political, or spiritual feats only to witness an unprepared succeeding leadership dismantle most of what they spent a lifetime laboring to create. It is a true tragedy to see one generation’s work destroyed, ignored, or devalued by the one that followed.
I am certain that every leader throughout history desired to see a vision, work, programs, projects, mission, and passion continued beyond his or her tenure. No generation wants its hard-fought leadership success to be swallowed up in a whirlwind of neglect, insensitivity, and lack of appreciation for the sacrifice expended on that achievement.
We must mentor! No greater measure of leadership success exists than the ability to protect, preserve, and transfer the accomplishments of the present leadership to the next generation. This is the heart of the principle of succession and must be a priority in our twenty-first century leadership challenge. This series is about this challenge, and I invite you to join the adventure and the journey. It is my hope that this series will inspire and equip you to think beyond your own leadership and motivate you to leave a legacy, not in institutions or on tombstones, but in people. May you always remember that your success depends on your successors.
-Dr. Myles Munroe
Saturday, August 24, 2024
RETURNING TO THE ORIGINAL KINGDOM MANDATE
Proverbs chapter 19
Today we are walking in: Returning To The Original Kingdom Mandate
Psalm 104:29
Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou takest away their breath, they die, and return H7725 to their dust.
RETURN
Today we look to- RETURN -H7725 shuv--to turn back, return, to bring back, to be returned, be restored, be brought back
The Torah testifies...............
Genesis 3:19
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return H7725 unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. H7725
The prophets proclaim..................
Hosea 5:15
I will go and return H7725 to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me early.
The writings bear witness...........................
2 Chronicles 30:9
For if ye turn again H7725 unto the LORD, your brethren and your children shall find compassion before them that lead them captive, so that they shall come again H7725 into this land: for the LORD your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away his face from you, if ye return H7725 unto him.
Returning To The Original Kingdom Mandate
I want to continue on the subject of the kingdom and we’re going to talk about returning to the kingdom mandate. Our focus today will be identifying your role in the program of Yah’s corporate will and this is incredible and the most important subject that anyone can ever study and that is the Kingdom mandate of Yah. I want to begin by dealing first of all with Yah’s original purpose. The reason why everything should be begin with purpose is because purpose is the motivation for all of Yah’s actions. Proverbs chapter 19 verse 21 says many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it’s the Lord’s purpose that will prevail. Proverbs chapter 19 verse 21 written by king Solomon, inspired by the Holy Spirit. This one statement summarizes the entire reasoning for life. I am going to read it again. Proverbs chapter 19 verse 21. Many are the plans and a man’s heart but the Lord‘s purpose will prevail. That statement means that purpose is more important than plans, purpose is more powerful than plans and purpose proceeds plans. It also implies without question that the only thing that motivates Yah is his purpose and not your plans. Let me read it again proverbs chapter 19 verse 21 says many are the plans in a man’s heart but the Lord‘s purpose will prevail over all of man’s plans. The King James version says many are the devices in a man’s heart, but it’s the Lords council that will prevail or will stand. The word purpose therefore uncounseled means the same thing. Why is the word council used in the old King James 16th century version and why is the word purpose our most modern translation from the Hebrew? Because the word council produces purpose. A council means to actually have a meeting with yourself. Yah counseled himself about what he wanted to do, and then he concluded the meeting and decided what he wanted, and it became his purpose. The word purpose means original intent, write it down please. The word purpose means original intent. In other words, there’s something that Yah originally intended to have, and that is what he calls his purpose. The word purpose, in the Hebrew is also the word that we translate will. Whenever you see the term well of Yah , you can literally say the purpose of Yah . They are the same thing. So Yah’s will is Yah’s purpose, therefore, Yah’s purpose is what Yah originally intended. Therefore the entire book that you call the Bible, a Library of 66 books contains in it Yah ’s will. What is Yah’s will? Yah’s purpose. What is Yah’s purpose? Yah’s original intent. The word purpose therefore is also defined in the biblical text as the reason for creation. It means the reason why Yah created everything. Why did Yah do something is what is called purpose. So purpose is the reason why things exist. Purpose therefore is the original intention that Yah had in mind when he created everything and anything. Purpose therefore is simply why. Why did Yah create planet earth?. Why did Yah create mankind?. Why did Yah create nature?. Why did Yah create the universe?. Why did Yah give you what he had promised you, wisdom, and knowledge and understanding?. Why did Yah give us the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, the reptile kingdom, and the kingdom of this natural world?. Why did Yah do all of this?. The reason is, he has an original intent. Now, the only thing that Yah wants is what he originally intended. That is a critical point. The only thing that Yah wants is what he originally intended. In other words, Yah is only interested in what he originally wanted, everything else is not interesting to Yah . What does Yah want then? Is his original well. Matter fact, the only thing that motivates Yah is not your will but his will. That is why that statement is so important in the book of proverbs. It says many are the plans in your heart. The word heart there has nothing to do with your chest. The Hebrew word, there actually means mind. Yah says many are the plans in your mind, you have created your own ideas he says about your life and about life, what you wanna do, what do you wanna be, where do you wanna go, how you want to live, who you want to marry, what career you want, what vocation that you want, what kind of ministry you want. Yah says you’ve got all these ideas about your life he says, but my purpose for your life will prevail over everything you are planning. In other words, Yah is saying before you make plans for your life consult me For your purpose. It’s tragic to spend 30, 40 years working on a plan that Yah never gave you birth to do. It’s possible to be successful failures because you can be successful in something Yah never gave you birth to do. Therefore, it’s more important to discover purpose than to make plans and you should make your plans according to Yah’s purpose for your life so that your plans will be in sync with your reason for being. Yah says my purpose is supreme to me, my purpose will prevail over everything Man thinks, conceives, develops or devices. Yah says I will accomplish what I purpose, which means I will accomplish what I originally intended to have. When Yahusha came his first public statement was Yah’s original will. He says repent, for the kingdom of heaven has arrived. In other words, he came back with an old idea. He said I came back to restore what Yah originally intended, which was my kingdom on earth. Yah never changes his purpose. Write this down, plans may change but purpose is permanent. Yah’s plans were interrupted in Genesis chapter 3, but his purposes were never changed. This is why when Yahusha came in Matthew chapter 5 and introduced his first sermon, the last part of the sermon he made his statement very clearly. He said I didn’t come to change the law nor what the prophets prophesied. Now, why did he make that clear upfront? He’s saying look, I didn’t come to introduce a new idea, I didn’t come to create something new that God never talked about. In other words, whatever the prophets talked about is what Yah told them about, and I am Yah in the flesh. Therefore, I came to do what I told them. I didn’t come to change the laws why? The laws are the principles and the presets by which my kingdom works and whatever laws I gave Moses those laws are valid today. I didn’t come to change the law, nor to destroy the prophecies, but I came to what? Fulfill them. I came to bring them into effect. Then he makes a statement we don’t understand sometimes. He says, and therefore heaven and earth will pass away before one statement Yah made falls unfulfilled. In other words, no matter what happens, even if Yah got to move the present heaven and the present earth, and create a new heaven and a new earth, he will do it to keep his original word. In other words, what Yah intended he will have even if he hast to create new products. He doesn’t change his assignment. So what is Yah‘s original purpose? Matthew chapter 4 verse 14. This is a very important verse of scripture. Those of you who studied theology and hermeneutics will know that it’s very important for you when you’re reading a historical document to understand what they call context. You should never read one verse of scripture. It is very dangerous to speak and teach from one verse of scripture. Now people do it all the time, but it’s very dangerous because context is more important than text. I’ve seen preachers mutilate scripture by taking one verse and making say what they wanted it to say. It’s very dangerous to do that. It creates error. Every verse must be kept in context, so the meaning of the verse would be true to its original author. When you read Matthew, chapter 24 you have to read this in context. Now when you look at Matthew chapter 24 and you look at the first three verses, you’ll find out there was a question asked by the disciples. They asked him a question concerning the end times. Their question was when will the end come, do you see that question there? They were asking about the end of the world or the end of the age. And they said, when will the end come? Tell us what will be the signs that the end is upon us. In verse three they said, when will this happen, and what shall be the sign of your coming, and of the end of the age, I think all of us here have been asking those questions. Most of us think it has arrived. I have come to announce to you that September 11th has nothing to