Thinking about Leading
My pastor asked me about using the program I run at church as a means to train leaders for our church and community. As a result, I’ve been contemplating the difference between a leader and a follower. For my benefit, I’d like to do a series of posts exploring specific traits that a person can develop to become a successful leader. I have not read anything on this subject, so this will flow completely from my little brain. I’m sure I’ll miss a bunch. I’m sure I’ll be redundant with what has already been written.
o well
It takes two to gossip
Do you hear gossip? If you allow slander in your presence, you are an accessory. You are enabling sinful communication when you have the power to end it. How do you stop it?
Speak up
Here are some ideas on how to stop the conversation.
“Okay, this conversation is going somewhere I don’t want to go.”
“Please stop. I don’t want to hear it.”
Or, “I really want to hear this, but I would be sinning if I did. Please don’t tempt me.”
You might be saying as you read this, “Oh my goodness! My friends will quit talking to me if I do that!” Yep. They might. But if your friendship is based on destructive chit-chat, it isn’t a friend worth keeping. Let her go.
On the other hand, your words might be the used by the Holy Spirit to convict them of their sin. My closest friends are those who love me enough to hurt me when I need it. Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Wounds from a friend can be trusted… Proverbs 27:5-6
Avoid those friends
If you keep sinning when talking with certain folks, you would be wise to stay away from them. Chances are if they are talking about others, they are talking about you too. A gossip betrays a confidence; so avoid a man who talks too much. Proverbs 20:19
Serious Stuff
Slander is serious. The Ninth Commandment is “Do not give a false testimony about another.” False testimony may not be an outright lie, but simple deceit. It is casting another person in a poor light without being certain of the facts. It may be giving your opinion as concrete evidence against a person’s poor behavior. This is setting yourself up as a judge using your own law (your opinion) for passing sentence. Jesus warns us to stop this judgmental behavior in Matthew 7, because judging brings impending judgment on the judger. You are in danger of discipline if you slander.
Slander is a result of many things: a form of revenge for being wronged, the result of envy, even simple boredom. It is talking about a problem with the wrong person, with the wrong goal. If you are offended by someone’s behavior, speech or manner, there is a correct way to handle your hurt.
First, you must start with yourself.
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. Matthew 7:3-5
Ask yourself: How did I contribute to this problem? Is this really my issue? Do I need to cover this person’s offense because I need to love more? Am I being too sensitive? Have I sinned against this person myself? Do I want to help this person become more Christ-like, or do I just want to hurt them back?
Then, you must speak to the person herself.
“If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.” Matthew 18: 15
Why? “The one with the sore toes goes, because she’s the one who always knows!” The person who hurt you may not be aware there is a problem. They can’t read your mind. You must discuss it with them! Not with your girlfriends. Not with your mother. Not with the elders. You must speak to the person who hurt you. The sweetest times of Christian fellowship and growth have been when I have bared my soul to another, revealing how much their sin hurt me; or I was confronted about my behavior hurting another. This confronting each other is the stuff the Church is made of.
Get busy.
… they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things they ought not to.1 Timothy 5:13
I find it fascinating that slander is the bastard child of poor time management. How do you spend your time? Do you waste time idling about, just barely getting your duties accomplished, much less reaching out to serve others? Do you build relationships based on gossip or compassion? Do you neglect your responsibilities to chit-chat for hours? “When words are many, sin is not absent.” If you are tempted with the sin of slander, maybe it’s time to stop talking and start working.
We Do Not Know
It is impossible for us to imagine heaven because we only know the shabbiness of our earth. We are three-dimensional creatures playing with the science of a fourth, fifth, and even eighth dimension that broadens the scope of what we experience as reality. There is much more than we know.
But God knows. He is the author, the playwright of our time. It is HIS story. We aren’t the directors or even the audience. We are the actors. But, we do not know the play. We only know the line as we say it, the day as we live it. We don’t know if we are in Act 1 or Act 5. We don’t even know all the characters, only those who share the stage with us at present. We do not know what he has in store for us. All we know is the stage as we experience it and some dim imaginings born of the seed of eternity planted in our soul at curtain rise.
“Let us picture a woman thrown into a dungeon. There she bears and rears a son. He grows up seeing nothing but the dungeon walls, the straw on the floor, and a little patch of the sky seen through the grating, which is too high up to show anything except sky. This unfortunate woman was an artist, and when they imprisoned her she managed to bring with her a drawing pad and a box of pencils. As she never loses the hope of deliverance she is constantly teaching her son about the outer world which she attempts to show him what fields, rivers, mountains, cities and waves on a beach are like. He is a dutiful boy and he does his best to believer her when she tells him that the outer world is far more interesting and glorious than anything in the dungeon. At times he succeeds. On the whole he gets on tolerably well until, one day, he says something that gives his mother pause. For a minute or two they are at cross purposes. Finally it dawns on her that he has, all these years, lived under a misconception.
But, she gasps, you didn’t’ think that the real world was full of lines drawn in lead pencil?
What? says the boy. No pencil marks there?
And instantly his whole notion of the outer world becomes a blank. For the lines, by which alone he was imagining it, have now been denied of it. He has no idea of that which will exclude and dispense with the lines, that of which the lines were merely a transposition –the waving treetops, the light dancing on the dock, the colored three-dimensional realities which are not enclosed in lines but define their own shapes at every moment with a delicacy and multiplicity which no drawing could ever achieve. The child will get the idea that the real world is somehow less visible than his mother’s pictures. In reality it lacks lines because it is incomparably more visible.”
We do not know.
~Combined thoughts with Lewis
Stumble It!
