If you cannot lead yourself, everything in your life is going to be hard. It amazes me how many people want to go into ministry to effectively lead others in how to live their lives and their own lives are far from being orderly. This is a new series on how to lead yourself to more effectively lead others.
Of course, no one has to be perfect to be in ministry, but you should be able to lead yourself. Many of the challenges you face in your life are not due to others but the way you lead yourself.
Even when someone has been a leader for a long time, it is hard to lead yourself because you are so comfortable with yourself; you make excuses for yourself; you are blind to your problems because they are so close to home. Also, we often give ourselves the benefit of the doubt that we do not give to others. We certainly judge others by their actions and judge ourselves by our “heart” unless we are very careful indeed.
The most important thing you can do to lead yourself well is deal with your blind spots!
We all have blind spots, but as leaders, because we influence people, we have to be very careful indeed as yours will become the blind spots of others. One of things that brings us into leadership is our ability to focus well, and a skill at solving a particular type of problem. But if all we then talk about is that problem, we preach the same one sermon over and over, we solve every problem with the same tool then we have blind spots.
If you think you are always right, you definitely have blind spots! Jesus Himself said we can actually be trying to take the speck out of someone else’s eye while we have an entire plank in our own eye. Seems Jesus was very aware that as leaders we could have blind spots. We trust our insight without spending enough time with Jesus and with older, wiser, mentors that we get our eyes sorted.
David sinned in a way that would cost any 21st century pastor their entire career. He slept with a woman who was not his wife, then murdered her husband when he impregnated her! He couldn’t see it was a problem. Then Nathan, very wisely, told David a story about a man who stole another man’s lamb, and David was furious at how badly this hypothetical man behaved – then David realized it was him. Nathan was exceptionally wise in this approach, and later David named one of his sons after him.
How do we end up with blind spots? Several ways, but a main way is we hear the Word and then don’t do it (James 1.23). It says that if we do this, we deceive ourselves. That’s the Bible phrase for a blind spot – self-deception. We need to spend time with Jesus and the Word, the mirror of the Word is what helps restore our sight, and the Spirit convinces us of sin, righteousness and judgment.
You will not get out of blind spots by trying hard, you need to be humble and let others correct your vision. You cannot operate on your own eyes! God will bring the right people into your life, and also do operations Himself – God can be trusted to keep your vision clear but you need to learn how to listen to others, admit you can be wrong, and let our blind spots become open doors to growing in Christ,
Selah.
Inspiring and Challenging Dreamers 