do with the end of the world, nothing to do with it. Yah saw pharaoh killed thousands of babies, he saw Harrod kill thousands of babies. He saw all kinds of terrorism all the time and it never touches Yah. When Yah is ready, Yah moves. When September 11th took place somehow the pulpits of our countries became the source of messages of doom. People saying these are the last days, the Lord is coming soon, prepare yourself, you better get ready, you better keep your soul in order. All of it was lies, and not true. Always read your Bible and not the hymn books. Always study the word, not just your preacher's sermons. Yah has not left anything in the dark. So when you read chapter 24 the question was what would be the sign of the end time and when will you come, Yahusha, the second time. Please notice he did not say to them, well I cannot tell you, it’s a mystery, it’s a secret. He didn’t say you’re not supposed to ask these deep questions. He didn’t do that. He told them exactly when the end will come. Now you’ve been taught like I’ve been taught when I was in church that no one knows the end, no one knows when the end will come. That’s not true. I know when the end will come and I’ve already seen it and Hamachiach told us when the end will come. Let’s read what he says. The question was, when will the end come and when will the second coming of the Son of Man be? He begins to answer them. Matter of fact, let’s look at verse 4. What are the first two words? Yahusha answered. Isn’t that beautiful? They said when will the end come? And what will be the sign of your second coming? And Yahusha answered them. So he is going to tell them now when the end will come. Number one he says watch out that no one deceives you. In other words, people walking around, saying he’s coming now, he’s coming there, he’s coming there, he’s coming over there. Verse five says for many will come in my name, claiming I am the Hamachiach and they will deceive many. Underline that statement please “I am the Christ“. He’s talking about people who come in every generation, claiming that they are the anointed of Yah. Now, since Hamachiach left the earth, there have been many who came and said that they came to complete Yah‘s work. So you have Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Islam, Scientologist. You’ve got all these gurus. He said look, there's going to be many saying I’ve got the final word. He said, but don’t be deceived. In other words, don’t be surprised when there are many different religions. Hamachiach is prophesying here about the rise of religious leaders who create religions. He says you will see much of that, but look at the next statement. He says but the end is not yet. You will hear of wars, rumors of war, BUT….. See to it, that you are not alarmed or amazed. Why? Such things must happen BUT. But what? The end is not yet. My goodness they are fighting in the Middle East, they’re fighting in Israel, they’re fighting in South Africa, oooo so Yahusha is coming… He said look, don't let that make you believe that I’m coming. Yes, there will be many Hamachiach and many conflicts, and there will be wars and rumors of wars and biological warfare and terrorist wars but he said the end is not yet. Read on. CONTEXT. He says nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, and there will be economic crisis, which is what he means by “farming” and there will be earthquakes in diverse places. Are they happening now? Yes. All these are just what? The beginning of birth pains. Nothing to do with the end. I’m about to show you something that is going to blow your mind. He said do not believe that these natural and human disasters have anything to do with the end. Verse nine, you will be handed over to be persecuted, to be put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me at that time and many will turn away from the faith and will betrayed each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many because of the increase of wickedness, the love of many show grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. Now he says all this will happen, but the end is not yet. Verse 14. He tells us when the end will come. This is surprising. I know when the end will come. The end will come in verse 14. Let’s read it. He says, and when this gospel…. not just any gospel but…. when this gospel….. not just any gospel….. but this gospel, not just any message, but when this gospel of what? The kingdom. But when this gospel of the kingdom is preached into every part of the world, to every nation, as a testimony unto them, when that is done, read the next line, then the end will come. See, we know when the end will come. According to Yahusha, the end will come when we as his disciples preach a certain message. That’s why he hasn’t come yet. We are preaching all kinds of stuff except for what he told us to preach. We are preaching faith, preaching prosperity, preaching deliverance, preaching healing, preaching baptized in the Holy Spirit, preaching name it and claim it, we’re preaching all this stuff, and he said look, you’re still not getting the right message. When this gospel of the kingdom has been preached to all the world as a testimony! In other words, it will be demonstrated also. When every nation… And that word nation there is very important. To every nation. Write the word nation down. The word nation is the Greek word ethnos. This word is referred to as being ethnic. It is not limited to ethnic groups. This word means special groupings. It is a grouping of people that have a common language, a common ethnic, a common belief system, a common commitment to ideals. This is a strange word. Ethnos therefore, when you use the word nation, it means people are committed to a single common ideal or a common commitment. For example the USA is called nation, but we don’t all speak the same language, we are not all from the same culture, we have different backgrounds, but yet we call ourselves a nation. Why is this a nation with so many colors and so many cultures and so many languages? Because we are committed to the same ideal of democracy of freedom of speech. In other words, it is the ideas of commitment that makes an ethnos. Another way to put this is it is any group that has a common language and a common ideal commitment. It could be, for example medicine. If you go into the field of medicine, you have to learn a different language, you have to adhere to a different code of ethics And codes of conduct. When you enter the world of law lawyers have a different ethnos. They have a different language and different ideas and different codes that you have to learn. That’s why you have to study for many years to become a doctor or a lawyer. You have to learn the language. It is an ethnos. Whatever there is a common grouping it is an ethnos. The word there is nation. Hamachiach says I will not come until the message of the kingdom enters every ethnos. Every single nation must hear the good news of what? The kingdom. Now here’s what’s important about this statement. Yahusha said the end will come when the church preaches this message to the whole world. The end depends on what you and I preach. It doesn’t depend on the AntiChrist, it doesn’t depend on wars, rumors of wars, it doesn’t depend on pestilence and farming and an earthquake. He said the end is not yet. He said the end will be controlled by my people. I don’t want you to miss this. Yahusha said look, the end of the world, and the coming of the Messiah again is controlled by the church. You still missed it. He said look, when you preach this message… What message? The message of the kingdom of Yah. When you preach that he says when I’m convinced that all the world has heard that message and have an opportunity to receive it then I will come. Which means that the end depends on you. I know this is tough. Because I had to change myself. Let me give you a cross reference for this. Yahusha was asked the question about the end time three times by the disciples. The second time, they asked him, when will the end come, he answered them in a strange way. He said the end of the age will be like the days of Noah. Do you remember that? And they said explain it to us and he said well in the days of Noah, they were eating and drinking and rose up in a revelry, and the Most High spoke to Noah and told him to build an ark and for 120 years, Noah built the ark, and when the ark was finished and the doors were shut by Noah, the rain began. Then he says, so will it be at the end of the age. Now, most of you still don’t understand what he meant. So let’s back up. He said the end of the world would be just like it was in the days of Noah. In the days of Noah Yah had a problem with the planet, and he wanted to consummate some things. He went to Noah and he said Noah, I need your cooperation. I need you to work with me. I want you to go and tell the whole known world that I’m going to destroy the earth with water but if they believe what you say and they come into this boat that I want you to build, they will be safe. So your message is to go and tell them and warn them that danger is coming. If they believe you and they obey you and come into this big boat called the ark then they will be safe and I will destroy the world with water. What did Noah do? Noah obeyed Yah. So Noah began to build the boat and Noah built the boat and while he was building it. He went out and told the people. They said what are you doing? He says this is why I’m doing it and he told them about the message, Yah told him about the rain coming and the floods coming. This is heavy now. Now, the rain was in Yah’s control, but WHEN it came was in Noah’s control. You will get it later. Yah says Noah, when you finish the ark and shut the door, the rain will start. The rain was ready from the first day Yah told him. Now the rain had to wait until Noah was finished. Now, if Noah had finished the ark in 50 years and shut the door, the rain would have come. If Noah would have shut the ark at 100 years the rain would’ve come. In other words, the rain was waiting on Noah’s assignment. So Yahusha said the end will come, but the end is waiting on your assignment. He says the son of Yah will come, but he’s waiting on the church to complete its assignment. As soon as Noah closed the door, it says, immediately the rain began. What are we preaching? That determines if Yahusha comes. And when THIS gospel. Everyone say “this”… Now if I’m wearing a watch right now, if I say this is my watch that means there are other watches around. If I said, this is THE watch, that means there’s no other watches around. But if I say THIS watch, that means there are other watches. Hamachiach says when THIS gospel, in other words, there are many other preachings