Leadership Resilience: Navigating Crisis with Faith and Focus

Devotional

Sermon Summary

Bible Study Guide

Sermon Clips


Now, look, being a leader means making choices that some people won't like. That is inherent to leadership, no matter what leadership you have. There you are, Mom, you're a leader in your home with your two or three kids. You're going to make decisions that not everybody likes in that home, are you not? [00:01:49]

Friends, to make it through a time of crisis, we need to have the same mentality. Now, to have that kind of focus, it means that Jesus had to have courage. And to make it through a time of crisis, we need courage. Pray for it, ask God for it. Lord, I feel discouraged. [00:12:03]

There's a different kind of courage, and this is the kind of courage which sees the difficulty ahead and steadfastly marches towards it. And friends, in some respects, that's an even more difficult kind of courage to have. Jesus had this kind of courage. He could see the cross on the horizon. [00:13:05]

When you get that kind of focus and that kind of determination, not everyone will receive you. You have to be okay with that. And there'll be some people who are so out of sync with what you're doing that they'll be like James and John. They'll say, well, do you want us to call down fire from heaven? [00:14:00]

In times of crisis, we really need to boil down ministry to its essential aspects and have focus upon those things. I remember one time really going through a difficult time in ministry, and at that time, for just a season, really, God had really blessed our congregation with an assistant pastor. [00:14:22]

If we make any of those things our focus in a time of crisis, let me tell you, you've already lost. You've already lost in the midst. You've been distracted from the most important things in ministry because of everything surrounding the present crisis. You may think that the battle is really with the conflict. [00:16:03]

Do not take to heart everything people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. For many times, also, your own heart has known that even you have cursed others. Go ahead, underline those verses in your Bible right now. There, now, I have to explain how I came across this as a leadership principle. [00:19:25]

You can't always stop people's tongues, so oftentimes the best thing to do is to stop your own ears. There's always so much blabbing going on, and if you pay attention to it, you will soon hear something bad about yourself. So in that chapter, Spurgeon goes through and first he says. [00:21:29]

Friends, many of us are way too sensitive regarding what other people say about us. You know, we kind of become like politicians with their focus groups and such. We're always casting about to see what other people say about us. Don't go fishing about to see what other people think about you. [00:25:04]

It would be better to be deceived a hundred times than to live a life of suspicion. Friends, that hits close to home to anybody who's been in ministry. If you've been in ministry and have not been hurt profoundly along the way, either you're just a remarkable sort of unicorn type of person. [00:27:22]

If we live these lives of protecting and isolating ourselves, of denying ourselves the blessing of deep relationships, then we're just not going to be able to lead well. You're going to guarantee disappointment for yourself by never trusting other people. You're going to have a sad and shallow existence of loneliness. [00:29:54]

We thank the Lord that our Savior is like that, that he has in perfection both these things, that the face determined to do God's will, as we saw both in Isaiah chapter 50 and Luke chapter 9. He has that face that's determined and focused. Jesus has that, but he also has in some measure. [00:34:30]

Ask a question about this sermon