Relationships and Community: Study, Obey, and Teaching

At some point you are going to have to decide if you want to impress people or influence people.  The most essential quality for leadership is not perfection, but credibility. - Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life

On social media there are influencers whose job it is to influence their followers to purchase certain products. The followers believe these influencers because they find them credible and mostly it's because the influencers have a life that the follower admires or wants for herself.

For many followers they live vicariously through the influencer and they think that if they do what the influencer does, then they will have what the influencer has.

I think the Kingdom is in need of influencers.

While studying the the book of Ezra, the light bulb came on to why I was so attracted to this study.

Ezra arrived in Jerusalem in August[e] of that year. 9 He had arranged to leave Babylon on April 8, the first day of the new year,[f] and he arrived at Jerusalem on August 4,[g] for the gracious hand of his God was on him. 10 This was because Ezra had determined to study and obey the Law of the Lord and to teach those decrees and regulations to the people of Israel.

Ezra was an influencer for those who had returned to the city of Jerusalem.  The people had been led astray and off track so they didn't know what they were supposed to be doing and they needed someone to teach them.

Enter Ezra

How did he go about it?

A commitment to:

• Studying
• Obeying
• Teaching the Decrees and Regulation 

Ezra provides the blueprint.  

I believe that we're in a time where we need influencers like Ezra to teach the people the word of God because we are so off track.  Spiritual barrenness and Biblical Illiteracy are at an all time high.  We need teaching of the word and not more self help nonsense.

I keep saying on this blog that I have an urgency in my spirit to get this party started and it's been a call to study, obey and live it out, and then by God's grace I will be teaching what I have learned.  It's critical.  If we want revival, then the people need to be taught the word of God.  Revival can't just be about running around the room or being emotional.  Folks must be rooted in truth.  

I believe this is part of my call because I got stirred up reading Ezra 7:10 and I immediately said out loud:  That's it.  That's what I'm supposed to do: Study, Obey, and Teach.  I must be determined and consistent in doing it.

Obedience looks like living it out...

As Rick Warren said above, the main qualification for leadership is: Credibility.  

I have never seen an effective leader who has low credibility.  It just doesn't happen.  Notice I said effective.  That doesn't mean that a leader with low credibility will not be popular.  That happens all the time because many popular leaders tell the people what they want to hear.  

However to be effective you need to be credible and the best way I've seen that happen is to live out what you want to teach.

In my classes at Shiloh, the teaching hits home because people have personal testimonies to back up what they're talking about.  

I've been challenged in the area of:

Not By Force

Not By Might

Not in My own Strength

But By His Spirit

And so I'm saying that but I must be obedient to that and ohhhh am I getting my lesson in THAT.

Letting Go

Sometimes the strongest thing that we can do is to let go. 

I am learning that lesson in this season and this past week it was loud and clear. 

Not by Force

Not by Might

Not in my own strength

But by his spirit

Rising in strength means rising in His Strength.

This week as I read my C.S. Lewis devotional for Lent, I was reminded that our entire faith revolves around resurrection.  Jesus died and rose with all power.

The first innocent and spontaneous desires have to submit to the deathlike process of control or total denial: but from that there is a reascent to fully formed character in which the strength of the original material all operates but in a new way.  Death and Rebirth -- go back to go up -- it is a key principle. Through this bottleneck, this belittlement, the highroad nearly always lies. - C.S. Lewis

We die to self daily and rise with the power of the Holy Spirit

This has been an interesting week.  I will rise with strength through faith and by His Spirit.  To Hell with Fear.  Let's Go Get it!