going around, a lot of stuff people are preaching, but when you get to this one, and you preach this stuff, the kingdom of Yah and you preach it all over the world then the end will come. In the book of Acts chapter 1, the disciples asked him after resurrection, will you now establish the kingdom? He says look, the hour when that is supposed to be established, no one knows the hour, the father knows the hour, but the time we know. What time? The time when we preach the gospel of the kingdom. I have a very strange suggestion. I suggest that the church itself has not even understood the kingdom. How can we preach it? We are experts in religion, but not the kingdom. It’s going to get a little heavy. Matthew chapter 4 verse 17, the first statement of Yahusha, when he began his ministry at age 30 it says, and Yahusha began to preach saying repent, for the kingdom of heaven has arrived. What is this big deal about the kingdom? Well, let’s talk about the assignment of Yahusha. Number one. The original plan of Yah was to extend his heavenly kingdom on earth through mankind. This is Yah‘s original plan. To extend his heavenly kingdom on earth through mankind. Number two his purpose was to establish a family of sons, and not servants. And that is important, because religion teaches us to be servants of the Most High but the kingdom teaches us to be sons of Yah. A servant and a son are different. I remember growing up in a religious environment and all I heard people say was, I just want to thank Yah I am just a servant of the Most High, I’m a servant of the Most High, and it sounds so good. I’m a servant of the Most High. It sounds so good, but Yahusha never said you must call yourself that. Religion makes you almost subjugated. Yah never wanted servants, he wanted what? Sons. Hamachiach says, in John chapter 1, as many as believed on him to them gave he the authority to call themselves. What? Sons of Yah. He told a story about the prodigal son, and he said look, there was a man who had two sons one went away and squandered all of his goods, and then he sat in the pigpen, and he said I will go back to my father, that’s religion, and I will ask him to be just a servant. That is religion. I’m not good enough to be sitting with Hamachiach so I will sit at his doormat. I just want to be a servant of the Most High, I want to serve the Most High. It sounds so good, so humble. Let me ask you a question, if you have a son or a daughter in your house and they said look, I don’t want to be your daughter or your son, I want to be your maid, how do you feel about that??? No mom, I don’t want to eat at the table, I’ll eat outside by the step, I’m not good enough to be sitting at the table. Daddy I just want to eat outside under the tree. I don’t want to be your son, just make me a servant. Listen to him, I am not worthy, he said. Sounds like a Christian doesn’t it? I’m not worthy to be saved by Grace, oh yes you are, he saved you before you even knew it. This false humility, that we call humility, makes Yah sick. Yah wants you to walk boldly into the throne room and say hello Pops, how are you doing today? You promised to do this for me, and do that for me and do this for me. That’s what he wants. Hamachiach says that when the son came back home, when the father saw him a long way off, he ran toward him, and before the son could even say, I want to be a servant he smashed his face up in his chest. He didn’t want to hear a word he had to say. You know, half of the things that you were telling Yah about Yah doesn’t even want to hear. You know what I have been Most High…. He says shut up. You say you know who I slept with and what I drink and he says shut up. My son who was once lost is now found, and to prove it I’m putting the ring, which is a sign of his identity with the family, bring the robe which is the status of his equality with the children and the father, and bring the slipper which puts him back in right standing with the family and kill the best reserved cow for special quality royalty. Royalty has come back home. He is a faithful Yah. He wants sons. Yahusha said that his son has an inheritance with the father. Number three he wanted to establish a kingdom of sons and not subjects. England was built on a monarchy matter fact, England has a history of being a kingdom. England still has remnants of kingdom concepts. The book in your hand is not a democracy. The book in your hand is not about a parliamentary democracy. It is not about a republic. The book in your hand is about a kingdom. Yah is not a Prime Minister, Yahusha Hamachiach is not a Prime Minister and he is not a president. He is a king. This is important. Therefore, the book that you have in your hand called the Bible is not about a republic, it is not about a democracy. As a matter of fact, the Bible is not democratic at all. The difference between a king and a Prime Minister or president is that you vote a Prime Minister into power and you vote for a president but you don’t vote for a king. Today in a republic and a democracy everybody has got to vote. In a kingdom, there is no vote. In a democracy, you can have a referendum and change the constitution. In a kingdom there is no referendum. Your opinion doesn’t count in a kingdom, I’m going to shout all by myself. In a kingdom you have no individual rights but in a democracy, you’ve got individual rights. In a kingdom, the word of the king is law and in a democracy, the people make the laws. In a democracy you can change the leader, if you don’t like him, but in the kingdom, you are the one that changes, it is not the king who changes. In a democracy you can introduce your own ideas and make it legislation and law, but in the kingdom, the ideas of the king become law. I’m going to bless you watch this. In a kingdom, an earthly kingdom, there’s a king and there are subjects. Now those of you who are from the former Commonwealth nations, you are all dominated by the imperialistic power of Great Britain. Great Britain was the United Kingdom of Great Britain. It was a kingdom, ruled by a queen and a king and we were subjects. Now the word sub is a prefix. Sub means below. Y’all listen carefully, in the kingdoms of the world, the people in the kingdom are SUB-jects and sometimes they are RE-jects. Now if you are a SUB-ject the very word destroys your self concept. I’m trying to get to a very important point. The kingdoms of the world make their citizens subjects but the kingdom of Yah is the only kingdom, it is the only kingdom where the king and all the subjects are family. It is the only kingdom where the king and the subjects are all kings and he is called the king of kings. Shout somebody!!!! You don’t understand the message.. In the United Kingdom, we have the House of Lords and then you have the subjects but in the kingdom of Yah, we have a Lord, his name is Yahusha Hamachiach, and he is the Lord of Lords. That is why it is called Good news. The kingdom is called good news why? It does not oppress and depress and suppress people, it sets them free to sit with Hamachiach in heavenly places. Next, he came to establish a commonwealth of citizens not Christians. The original plan of Yah was never to have Christians. A Christian, write this down, is a religious creature. A citizen is a legal creature. I’m going to say it again, a Christian is a religious creature. I used to be a Christian, and it almost killed me. I was poor and enjoying poverty, because religion makes you comfortable in poverty. I was sick and enjoying sickness because religion makes you comfortable and sickness. The word Christian was never used by Yahusha, it was never ever used by Yahusha, it was never ever introduced by Yahusha, and he never ever told us to call ourselves that word, Christian. The word Christian was created by and introduced by pagans. Read your history. Peter never used it, James never used it, John never used it, Paul mentions it twice when he was in a pagan town, when the pagans didn’t know what to call the believers, so they invented this word that you’ve adopted. I rebuke that in the name of Yahusha. I don’t want to carry any name the pagans gave me. I want the name he gave me. He says you are sons of Yah . He says you are kings and priests. I like that better. A Christian is a religious person. A citizen is a legal person. Christians belong to a religious group, but a citizen belongs to a kingdom. A religious creature gets things from his gods by appeasing them. A citizen gets things from his government by qualifying for them. A citizen is different. A religious person gets things from their gods by doing acts of worship, but a citizen gets things from his government by demanding his rights. So when you are a Christian, that’s why you have to do a lot of things to make God like you, because you are just like the heathen and the pagans. Pagans built temples to their gods, they bring food to their gods, they offer money to their gods, they do obligations, they pay money to their gods. Matter fact, the word used for these different religions were simply pagans. A pagan is not an atheist. Pagan is a worshiper, a religious person that serves their gods. They are very dedicated to their gods. Christians are listed among one of the world religions. When Yahusha walked the Earth, they did not know what to call him. He was not a Pharisee, he was not a sadducee. He was not a Herodian. That is why wherever he went they asked him who are you? After hearing this teaching today if you apply it when people ask you who are you? You should not be telling them that you are a Christian. That is a religious person. You should be telling them. Oh, I am a son or daughter of the living Yah , working here in this location to bring transformation.
Today we are walking in: Returning To The Original Kingdom Mandate
Psalm 104:29
Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou takest away their breath, they die, and return H7725 to their dust.
RETURN
Today we look to- RETURN -H7725 shuv--to turn back, return, to bring back, to be returned, be restored, be brought back
The Torah testifies...............
Genesis 3:19
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return H7725 unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. H7725
The prophets proclaim..................
Hosea 5:15
I will go and return H7725 to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me early.
The writings bear witness...........................
2 Chronicles 30:9
For if ye turn again H7725 unto the LORD, your brethren and your children shall find compassion before them that lead them captive, so that they shall come again H7725 into this land: for the LORD your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away his face from you, if ye return H7725 unto him.
