I have been thinking a lot about leadership recently.  I found an amazing quote by James McGregor Burns who is well known presidential biographer and writer on leadership.  He says that “Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on the earth.”  That is one of the most true statements I have heard recently.  Everyone knows in a general way what leadership is and we can even point to a few good leaders that we have known but most of us have no idea how to become a good leader.  Many of us don’t even know how to identify good leadership until it is too late and we are burned by the leaders we have placed ourselves under.

Jesus gives us a lot of insight on leadership and the kinds of leaders we need to follow.  We are doing a mini-series on leadership at Green Hills.  This last weekend (July 19th) I taught a message titled ‘Shepherds and Wolves’ that talked about leaders we need to  run from.  It was a very challenging message to put together.   If you are interested to find out more about leadership you are welcome to check it out here at itunes.

Just click the link to listen: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=274809927

If you are anything like me your life is a checklist.  I wake up and the first thing I think about is what I need to do that day.  I seem to have been born with a personal task master wired into my brain that is OCD about arranging the items I have to do in order of importance, urgency and the most efficient order to do them in.   There is always something new to do and something new to see.  So if I want to do something, even if it is fun, I just add it to the list and proceed to execute that task with as much precision and focus as I can muster.  Unfortunately, I get so busy thinking about what is next and how to do it that I miss the beauty and pleasure in what I am currently doing.  It’s what I call the curse of “NEXT”.

It is so easy to live in the future and not in the present.  If we are not careful, we can miss life while we plow right through it.  I used to think that when I got my iPhone my life would be so much easier because I could keep my calendar synced up and I could find a lot of extra time once I had all my calendar issues settled.  But instead of being less busy, I have simply filled the time with other busy things.

This week I have been thinking about the concept of slowing down.  John Ortberg, the author of “T he Life You Have Always Wanted”,  devotes a whole chapter that is very worth reading about this concept.  His premise is that if we don’t slow down we will miss the most important things in this life.  Ortberg says we must choose to slow our life down or else it will constantly be out of control.  We will never enjoy life unless we choose to slow down.  No one else can do that for us.  We must practice it as a discipline.  In the same way that we train for a 5K or a Triathlon, we must train to be people who enjoy the moment.

Last year I had the opportunity to start a church.  Although it is a labor of love, it is a lot of hard work.  There is constantly something to do and people to minister to.  In the midst of all this I must choose to slow myself so that I can enjoy the journey God is allowing me to go through.  There will never be another beginning to Green Hills Church.  If I am not careful, I will miss the joy in seeing a new church bloom.

We all need seasons in our lives to rest.  Doing things are very important, but if life is constantly doing and never being then it is not enjoyable.  I don’t want to be a human doing, I want to be a human being.  That’s why God has given us the Sabbath, a time to rest.  God from the beginning has chosen to model that we need to take time in our lives to rest.  He told the people of Israel to rest every week and every 7 years they had to let their land rest.  Rest is very important.  It allows us to live, not just to do.

Summer time is a great time to slow down.  The pace of life around us naturally slows down due to the change in seasons. This summer, my Co-Pastor, Brad and I decided that we were going to enjoy the summer.  We decided that we were going to slow down and choose to rest because the fall is an exciting and very busy time.  It’s just really hard to honor that commitment.  But this week I have realized that summer is passing by very quickly and if I don’t choose to slow myself, I will enter the fall fatigued.

So here are some ideas on how to proactively rest.  I don’t mean that you shouldn’t go to work or that you should slack off on work but I think there are some ways to slow life down.  First of all turn the TV off.  Thats right.  Football isn’t here yet and all your favorite shows are on hiatus until the fall, so why do we need to watch reruns for hours at a time at night?   Try this, instead of watching TV, pick out a book and immerse your mind into another world.  I know some people like reading non-fiction, I think there is no substitute for escapist fiction.

A second idea is to choose to be either 5 minutes early or 5 minutes late to things.  You would be surprised how much pressure you relieve when you do this.  You take the control of the situation instead of falling into the tyranny of deadlines.

Lastly, I think a great way to slow down is to remove something from your calendar that is important.  Our lives are constantly filled with things that are important and urgent.  Many things we think are important really aren’t.  I often find myself doing things that I dont want to do, in hopes of impressing someone.  Sometimes we need to let those things that only seem important to fade away into the background and let the truly important things like family and God rise to the forefront.

