LET’S START BY POSING SOME QUESTIONS

Q & A

1. If Satan were to try and invalidate you as a servant of God how do you think he would do it

2. Do you have close friends that you can confess your sins to?

3. Do you have people around you that have the freedom to challenge you?

4. Are you secure in your identity or are you only secure performing and producing?

STUART…

1. We must have our own revelation of \Jesus not someone

else’s

2. We have to take responsibility for our own life.

Acts 20:28 “Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of

which the Holly Spirit has made you overseers”. Our first

responsibility – is to ourselves and our walk with God

3. We have to learn to handle pressure.

We are called to a life of pressure which we cannot duck out of.

In pressure God enlarges us.

STUART CONT.…

a. At time it can be tough

2 Cor 1:8 We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the

hardships we suffer in the province of Asia. We were under great

pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of

life.

b. We are in a battle

Luke 22:31 – Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and

was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days he was tempted

by the devil.

Luke 22:31 “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat”.

2 Cor 4:8 – The enemy want us to flag in zeal. When harvest does not

come as quickly as we would like – do not give up.

C. THE PRESSURE OF CRITICISM

To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing be nothing.

We must learn to handle criticism. It will come because:

I. Not everyone is called to lead

II. People do not know all the facts.

III. We all have blind spots.

IV. Some people have been wounded by authority.

V. Leadership can arouse jealousy.

We must deal with rejection in ourselves because it is part of our

leadership calling. Leaders cannot afford to be over-sensitive.

HOW DO WE HANDLE CRITICISM?

1. Expect it

2. Listen to it

3. Ask for grace

4. Don’t reject it out of hand

When the secretary of state called Abraham Lincoln a

fool his reply was, “Stanton is a wise man. If he

said I am a fool I had better look into the matter.”

STUART CONT.….

5. Don’t be discouraged by it.

6. Don’t be ruled by it or give place to

anger and hurt.

7. Don’t personalise it or retaliate.

8. Seek to discover the reason behind

the criticism.

ADRIAN…

Dr Donald Howard said… Always listen to criticism but never

respond to it.

• Recognise there is no such thing as personal ministry, God

gives gifts to the church for developing the church for works of

ministry, so it’s the collective body that Minsters.

Staying on the Way’

We need to Know

It ought to be WILL not emotions that take the lead

Emotions / feelings are not necessarily wrong but they should not

be the lead decision making part of us, yet they often are.

ADRIAN CONT.…

We need to know

How to deal with:

• Failure

• Disappointment

• Lost Battles (usually they are not the whole war)

• “We would run away like other have” but you have

the words of eternal life .

John 6:68

ADRIAN CONT.…

After this, many of His disciples drew back (returned to

their old associations) and no longer accompanied

Him.

Jesus said to the Twelve, will you also go away?(and

do you too desire to leave me?)

Simon Peter answered, Lord, to whom shall we go?

you have the words (the message of eternal life.

• Logical alternatives – there aren’t any!

STUART… IDENTITYWe must find security in our identity in Christ.

Leaders must not need to be needed.

Identity has to precede function. Know who we are before we start

asking what we can do.

Jesus, before he did anything, received approval as the Father’s son.

Emotions must not be tied to performance. We must not feed our

insecurities through looking for success as leaders. Jesus made

himself of no reputation.

To release others we need to be free from the fear of being overtaken by

others . A good Father want to see his son excel him.

Leaders often unwittingly place his/her faith in the institution rather than

God. With the result that as the institution goes, so doe the leader’s

sense of worth and well- being

STUART CONT.…

WE HAVE TO LEARN TO DEAL WITH

DISAPPOINTMENT – WITH GOD, WITH OTHERS,

AND WITH OURSELVES

Elijah though God had let him

down. God owes us nothing.

We are His servants.

STUART CONT.… WE MUST AVOID A MINISTRY

RATHER THAN RELATIONSHIP ORIENTATION.

We need friends (Mk 3:14). We do not exist for ministry. Many

have fallen on that road and will fall.

Comparison will heighten a sense of inadequacy

• We must walk in openness and honesty

• Honest sharing of pressures that come – sexual, financial,

family and time pressures.

• Leaders who present themselves as the oracle of the Lord are

heading for disaster. No one hears from God that clearly all

the time. Everyone can get it wrong

WORKSHOP…

• Who would you go to for input

advice and adjustment?

• What would you not tell your

spouse if you are married?

• What do you think are the biggest

cause of ‘no longer waling in the

way’

ADRIAN… EXPECTATIONS OF OTHERS AND

TEMPTATION Expectations

• If you are in Leadership People will put you on a pedestal even if you

don’t want to be there (this can be both useful and detrimental)

useful because maybe you should aspire to it, unhelpful because

they are going to be disappointed in you when you don’t meet their

unreasonable standards, do they know the real you?

• People will have expectations of you, many, most you will not be able

to live up to or fulfil, some of those expectations will be useful

because they are right expectations and should push us to aspire to

them, others will be false expectations and we should acknowledge

them as such.

• People will want you to fulfil their expectations of ‘spirituality’ so you

need to pray all night and be in work by 8.00a.m. and they will join

you for the prayer time (they won’t)

ADRIAN CONT.…

The temptation but – who am I going to let down:

This can be helpful in keeping us on the way…

• Myself

• My Friends

• My close relationships

• Those who maybe I lead

• But most of all God

With half an eye we can see the devastation that is caused by

leadership fall not just to them to others.

ADRIAN CONT.…

DON’T

• Believe your own publicity

• Have a puffed up perspective on who

you are

• Put yourself in temptations way

HOW DO WE DEAL WITH THE LOSSES?

Stuart Lindsell

Adrian Hawkes

Berlin November 2014