Returning To The Original Kingdom Mandate
I want to continue on the subject of the kingdom and we’re going to talk about returning to the kingdom mandate. Our focus today will be identifying your role in the program of Yah’s corporate will and this is incredible and the most important subject that anyone can ever study and that is the Kingdom mandate of Yah. I want to begin by dealing first of all with Yah’s original purpose. The reason why everything should be begin with purpose is because purpose is the motivation for all of Yah’s actions. Proverbs chapter 19 verse 21 says many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it’s the Lord’s purpose that will prevail. Proverbs chapter 19 verse 21 written by king Solomon, inspired by the Holy Spirit. This one statement summarizes the entire reasoning for life. I am going to read it again. Proverbs chapter 19 verse 21. Many are the plans and a man’s heart but the Lord‘s purpose will prevail. That statement means that purpose is more important than plans, purpose is more powerful than plans and purpose proceeds plans. It also implies without question that the only thing that motivates Yah is his purpose and not your plans. Let me read it again proverbs chapter 19 verse 21 says many are the plans in a man’s heart but the Lord‘s purpose will prevail over all of man’s plans. The King James version says many are the devices in a man’s heart, but it’s the Lords council that will prevail or will stand. The word purpose therefore uncounseled means the same thing. Why is the word council used in the old King James 16th century version and why is the word purpose our most modern translation from the Hebrew? Because the word council produces purpose. A council means to actually have a meeting with yourself. Yah counseled himself about what he wanted to do, and then he concluded the meeting and decided what he wanted, and it became his purpose. The word purpose means original intent, write it down please. The word purpose means original intent. In other words, there’s something that Yah originally intended to have, and that is what he calls his purpose. The word purpose, in the Hebrew is also the word that we translate will. Whenever you see the term well of Yah , you can literally say the purpose of Yah . They are the same thing. So Yah’s will is Yah’s purpose, therefore, Yah’s purpose is what Yah originally intended. Therefore the entire book that you call the Bible, a Library of 66 books contains in it Yah ’s will. What is Yah’s will? Yah’s purpose. What is Yah’s purpose? Yah’s original intent. The word purpose therefore is also defined in the biblical text as the reason for creation. It means the reason why Yah created everything. Why did Yah do something is what is called purpose. So purpose is the reason why things exist. Purpose therefore is the original intention that Yah had in mind when he created everything and anything. Purpose therefore is simply why. Why did Yah create planet earth?. Why did Yah create mankind?. Why did Yah create nature?. Why did Yah create the universe?. Why did Yah give you what he had promised you, wisdom, and knowledge and understanding?. Why did Yah give us the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, the reptile kingdom, and the kingdom of this natural world?. Why did Yah do all of this?. The reason is, he has an original intent. Now, the only thing that Yah wants is what he originally intended. That is a critical point. The only thing that Yah wants is what he originally intended. In other words, Yah is only interested in what he originally wanted, everything else is not interesting to Yah . What does Yah want then? Is his original well. Matter fact, the only thing that motivates Yah is not your will but his will. That is why that statement is so important in the book of proverbs. It says many are the plans in your heart. The word heart there has nothing to do with your chest. The Hebrew word, there actually means mind. Yah says many are the plans in your mind, you have created your own ideas he says about your life and about life, what you wanna do, what do you wanna be, where do you wanna go, how you want to live, who you want to marry, what career you want, what vocation that you want, what kind of ministry you want. Yah says you’ve got all these ideas about your life he says, but my purpose for your life will prevail over everything you are planning. In other words, Yah is saying before you make plans for your life consult me For your purpose. It’s tragic to spend 30, 40 years working on a plan that Yah never gave you birth to do. It’s possible to be successful failures because you can be successful in something Yah never gave you birth to do. Therefore, it’s more important to discover purpose than to make plans and you should make your plans according to Yah’s purpose for your life so that your plans will be in sync with your reason for being. Yah says my purpose is supreme to me, my purpose will prevail over everything Man thinks, conceives, develops or devices. Yah says I will accomplish what I purpose, which means I will accomplish what I originally intended to have. When Yahusha came his first public statement was Yah’s original will. He says repent, for the kingdom of heaven has arrived. In other words, he came back with an old idea. He said I came back to restore what Yah originally intended, which was my kingdom on earth. Yah never changes his purpose. Write this down, plans may change but purpose is permanent. Yah’s plans were interrupted in Genesis chapter 3, but his purposes were never changed. This is why when Yahusha came in Matthew chapter 5 and introduced his first sermon, the last part of the sermon he made his statement very clearly. He said I didn’t come to change the law nor what the prophets prophesied. Now, why did he make that clear upfront? He’s saying look, I didn’t come to introduce a new idea, I didn’t come to create something new that God never talked about. In other words, whatever the prophets talked about is what Yah told them about, and I am Yah in the flesh. Therefore, I came to do what I told them. I didn’t come to change the laws why? The laws are the principles and the presets by which my kingdom works and whatever laws I gave Moses those laws are valid today. I didn’t come to change the law, nor to destroy the prophecies, but I came to what? Fulfill them. I came to bring them into effect. Then he makes a statement we don’t understand sometimes. He says, and therefore heaven and earth will pass away before one statement Yah made falls unfulfilled. In other words, no matter what happens, even if Yah got to move the present heaven and the present earth, and create a new heaven and a new earth, he will do it to keep his original word. In other words, what Yah intended he will have even if he hast to create new products. He doesn’t change his assignment. So what is Yah‘s original purpose? Matthew chapter 4 verse 14. This is a very important verse of scripture. Those of you who studied theology and hermeneutics will know that it’s very important for you when you’re reading a historical document to understand what they call context. You should never read one verse of scripture. It is very dangerous to speak and teach from one verse of scripture. Now people do it all the time, but it’s very dangerous because context is more important than text. I’ve seen preachers mutilate scripture by taking one verse and making say what they wanted it to say. It’s very dangerous to do that. It creates error. Every verse must be kept in context, so the meaning of the verse would be true to its original author. When you read Matthew, chapter 24 you have to read this in context. Now when you look at Matthew chapter 24 and you look at the first three verses, you’ll find out there was a question asked by the disciples. They asked him a question concerning the end times. Their question was when will the end come, do you see that question there? They were asking about the end of the world or the end of the age. And they said, when will the end come? Tell us what will be the signs that the end is upon us. In verse three they said, when will this happen, and what shall be the sign of your coming, and of the end of the age, I think all of us here have been asking those questions. Most of us think it has arrived. I have come to announce to you that September 11th has nothing to do with the end of the world, nothing to do with it. Yah saw pharaoh killed thousands of babies, he saw Harrod kill thousands of babies. He saw all kinds of terrorism all the time and it never touches Yah. When Yah is ready, Yah moves. When September 11th took place somehow the pulpits of our countries became the source of messages of doom. People saying these are the last days, the Lord is coming soon, prepare yourself, you better get ready, you better keep your soul in order. All of it was lies, and not true. Always read your Bible and not the hymn books. Always study the word, not just your preacher's sermons. Yah has not left anything in the dark. So when you read chapter 24 the question was what would be the sign of the end time and when will you come, Yahusha, the second time. Please notice he did not say to them, well I cannot tell you, it’s a mystery, it’s a secret. He didn’t say you’re not supposed to ask these deep questions. He didn’t do that. He told them exactly when the end will come. Now you’ve been taught like I’ve been taught when I was in church that no one knows the end, no one knows when the end will come. That’s not true. I know when the end will come and I’ve already seen it and Hamachiach told us when the end will come. Let’s read what he says. The question was, when will the end come and when will the second coming of the Son of Man be? He begins to answer them. Matter of fact, let’s look at verse 4. What are the first two words? Yahusha answered. Isn’t that beautiful? They said when will the end come? And what will be the sign of your second coming? And Yahusha answered them. So he is going to tell them now when the end will come. Number one he says watch out that no one deceives you. In other words, people walking around, saying he’s coming now, he’s coming there, he’s coming there, he’s coming over there. Verse five says for many will come in my name, claiming I am the Hamachiach and they will deceive many. Underline that statement please “I am the Christ“. He’s talking about people who come in every generation, claiming that they are the anointed of Yah. Now, since Hamachiach left the earth, there have been many who came and said that they came to complete Yah‘s work. So you have Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Islam, Scientologist. You’ve got all these gurus. He said look, there's going to be many saying I’ve got the final word. He said, but don’t be deceived. In other words, don’t be surprised when there are many different religions. Hamachiach is prophesying here about the rise of religious leaders who create religions. He says you will see much of that, but look at the next statement. He says but the end is not yet. You will hear of wars, rumors of war, BUT….. See to it, that you are not alarmed or amazed. Why? Such things must happen BUT. But what? The end is not yet. My goodness they are fighting in the Middle East, they’re fighting in Israel, they’re fighting in South Africa, oooo so Yahusha is