Heroes

Throughout history there are heroes.   They are usually considered men or women of great acclaim – people who have changed history or have gained a spot in the record of life because of something they stood for or something they accomplished.  In most cases, their life actions proved to demonstrate their core belief system.  Over time, the attributes that qualify them as heroes are found more in their beliefs than their actions.

Not every hero is famous. Some are infamous.  Others may even be notorious.  Most are unsung, every day people, who have chosen to pay the price to live as they believe.  What makes a person a hero is in what he chooses to mean for others – even if they will never see it.  He is not motivated by personal glory, but by a sense of doing what is right – a sense of purpose fulfilled in that there is something that needs to be fulfilled in the world and they are the ones in the right time, the right place and the right season to bring it about.  They are human and real, and like the rest of the world, have their faults and weaknesses.  Yet, they are not defined by those weaknesses but by their strengths.  

Most never recognize their value as a hero.  They do not see their strength and are often even lost to define their purpose because they did not “locate it” in the sense that we are taught to do. They simply walked into their purpose and embraced it as it unfolded.  Ironically, they are the ones who usually look at the fabric of their lives, wondering if they will ever accomplish – ever have value.  They never recognize that the value they offered is found in the significant life change they bring to those they touch.

God placed such a hero in my life.  I will even identify him by name because I believe that when someone is a hero, he deserves the respect of recognition.  God blessed our family and our ministry nearly fourteen years ago by bringing David Gardner into our lives.  He embraced us, and in so doing, he chose to recognize and embrace the call of God on our lives.   We were still early in our ministry.  In many ways, our ministry and even our lives were being defined.  David risked his future and took the plunge to become part of the fabric of our lives.  He embedded himself into the work for whatever was needed to make for our success, both as ministers and as family.

David embraced the understanding that the Apostle Paul identified to the church at Ephesus,

  “What you make happen for others, God makes happen for you.”

Young men are philosophers and identify with such sayings in a particular way.  David embraced our ministry, our lives, and our faults when both of us were young enough to 

“have all of the answers.”  We were 

“God’s ministers of faith and power”

and knew how to rightly divide the principles of God(mild sarcasm implied). Age offer a clearer picture of life, and we matured, and grew.  In so doing, as we did for others, we developed a clear understanding of what would unfold for us – both individually and together.  Like so many others, we looked at the Elijah/Elisha model and followed the teaching of many of the voices of the day.  In that era, the understanding of the reward of an armor-bearer in ministry is that such a role was a necessary stepping-stone to having your own ministry.  You serve a man in ministry and God will elevate you to your own ministry.  A lot of “armor-bearers" embraced the task with exactly that in mind.  

And, a lot quit on God when they realized disappointment when their “ministry” never materialized.

I can honestly say that the price of launching successfully into your own ministry is that you will have to serve another’s.  It is part of the training ground and part of the price – a combination of “God’s School of Hard Knocks” and the seed sown into a successful future.  But through years of watching people “try and fail” in pursuing this path to produce ministry, I have come to understand something.  

There are those who have a season of serving another as they reach toward their destiny, and there are those who God uniquely ordains and commissions to serve the destiny of another.  

They are the Samwise Gamgee to Tolkien’s Bilbo Baggins in “The Lord of the Rings.”  The destiny of the one they serve becomes their destiny.  The notion that what you make happen for others, God makes happen for you takes on a different meaning. What happens in the life of the one you serve is a part of you.  The destiny you help fulfill n their life becomes your destiny as well. 

The world creates famous heroes.  They are identified throughout history, beginning with the heroes of the faith.  Yet, for all of the accomplishment of the famous heroes, nearly all of them would have been lost to success without those who were close behind them offering support and making things happen.  

The Apostle Paul is a great hero of the faith.  He even acknowledges some who stood with him and co-labored with him.  He gets the accolade because he authored the letters that became the foundation for the modern church.  But, what of those who dedicated their life to making certain that the churches throughout Asia received those letters?  It took great faith and great courage to write those words of inspiration form prison, but what of the person who risked his life to make certain those letters were read?  Without them, Paul’s writings, regardless of how profound, would have meant nothing in the course of history. 

