Leadership Fridays: Good Leaders Actually Finish (video feat. Matt Chandler)

This clip is from Desiring God's 2009 Pastor's Conference (but, again, it is applicable to every leader). I have gone back to this message several times this last year for encouragement and refocus on the things that matter.

This is not a new encouragement from this blog but "To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you." Leaders, make sure Christ is your food, your righteousness and your hope. Some ideas:

• Trade wasted TV time with productive things that you want to do (HT: Matt Perman). Read good Christ-exalting books, watch/listen to great messages, create, write, paint, compose (you get the drill, fill in the margins).
• Become a student of the clear conscience, perfect acceptance, highest status, best commendation, and secure future you have in the Gospel. Pray for strength to understand it (Phil 3:14-19, Psalm 51:12).
• Study the person of Jesus Christ. A small religious teacher does not compel us to a life of service and worship, but the Thundering King of Heaven who died in my stead? Yeah, you need to see him (2 Cor. 3:18, Nehemiah 8:10).
• Be transparent with others regarding your own sin. Sober judgment of ourselves is a gift, protecting us from the dark pit of self-righteous pride (Luke 18:9-14).

As you rely on God's grace to faithfully pursue these things, passages like:

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Colossians 1.13–14)

will thrill you freshly and revive your first love, which faithful churches throughout history have lost (Rev. 2:2-5) and, if you lose, will ruin your finish.

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