Day 11

“Leadership is about taking responsibility, not making excuses.” — Mitt Romney

BY NO MEANS

It can be easy to justify the same sin when you’ve already done it once. “I’ve already slept with my girlfriend, so I might as well keep doing it.” “I’ve already cheated on my spouse, so what’s one more time?” “I already looked at porn this week, so I might as well do it again today.”

Paul hits this justification on the head in his letter to the Romans. By continuing to sin just because you can ask for forgiveness later is an abuse of grace.

Grace is undeserved in the first place, so it’s not that you earned it. But don’t allow yourself to keep on sinning because God will forgive you anyways. Each time you sin, you are losing out in that moment what God could be doing in and through you instead.

Your time is too valuable to make excuses about throwing it away.

TODAY’S TRUTH

“What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” — Romans 6:1-2

TODAY’S ACTION STEP

Listen to a sermon.

There are countless sermons you can listen to. If you prefer to watch a video of one, do that instead.

So many people tend to justify their sinful actions because they think they’ve already messed up, so why not continue in it. The more you hear God’s Word and those who teach it, the less likely you will be to make excuses for why you believe you’re exempt from following it.

One of my favorite authors, CS Lewis, once said:

Maybe you’ve never produced music or baptized anyone, but I think we can still be friends since I'm pretty sure you and I still have something in common: YOU'RE SCREWED UP!

I know I just insulted you/us, but keep reading!

Truth be told, some of my greatest life stories capture "Heck yeah!" successes, but most of my experiences include “What did I just do?!” failures. It makes sense though. Somewhere along the way I bought into the idea that failure doesn’t have to be permanent. Failure is merely a learning opportunity and brings you one step closer to getting it right. It is for this reason that failure has led me to some of my sweetest victories.

“Friendship is born at the moment when one man says to another 'What! You too?'”

If you look close enough, every story from the past provides a learning opportunity for the future. My life mission statement is this:

There's a lot of leaders out there, but I've discovered that about 90% of them aren't worth following. Become a leader worth following. You may figure out how based on trial and error… OR you can learn from the past experiences of others so you can leapfrog over their failures and gain insight from their wins.

Let's play leapfrog.

It's not that I believe I have mastered any of my passions, but I have found a leader worth following: Jesus. I invite you to join my journey as I continue to explore and apply what I have learned from the greatest leader of all time. Simple and small action steps will not only help you become a leader worth following, but a leader who IS followed. Let's do this.

“To inspire and equip others to become leaders who are worth following.”

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If you look close enough, every story from the past provides a learning opportunity for the future. My life mission statement is this:

You can become a leader worth following by figuring it out on your own based on trial and error… OR you can learn from the past experiences of others so you can leapfrog over their failures and gain insight from their wins. Let's play leapfrog. It's not that I believe I have mastered any of my passions, but I have definitely learned things along the way and would love to share the good and the bad so you can leapfrog me. My hope is that you can take simple and small action steps based on each blog post that will help you become a better leader. You’ll be amazed at how far you can go by taking one small step at at time.