Some of you have checked out my buddy Josh Bronleewe’s music- especially his song “Wake Up” that I posted a while back on the blog.  I was listening to a new song he posted on his myspace page called “Highway.”  It’s really mellow and it slowed me down as I listened to it.  I hope you like it:  http://www.myspace.com/joshbronleewe

I had a first for me last night.  Tab and I got a chance to go to the Nashville Sounds game.  If you don’t know who the Sounds are, they are the Milwaukee Brewer’s AAA affiliate.  It was my first time to go to one of their games.  I was pleasantly surprised by how much fun it was.  We dined on $1 hotdogs and chocolate ice cream in a waffle cone.  Seriously is there anything more relaxing that watching a late afternoon baseball game.  It seems like time just stands still.   There was actually a lot of good talent on the field.  Thanks to some online research on ESPN.com and Buster Olney’s blog I found out that they have an absolute stud in their 22 year old short stop, Alcides Escobar. You can read Buster’s blog here: http://insider.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?entryID=4306954&name=olney_buster

If you got a free evening, I highly recommend you checking out a Sounds game.

Here are some pictures of the event.

Rob Bell put this video/talk together and it is really inspiring.  He talks about the value of serving others and how to be blessing.   Of course it has his trademark creativity and relevant explanation of Old Testament teaching.  If you have 5 minutes to watch it I promise it will move your soul.

To see the video just cut and paste the link:

http://player.flannel.org/compassion?referer=corner

Compassion is an amazing ministry that helps underserved children around the world.  Check this video out!  This will move your heart!

I heard through some friends about a man named, David who is battling brain cancer.  He found out that he has a tumor in his brain that is around his comprehension and language centers.   I couldn’t imagine going through an experience like that.  I wanted to turn you on to his blog because it is incredibly inspiring to hear his heart.  This is right in line with what I have been writing recently about trusting God when bad things happen to us.

Here is something that David posted recently:

This tumor was specifically designed for me by God.
The other day my sister sent me an article written by John Piper called ‘Don’t Waste your Cancer’ <http://www.hopetriumphant.com/don%27t_waste_your_cancer.htm> .  Written on the eve of John’s prostate surgery, his first point is:

1. You will waste your cancer if you do not believe it is designed for you by God.

“It will not do to say that God only uses our cancer but does not design it. What God permits, he permits for a reason. And that reason is his design. If God foresees molecular developments becoming cancer, he can stop it or not. If he does not, he has a purpose. Since he is infinitely wise, it is right to call this purpose a ‘design’. If you don’t believe your cancer is designed for you by God, you will waste it.”

God didn’t give me a bum leg or a sore back. He has designed a tumor to grow in my brain in the specific place – the exact location – where I would never ever want it to be.  He has intricately fused a massive lesion into the middle of my comprehension and language centers.  He has calcified cancerous tissues around the speech production areas of my brain; the essence of my personality, my career and my future.

If God were about to tell a compelling story with my life that ended in His glorification, this is a pretty incredible way to start it.  After all, would we still talk about Goliath if he wasn’t a giant?

This is the beginning of a new story, but I want to make a clarification.  This new story is about God, not me. So I confidently declare Psalm 20:6-9.

6 Now I know that the LORD saves His anointed;
He will answer him from His holy heaven
With the saving strength of His right hand.

7 Some trust in chariots, and some in horses;
But we will remember the name of the LORD our God.

8 They have bowed down and fallen;
But we have risen and stand upright.

9 Save, LORD!
May the King answer us when we call.

Please be praying for David.  If you want to follow along his blog is:  http://www.jumpdavidjump.typepad.com/

I have found that most of us struggle with a fundamental distrust of God.  Even if you are a devout believer in God, when tough times come it is easy to begin to doubt the fundamental nature of who God is.  That is because at our core we believe that bad stuff shouldn’t happen to good people.  We think only good things should happen to good people.  We believe subconsciously in a cause and effect relationship with the universe.  Subtly, we begin to see God as someone who spends his time averting evil from people who follow him and rewarding them for doing good.  At the same time he is punishing people for doing bad things and bringing chaos into their lives.

