Leadership comm. 8

Hi Team,

So we've learned about being authentic and excellent so let me add a third item to the growing list:

Gracious

[gray-shus] –adjective

1.Abounding in love and mercy.

2.Produced by divine grace; influenced or controlled by God

The Grace of God given through Christ Jesus is the defining difference between Christian faith and other religions. When we miss out on grace we become moralistic at best (which helps us to live better lives but requires no faith) or legalistic at worst where we believe that good acts win favour with God, but good acts cannot save us from death. Only Jesus can and the Bible tells us God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. - Romans 5:8 ESV Let me remind you of this simple saying "Grace is those undeserving getting things from God that they cannot earn."

As leaders of various ministries we need to be focused on sharing with those around us the grace of God given through Jesus. The moment we expect people to earn God's favour we will no longer be pointing them towards Jesus. Jesus has already won the Father's favour for us, we do not need to do this!

The example that I have found myself often seeing is with Sunday School over the years in various churches. The kids that are there every week we reward, those that attend poorly we don't. Whilst it's important to honour those who have done well, we must be careful not to undermine Jesus grace. I think we face this conundrum in counselling the broken, preaching God's word, leading homegroups and almost every time we deal with some other person, who like us, is sinful.

It's all, always about Jesus and his grace shown to sinful humans!

Blessings,

Brent