coming… He said look, don't let that make you believe that I’m coming. Yes, there will be many Hamachiach and many conflicts, and there will be wars and rumors of wars and biological warfare and terrorist wars but he said the end is not yet. Read on. CONTEXT. He says nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, and there will be economic crisis, which is what he means by “farming” and there will be earthquakes in diverse places. Are they happening now? Yes. All these are just what? The beginning of birth pains. Nothing to do with the end. I’m about to show you something that is going to blow your mind. He said do not believe that these natural and human disasters have anything to do with the end. Verse nine, you will be handed over to be persecuted, to be put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me at that time and many will turn away from the faith and will betrayed each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many because of the increase of wickedness, the love of many show grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. Now he says all this will happen, but the end is not yet. Verse 14. He tells us when the end will come. This is surprising. I know when the end will come. The end will come in verse 14. Let’s read it. He says, and when this gospel…. not just any gospel but…. when this gospel….. not just any gospel….. but this gospel, not just any message, but when this gospel of what? The kingdom. But when this gospel of the kingdom is preached into every part of the world, to every nation, as a testimony unto them, when that is done, read the next line, then the end will come. See, we know when the end will come. According to Yahusha, the end will come when we as his disciples preach a certain message. That’s why he hasn’t come yet. We are preaching all kinds of stuff except for what he told us to preach. We are preaching faith, preaching prosperity, preaching deliverance, preaching healing, preaching baptized in the Holy Spirit, preaching name it and claim it, we’re preaching all this stuff, and he said look, you’re still not getting the right message. When this gospel of the kingdom has been preached to all the world as a testimony! In other words, it will be demonstrated also. When every nation… And that word nation there is very important. To every nation. Write the word nation down. The word nation is the Greek word ethnos. This word is referred to as being ethnic. It is not limited to ethnic groups. This word means special groupings. It is a grouping of people that have a common language, a common ethnic, a common belief system, a common commitment to ideals. This is a strange word. Ethnos therefore, when you use the word nation, it means people are committed to a single common ideal or a common commitment. For example the USA is called nation, but we don’t all speak the same language, we are not all from the same culture, we have different backgrounds, but yet we call ourselves a nation. Why is this a nation with so many colors and so many cultures and so many languages? Because we are committed to the same ideal of democracy of freedom of speech. In other words, it is the ideas of commitment that makes an ethnos. Another way to put this is it is any group that has a common language and a common ideal commitment. It could be, for example medicine. If you go into the field of medicine, you have to learn a different language, you have to adhere to a different code of ethics And codes of conduct. When you enter the world of law lawyers have a different ethnos. They have a different language and different ideas and different codes that you have to learn. That’s why you have to study for many years to become a doctor or a lawyer. You have to learn the language. It is an ethnos. Whatever there is a common grouping it is an ethnos. The word there is nation. Hamachiach says I will not come until the message of the kingdom enters every ethnos. Every single nation must hear the good news of what? The kingdom. Now here’s what’s important about this statement. Yahusha said the end will come when the church preaches this message to the whole world. The end depends on what you and I preach. It doesn’t depend on the AntiChrist, it doesn’t depend on wars, rumors of wars, it doesn’t depend on pestilence and farming and an earthquake. He said the end is not yet. He said the end will be controlled by my people. I don’t want you to miss this. Yahusha said look, the end of the world, and the coming of the Messiah again is controlled by the church. You still missed it. He said look, when you preach this message… What message? The message of the kingdom of Yah. When you preach that he says when I’m convinced that all the world has heard that message and have an opportunity to receive it then I will come. Which means that the end depends on you. I know this is tough. Because I had to change myself. Let me give you a cross reference for this. Yahusha was asked the question about the end time three times by the disciples. The second time, they asked him, when will the end come, he answered them in a strange way. He said the end of the age will be like the days of Noah. Do you remember that? And they said explain it to us and he said well in the days of Noah, they were eating and drinking and rose up in a revelry, and the Most High spoke to Noah and told him to build an ark and for 120 years, Noah built the ark, and when the ark was finished and the doors were shut by Noah, the rain began. Then he says, so will it be at the end of the age. Now, most of you still don’t understand what he meant. So let’s back up. He said the end of the world would be just like it was in the days of Noah. In the days of Noah Yah had a problem with the planet, and he wanted to consummate some things. He went to Noah and he said Noah, I need your cooperation. I need you to work with me. I want you to go and tell the whole known world that I’m going to destroy the earth with water but if they believe what you say and they come into this boat that I want you to build, they will be safe. So your message is to go and tell them and warn them that danger is coming. If they believe you and they obey you and come into this big boat called the ark then they will be safe and I will destroy the world with water. What did Noah do? Noah obeyed Yah. So Noah began to build the boat and Noah built the boat and while he was building it. He went out and told the people. They said what are you doing? He says this is why I’m doing it and he told them about the message, Yah told him about the rain coming and the floods coming. This is heavy now. Now, the rain was in Yah’s control, but WHEN it came was in Noah’s control. You will get it later. Yah says Noah, when you finish the ark and shut the door, the rain will start. The rain was ready from the first day Yah told him. Now the rain had to wait until Noah was finished. Now, if Noah had finished the ark in 50 years and shut the door, the rain would have come. If Noah would have shut the ark at 100 years the rain would’ve come. In other words, the rain was waiting on Noah’s assignment. So Yahusha said the end will come, but the end is waiting on your assignment. He says the son of Yah will come, but he’s waiting on the church to complete its assignment. As soon as Noah closed the door, it says, immediately the rain began. What are we preaching? That determines if Yahusha comes. And when THIS gospel. Everyone say “this”… Now if I’m wearing a watch right now, if I say this is my watch that means there are other watches around. If I said, this is THE watch, that means there’s no other watches around. But if I say THIS watch, that means there are other watches. Hamachiach says when THIS gospel, in other words, there are many other preachings going around, a lot of stuff people are preaching, but when you get to this one, and you preach this stuff, the kingdom of Yah and you preach it all over the world then the end will come. In the book of Acts chapter 1, the disciples asked him after resurrection, will you now establish the kingdom? He says look, the hour when that is supposed to be established, no one knows the hour, the father knows the hour, but the time we know. What time? The time when we preach the gospel of the kingdom. I have a very strange suggestion. I suggest that the church itself has not even understood the kingdom. How can we preach it? We are experts in religion, but not the kingdom. It’s going to get a little heavy. Matthew chapter 4 verse 17, the first statement of Yahusha, when he began his ministry at age 30 it says, and Yahusha began to preach saying repent, for the kingdom of heaven has arrived. What is this big deal about the kingdom? Well, let’s talk about the assignment of Yahusha. Number one. The original plan of Yah was to extend his heavenly kingdom on earth through mankind. This is Yah‘s original plan. To extend his heavenly kingdom on earth through mankind. Number two his purpose was to establish a family of sons, and not servants. And that is important, because religion teaches us to be servants of the Most High but the kingdom teaches us to be sons of Yah. A servant and a son are different. I remember growing up in a religious environment and all I heard people say was, I just want to thank Yah I am just a servant of the Most High, I’m a servant of the Most High, and it sounds so good. I’m a servant of the Most High. It sounds so good, but Yahusha never said you must call yourself that. Religion makes you almost subjugated. Yah never wanted servants, he wanted what? Sons. Hamachiach says, in John chapter 1, as many as believed on him to them gave he the authority to call themselves. What? Sons of Yah. He told a story about the prodigal son, and he said look, there was a man who had two sons one went away and squandered all of his goods, and then he sat in the pigpen, and he said I will go back to my father, that’s religion, and I will ask him to be just a servant. That is religion. I’m not good enough to be sitting with Hamachiach so I will sit at his doormat. I just want to be a servant of the Most High, I want to serve the Most High. It sounds so good, so humble. Let me ask you a question, if you have a son or a daughter in your house and they said look, I don’t want to be your daughter or your son, I want to be your maid, how do you feel about that??? No mom, I don’t want to eat at the table, I’ll eat outside by the step, I’m not good enough to be sitting at the table. Daddy I just want to eat outside under the tree. I don’t want to be your son, just make me a servant. Listen to him, I am not worthy, he said. Sounds like a Christian doesn’t it? I’m not worthy to be saved by Grace, oh yes you are, he saved you before you even knew it. This false humility, that we call humility, makes Yah sick. Yah wants you to walk boldly into the throne room and say hello Pops, how are you doing today? You promised to do this for me, and do that for me and do this for me. That’s what he wants. Hamachiach says that when the son came back home, when the father saw him a long way off, he ran toward him, and before the son could even say, I want to be a servant he smashed his face up in his chest. He didn’t want to hear a word he had to say. You know, half of the things that you were telling Yah about Yah doesn’t even want to hear. You know what I have been Most High…. He says