- What else could you need at this point? Probably a nap.
- What keeps us from doing what we’ve learned? Fear. All the greatest leadership learning can be rendered useless by fear. And Jesus get its.
- He offers one command, “Do not be afraid.” It’s what’s commanded more often than anything else.
- Nothing undermines the power and blessing of a gifted, talented, equipped, promising leader like fear.
- Why is fear the fundamental challenge? Because fear is the silent destroyer of dreams.
- All great leadership flows first from dreams.
- Martin Luther King Jr’s dream
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- “Tell him about the dream Martin…” He shared that without a note on the paper and history has never been the same. Leadership begins with a dream.
- It will be the power of lurking fear that renders it useless and begins to destroy the dreams.
- Fear destroys the love that inspires the dream and replaces it with a preoccupation with self.
- What if this doesn’t work? What if I try this and it fails and everyone blames me?
- At IJM, we have a dream about protecting people from injustice. We just want the violence to stop. We have seen more than 40K rescued from those trying to hurt them.
- Everyday fear goes to work trying to destroy the dream.
- Kenya – one poor taxi driver being brutalized by police that had been extorting him. The driver and his attorney have disappeared. They were tortured and murdered. What do you think that does to your dream about protecting the poor against violence? It undermines it. It replaces it with preoccupation with self. What’s going to happen to me? What’s going to happen to us?
- I’ve seen more dreams destroyed by everyday insecurities that lead us to abandon our dreams without putting up a fight.
- You and I are not likely to know what scares us most deeply.
- I almost didn’t start at IJM because of fear. Not because of the obvious risks. I was afraid of being a failure, looking like a failure to others. It’s that picture of looking like a loser to others that was unbearable to me. Once I exposed the real fear, I knew what I was up against. The dream won! If I had taken up the facade of the respectable fears, the dream would have died. And tens of thousands would have gone off to die in the silence.
- You must relentlessly inventory your fears.
- What am I really afraid of here? What am I really anxious about? Without this, leaders find themselves driven by their fears. The whole team, organization gets to be led by the leaders fears.
- Everyday for 30 minutes at IJM to prepare their interior in stillness with God. What happens? Immediately anxiety and worry boils up, which is why many don’t do it.
- Is God in a panic about how this dream is going to work out? Perhaps He has a path.
- Switch from playing defense to playing offense.
- No great dream of love has ever been built on the fear what could go wrong. It’s always been built on the hope of what might go right.
- Are you more impressed with what human beings are getting wrong or what God is getting right?
- Fundamentally, if we’re more impressed with bad men than God, then we will be driven by fear.
- You can not lean forward while you’re leading a retreat to a bunker of safety.
- Kids playing soccer for the first time. Big ball of kids and the one kid who has figured out the fun in playing offense.
- God is inviting His people and His leaders to stop living in the joy killing fear of playing defense in the world. He’s inviting them to play defense.
- Too many act as if the gates of hell are advancing against them. Gates don’t move. Hell is desperately playing defense in the world and gets Jesus Christ the gates of hell cannot prevail.
- There is loss in the world and defeats are bitter. On the night before the cross, Jesus says, “Take courage. In the world, you will have trouble. But I have overcome the world.”
- One of the biggest issues is modern day slavery.
- There are 46 million people held in slavery. Perhaps the darkest is child sex trafficking.
- Ground zero for this was in the traumatized state of Cambodia.
- How should the people of God respond? What did the Christians in Cambodia do? They went to work with IJM and authorities to start rescuing, develop facilities for after care.
- When I spoke a decade ago, Cambodia was the darkest place. Now it has collapsed. Christianity Today cover story – “Cambodia Rising”
- This is the people of God playing offense in the world.
- Freedom Sunday
- They forge a community of courage around them.
- Lone Rangers don’t make great dreams come true. They make great movies come true. But they are movies and they are not true.
- Jesus gathered men and women around him and forged a community of courage. He called them to courage. “Do not be afraid.”
- What’s his strategy for securing that courage in the fight? It’s the power of a team humbling serving each other.
- The Master and Teacher gets down on the floor and washes the feet of his teammates.
- I knew that our survival against the onslaught of fear was based upon how well we loved each other. Would we scatter with fear? Would we desolve into infighting and denial? Would we give up on the dream and take on a “more realistic” option? I saw a team holding on and choosing to trust God and trusting others.
- In the end, they have all chosen to double down on the fight. No one has walked away. Instead they’ve grown by 20%.
- Courage, like fear, is contagious. Murder suspects have been arrested and are properly being prosecuted. Why? Because the leaders forged a community of courage.
- David Macarra – “we will never stop fighting…and we will win.”
- “The real soldier is Christ himself.”
- As a leader, you have a dream in your heart. A dream of love. A dream of what could be so much better. You have a love of irrepressible, transforming power.
- The real soldier in the fight for all goodness in the world is God himself. Hold on to that truth outside the doors. It will allow us to lead without fear.
- Five years after his dream speech, Martin Luther King stood before his followers for the last time. He wanted them to know that God had allowed him to go to the mountaintop.
- You have been given everything you need to lead this dream you’ve been given, this struggle God has placed in your heart. What incredible thing might God do if you were to lead without fear?
- Take up the dream! Lead without fear out there to the glory of God and to the transformation of His world.
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