The Inspired Leader: 101 Biblical Reflections for Becoming a Person of Influence (27 page)

Generally people lean to one side or the other on the grace-truth continuum. We are either reluctant to hurt someone’s feelings, so we withhold the truth, or we become angry and use our words as lethal weapons. Paul and Barnabas struggled with this issue. John Mark abandoned them on their first missionary journey (Acts 13:13). When it came time for Missionary Journey #2, the kindhearted Barnabas wanted to show grace and give John a second chance (Acts 15:37). Paul, however, spoke the truth: John had deserted his colleagues at a critical time, proving he was unreliable (Acts 15:38-40). They needed someone with more backbone and perseverance. Someone like Silas. Who was right? Both viewpoints had merit. Silas would indeed become a reliable colleague. However, in later years, Mark would greatly encourage the apostle as well (2 Tim. 4:11). Mark needed both grace and truth.

Sometimes the people around you require grace. They need another chance. They hope for forgiveness, without a browbeating. However, never compromise truth in order to dispense grace. Reality must still be faced. At other times, you have to deliver hard truth and act on the facts. However, as you speak the most painful truth you can still show grace. It
is
possible to fire someone gracefully! If you are speaking “truth” in anger, you probably aren’t showing grace. If you have a tough word for someone, wait until you can say it without anger. Don’t focus strictly on the negative, but share the positive as well. Offer hope for the future, even if your word for that day must be harsh.

Strive to give people full measures of grace and truth.
People desperately need to hear the truth, and withholding it won’t help them grow or mature. Likewise, everyone, including your family, needs to be uplifted by grace. Grace and truth presented together transform people. As you impart both, you can experience the indescribable joy of acting like Jesus.

REFLECT FOR A MOMENT

1. Do you tend to focus on speaking “truth” to people? Do you feel the need to confront shortcomings and to “tell it like it is”? If so, consider if you need to balance your truth giving with more grace.
   

2. Do you tend to extend people grace, regardless of how many times they fail or disappoint you? If so, consider whether there are times you need to confront inappropriate behavior and to hold people accountable for their actions.
   

3. Have you hurt people by either being too harsh, or too lenient in how you related to them? It is difficult to always strike a balance. If you went too far one way or the other, go to that person and apologize. Seek to be reconciled. Ask God to show you how much truth and grace you should express to that person in your next encounter.
   

WALT DISNEY IS famous for his creative genius and vision. But simply having a vision of what
could
be is not enough. There is a multitude of creative souls whose heads are brimming with fantastic ideas that will never see the light of day. Such dreaming profits people not at all.

As with most fabulously successful businesspeople, Walt Disney experienced numerous and significant failures. When he was 21, Walt’s company, Laugh-O-Gram, based in Kansas City, was forced to declare bankruptcy. It was a difficult time for Disney, since he had encouraged friends and relatives to invest in his fledgling company. Then in 1928, after moving to California, Disney established Walt Disney Studios and once again began producing cartoons. However, in one of the most devastating events in his life, he was betrayed by his own employees and associates and saw his new company cannibalized. It was one of the lowest points in Disney’s life. At that point he was in danger of becoming another of the thousands of aspiring writers, directors, and actors whose hopes of success in film had come crashing down on the jagged rocks of reality. But it was said that “Walt Disney seemed to never lose faith…‘He was always optimistic…about his ability and about the value of his ideas and about the possibilities of cartoons in the entertainment field. Never once did I hear him express anything except determination to go ahead’” (Neal Gabler,
Walt Disney,
72). Significantly, once Disney had recovered from his devastating setback, his next creation was Mortimer Mouse. When his wife Lillian declared she thought the name “Mortimer” was a terrible name, Disney suggested “Mickey,” and the rest, as they say, is history. Successful people are not necessarily those who have avoided failure or hardship, but rather they are individuals who refused to become discouraged or to lose focus on where they were going. It has been said of Disney, “When he was enthused, as he usually was, he got others enthused too.” It was Winston Churchill who claimed that “success” was going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

David had been given a vision from God that he would one day become the king of Israel. But, rather than his circumstances improving, they grew worse. King Saul became paranoid and sought to kill him. He was forced to flee from his homeland. The king gave David’s wife to another man. When David fled to the city of Gath, its citizens attempted to arrest him. Forced to extremes, David had to act as if he were mad to escape with his life (1 Samuel 21:10-15). At this nadir of his life, David might easily have abandoned any thoughts that God would grant him success or that he would ever achieve his dreams. Yet this is what David wrote, “
In God I have placed my trust; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me? Vows made to You are binding upon me, O God; I will render praises to you, for You have delivered my soul from death. Have You not kept my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living?
(Psalm 56:11-13).