shut up. You say you know who I slept with and what I drink and he says shut up. My son who was once lost is now found, and to prove it I’m putting the ring, which is a sign of his identity with the family, bring the robe which is the status of his equality with the children and the father, and bring the slipper which puts him back in right standing with the family and kill the best reserved cow for special quality royalty. Royalty has come back home. He is a faithful Yah. He wants sons. Yahusha said that his son has an inheritance with the father. Number three he wanted to establish a kingdom of sons and not subjects. England was built on a monarchy matter fact, England has a history of being a kingdom. England still has remnants of kingdom concepts. The book in your hand is not a democracy. The book in your hand is not about a parliamentary democracy. It is not about a republic. The book in your hand is about a kingdom. Yah is not a Prime Minister, Yahusha Hamachiach is not a Prime Minister and he is not a president. He is a king. This is important. Therefore, the book that you have in your hand called the Bible is not about a republic, it is not about a democracy. As a matter of fact, the Bible is not democratic at all. The difference between a king and a Prime Minister or president is that you vote a Prime Minister into power and you vote for a president but you don’t vote for a king. Today in a republic and a democracy everybody has got to vote. In a kingdom, there is no vote. In a democracy, you can have a referendum and change the constitution. In a kingdom there is no referendum. Your opinion doesn’t count in a kingdom, I’m going to shout all by myself. In a kingdom you have no individual rights but in a democracy, you’ve got individual rights. In a kingdom, the word of the king is law and in a democracy, the people make the laws. In a democracy you can change the leader, if you don’t like him, but in the kingdom, you are the one that changes, it is not the king who changes. In a democracy you can introduce your own ideas and make it legislation and law, but in the kingdom, the ideas of the king become law. I’m going to bless you watch this. In a kingdom, an earthly kingdom, there’s a king and there are subjects. Now those of you who are from the former Commonwealth nations, you are all dominated by the imperialistic power of Great Britain. Great Britain was the United Kingdom of Great Britain. It was a kingdom, ruled by a queen and a king and we were subjects. Now the word sub is a prefix. Sub means below. Y’all listen carefully, in the kingdoms of the world, the people in the kingdom are SUB-jects and sometimes they are RE-jects. Now if you are a SUB-ject the very word destroys your self concept. I’m trying to get to a very important point. The kingdoms of the world make their citizens subjects but the kingdom of Yah is the only kingdom, it is the only kingdom where the king and all the subjects are family. It is the only kingdom where the king and the subjects are all kings and he is called the king of kings. Shout somebody!!!! You don’t understand the message.. In the United Kingdom, we have the House of Lords and then you have the subjects but in the kingdom of Yah, we have a Lord, his name is Yahusha Hamachiach, and he is the Lord of Lords. That is why it is called Good news. The kingdom is called good news why? It does not oppress and depress and suppress people, it sets them free to sit with Hamachiach in heavenly places. Next, he came to establish a commonwealth of citizens not Christians. The original plan of Yah was never to have Christians. A Christian, write this down, is a religious creature. A citizen is a legal creature. I’m going to say it again, a Christian is a religious creature. I used to be a Christian, and it almost killed me. I was poor and enjoying poverty, because religion makes you comfortable in poverty. I was sick and enjoying sickness because religion makes you comfortable and sickness. The word Christian was never used by Yahusha, it was never ever used by Yahusha, it was never ever introduced by Yahusha, and he never ever told us to call ourselves that word, Christian. The word Christian was created by and introduced by pagans. Read your history. Peter never used it, James never used it, John never used it, Paul mentions it twice when he was in a pagan town, when the pagans didn’t know what to call the believers, so they invented this word that you’ve adopted. I rebuke that in the name of Yahusha. I don’t want to carry any name the pagans gave me. I want the name he gave me. He says you are sons of Yah . He says you are kings and priests. I like that better. A Christian is a religious person. A citizen is a legal person. Christians belong to a religious group, but a citizen belongs to a kingdom. A religious creature gets things from his gods by appeasing them. A citizen gets things from his government by qualifying for them. A citizen is different. A religious person gets things from their gods by doing acts of worship, but a citizen gets things from his government by demanding his rights. So when you are a Christian, that’s why you have to do a lot of things to make God like you, because you are just like the heathen and the pagans. Pagans built temples to their gods, they bring food to their gods, they offer money to their gods, they do obligations, they pay money to their gods. Matter fact, the word used for these different religions were simply pagans. A pagan is not an atheist. Pagan is a worshiper, a religious person that serves their gods. They are very dedicated to their gods. Christians are listed among one of the world religions. When Yahusha walked the Earth, they did not know what to call him. He was not a Pharisee, he was not a sadducee. He was not a Herodian. That is why wherever he went they asked him who are you? After hearing this teaching today if you apply it when people ask you who are you? You should not be telling them that you are a Christian. That is a religious person. You should be telling them. Oh, I am a son or daughter of the living Yah , working here in this location to bring transformation.
Friday, August 23, 2024
INTEGRATING VISION AND VALUES
Proverbs chapter 4
Today we are walking in: Integrating Vision and Values
Today we look to the word-LEADER- H5057 nagiyd-- leader, ruler, captain, prince; excellent thing, (chief) governor, leader, noble, prince, (chief) ruler.
The Torah Testifies.............................
*****
The prophets proclaim...............
Isaiah 55:4 - Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader H5057 and commander to the people.
The writings bear witness.............
2Chronicles 32:21 - And the LORD sent an angel, which cut off all the mighty men of valour, and the leaders H5057 and captains in the camp of the king of Assyria. So he returned with shame of face to his own land. And when he was come into the house of his god, they that came forth of his own bowels slew him there with the sword
Chapter 12
Integrating Vision and Values
“Leaders stand for something—vision. Leaders stand on something—values.” —Dr. Myles Munroe
A woman was in the process of cleaning out several boxes in her attic that had been stored there for years—ever since she and her husband had moved into their home to accommodate their growing family of four children, who were now adults. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a box half-hidden behind the chimney. It was covered with dust and was still taped shut.
I wonder what’s in there? she thought. After carefully brushing away the dust, she pulled the yellowed, wrinkled tape off the center groove of the box and opened up the flaps. Inside, she saw several pieces of red cloth, imprinted with an intricate design, wrapped around some unknown objects. Suddenly, a memory flashed into her mind, taking her back three decades, and she instantly remembered what the items in the box were: several jade objects from China that a friend had given her, which she had inherited from her father. The woman had forgotten all about having received them; she had not given them a thought in years.
The next week, she had the items appraised, and she was stunned to find out they were comparable in age and quality to an eighteenth-century jade collection that had been featured on the television program Antiques Roadshow several years earlier. The items in that collection had been valued at as much as one million dollars.
A Long-Forgotten Treasure
In many ways, character in our contemporary culture has become like the long-forgotten treasure the woman in the above scenario found inside the dusty box. She hadn’t known what a precious heirloom was in her own house, because she’d abandoned it to a corner of her attic for decades.
Likewise, our society has increasingly relegated values and moral standards to the “attics” and “basements” of our culture. Many people don’t realize what a treasure our society has lost, because it is out of their moral range of vision. The only way character can come back into their line of sight is for them to see a clear manifestation of it in the lives of leaders like you and me. Then, they will be able to recognize the infinitely valuable gift that has been waiting for them all along, so they can receive it and manifest it in their own lives.
It is up to us to initiate the process of restoring character to our culture. Yahusha of Nazareth said that “the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”1 Similar to the merchant who sold everything he owned to obtain the pearl “of great value,” we need to make the reintroduction and development of character our number one priority.
There must be a rediscovery, reprioritization, and resurgence of character among the leaders of the world’s emerging and industrial states alike, so that we can begin to see the restoration of a culture of character in leadership. Teachers, professors, and educational administrators—from grade schools through universities and other institutions of learning—must reprioritize their programs and curriculum to teach students how to develop and refine their character and to understand why character is essential for individuals, communities, and nations.
We need to make the reintroduction and development of character our number one priority.
We must likewise see a commitment among leaders in all fields of endeavor to transform their own conduct, rededicating themselves to high standards and noble values of genuine leadership. Consequently, we need a new breed of leader who will embrace and manifest a culture of accountability—to himself, to his constituency, and, most important, to the Creator Himself, who extended to us the privilege of representing Him as leaders in the earth.
The Intersection of Vision and Values
We could sum up the entire message of this series in the following way: Leaders stand for something—vision. Leaders stand on something—values. And, of these two elements, values are of higher importance. As we have noted throughout the preceding teachings, if a leader does not have an active commitment to his values, moral standards, principles, discipline, and ethical code, all of his endeavors will be weakened—and may even be nullified. Since character must be our number one priority in leadership, let’s review how vision and values are permanently interrelated in the life of a principled leader.
