A Leader in the Making: Essentials to Being a Leader After God's Own Heart

A Leader in the Making: Essentials to Being a Leader After God's Own Heart

by Joyce Meyer
A Leader in the Making: Essentials to Being a Leader After God's Own Heart

A Leader in the Making: Essentials to Being a Leader After God's Own Heart

by Joyce Meyer

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Overview

Grow your faith and learn how God's plan can make you a more effective person in this inspiring Christian leadership book.
Whether you're an established leader or you're just beginning to grow, this book will show you how to cultivate a loving spirit and positive outlook that pleases God in every way and enhances your ability to guide those that surround you -- from family and friends to colleagues. As a Christian leader, you will face a series of tests on your spiritual journey, and sometimes you'll come up against setbacks. In these four sections, Joyce Meyer will help you overcome any leadership challenges you're facing:
  • Part 1: Preparation for Leadership
  • Part 2: The Heart of a Leader
  • Part 3: Testing the Heart of a Leader
  • Part 4: The Requirements of Leadership
With gentle encouragement and valuable advice, this practical guide is perfect for anyone who is looking to grow in faith and spirit -- and be a stronger leader in the ministry and secular businesses.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780446551298
Publisher: FaithWords
Publication date: 11/15/2008
Sold by: Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format: eBook
Sales rank: 1,063,002
File size: 367 KB

About the Author

About The Author
Joyce Meyer is one of the world's leading practical Bible teachers. Her daily broadcast, Enjoying Everyday Life, airs on hundreds of television networks and radio stations worldwide.

Joyce has written nearly 100 inspirational books. Her bestsellers include Power Thoughts; The Confident Woman; Look Great, Feel Great; Starting Your Day Right; Ending Your Day Right; Approval Addiction; How to Hear from God; Beauty for Ashes; and Battlefield of the Mind.

Joyce travels extensively, holding conferences throughout the year, speaking to thousands around the world. Joyce resides in St. Louis, MO.

Read an Excerpt

A Leader in the Making

Essentials to Being a Leader After God's Own Heart

Chapter One




"That person is a born leader"

We hear this statement often.

Are leaders born or are they made?

It is true that some people do seem to be born with an abundance of leadership gifts and qualities. But it is also true that some of the best leaders in the kingdom of Cod are those whom the world would probably disregard as even qualifying for leadership. All that these type of people need is someone to recognize their potential and help them develop it. Often they turn out to be some of the most precious and effective people in leadership.

Whether you are a born leader or you have to work at becoming one, my purpose in writing this book is to help you recognize your potential as a leader and show you how to develop it.

Some people who work for my husband and me in our ministry come under the category of born leaders. They just have that innate ability to get things done. They have the strong, aggressive type of personality that seems to instinctively know how to motivate others to work together.

But we also have people on our management team I personally would never have thought could ever become managers. Yet when we were in need in a certain area, they seemed to be the ones God was pointing to for that position, so we gave them that chance. We continued to work with them until some of them have become the best managers we have.

One of these people is a woman named Charlotte. When she first came to work for us, she was so fearful that she could not even talk to me without breaking down and crying. Anytime we tried to get her to do anything other than what she was used to doing, she would become frightened and say, "I don't know if I can do that. I'm afraid I'll make a mistake."

Finally, one day I felt that the Lord was telling me to call her into my office and say to her, "Charlotte, God wants me to tell you that it's time to grow up. You've got to stop crying and being afraid of everything."

She later told me that she went home in tears because I had hurt her feelings. But when she prayed about it, God told her, "Joyce is right. It is time for you to grow up and start accepting more responsibility."

She said yes to the Lord and to us, and now she has developed into one of our finest leaders. She has learned to accept more and more responsibility-all because she quit being afraid and started developing her potential.

That happened because we were determined not to give up on her. Like Charlotte, there are many people who have tremendous potential? but need someone who will work with them and not give up on them.

Aren't you glad that God did not give up on you? Well, guess what? He may put someone else in your life He does not want you to give up on.

Sometimes the people who are the biggest thorns in our side are the very ones Cod wants us to be patient with and help develop just as He was patient with us and is helping us develop into all that we can be.


The development of personal potential is each person's number one job.

We all have undeveloped potential, but we will never see it manifested until we believe God and believe that we can do whatever He says we can do in His Word. Unless we take a chance and step out in faith believing that with God nothing is impossible, He cannot do the work in us that He wants to do to develop our potential.

I believe you are reading this book by divine appointment. Even if nobody else in the world believes in you, God does. With that confidence, you can do whatever He wants you to do. Without it, no matter what He wants you to do, you will be unable to do it because you are not in agreement with Him.