Throughout every difficult challenge David faced (and there would still be many more to come), David kept his eyes on the Lord. He knew that if God had spoken, absolutely no one could ultimately thwart him from receiving what God had promised. Significantly, immediately after the Scripture relates David’s low point in Gath, it describes how mighty men from all across the land began to be attracted to join him (1 Samuel 22:1-5). If David was to lead mighty men, he had to retain his confidence in the Lord! He could not lose hope. He had to stay focused on his mission, regardless of the setbacks and obstacles. Ultimately he became his nation’s mightiest king, just as God had promised.

What challenges are you currently facing? Have they caused you to lose hope, or confidence? Are you being tempted to give up? Now is when your true mettle will be determined. Hold fast to what you know to be true and stay close to God. He’ll do the rest.

REFLECT FOR A MOMENT

1. Do you tend to persevere in adversity? Or, when times get tough, do you grow discouraged and give up? If so, God may keep giving you practice until you learn to keep your confidence in Him! People who quit when circumstances become difficult prove they have little confidence in God and His ability to sustain them.
   

2. It is sometimes during our most grievous trials that we are closer to God’s best than we ever were before. It would be tragic to quit or lose heart only weeks or days before God’s provision had arrived. If you are beginning to falter, take time to back up and get a proper perspective. Look for what is positive. Enlist godly counselors. Build a support team around you that will encourage you to hold the course until you have finished the race Christ set before you.
   

WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST was always a controversial figure. He would eventually become one of the most powerful and influential businesspeople in America as he utilized his popular newspapers from across the country to promote his beliefs and to support his causes. As a young man, Hearst suffered the woeful neglect of his father who was a U.S. Senator. He repeatedly wrote to his father while he was a student at Harvard, seeking to gain his affirmation and interest, but to no avail. At one point he wrote, “I wrote you not long ago and inserted in my letter a mild request for an answer, but the answer never came…Will you kindly take some notice of your only son?” Notes Hearst’s biographer, “All his life he had tried to prove to his father that he was worthy of his respect. If he had failed at Harvard, he had succeeded magnificently at the
Examiner,
turning a moribund, bankrupt daily into a profitable enterprise. But it had been in vain” (David Nasaw,
The Chief,
46, 89). His father trusted him so little that, in his will, he left most of Hearst’s inheritance in his mother’s care.

One would think that anyone who had suffered such painful neglect as a child would naturally have been zealous to nurture and affirm his own children when he became a parent himself. But such was not the case. Paradoxically, what later frustrated Hearst most about his own sons were the very shortcomings he suffered from himself. Not one of his sons completed college, just as their father had not. Hearst would become infuriated with his offspring for their extravagant spending habits, even though he, himself, had set the example. And, even though Hearst suffered miserably from his own father’s neglect, he ignored his own children just as thoroughly. Despite all he had seen that was wrong in his own father, Hearst had unknowingly become just like him. Although Hearst desperately craved parental affirmation and praise for his efforts, it seldom came. Yet Hearst was filled with criticism and ridicule for his own sons who clearly could never meet his high standards.

Isn’t it amazing how we can so clearly see the sins of others but be blinded to even greater transgressions in our own life? Jeremiah 17:9 notes, “
The heart is desperately deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?”
One of the greatest challenges for leaders is to beware of self-deception. That is, we fool ourselves into assuming our unethical or immoral or even illegal behavior is somehow justified. Or we berate our staff and colleagues with righteous indignation, even though we would be deeply offended if someone spoke to us in the same manner. Or we condemn our associates who appear petty or proud yet excuse that same behavior in ourselves.

David could have justifiably condemned King Saul for seeking to kill one of his most reliable and trusted soldiers (1 Samuel 20:1). Yet later, when David was king, he would plot to have one of his own loyal officers murdered so he could marry his wife (2 Samuel 11; 23:39). Samuel might have criticized the lax way in which Eli raised his two wicked sons (1 Samuel 2:12-17; 22-25). Yet Samuel’s own two sons would greatly dishonor God and eventually drive the Israelites to clamor for a king to lead them (1 Samuel 8:1-5).