In modern times we look at great ministers of the faith.  We see the Joyce Meyers, the Jentzen Franklins, the Andy Stanleys, the Creflo Dollars, and the T. D. Jakes of the world.  We hear their messages of hope and challenge.  We identify their testimonies and their crises of faith and we identify how they overcame and found their destiny.  We see their destiny unfold as they communicate with millions of people, both in huge live events and via television and books. Yet, we never realize that the destiny of those people was only brought into fruition by those who made certain that the cameras were pointed in the right direction, the editing was done with excellence, so that that individual could be cast in their best light.  More importantly, those individuals had to look past the human frailty of the leader they serve.  They have to wade past the “human condition” to recognize the greater purpose in that individual, and that without them you would never know who these individuals are.

There are people who have worked with Billy Graham for perhaps half a century.  Their call was his call.  Their destiny was fulfilled in his.  The destiny of Joyce Meyers is also the destiny of those who have co-labored with her behind the scenes.  Their destiny is not to “fulfill her destiny.”  Her destiny is  their destiny.  What God unfolds for her, He also unfolds for those who serve her purpose.  They share like purpose.

David asked the question many times: “What is my purpose?”  Or, 

“When will I discover my purpose?” 

He also has answered it many times, perhaps without realizing it, because his answer was cloaked in the mission of the day.  

“My mission is to see that the ministry that I serve reaches and brings change to others – that the minister God has called me to serve is able to effectively do what God has called him to do.  Whatever I need to do to help him accomplish his mission

becomes my task.”  

David started the process by serving the destiny in our lives.  He expected that God would allow him to fulfill the destiny in his life.  Fourteen years later, some would argue, he hasn’t found his destiny.  I say our destiny is intertwined.  My destiny is his destiny.  The success I enjoy is also his success.  That which happens for me also happens for him.

Paul defined this in Ephesians when describing the gifts God gives to all men, that we function together utilizing our specific abilities until all come into the unity of the faith.  Would I have a ministry without David?  Probably.  But it would not look anything like it does now.  Would it touch the same people? Perhaps not.  It may have touched other people in a different capacity.  Would it be what it is today? No.  

The sum of the parts is greater than the parts themselves.

When David embraced our lives, he did so as a ministry.  To embrace our ministry meant that he embraced our family.  He helped us raise our children form the time they were in diapers.  (Yes, he even did those.)  He has lived as their Uncle David and has played a pivotal role in their personal growth and success.  He has responded to every request I have ever asked of him, for the purpose of making certain that when the time came, that which was necessary for ministry to go forth would be in place, ready to function.   He saw us lay our life and our future on the line to see accomplished the task God placed in our hands.  He laid his life on the line to make certain that we could truly accomplish that task.  As a result any success we have in our church, in our ministry and even in our family is a success in which he shares.  He did not need to look for a purpose.  He simply embraced purpose.  If he hadn’t, I do not know where I would be today. That makes him a hero – just as certain as if he had jumped into a burning building to rescue me.  Anyone who lays his life on the line for the life of another is a hero – and deserves a hero’s reward.  I cannot think of our life without David's existence.  Nor would I want to... we are more complete because of his role in our lives.

As you read this, you may be one who is trying to find your destiny.  You may be questioning your value or your purpose in life.  Consider whose life you touch right now.  Consider how their life would be different without you.  Consider further the gift they are to others.  Would they be the same gift without your input into their life?  You may be fulfilling destiny and not even knowing it.

What Kind of Leader Are You?

I love the way the Apostle Paul articulates.  If you read through his writings, it is helpful to remember that the translation into the English language (and particularly the Old English Language) can at times seem like a woven labyrinth of literary mystery.  When that happens, it sometimes clouds the simple eloquence of what is communicated.

Paul addresses the church at Corinth and speaks to the divisions which are occurring among the people based on whose teaching they chose to follow.  He made a point of communicating the fact that the leaders of the church were people who were gifted and anointed of God to carry forward the message of the Gospel. They were also, simply stated, people.  He further identified that there was danger in failing to recognize the common goal of the leaders because in doing so, one can easily divide Christ and his purpose in their life.  Such action creates for men to seemingly identify the Gospel based on how it fits their desire.  It “makes wise” one who begins to believe he knows more than what he really does, and in so doing, creates a distortion of the Gospel in both their thinking and in the thoughts of others.

In the third chapter, Paul stated that he could not speak to the church members of Corinth as “spiritual people” but as “carnal people” – a distinction he identified in several places within his writings.  He constantly focused on man’s ability to discover and discern the “mystery of God” – to identify life on Kingdom terms.

I like how the Message communicates this thought.

