The I in Leadership, Part 2

Last time I shared three areas of "self leadership" in which I'm hoping to grow this and every year: Spiritual, Personal, and Professional.

I'd like to share a little bit more of what I'm learning about leading myself spiritually.

You may be familiar with the classic "spiritual disciplines" like prayer, scripture reading, confession, fasting, etc. I find them most helpfully discussed at length in Richard Foster's book "Celebration of Discipline." I have also learned a great deal from other authors, but as an overview, Foster's book is superb. He divides a dozen different disciplines into three general categories: inward, outward, and corporate. 

The twelve he explores are tremendously inter-related, a reminder that everything we do in our spiritual journey affects the rest of our spiritual journey. This is true of fasting, for example. It's also true of sin. 

The hardest thing for me to remember is that the practice of spiritual disciplines is primarily for these two purposes: "training in righteousness" and intimacy with our Father. 

Training in righteousness is a telling phrase. No basketball player spends time in the weight room so they can be good with weights. They work out on the treadmill or do bicep curls so when they hit the court they can play basketball well. And win. The same is true in our faith. We spend time reading God's word not as an end, but a means to and end. We pray the same way. And submit. And confess. And worship. And meditate.

I want to ever-increasingly do the activities of my faith to increase my faith. I want to train for the battle and actually engage in the battle.

And win.

These things are essential for worship leaders.

In addition to training, we lead ourselves spiritually to increase intimacy with God. A trio of writers that have helped me with this are Ken Gire, John Eldridge, and Max Lucado. If you don't mind reading a Roman Catholic who excelled in this area, check out the writings of Thomas Merton. Amazing stuff.

I'm not sure there's a whole lot I can offer to specifically aid your journey toward intimacy with God. For me it's a matter of posture and attitude. When I read scripture, I place myself under its' authority. That's posture. As I pray, I come to God as His son, not His subject. That's attitude. Perhaps those will inspire better thoughts in your mind.

Back to the bigger picture as we wrap up: Jesus led Himself perfectly. He only did what the Father told Him to do. He was so intimate with His Father that He could say they were "one." And His training in righteousness was effective enough to see Him through the agony of the garden, the anguish of the cross, and to the emptiness of a tomb. He fought and won.

We can too.