Once upon a time there was a teacher in Texas who was helping one of her kindergarten students put on his cowboy boots? He asked for help, and she could see why. Even with her pulling and him pushing, the little boots still didn’t want to go on. By the time they got the second boot on, she had worked up a sweat. She almost cried when the little boy said, “Teacher, they’re on the wrong feet.” She looked, and sure enough, they were.
It wasn’t any easier pulling the boots off than it was putting them on. She managed to keep her cool as together they worked to get the boots back on, this time on the right feet. He then announced, “These aren’t my boots.” She bit her tongue rather than get right in his face and scream, “Why didn’t you say so?”
Once again, she struggled to help him pull the ill-fitting boots off his little feet. No sooner had they gotten the boots off when he said, “They’re my brother’s boots. My mom made me wear ’em.” Now she didn’t know if she should laugh or cry, but she mustered up what grace and courage she had left to wrestle the boots on his feet again.
Helping him into his coat, she asked, “Now, where are your mittens?” He said, “I stuffed ’em in the toes of my boots.” (John Beukema, Chambersburg, PA, www.PreachingToday.com)
As any teacher knows, it takes a lot of patience and self-control to work with children, but often it takes even more self-control to work with their parents. You see, that’s what it takes to be an effective leader. A leader must first learn to lead himself if he wants to be effective in leading others young or old. He must learn to control his own passions if he is going to help people control or channel their passions in the right direction.
If you have your Bible, I invite you to turn with me to 1 Timothy 3, 1 Timothy 3, where the Bible talks about the qualities of an effective leader, and one of those absolutely essential qualities is self-control. Take a look at it in…
1 Timothy 3:3 A good leader is “not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.” (NIV)
If you want to be an effective leader, then you cannot let anything control you. First…
DON’T LET ALCOHOL CONTROL YOU.
Or as the text says, don’t be "given to drunkenness."
Proverbs 31:4 says, “It is…not for kings to drink wine, not for rulers to crave beer, lest they drink and forget what the law decrees, and deprive the oppressed of their rights.” (NIV) Drinking alcohol is NOT appropriate for leaders, because it affects their judgment.
The only people alcohol helps are those who are dying. That same passage in Proverbs goes on to say, “Give beer to those who are perishing…let them drink and remember their misery no more” (Proverbs 31:6-7). Alcohol eases the pain associated with the last stages of the dying process, but it erases the perspective of a leader who wants to help people really live.
One recovering alcoholic put it this way:
I drank for happiness and became unhappy.
I drank for joy and became miserable.
I drank for sociability and became argumentative.
I drank for sophistication and became obnoxious.
I drank for sleep and woke up tired.
I drank for strength and felt weak.
I drank for relaxation and got the shakes.
I drank for courage and became afraid.
I drank for confidence and became doubtful.
I drank to make conversation easier and slurred my speech.
I drank to feel heavenly and ended up feeling like hell. (Dear Abby, April 22, 1993).
Alcohol is not a good thing, especially for a leader.
Max Lucado, one of America’s great Christian leaders, found that out earlier in his ministry. He once said, “I come from a family of alcoholism. If there’s anything about this DNA stuff, I’ve got it.” For more than 20 years, drinking was not a major issue for Lucado, but about 10 years ago, it nearly became one. Lucado recalled, “I lowered my guard a bit. One beer with a barbecue won’t hurt. Then another time with Mexican food. Then a time or two with no food at all.”
One afternoon on his way to speak at a men’s retreat he began to plot: “Where could I buy a beer and not be seen by anyone I know?” He drove to an out-of-the-way convenience store, parked, and waited till all the patrons left. He entered, bought a beer, held it close to his side, and hurried to his car. “I felt a sense of conviction,” Lucado remembers, “because the night before I’d had a long talk with my oldest daughter about not covering things up.”
Lucado didn’t drink that beer. Instead he rolled down the window, threw it in a trash bin, and asked God for forgiveness. He also decided to come clean with the elders of his church about what happened: “When I shared it with the elders, they just looked at me across the table and said, ‘Satan is determined to get you for this right now. We’re going to cover this with prayer, but you’ve got to get the alcohol out of your life.’” Lucado says, “I really took that as from God.” (Robert Andrescik, “America’s Pastor Speaks to Men,” New Man, Jan/Feb 2002; www.PreachingToday. com)
If you aspire to be a leader of men (or women), I ask you to seriously consider abstaining from alcohol. Like Max Lucado, take this as a message from God, because there really is no good reason to drink alcohol, and the potential harm far outweighs any benefits, except to those who are dying.
If you want to be an effective leader, don’t let anything control you. Don’t let alcohol control you. And 2nd…
DON’T LET ANGER CONTROL YOU EITHER.
