Spiritual Leadership – Battle of Me

Our young couple sat at home last night. They didn’t go to church and they didn’t learn from His world. However, the greatest tragedy is not that they didn’t go or learn but that they did not spend time with the fellowship.

The Battle of Me is the final battle that this couple faced. This battle is summed up in the phrase “Who do I choose – God or me?”

This young couple did not know they were losing the Battle of It Is All About Me. They still do not realize that all they talk about is themselves. “We left because we…”, “We felt…”, “We couldn’t…” are the things that they say. Ask them if God called them to leave and they will hem and haw and say, “Well, yes, I guess..”

When it came right down to crunch time, the young couple chose their comfort, desire and feeling and it became the driving force to disable them from spiritual leadership. This decision to make it “all about them” was underpinned by diminishing spirituality and not understanding that what God called them to was not optional.

“The band is better there…things are livelier…I think my husband will get in a small group and I will do anything for his benefit…we just need a change,” they said to their dear friends and followers on the way out the door. Interestingly, when the wife showed up to her ministry areas, called people together and made the big announcement, most people just shrugged, said “Goodbye” and went on with the work. She looked like a fish out of water but these people had had it. They saw what this young couple could not see – they saw the couple being self centered, shallow and becoming disconnected from the Kingdom.

Some people choose great sacrifice, martyrdom, discomfort and challenge in their “service to God.” However, many of those people still are choosing themselves and not God. They talk about the persecution and sacrifice and lift themselves up. Do you see it? It is about them!

Case in point, Theresa, a young lady years ago in a college group. Every week she put in prayer requests for her work and for her challenges there. She told of how people couldn’t accept her and persecuted her because she was a Christian. People prayed hard but as I began to get to know her I began to see something funny. This girl created her own suffering in her “spirituality”. She was obnoxious to the lost people and annoying. She did not operate in grace and love. Though she chose “discomfort and sacrifice all in the name of her God”, she still was choosing herself. If it were about God she would have operated differently. You see it is not about sacrifice but about “who you choose in good and bad – God or yourself.” Suffering and sacrificing do not equate to choosing God when they are brought on by you or lift you up.

For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God.

1 Peter 2:20 NASU

I have continued to watch that young couple. They haven’t really connected and as the husband told me a while back, “We just can’t find what we had in the old days at the church.” I responded, “I hate to say this because I don’t want to make you feel bad but I live what you loved in the old days every day. It is still there but it is found in serving alongside your brothers and sisters, being committed to them and following God. It is still there: the family, the closeness, the walk.”

They don’t see it but in choosing themselves they lost the very thing that only God could give them – peace in their walk. It is not that they don’t sacrifice or serve. It is that at the most molecular level of their Christianity they chose themselves. It did not matter what God was directing – their direction became focused on what they wanted.

There are times when we will not “like, be comfortable or really want to choose” the surroundings we are in while we choose God. There are other times that we will like the surroundings and find great comfort in the environment in which we serve. In both of these situations we can find peace if we know that we chose these circumstances because we chose God. A familiar song goes, “Better is one day in your house than a thousand elsewhere.” I wish I could add a verse, “Better is every day where you are and where you want me than a thousand things that I would desire.”

It is not about suffering or living in great comfort. It is simply about choosing God and Him alone and realizing that nothing else matters.

But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at last you have revived your concern for me; indeed, you were concerned before, but you lacked opportunity. Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. Nevertheless, you have done well to share with me in my affliction.

Php 4:10-14 NASU