What a great leadership day...full of wisdom. It began with MC "Envelope Moments" with Jeanne. Won't share why, but this is a special day each year. Her message was golden. The notes are below, but my favorite line was "Your gift-set will be ready for ministry long before your character, your endurance, your wisdom, or maturity will be."
Then after a little afternoon work, it was off to a post-NYLC meeting with Mike, an incredible man of God, full of wisdom regarding business and Jesus ... then dinner with some of the NYLC team ... then sat in on the MC meeting with Mike where he shares his wealth of experience whenever he's in town.
Leadership Nuggets from Jeanne, the queen herself, this morning...
- An envelope moment is when you feel another person or circumstance are in control of your life and you feel powerless regarding the outcome
- A loss of relationship with the Lord isn’t sudden, it is a slow process that goes bit by bit
Most of the time it will be, “wow, feels like a curveball hit my face” - It takes more faith to have a right response and trust God when circumstances don’t go as planned than to go along merrily when they go as planned
- People and circumstance will make or cause countless decisions that will cause pain in your life
- Never confuse man’s decisions with God’s directive
- Unforgiveness is like drinking a poison and expecting someone else will die
- You need to get nervous when the coaches in your life get quiet
- The degree to which you are able to trust God with heavy envelope moments is parallel to the degree of anointing on your life
- A goal of “finishing well” may not be impressive to people, but is to God
- Do not focus on the why of the envelope, but rather on the what
Not, “Why Lord did You do this?”
You probably won’t ever really figure out the why
Say, “Lord what can You do with this in my life?” - Success in life comes not from holding a good hand but playing a tough hand well
- Never let a good crisis go to waste
- Faith doesn’t mean its always going to be pretty
- Never doubt that ultimately God is bigger than any envelope in your life…SO much bigger
- Plan B can become plan A when envelope moments occur if your spirit and heart are right
- The Father heart of God wants to take care of you when you go through hard things
During those envelope moments, refuse to give in to the narcotic of self-pity - Be above society and don’t get the victim mentality
- All of life really is suck it up, because if you don’t suck it up, it will eventually suck you up
- Many people build their identity off of what people did wrong to them
- Compassion is the adrenaline for acts of mercy
- Self-pity is a narcotic that leaves its addicts wasted and alone
- SELF – Satan’s Exact Location Forever
- There is a difference between compassion and picking up another persons offense
- Finish the race with the wind in your face
- The object is not getting over the finish line, the object is getting over the finish line with a spiritual passion and the fire still burning in your heart (illus. olympic marathon athletes in old days)
- A double minded man is unstable in ALL his ways
- Your gift-set will be ready for ministry long before your character, your endurance, your wisdom, or maturity will be.
- Don’t turn a deaf ear to the messages when you say you want coaches in your life
- Don’t be too quick to be done or you will forfeit all who you could be
- In God’s economy no sin is worse, the problem is some sins cost more
- Story of boy opening the cocoon too early to see the butterfly but the butterfly wasn’t fully formed and developed so it ended up crippled and couldn’t fly
All the other kids had their experiments done and all that was left was his
He saw the rip and made it bigger
The boy didn’t want the caterpillar to strain and work an go through this hard ordeal so he snipped it to make it easier, it seemed better at first and the butterfly had come out, but really it wasn’t done growing
Relate to this
The only thing that gave the butterfly the strength in its wings to gain the altitude was the struggle
Only through difficult times do your wings ever find the strength to fly
If you want to be real good you won’t take your wings until you are saying to people around you and say, “Am I really ready for this?”
Leadership nuggets from our amazing board Mike (caught without a pen on this one...stink!). Three memorable ones...
- Come September, after the summer, will the team come back stronger or weaker? Will you be stronger on September 1, than you were on June 1? Challenge, spiritually what are you going to do over the summer to get better? It was meant as a challenge to the students, but because of some staff changes, I'm owning it for myself. We are going to the team approach for teaching our MC clasesses and I'm on the rotation. Game on. I'm pretty excited to get back behind the music stand on a more consistent basis.
- Some are given the vision, while others are given the provision (for the vision). I think there is a sermon in there ... "pro" vision ... "for" vision.
- Some of you think because circumstance changed, that God changed His mind.