i'm finding out, rather abruptly, that leadership is lonely. I am in a new position and am now the boss of a group of people i used to be dear friends with. the friendships are still there and in some ways have deepened, however there is a distinct difference that is easting at me. People turn to you to solve issues, people turn to you to resolve conflict, they look to you to lead. There is a type of pressure on you and the tempation is to take that pressure and try to solve the problems they ask you to in my own strength. The downfall of that is that strength is found in the weak, since strength is a gift from God himself. When we ask ourselves what our greatest good is, we tend to think about helping people, but the down fall of helping people as the greatest good is when we die, our ministry dies with us. When we place Jesus as the greatest good, when we die, the part we played ends, but the ministries grows in glory through our death. I am learning that we lead best through our weakness and living in honesty through them. By openly showing my mistakes i invite people into brokenness and allow them to show my grace and also allow myself to die. Jesus has a habit of calling misfits and rebels to him for his purposes and i am learning i am a small rebel that he is redeeming to make his instrument. Moses was a murderer and had temper problems, abraham gave his wife away, jacob cheated and lied his way to power, david lusted, solomon doubted and lost faith, peter denied jesus, and paul killed the church. The beauty of this is the story is not about us. Your life is not about you and your success, rather the story of a faithful God loving his unfaithful lover. Our job is more to represent rather than to save, to exist in something instead of recreating. Death becomes another beautiful thing that just takes us one step closer to our faithful lover.