Don’t be overcome by violent emotions. Verse 3 says, don’t be violent. Literally, don’t be a fighter. Don’t be contentious, demanding your own way all the time.
Just a few years ago, Neil Melly was at the Los Angeles International Airport, attempting to get to Australia, but Melly lacked a valid credit card so he was unable to purchase a ticket.
Now, most of us might be embarrassed if our credit card wasn’t approved, but Melly got angry. Hours later, he angrily stripped off all his clothes and returned to make a dash for the airport runway. Baggage handlers watched as Melly scaled a fence topped with three strands of barbed wire, fearlessly and without injury. Then he sprinted across the tarmac toward a jumbo jet and crawled inside the wheel well of an Australian plane that was on the move.
Airport spokeswoman, Nancy Castles, said, “He could have been sucked up by an engine,” or crushed when the landing gear was retracted. “And if not, he very likely would have frozen to death during the 15½ hour flight at 30,000 feet while wearing no clothes.”
Pilots stopped the plane, Melly was coaxed from his hiding place and arrested. The official charge was trespassing. Apparently there’s no law against poor problem solving, anger mismanagement, or being the butt of jokes. (Naked Man Climbs Onto Moving Jet, Yahoo.com, 11-04-04; John Beukema @ www.PreachingToday.com)
Most of us lose our cool from time to time. We might not do what Melly did – get naked and climb barbed wire; but when we do act in anger, it’s just about as useful. Anger makes us do stupid stuff, so we have to be careful not to let it control us. Don’t be violent, verse 3 says.
Instead, be gentle. The word literally means, “Be yielding.” Don’t fight to maintain control; instead, yield control.
We usually think of leaders as people who get their way all the time. They place demands on people and expect people to cater to them, but that is not effective, biblical leadership. If you have to force people to follow, then you are no leader; you’re a bully.
Now, that is not to say that a good leader is some weak, mealy-mouthed wimp, who never takes a stand. No. A good leader often takes a strong stand, but never for himself and always for someone else’s benefit.
Josephus, a great First Century, Jewish historian, reported that John the Baptist was such a powerful figure that years after he died, people still trembled whenever his name was mentioned. Jesus himself said John the Baptist was “greater than any man born of woman.” Yet when John’s disciples became concerned that more people were following Jesus than John, John told them, “That’s Okay. He must increase, but I must decrease.”
John the Baptist was not self-seeking at all. He was a powerful figure, yes, but one who yielded to Jesus Christ. He put Christ’s interests above his own, and that’s what an effective leader does. He yields first to Jesus Christ.
Then he yields to others.
A man was struggling to get to Grand Central Station in New York City. The wind blew fiercely, and the rain beat down on him mercilessly as he lugged two heavy suitcases toward the terminal. Occasionally, he would pause to rest and regain his strength before trudging on against the storm.
At one point, he was almost ready to collapse when a man suddenly appeared by his side, took the suitcases, and said in a strangely familiar voice, “We’re going the same way. You look as if you could use some help.”
When they had reached the shelter of the station, the weary traveler, asked the man, “Please, sir, what is your name?” The weary traveler was none other than the famous educator, Booker T. Washington.
The man who helped Washington carry his suitcases answered, “The name, my friend, is Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt.” (J. Allen Blair, Living Faithfully)
Both of these men were great leaders in their day, not because they demanded that people serve them. No. They were great leaders, because they were willing to serve people.
If you want to be an effective leader, then don’t let anger control you. In other words, don’t be violent; instead, be gentle or yielding, and don’t be quarrelsome, vs.3 says. Don’t pick fights; settle them. Don’t create conflicts; resolve them, because that’s what good leaders do.
Two friends, Bill and Tom, were drinking at an all-night café. They got into a discussion about the difference between irritation, anger, and rage. At about 1 A.M., Bill said, “Look, Tom, I’ll show you an example of irritation.”
He pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number at random. The phone rang and rang and rang. Finally a sleepy voice at the other end answered, and Bill said, “I’d like to speak to Jones.”
“There’s no one here named Jones,” the disgruntled man replied as he hung up.
“That,” Bill said to Tom, “is a man who is irritated.”
An hour later, at 2 A.M., Bill said, “"Now I’ll show you a man who is angry.” He pulled out his cell phone, dialed the same number, and let it ring. Eventually, the same sleepy voice answered the phone.
Bill asked, “May I please speak with Jones?”
“There’s no one here named Jones,” came the angry reply, this time louder. The man slammed down the receiver.
An hour later, at 3 A.M., Bill said, “Now I’ll show you an example of rage.” He pulled out his cell phone, dialed the same number, and let it ring. When the sleepy man finally answered, Bill said, “Hi, this is Jones. Have there been any calls for me?” (David Holdaway, Scotland; www.PreachingToday.com)
Bill may have gotten some laughs, but he was no leader. You see, a good leader is not contentious. Rather, he is a calming influence in times of stress.