1. Vision Is an Interpretation of Values
Your vision interprets your values in the sense that it reflects and communicates them. For example, suppose your vision is to help young people who are members of gangs that are undermining your community to become engaged in positive activities that will build up the community, instead. Your vision communicates that you value the lives of young people, and that you value improving the quality of life in your community.
Similarly, an organization’s vision reflects its corporate values. For instance, suppose the vision of a home-based business was to create exquisitely embroidered garments to sell to specialty stores, the proceeds of which would supplement the family’s income. This vision communicates that that the business, through its owner, values creativity, quality, enterprise, and financial stability.
Therefore, when leaders in politics, religion, education, business, economics, sports, and other fields invest their time and money in a vision, that vision can be used as a measure for assessing their principal values. Yahusha of Nazareth said, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”2
2. Vision Is Protected by Values
Your vision is only as safe as the values that undergird it. If you cherish a great vision but don’t value the principles that would enable you to realize it, you may as well not pursue that vision. There needs to be a marriage of purpose and principles. You have to know your purpose, but you must live by your principles. In this sense, vision may be compared to the head, and values to the heart. We should take the advice of an ancient proverb that says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”3
It has been said that “the process is as important as the product,” and this is certainly true in regard to fulfilling one’s vision. Years ago, my organization decided to construct a large building called the Diplomat Center. I envisioned how it would be used to teach people about their purpose as leaders. So, I was excited about it, and I was caught up with securing the property, raising the money, and working long hours to see it come to fruition. However, one day, I sensed that Yah was saying to me, “I am not pleased with you.” I was confused, so I asked, “What are You talking about? I’m doing Your will. You told me to build the building.” He said, “You’re not leading the people. You are driving them.” It broke my heart to realize that I had been driving the people who were involved in the vision, rather than inspiring them.
Then, I felt Yah saying, “You have passion, and passion is good, but you have no compassion. Stop everything. I want you to get your balance back.” Deeply convicted, I went into a brief season of solitude in order to regain the balance between my passion and my compassion. The people in my organization were supposed to love this project, not just endure it. So, after reflecting on the situation, I had to go to the people and publicly ask them to forgive me for breaking the law of compassion. I explained to them that, from that point on, we would work together. My confession changed the whole spirit of the organization. People donated more money toward the project, and they also dedicated their time and their skills to see it accomplished.
The ethical issue I had to deal with was that I had been standing for something—the idea of how the new building would support the organization’s vision—but I hadn’t been standing on the values that were needed for the process of carrying it out. Having character, therefore, requires more than discovering what you were born to do and pursuing the fulfillment of your vision; it involves pursuing the fulfillment of your vision in a way that corresponds with ethical principles.
Individual leaders and organizations alike should protect themselves against ethical breaches by setting strong values for themselves. For example, an organization’s governing board should decide what types of policies it will and will not sanction. A business should determine what standards it will not compromise on. A family should decide what media content it will and will not allow into its home. A corporate entity that has not established values for itself lacks moral protection. It is like a city without walls from ancient times that has left itself vulnerable to deadly attack by enemy armies.
Having character involves pursuing the fulfillment of your vision in a way that corresponds with ethical principles.
Vision Without Values—a False Attempt at Reaching Destiny
When a leader pursues his vision without having established values, he is attempting to reach his destiny without the necessary component of discipline. For example, regardless of how great a leader’s vision might be— whether it is to build a family, a ministry, a business, or a country—the entire process must be balanced by clear, strong values that guide his conduct. As we have seen, no matter how wonderful your anticipated destiny might be, if you don’t have discipline, you will short-circuit that destiny and be in danger of losing it completely.
One of my close friends is a distinguished gentleman named Dr. Richard Demeritte Jr. He and I met years ago when he was the ambassador to England from the Bahamas. He has also served as the ambassador to the European Union. When we were talking together one time, he told me a time-honored value his father had conveyed to him: “When in doubt, do what’s right.” This statement provides extremely valuable yet easy-to-remember ethical advice. When you are faced with a moral choice, just do what’s right! A leader of character should always live that way.
The Power of Character to Create Leaders of Principle
In the introduction to this series, we examined principles that showed how crucial leaders are to the development and well-being of a culture. For instance, we noted that nothing advances without leadership and nothing is corrected without leadership. Let’s now review what we’ve learned about the importance of character to the development of leaders equipped to help bring about a cultural course correction and to advance our societies through ethical principles.
1. Character Gives Leaders Credibility
The only avenue for gaining credibility with people so that they will respect our leadership is to develop genuine character. When we demonstrate character, people will not only make deposits in our “trust account,” but they will also advance us “credit” as an investment in our future. They will follow us in faith—and every deposit and investment they make will strengthen the credibility of our character. If we continue to be consistent, they will keep following us. We must build a stable and honorable life if we want people to believe what we say about ourselves and our vision. How committed are you to leading with credibility?
2. Character Gives Leaders Moral Force
Character—not power—is the force of true leadership. If a person has moral force, he doesn’t need to put physical or emotional pressure on people to make them do what he wants. The moral force of a leader is potent because it has the capacity to influence others.
When you develop into a person of strong character—dependable and stable —that is when you become a true force in leadership. For example, your followers may be deeply impressed by your ability to stay steady under pressure. Consequently, your very presence will bring peace to them, because they will know they can rely on you. People will be influenced by you when they are inspired by you, and inspiration comes from character. Are you focused on power—or on moral force?
“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.” —Mark Twain
3. Character Ensures That Leaders Maintain Trustworthiness
Trust is a privilege given to the leader by his followers; therefore, a leader must maintain that trust over time and keep it up-to-date. Some companies will spend billions of dollars to protect the longevity of their good name and reputation after a defect or malfunction is discovered in one of their products. They issue a recall and may develop advertising campaigns to alert and reassure their customers, even though doing so entails tremendous cost.
For example, if a toy company hears that a child has gotten hurt because of a defect in one of its products, it will recall the toy, and it will refund its customers in full. To maintain its character, it will spend money to help rectify its mistake. I remember a particular recall of meat due to contamination by E. coli bacteria. The company that supplied the meat immediately stopped its sale, at a loss of likely millions of dollars. But it wasn’t too high a price to pay to protect its good name and prevent additional sickness and potential death among its customers.
So, if many companies will go to that kind of effort to protect the integrity of their name in the marketplace, why do many leaders fail to protect the integrity of their names among their followers by ignoring ethical principles? We can’t set a price tag on having a good name. Are you willing to pay the costs of self-control, discipline, and delayed gratification in order to establish and maintain true character?
4. Character Legitimizes Leaders
It is character that gives people a legitimate right to lead others. Leaders without character are “illegal,” because they are asking people to place their faith in an untrustworthy source. No one has a right to lead if he cannot be trusted, and it would be inappropriate for him to ask people to follow him. If he does, it’s as if he is running a scam, because con men are individuals who ask people to trust them, even though they will never deliver what they promise, but will, instead, steal something from them. There are many people throughout our world today who are powerful con men—but they call themselves “leaders.”
Is that statement too harsh? I don’t think so, because leaders without character who violate people’s faith inevitably take away some quantity of their valuable personal assets—things like trust, security, peace of mind, and hope. This is why, when people become disappointed over the poor ethical conduct of a leader they have followed, many of them become angry. They take it personally, because they have committed much of themselves to the leader and his vision. The leader’s conduct and its aftereffects constitute a major abuse of the great gifts the people have invested—their time, energy, talents, resources, and commitment—which they have poured out based on their trust.
For example, suppose someone has been a member of a particular ministry for ten years, bringing her children to Sunday school to be taught good principles, and donating generous financial support. If it were then disclosed that the ministry’s pastor was having an extramarital affair with another member of the congregation, this ministry member might not only be shocked but also very angry, thinking, How could he have done that to my money, my time, my children! She takes it personally because she has invested valuable aspects of her life in the ministry based on the leader’s presumed character. But his conduct canceled the legitimacy of his leadership. Depending on how the other leaders at the ministry handle the matter, she may feel that she can no longer stay a member of that congregation.
As we have seen, many people today respond to leaders based on what they promise more than on what they value. We need to shift the condition of our support from promises to proven character. The condition should be: “Don’t just tell me what you can do for me—show me who you really are. If you clearly demonstrate that you have character, I will give you my trust.”
How about you? When people place their faith in you as a leader, are they relying on a trustworthy source—or an untrustworthy one?
5. Character Establishes Integrity in Leaders
We have learned that character is built through tests over time and that having integrity involves the integration of one’s thoughts, words, and actions. Thus, a leader’s integrity can be established only over the course of time, which allows for this integration to occur. For this reason, leadership should not be given to people who have not yet been tested and tried. They must have a clear history of experiences as evidence that they have demonstrated stability, trustworthiness, and competence over time.
