I think the biggest cost of leadership is the price paid for the unseen.

I am not talking of the long hours of study and preparation, that is a cost that comes with the position or the pressure that comes with the responsibility for the welfare of others, I am talking of disappointments and betrayals. The hours spent investing your life, time and talent into people and then to see them walk off without a thought, a care or even a thank you. Lives that would have been wrecked or destroy if you had not intervened.

That is the biggest price paid.

People who have been allowed room into a leader’s life, who eagerly drink from the hours of study and life experience, who take time that could have been spent with family and friends but were not.

I think of Jesus and Judas. Judas, I think  had a revelation of who Christ was to the same degree that Peter did, a revelation and a perception that few men had ever experienced. Judas who walked, talk, labored and did miracles beside our Savior, his leader, all the time harboring an agenda. Hidding his true feelings and intentions. Judas had no problem benefiting from the power of God, but when the time came he turned and betrayed Him with a kiss.

John Macarthur writes:

Judas could have kissed Christ’s hand or the hem of His garment, but he feigned affection for Christ, not only to provide a sign, but also to attempt to deceive Christ and the disciples. “I shall kiss” (Gk. phil[ma]es[ma]o) is the future tense of phile[ma]o, which means “to show affection.”

Judas was feigning innocence, a weak attempt on his part to conceal his character and treachery. It would be bad enough to betray a friend, but inconceivably Judas sold out the very Son of God!

The delusion of thinking he could deceive Him added to his sin beyond description. Judas fulfills this thought in Proverbs 27:6: “The kisses of an enemy are deceitful.” Integral to an enemy’s deceit is an exaggeration of his friendship.

As leaders we should always remember that friendship and trust is only ever earned over time. I believe we should guard our heart, not to the point of cynicism, but for the sake of protecting the issues of our life. But then at the same time be at peace – because disappointment will happen. It happened to Christ, yet God used what was heart breaking and made it breath taking.

In all that happens, I still look upon those who seek to damage and damn their leaders with great compassion.

I am moved with the same sense that I am moved when I think of Judas. A life wasted, a life manipulated by self and Satan and as Christ said, it would have been better if he had never been born.

After 20 years of ministry I look back and can not think of one instance where someone betrayed the genuine love and fellowship of their leader when their life was not shattered upon the rocks of their own personal Potter’s Field.

What a waste. What a tragic and utter waste – for all concerned.

Praise is really the chief object of all public acts of worship. We all need to examine ourselves at this point. We must remember that the primary purpose of worship is to give praise and thanksgiving to God. Worship should be of the mind and of the heart.

It does not merely mean repeating certain phrases mechanically; it means the heart going out in fervent praise to God. We should not come to God’s house simply to seek blessings and to desire various things for ourselves, or even simply to listen to sermons; we should come to worship and adore God. ‘Blessed be the God and Father’ is always to be the starting point, the highest point.

“If we give the impression that the main effect of Christianity is to make us miserable, then it is not surprising that ninety per cent of the people are outside the Christian church. ‘Miserable Christians,’ they say, ‘look at them!’ And they add that they have life, they have joy, they have fullness.

Shame on us Christian people!

But it is not merely a question of saying shame on us. What a terrible responsibility is ours if we are so misrepresenting this ‘glorious gospel of the blessed God’ (1 Timothy 1:11). We are meant to be witnesses to all people that we are filled to overflowing. We are meant to show the truth of the psalmist’s words: ‘My cup runneth over!’ (Psalm 23:5).”

Dr M. L-J

This morning Dr John Binkley preached a fantastic message called Kings and Priest.

I have traveled with John for years - but this was the best, most conscience presentation of a timeless truth I have heard.

I encourage - download the copy Monday from www.clctx.org

The Rev. P. Gavin Duffy writes :

He has allotted to man a certain span of life, and His will is
that life shall be lived out. I want you to recall that all those He
called back from the dead were young people who had not lived
out their fulness of years; and in that very fact we may well see
His protest against premature death…. Of course, we must
not expect that the old shall be physically young, but if the
alloted span has not been spent we have a right to claim God’s
gift of health; and, even though it be past, if it be His Will that
we should continue here for a time longer, it is equally His Will
that we should do so in good health.

Douglas Malloch wrote:

Death comes, and then we blame our God,
And weakly say, “Thy will be done”;
But never underneath the sod
Has God imprisoned any one.
God does not send disease, or crime,
Or carelessness, or fighting clans;
And when we die before our time,
The fault is man’s.

He is a God of life, not death;
He is one God that gives us birth;
He has not shortened by a breath
The life of any on the earth;
And He would have us dwell within
The world our full allotted years.
So blame not God-for our own sin
Makes our own tears.

There is no such thing as Christianity apart from the Lord Jesus Christ; there is no blessing from God to man in a Christian sense except in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. Anything which claims to be Christianity without having Christ at the beginning and the center and the end is a denial of Christianity, call it what you will. There is no Christianity apart from Him; He is everything.

If you hear a speaker and Christ is not ever present - then they are not preaching but sharing philosophical ideals.

If you read a book and Christ is not ever present, then you are reading a self help book not a Christian book.

It is the Christ in Christian, that makes it so.

To the Christian God is ‘our Father’. To the Christian, God is not just some philosophical X in the distance, whom he talks and argues about cleverly in his philosophical books; God is not some great force, some mighty power away in some distant heaven; He is the Father, my Father, our Father.

The whole relationship between man and God has been entirely renewed and changed. God is no longer some terrible far-distant law-giver waiting to punish us; He is still the lawgiver, but He is also ‘my Father’.

Just as you should keep your focus off yesterday, you shouldn’t be obsessed with tomorrow.

If you’re always thinking about tomorrow, you’ll never get anything done today.

Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is unknown, all you have is today.

I have heard people often say “I am working on it” or “I am getting to ‘it’”

Are you working on ‘it’?

What is ‘it’?

‘It’ is the thing you worked on yesterday or neglected yesterday that you have to do today.

‘It’ is what you are working on today that guarantees your tomorrow.

Here are seven thoughts on Hindsight, Foresight and Insight:

No. 1,
• hindsight can see results;
• foresight can see potential;
• insight sees the heart.

No. 2,
• hindsight believes after it’s happened;
• foresight believes before it happens;
• insight believes when no one thought it would happen.”

No. 3,
• hindsight misses opportunity;
• foresight recognizes opportunity,
• But insight creates opportunity.

No. 4,
• hindsight lives in regret, what might have beens, what could have beens.
• Foresight lives in hope; it’s got some expectation to it.
• Whereas I believe insight lives in faith.

No. 5,
• hindsight sees what is certain;
• foresight sees what is possible;
• insight sees when it’s impossible.

And No. 6,
• Hindsight is the word of the fearful, because if I’m going to live my life in fear, I’m never going to step out, and so I’m always going to be learning out of hindsight, learning out of what could have beens, what might have beens.
• Foresight is the word of the courageous. Courageous people have foresight,
• insight is the word of the uncanny. Insight will give you that uncanny ability to read, to see, to read.
No. 7,
• hindsight knows what everybody knows;
• foresight knows what few people know;
• insight knows what God only knows.

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Some thoughts from this morning’s sermon - which is available for free from the church website