10 Days to Better Spiritual LeadershipSample

Every Christian is obliged to be the best for God. Like any other worthwhile activity, if leadership can be improved, we should seek to improve it. In so doing, we prepare ourselves for higher service that may be just around the next corner, though unseen at the present.

Not every Christian is called to major leadership in the church, but every Christian is a leader, for we all influence others. All of us should strive to improve our leadership skills.

The first steps toward improvement involve recognizing weaknesses, making corrections, and cultivating strengths. 

Romans 12:1 issues this imperative to leaders: “Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.” The Greek aorist tense of the verb “offer” (which signifies a onetime act that is finished and done) is followed by thirty-six present-tense verbs (continuous action) that specify what should happen once we obey and offer. Two of those results are especially noteworthy here.

First, “exert yourself to lead” (Romans 12:8). Barclay translates this phrase, “If called upon to supply leadership, do it with zeal.” Here is the summons to dive wholeheartedly into leadership, to serve with energy, to leave no room for sloth. Are we doing it? Does your leadership show the intensity typical of Jesus?

When the disciples saw the Master ablaze with righteous anger at the desecration of His Father’s temple, they remembered the writings: “Zeal for your house will consume me” ( John 2:17). So strong was Jesus’ zeal that His friends thought He had abandoned common sense (Mark 3:21) and enemies charged Him with having a demon ( John 7:20). Do people ever use “zeal” and your name in the same sentence?

Similar intensity marked Paul at every stage of his life. We should strive for such continuing intensity as we grow older. Age tends to turn a flame into embers—the fire needs fresh fuel always.

Before his conversion, Paul’s zeal drove him to terrible cruelty against the early Christians, such that he mourned over it later. That same zeal, cleansed and redirected by the Holy Spirit, carried into his new life in Christ and led to amazing achievements for the very church he once tried to destroy.

Full of the Spirit, Paul’s mind was aflame with the truth of God and his heart glowed with God’s love. At the center of his life was passion for the glory of God. No wonder people followed Paul. He exerted himself to lead. He did it with intensity and zeal. And the spirit of his life was contagious to those around him.   

Our second present-tense verb in Romans 12 comes from verse 11: “Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.” 

This verse points to the dynamic behind consistent, zealous service:  Most leaders know times of great spiritual excitement, of the burning heart, of special nearness to God, and more than ordinary fruitfulness in service, but the problem is staying there! Verse 11 holds out the alluring possibility of living “aglow with the Spirit”. We need not go off boil if the Spirit is the great central furnace of our lives.

In His great sermon on prayer, Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would be given if only we ask. “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13). When we trust Christ for salvation, this promise is fulfilled in us, for Paul teaches that “if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ” (Romans 8:9).