Monday Morning Encouragement: January 2012 Archives

I have come to believe that failure in the season of conflict--failure to deal with it, failure to learn from it, failure to move beyond it--prevents entrance into a new season of joy. For that reason alone, I have tried to handle conflict in the best possible way.

I have been engaged in a study of the second half of Paul's letter to the Ephesians, and, not surprisingly, the themes from that letter have been resonating in my mind over the past few weeks. I have been struck by Paul's emphasis on the importance of love and unity in the local church. On the one hand it's kind of obvious--we need to love the Christians around us--but on the other hand, the personal implications are profound. I've always known that God calls me to love the people I covenant with in my local church, but until now I haven't been quite so aware of the danger of falling out of love.

I fall prey to this temptation when the greatest day of my life is the day I become President, not the day my organization made great progress forward. I am the victim of this temptation when it is more important for me to be President than it is for my organization to change to meet the needs of a changing world. The drive has been to get ahead, to succeed, so, now that I'm here, I've succeeded and I need to do everything I can to stay here.