Several years ago (January 1996), a massive snow storm hit the East Coast of the United States. (In fact, I remember Sandy and I, with our kids, getting caught in that storm as we were visiting our parents in Pennsylvania and Maryland.) Well, as the storm moved up the coast, people flooded the supermarkets to stock up on food.
In Bloomfield, New Jersey, the local A&P Grocery store began to run out of milk and bread, and the customers went wild. There was shouting, pushing and shoving, and things would have gotten a whole lot worse were it not for one man who said he was a preacher. He asked to speak over the intercom, and in a calm voice he soothed the angry crowd.
The manager said, “We would have liked to thank him, but he disappeared.” (National and International Religon Report, January 22, 1996, p.3)
That man was a true leader – a calming influence in the midst of chaos. And if you want to be an effective leader, then you must be the same. Be a calming influence, not a contentious one.
Don’t let alcohol control you. Don’t let anger control you. And finally, if you want to be an effective leader…
DON’T LET MONEY CONTROL YOU EITHER.
Don’t let avarice or greed be the driving influence of your life. Verse 3 says, a good leader is “not a lover of money.”
Kevin Miller, one of the editors at Leadership Journal, talks about his dad telling him two stories all the time when he was a kid. In the first one, a couple goes to Harvard University and asks to see the president, because they want to give a donation to the university. The president agrees to see them, but he doesn’t know them, and because they’re from somewhere way out west, he treats them curtly. After a few moments, the woman finally turns to her husband and says, “Come, Leland; I think there are better things we can do with our money.” The man was Leland Stanford, founder (with his wife) of Stanford University.
“Even as a child,” Kevin Miller says, “I understood that the moral of this story was not, ‘Be nice to strangers.’ Instead, this story was about who has real power. The moral is, ‘If you have money, you can tell anyone – even the most established, respected, or powerful person in the world – to go take a flying leap.’” That’s what Kevin’s dad taught his son.
The second story Kevin’s father used to tell him was about a minister that was invited to John D. Rockefeller’s mansion. As he drove up the winding drive lined with tall trees, he said, “My, my! This is what the Lord might have done—if he’d had the money.”
As a child, Kevin understood the moral of this story, too. God doesn’t have as much money as Rockefeller, and so God doesn’t have much power. In other word, “Money is more powerful than God.” Again, another lesson from his dad.
Kevin Miller’s dad spent most of his life working really hard to make money, but then Kevin says, “He made a tactical error.” He decided to go to church with his wife and son. The pastor gave an altar call that day, and something connected with Kevin Miller’s dad. He went forward and began to follow Jesus. He was 60-years-old. He began to read a small, blue King James Bible, and for the first time in his life, he began giving with real interest. He told his son, in what was a rare sharing of his personal life, “Kevin, I’ve started to tithe, and it’s been a great adventure.”
Kevin’s dad suffered a heart attack at age 70. He lay in a hospital bed for 5 days, and then he died. At the funeral home, a woman Kevin had never seen came up to him and said, “You don’t know me, but I was in a bad marriage; my husband was beating me, and I needed to get out to save my life. But I didn’t know what I would do to support myself. Your dad paid for me to go to junior college and get a degree, so I could be a dental hygienist. He paid for the whole thing, and nobody else knew about it. Now I have a job, and I’m making it. Your dad literally saved my life.”
Kevin Miller writes: “I wonder what would have been my dad’s legacy if he had kept loving money and trying to be like Leland Stanford and John D. Rockefeller. He would have died with a lot of money, but not a lot of love. Instead, he took a risk. He tried to learn how to ‘keep his life free from the love of money.’ And when he died, he left behind a woman who knows every day when she cleans people’s teeth that it’s a miracle she’s still alive. (Kevin Miller, in a sermon, Financial Contentment, www.PreachingToday.com)
You see, his most positive influence began when he gave up his love for money and replaced it with a love for God and for others.
I’ve quoted Peter Maurin before, but he’s worth quoting here again. In Leadership journal some time ago, he wrote these words: “The world would be better off if people tried to become better. And people would become better if they stopped trying to become better off. For when everybody tries to become better off, nobody becomes better off. But when everybody tries to become better, everybody is better off. (Peter Maurin, Leadership, Vol.5 No.4)
I’m sure most of you want to do what you can to make this world a better place. Then work on becoming better, not better off.
If you want to become an effective leader, then don’t let alcohol control you; don’t let anger control you; and don’t let money control you. Instead, do what Kevin Miller’s dad did and trust Christ with your life. Let Christ control you, then let Him use you to lead others to Himself.