An emerging leader, therefore, must be tested to see if he can stand up under pressure: How stable is he when circumstances are not going well? Can he handle the weight of disappointments? To this end, an individual who is young or untried should be given responsibility gradually, so that he can develop and manifest character with each level of accountability. This principle is the reason I emphasized the core character quality of responsibleness in the previous teaching. If a person does not develop this quality, he cannot become a principled leader. I give many people in my organization challenging responsibilities because I want them to be able to grow and become qualified to accept leadership positions. Therefore, it’s important for us not only to build our own character, and not only to look for demonstrated character in other leaders, but also to help our followers develop their character so they may become trusted leaders, as well.
Leadership should not be given to people who have not yet been tested and tried.
Vision Gives Meaning to People...
Many leaders think that their goal should be to get people to believe in them. On the contrary, the goal of leaders should be to get people to believe in themselves—to provide an avenue through which they can discover meaning for their lives and manifest their purpose through their personal vision. Helping people to do this requires balance on the part of the leader, because, when people are inspired by a leader’s passion, they often confuse the vision with the leader in their minds. In this way, they think they are being drawn to the person. As we have seen, a leader of principle takes the focus off of himself and puts it on the vision. It is the vision—not the leader—that gives people meaning. And it is the vision that will sustain the people’s conviction, because that is where they will find their significance in serving their gift to others.
What we have just discussed shows how important it is for us as leaders to act on our convictions and not neglect our vision. When we pursue our own purpose, we actually help other people to find theirs. We should reflect on that responsibility, because the opposite scenario can also occur. Think about it: If we don’t maintain our passion for our vision, the people may also lose their energy for their vision. When we feel like giving up and start talking about quitting, the people may also begin to lose their sense of purpose. When we lose our focus, or our commitment to strong character, the people may lose their way in life. Therefore, we must keep vision and values prominent in our lives—other people are depending on us! Who are you currently helping to find meaning and purpose for their own lives through your vision?
...and Values Preserve That Vision
It is imperative that people stay focused on the vision rather than on the leader, because of the danger that a cult of personality will develop. You must never allow people to become so attached to you that they begin to idolize you. How many organizations today have become defunct because they were run by leaders who were “worshipped” by their followers, so that everything fell apart when the leaders had a major moral failure? Leaders need to watch their pride in this respect, because pride can destroy them and their vision. Pride is what makes leaders think they should be idolized. They being to think the vision is all about them, that it’s built around them, that its success is all up to them.
Let us guard against such attitudes. If we don’t want to be humiliated by failure, then we should volunteer right now to humble ourselves. As I emphasized in the previous teaching, humility is another core quality of principled leaders. Cultivating an attitude of humility will help leaders protect themselves and their vision.
Never forget that you and your vision have great significance. “Your” people—the people who are associated with your vision, or will be associated with it—need you. Your character is vital to them. For their sake, as well as your own, commit to be a leader of principle.
A New Beginning for Character
The purpose of this series has been to introduce you to yourself—to your intrinsic significance and your character alike. I want history to write a good account of your life on earth. Please don’t become one of those leaders who begins well and starts a good work, only to have a moral failure or become sidetracked before reaching his destiny. Instead, be a great leader who stays true to his convictions and fulfills his purpose and vision according to strong values; one who never betrays the followers who have placed their trust in him.
You have learned many principles and guidelines for character in these pages. But knowledge and understanding of character and its principles are not enough. If we do not act on what we know, it is the equivalent of never having learned it. These principles won’t operate in our lives unless we apply them. It is by applying them that we have access to the power of character in leadership. At the back of this series are Character Development Worksheets that will help you to evaluate your current beliefs, convictions, values, moral standards, and discipline, so that you can become intentional about the development of your character.
Perhaps you were not raised with much instruction in morals and ethics. If that is the case, you have likely struggled with character issues that now affect multiple areas of your life—your relationships with other people, your job, and the pursuit of your personal purpose. Because a foundation of character was not established in your life at an early age, you didn’t have the resources and wisdom to deal with the various ethical issues you encountered once you reached your teenage years and beyond. I encourage you to use this series as a new beginning for the establishment of strong character in your life.
Principles of character won’t operate in our lives unless we apply them.
May we all dedicate ourselves to a new beginning for character—in our own lives, in our families, in our communities, and in our nations. I encourage you to share these principles of character with your children and other family members, your friends, your staff, and your colleagues. The power of character needs to be taught in the halls of government and the boardrooms of every country in the world. No leader should enter into politics, business, education, economics, education, religion, the arts, professional sports, or any other realm until he has established personal moral standards. I believe that ethical principles should be included in premarital counseling courses, as well, to encourage new husbands and wives to become principled leaders who build their homes upon the strong and enduring foundation of character.
Doing nothing about the crisis of character in our world is not an option, because the future of leadership and our culture is at stake—and the world will not transform itself. Our Creator established character as the foundation of human leadership and success. Let us make a lasting commitment to stand on vision and to stand for values.
How to “Fall Up”: Restoration After Character Failure
The streets of history are littered with the remains of wasted lives—the lives of powerful, talented, skillful, and educated leaders who collapsed under the weight of their achievements, success, notoriety, influence, and power because they lacked an ethical foundation that could have carried them to their destiny. Many of these onetime great leaders undervalued the priority and power of character in their lives. They traded faith for fame, principles for power, and moral respect for reputation.
It is tragic to observe the dishonorable descent of such leaders who, by their own indiscretion, irresponsibility, lack of discipline, and abuse of privilege sell their integrity for temporary pleasures and destroy their character. Sadly, I have personally known and observed many leaders, with great potential to impact the world for good and make a difference in their generation, disintegrate right before my eyes as their outstanding leadership talent and skills dissolved in the murky waters of a life without noble character. Many of them believed that their past accomplishments, achievements, and reputations could compensate for the trust they had lost, but they were greatly mistaken.
Human beings are thus prone to succumb to the lure of power, fame, notoriety, and the adulation of the masses, and many people fall in disgrace by neglecting to secure a strong, durable character. Consequently, we need to ask the following questions: Can a leader survive and recover from a character failure? Is there a way back to the road of leadership success?
Leaders are normally trained in how to succeed, but they are rarely taught how to fail effectively—by learning from their mistakes and making changes to avoid repeating them in the future. They fall down, but they don’t know how to “fall up” after failing.
When a leader fails, he is often rejected by those whom he has been leading because of this breach of faith. Although a leader’s legacy can be dismantled by defective character, one of the greatest tragedies in the world is when someone with tremendous potential fails morally and then feels he can never be restored. Failing in leadership is not as grave as failing to deal with that failure effectively. If you’ve fallen, you must make personal changes that will enable you to “fall up,” transforming your life from the inside out.
Remember that a leader’s ability to function successfully in his role of influencing others for a great cause in the interest of humanity is what I call the “trust factor.” Trust is the currency of true leadership and is the power that is deposited into the leader’s influence account. The only way to protect this deposit of trust is to establish strong character. If an individual wants to secure his leadership, he must make protecting and maintaining his account of trust his principal responsibility. It can take years for a leader to build this account—but only minutes of irresponsibility to deplete it and even cancel it.
The following are the steps to restoration, reconciliation, and reclamation after you have experienced a moral failure or otherwise “fallen” in your leadership role:
1. Admit your need for help.
2. Confess your violation of trust.
3. Identify a true and reliable authority in your life to be accountable to.
4. Practice complete submission to that authority without condition.
5. Obey the advice, counsel, and instruction of that authority without condition.
6. Accept full responsibility for your fall.
7. Agree never to attempt to defend yourself or your act of indiscretion.
8. Agree to allow the authority to represent and speak on your behalf to your constituency and the greater community.
9. Practice total submission to the discretion of the authority with regard to your readiness to return to public service.
10. Establish a permanent relationship with the authority for the purpose of ongoing accountability.
If a leader follows these steps, he can find healing and restoration. The safest course to take when you fall is to submit yourself to a qualified human authority.
Again, failure is not the termination of a leader’s call, assignment, gifts, or talents. It must be seen as a detour, an interruption, and even an attempt to cancel destiny. If you have fallen down, it’s time for you to “fall up” and seek restoration.
Make sure you take time out from your other responsibilities to evaluate what went wrong. Some leaders who fail keep on going as if nothing had happened. You will need to seek forgiveness from those you have let down, but then you must develop self-control, steadiness, maturity, and all the other values of principled leadership. Trust the Creator to restore you to leadership when you are ready for it. There is life after “the fall,” but you must follow the process of restoration in order to receive its benefits.
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