When we don't agree with Cod, we are, in essence, agreeing with the devil. We are saying the devil is right when he tells us through negative thoughts or someone else's comments that we are worthless and can do nothing.

It is very important with whom we agree. Jesus said that if any two agree on earth about anything, it will be done for them by His Father in heaven.

When I was going through a difficult period in my life, the Lord reminded me of this verse and told me that if I could not find anyone else to agree with me, I could always agree with the Holy Spirit. He is on the earth too if He lives inside of us. We agree with Him by agreeing with what we know the Word says is true in a particular situation.


GIVE SHAPE TO YOUR POTENTIAL

Noah Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language defines potential as "existing in possibility, not in act."

Potential cannot manifest without form. Like concrete, it must have something to be poured into, something to give it shape and make it useful. What is the form into which potential is poured? Decisions. To develop potential properly we must have a plan and pray over that plan, we must have a purpose and we must be doing something.

I believe that many people are unhappy because they aren't doing anything to develop their potential. In fact, many of them never develop their potential because they don't do anything except complain that they're not doing anything!

If you want to see your potential developed to its fullness, don't wait until everything is perfect. Do something now. Start laying your hand to whatever is in front of you. You cannot start at the finish line. You must start at the starting block like everybody else.

Many people want to start at A, blink their eyes twice and be at Z. It doesn't work that way.

Give your potential some form. Do something with it. You will never find what you are capable of doing if you never try anything. Don't be so afraid of failing that you never take a chance. Don't stay in the safety zone doing nothing, thinking that as long as you do nothing you are safe. You may be safe, but you will never succeed at developing your full potential or feeling fulfilled in what you are doing. Step out into what you feel God is leading you to do, and you will soon discover what you can and cannot do.

So many people are frustrated about not knowing what their gifts are or what God has called them to do with their life. All you have to do to find out what your call is, is to start doing a few things related to an area in which you are interested. God is not going to make you spend your whole life doing something you hate. Although I have children and grandchildren whom I love and enjoy very much, I have also-discovered that my gift and calling is not working with small children. But there are people who love to do that. My daughter Sandra is one of them.

There is someone who is anointed for everything that needs to be done. The smart leader knows what he can do and what he cannot do and surrounds himself with people who do well what he cannot do at all.


I believe God puts seeds in us. Even Jesus is referred to in the Bible as a Seed. We often talk about all the rights, privileges and victories that are ours in Christ, along with all the other blessings like peace, righteousness and joy. I believe all of those things come into our spirit as a seed when we receive Jesus as our Savior. (If you have never done that, and you would like to, there is a prayer you can pray at the end of this book.)

One reason some people never have manifested in their lives what the Bible tells us we can have is that they never develop their seed. It never gets out of the seed stage because it just sits in them; they don't do anything with it.

I have experienced a lot of victory in my life. I come from an abusive background where I endured many years of sexual, verbal and mental abuse, failed relationships, hurts and emotional pain before I married my husband, Dave. I was quite a mess when I got into a serious relationship with the Lord. I can say that what I read in the Bible has worked in my life. But I can also say that it had to be developed. None of it fell on me like ripe fruit from a tree. I had to take potential and turn it into reality - by developing it.


THE NECESSITY OF DEVELOPMENT

As defined in Webster's 1828 dictionary, development is "an unfolding; the discovering of something secret or withheld from the knowledge of others; disclosure; full exhibition."

What you and I have in us is great, but it is not going to do any good if we do not take it and give it some form and shape that is going to help us and everybody else.

In 1 Peter 4:10 TEV we are told that we are to develop and use our gifts as a blessing to one another. That is why God gives us gifts, so we can be a blessing to others.

There is no excuse for any of us ever being bored or lonely because there is always someone out there who needs what we have. All we have to do is find them and start releasing our gifts for their benefit.

A real estate developer may have plans in his office for a new subdivision, but no one will ever see those plans become reality unless the developer takes them and does something with them. The same is true for us in the church. How many of us have good ideas and great plans but never do anything with them? Many of us are good at dreaming but are no good at all at making a practical, dedicated effort to develop our potential and manifest our dreams in our lives.

What lies between potential development and manifestation? Nothing so spiritual that nobody can figure it out, but just simple, everyday things like time, determination and hard work.

Nobody can be determined for us. We must be determined. If we are not determined, the devil will steal from us everything we have. But although we must be determined, we must not go to the extreme and become workaholics. We need balance in this area just as in every other area of our lives.