1 Cor. 3:1-4 "But for right now friends, I am, completely frustrated with your dealings with each other and with God.  You are acting like infants in relation o Christ, capable of nothing more than nursing at the breast.  Well then, I’ll nurse you since you do not seem to be capable of doing anything more..  As long as you grab for what makes you feel good or makes you look important, are you really much different than a babe at the breast, content only when everything is going your way?  When one of you says, “I am on Paul’s side,” or “I’m for Apollos,” aren’t you being totally infantile?"

There are two things I want to consider here.  One is that  

Believers often have a tendency to gravitate to a teaching or to a leader who leads in the direction they most want to go. 

They embrace the doctrine that suits them or is comfortable for them.  They resist anything taught that stands in opposition to aspects of their lifestyle they do not want to change.  Or, they religiously hold to what they have always heard, as Paul often communicated when speaking to people bound by both tradition and law.  People can vest themselves in problems on both sides of this fence.  They either become so “free of the law” that the law carries no value in their life, or they hold to the law with such tenacity that they miss the purpose of its fulfillment.  Worse, they are so blinded by what they hold to, that they miss the value of what God really wants to do in their lives.  Jesus came, not to bind us to the law, but to fulfill the law in us – that the lessons learned in keeping the law would reveal to us a much greater purpose – a more complete way.

The second issue is that

 

living through this dichotomy in a personal level tends to damage your ability to lead in the manner in which God called you.   

You can lead strongly in the areas that you are comfortable – even to the point that you can unwittingly lead people in a wrong direction because of how you embrace it.  Or, you take the lead in certain areas, but avoid leading in others because to touch those areas means that you have to deal with those same areas in your own life.  You become weak as true leaders in the kingdom because what invariably occurs through this process is a diatribe certain to overpower almost every voice of reason.

Paul identifies something else, which I believe speaks on several levels. He discusses what a leader really is and isn’t.  In doing so, he defines those you follow, but I believe also sets the stage for leaders to recognize who they are in their own estimation.

Look at 1 Cor. 4:1-5  (the Message)

“Don't imagine us leaders to be something we aren't. We are servants of Christ, not his masters. We are guides into God's most sublime secrets, not security guards posted to protect them. The requirements for a good guide are reliability and accurate knowledge. It matters very little to me what you think of me, even less where I rank in popular opinion. I don't even rank myself. Comparisons in these matters are pointless. I'm not aware of anything that would disqualify me from being a good guide for you, but that doesn't mean much. The Master makes that judgment.  So don't get ahead of the Master and jump to conclusions with your judgments before all the evidence is in. When He comes, He will bring out in the open and place in evidence all kinds of things we never even dreamed of—inner motives and purposes and prayers. Only then will any one of us get to hear the "Well done!" of God."

I find in most cases that how a leader responds to situations identifies a lot about his own heart. 

If a leader is a servant of Christ, he is a steward 

of the mysteries of God.  

In keeping with how Jesus taught, such a person will be far more interested in guiding (or leading) someone into the mysteries and workings of God, than he will be as an enforcer.  Earthly enforcers tend to enforce what matters to them.  This is true in every aspect of earthly life, from law enforcement to our judicial system.  Government and education are all guided by the law, but the law winds up being interpreted and enforced based on what matters to the enforcers.

It is because of this that people tend to gravitate to the leaders who “think in kind.”  Such division has polarized our nation.  I believe that it polarized the church beforehand.  If you look hard, you find that polarization in the family unit.  Look even harder, you find it in man.  James 1:8 identifies that a double-minded man is unstable in all of his ways.

Paul reminds people to be careful of whom they follow.  He cautions them to be careful of how they view who they follow.  He reminds everyone, both the leader and the led, that God chooses the true qualification for leadership, not man.  He warns the church to avoid jumping to conclusions about what He does in people before the evidence is in.  

 Many relationships are destroyed because people speak against their perception of something without realizing what God is really doing that they cannot yet see.  

 In so doing, they will fail to see what God will do next because their eyes as well as their hearts toward that relationship will be blinded by their judgment.

Consider who you follow.  Consider who you lead.  Consider the “hows” and the “whys” of both.  Are you an encourager or a “scourger.”  Do you prove a point or make a plea?  Do you issue an edict or extend an invitation? All of these things speak to how you rightly divide the Gospel.  It will help you answer the question, 

“What Kind of Leader Are You?"