Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.  2 Corinthians 4:18

“He who thinks he leads,” said Benjamin Hooks, “and has no one following him is only taking a walk.”  No great cause can survive apart from leadership–in government, in industry, in business, in the church.  One of the problems of leadership is that it is often difficult for the leader to distinguish between leading a cause and being the cause.  In reality, a leader is committed to a cause, but he does not become the cause.  Sometimes a leader pours himself into the cause he represents so much–body, soul, and spirit–that his judgment and perspective become warped.  The individual begins to think that he is the cause.

When that happens, thinking grows fuzzy.  Abuses take place that would never have happened in the early phases of leadership.  The leader thinks that he or she deserves certain things: money, adulation or worship, and perhaps even sexual liberties that violate the very cause he or she represents.

Leadership failures today are rampant in almost every section of society.  Expectations, years of training and mentoring, to say nothing of the financial investment made in the leader, are all gone.  A flurry of allegations follow wrongdoing.  A resignation promises to quiet the storm; admitting no wrongdoing, the leader is replaced.

Have you ever wondered as have I, why the New Testament, which chronicles the lives of men and women exactly as they are, with their flaws and failures, their warts and wounds, tells of so few actual failures in leadership?  True, there were some who did fail.  “Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me…” Paul wrote to Timothy (2 Timothy 4:10).  The young man John Mark got homesick and went back to his mother, but there are no situations described where money was misappropriated, or a leader in the early church disgraced the cause through immorality.

Were these leaders made of sterner stuff?  Or have we lost something that they had, something which we need to rediscover today?  It has been my observation that when a leader fails, he has generally lost touch with three things:  (1) his own feelings, (2) his faith, and (3) his family.  His concept of reality has been replaced with a false, make-believe world which ignores what he or she really knows, and the world of reality is replaced by that of fantasy.

Writing to the Corinthians, Paul opened his heart.  He made it very clear that he was not the cause.  He only represented it.  The cause was proclaiming the Gospel, and Paul stressed two powerful truths which helped him endure some very difficult times:  (1) Renewal, and (2) Perspective.  Here’s the text:  “Therefore we do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

Renewal–emotionally, physically, spiritually–helps maintain reality.  Time with God, time in His word, and time alone helps you see the whole of life.  It makes you realize that the position of leadership is never owned by anyone.  It’s merely a day by day appointment.

Perspective–understanding that most of what you think is so important today won’t count for much five minutes after you die–is vital.  It helps you sift between the trivial and the really important.

Leadership is either a curse or a blessing.  It depends on what you as a leader make of it.  May God help us to wear the mantel of leadership wisely.

Resource reading:  2 Corinthians 4:7-15