Unfortunately in the real world, bad things do happen to nice people.  Good things happen to bad people.  It seems really unfair.  When pain enters into our life we doubt whether God is good, omniscient, and all powerful.  We may even wonder if God exists at all.  This is because we do not have a good understanding of the God of the Bible.

It is easy to lose hope in God when we think that he allows evil things to happen and for justice to be withheld without a good reason.  But just because we can’t fathom a reason why bad things may happen to us or to those we designate as good, does not mean that God doesn’t exist.  It’s a form of pride in our own mental abilities, to imagine that with our finite understanding of the universe and the limited time we have on the planet we could figure our all of God’s reasons for why we experience pain.  But as we look at the Bible we can find an answer to the question of evil.

In the Bible, we find a God who is good, all powerful,  and hates evil.  However, he allows evil to exist in the world for an important reason.

The reason that God allows evil to exist is rooted firmly in the gospel.  This is Christianity 101.  God allows evil to happen because he loves people. I understand this seems very counter intuitive.  Why would God allow pain and suffering in the lives of people that he loves.  Isn’t that sadistic and cruel?  That doesn’t seem very loving.  According to the Bible however, God allows evil to exist because he wants to rescue humanity from its clutches.  God has vowed to end evil, pain,  and suffering forever someday but he has held back because he is extending grace to those who are perpetuating this cycle of evil, namely you and I.

You see, if God was to destroy evil and suffering today, then he would have to destroy all people who are currently under the domination of sin.  It is a package deal.  If he were to destroy one part of the construct of this world he has to destroy all of it.  Humans are tied into the story of suffering and injustice because we are the ones who initiated it into this world.  We are not exempt from the system of this world that we are born into. God does his work of limiting evil by setting constraints upon it.   When he finally does away with evil, all those who do not come to a repentant relationship with Jesus Christ will be destroyed along with evil, injustice and pain.  God is extending mercy upon humanity by waiting to do away with evil.

An interesting side effect of God extending mercy on humanity is that God has not exempted himself from the human problem of pain.  Jesus entered into the world and experienced pain and suffering first hand.  God has not chosen to keep pain at an arms distance but has instead chosen to enter into it.  He understands what it is like to suffer.  He understands what it is like to be mocked, because he was scorned by the religious crowd.  He understands what it is like to hurt when a family member dies young, his earthly father Joseph died before his time.  He understands what it is like to be different, he was seen as an interloper by the leaders of the Jews.  Jesus knows what it is like to be beaten and cursed at.    He even understands what it is like to die for what you believe in.  He understands pain.  And he has chosen to weld his story with ours so that God no longer has the choice to opt out of human suffering.

This is why we can have confidence in God.  Because God has said that we are now his people.  That we have been shown mercy.  1 Peter 2:10 says ‘Once you were not a people but now you are God’s people; you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy.”  God now offers us a chance to get away from the consequences of sin and pain through Jesus.

The problem is that we struggle when times get hard.  We quickly stop trusting God when pain enters into our life.  That is because we are really in it for ourselves.  However, God does promise to redeem terrible situations for good.  God is in the redemption business.  God wants to use our hard times to show himself to the world through us.  God uses our suffering as a stage to reveal himself to people far from him. There is a purpose behind the things that we go through.  I love John 9:3 what Jesus says when he is asked about a man who had been blind from birth.  His disciples wanted to know whose fault it was that he had been born blind.  Jesus said, it was neither the mans fault or his parents fault, but it was so the works of God might be displayed in him.  That is amazing.  God allows the pain of this world to exist so that he can show himself to be God.

I don’t know if you are struggling today with some sort of suffering or pain, but I know that God is at work within you if you let him take the stage.  If you say God, I trust you with everything, then he is able to take your pain and make something amazing out of your life.  God has not forgotten where you are and what you are going through.  1 Peter 5:7 says, “Cast your care upon him because he cares for you.”  The first step to casting you cares/suffering upon him is to trust Jesus. Trusting someone that you have an innate tendency to mistrust is a difficult process but it is one that brings eternal dividends.  It is a leap of faith that God really has your best interest in mind.