Later on in this book I will describe the time when the Lord spoke to my husband, Dave, and told him it was time for us to go into television ministry when we were just getting comfortable with being on the radio. Obviously, we had the potential to do that, but it had to be developed, and that kind of development does not come by sitting in a rocking chair taking it easy!

I have a saying, "If you're going to hang out with God, there ain't no retirement!" Whatever our age or situation, taking potential and transforming it into reality requires an investment of time, determination and a willingness to work hard.

NO RETURN WITHOUT INVESTMENT

Many people are not willing to invest anything with the hope of reaping a return from that investment somewhere down the road. Their philosophy is, "If I'm going to do anything right now, I want some pay right now. I want something back right now."

In my own life, I started out in the ministry teaching twenty-five people who sat around together on my living room floor. I invested five years of my life into teaching those people with little or no financial return at all and often not much appreciation, just a lot of hard work. But those five years were developmental years for my teaching ministry today.

Not long ago my older son, David, who has started to teach and preach some, asked me if I had any notes on a certain subject. I have three file cabinets with three long drawers each that are full of message after message on a variety of subjects. Those files represent twenty-two years of hard work. So often people look at something like my ministry and they wish they had it. But they wouldn't want to invest the time and hard work it took to build it.

Most of us have no problem with wishbone; it's backbone that we are lacking.


The undeveloped, wasted potential in this world is pathetic. Everyone was created to do something great-great in its own realm. Each of us has the potential to become great at something-a great wife, a great mom, a great seamstress, a great husband, a great father, a great businessman. But whatever we do, we should not have little ideas, dreams or visions.

Little things are important, and we should never despise the day of small things. But we ought to have big ideas, dreams and visions because we serve a big God. I would rather have a big dream and see half of it come to pass than to have a little dream and see all of it come to pass.

I believe that when God created all of us, He formed and fashioned each person, breathed the breath of life into us and then took a little part of Himself and placed it within each of us. One of us may have a musical gift, another may have a speaking gift, another a writing gift. The problem comes when we try to take the gift God has given us and use it to do what someone else is doing instead of developing our own potential.

Each one of us is full of potential. We have a part of God in us. We are not a mistake. We don't have to spend our lives on the back burner. We are not too old or too young. We have God-given dreams and visions. But the dreams and visions Cod gives us for the future are possibilities not "positivelys." (That's the way God spoke it to me a long time ago.) With Him, nothing is impossible, but it also takes our cooperation and willingness through determination, obedience and hard work to develop what He has put in us.


The manifestation of our God-given dreams and visions does not appear overnight. It grows from a seed planted in our heart by God and nourished and nurtured by us day after day until it gradually springs forth as fruit in our lives.

It is similar to a seed that is planted in a woman's womb at the time of conception. The baby doesn't appear immediately. There is a nine-month development period.

We often see patterns in the way God does things, and Cod uses the pattern of birthing in many areas of our lives. He starts with a seed, which He plants in us in the form of a thought, a dream, a desire. In order for that seed to grow and develop, we must nourish and nurture it, being careful to watch over it and protect it because the devil is a master at stealing seeds. Then one day that seed springs forth as the manifestation we desired.

That is what Jesus meant when He said that the devil comes only to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.... Jesus also said that Satan is a liar.... and the father of lies.... Between stealing and lying, he keeps the majority of the human race from ever doing much of anything.

I am living proof that anybody can fulfill the call of Cod on their life if they want to. In the natural I don't have a lot of gifts and talents. But I have a mouth, and I am using it for the glory of God.

Continues...


Excerpted from A Leader in the Making by Joyce Meyer Copyright © 2001 by Joyce Meyer
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Table of Contents

Introduction7
Part 1Preparation for Leadership
1Develop Your Potential: Nobody Starts at the Finish Line13
2Develop Your Potential: Nobody Starts at the Finish Line, Part 225
3Stability Releases Ability39
4Stability Releases Ability, Part 253
Part 2The Heart of a Leader
5Negative Conditions of the Heart69
6Negative Conditions of the Heart, Part 291
7Negative Conditions of the Heart, Part 3109
8Positive Conditions of the Heart, Part 1123
9Positive Conditions of the Heart, Part 2145
10Positive Conditions of the Heart, Part 3161
Part 3Testing the Heart of a Leader
11Tests of Leadership175
12Tests of Leadership, Part 2195
13Tests of Leadership, Part 3209
Part 4The Requirements of Leadership
14Character Development223
15The Importance of a Balanced Life237
16Common People with Uncommon Goals263
Conclusion287
Prayer for a Personal Relationship with the Lord291
Endnotes293
Bibliography303
Recommended Reading on Leadership305
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