I talk more about this on this week’s podcast from Green Hills Church:

Just click the link to listen: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=274809927

Ok!  So I have a confession to make.  I just joined Twitter last week.  I feel kind of like a sell out but I think it will be a cool instrument to continue reaching people through this blog.  If you are into Twitter you can follow me at Mike_Harder or http://twitter.com/mike_harder

See you online!

I don’t know if you are anything like me but I struggle with comparing myself to others.  Its something that happens in the back of my mind constantly.  I find myself gauging my own performance or self worth by looking around.  Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing with benchmarking yourself to seeing how you are doing and what you could be doing better but comparisons can be very dangerous to our psyche and our walk with God.  The reason they can be dangerous is because we can become slaves to an image of what we should be and miss the freedom that comes with being who we really are.

Many times when I compare myself to others I make dangerous mistakes.  I either prop myself up and push others down, allowing to think I am doing really well because of my perceived superiority, or I see myself as a complete failure because of someone else’s success.  Comparisons make us ride a out of control emotional roller coaster.  I become a hostage to my emotions.   The dirty little secret about comparisons that I have learned recently is that comparing yourself is really a form of pride.

Two areas that I struggle with are Comparisons with my dad and comparisons with my peers.

Comparison with Dad - I have a great relationship with my dad but it is easy to compare myself with where he was in his ministry or his life when he was my age.  I know other people struggle with the desire to please their dad and live up to his expectations.

Comparisons with Peers - This is probably the worst arena of comparisons for me.  It is so easy to compare myself with my friends and co-workers.  Performance is valued highly in western culture an the pressure to perform is exhausting.  I think preachers really struggle with this because we have so much value tied into how we do when we teach.  Everyone else is evaluating us as we teach and so we also evaluate ourselves.  We can fall in the trap of equating our personal value to our teaching popularity.  Compounding the problem is the power of the internet and podcasts.

Honestly the only way to be free from comparing yourself with your peers is to choose to walk in humility.  Dictionary.com defines humility as: having a modest opinion or estimate of one’s own importance and rank. I really like that definition.  Humility frees us to be who we really are.  1 Peter 5:5 says:  “And all of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because God resists the proud,but gives grace to the humble.” Humility covers our nakedness and our insecurities. Humility brings God’s favor on our life

If you struggle with humility and comparing yourself to others I encourage you to trust God and fire yourself from comparing yourself to others.  That will allow you to find true freedom and the ability to enjoy your life.

I talk about this topic a lot more on this week’s podcast from Green Hills Church.  Check it out here!

Just click the link to listen: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=274809927

This Sunday I am teaching on the topic of humility as we teach through the book of John.  Honestly, I am not the best person to be teaching about humility since I have not come close to attaining it.  But I really have felt burdened for this message since I returned from Italy.  I have really been convicted of my sins of comparison in the last week.   Being away for 12 days on vacation was so refreshing.  I completely unplugged from my life here.  No email, phone calls or computer.  Just my iphone that I used to blog our trip. When we got back I felt really rejuventated.

On Monday morning as I was getting ready for our staff meeting, I began to feel the weight of life begin to creep upon my bones.  I was surprised to feel how heavy the stress felt that I had been under before I left for vacation.  The stress was pressure to perform as a pastor, pressure to succeed, and the pressure of leadership.  I was worrying about things I had no control of but hoping that through my worry that I would be able to overcome my obstacles.  In that moment I felt God convicting me of not trusting him.

I immediately began to pray and ask God for forgiveness.  I needed forgiveness for trying so hard to carry all the burdens on my own.  I vowed to turn that stuff over to him and just work hard at doing what he has called me to.  I need to just focus on being myself and staying humble.  Humility frees us from the pressure of having to prop ourselves up by our accolades.  

Jesus modeled humility throughout his life.  Most of us are aware that Jesus set the gold standard for what it is to live a life that was humble and selfless.  But as I have been digging in the scriptures I am amazed at how truly humble Jesus really is.  I am struggling as a flawed vessel to live a life that resembles that of my savior.  

Please pray for me as I share this message on Sunday.  I know that so many of us are trying so hard to succeed and to find validation.  My prayer is that our people can find freedom from the tyranny of comparison and the weight of pride this Sunday.