“Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.”- Jesus in Matthew 5:4 
This is the age of superficiality. It is the age of skimming the surface of our lives without the notice of what is below the waterline.We are busy. We live fast and we are over-extended. There is so much going on above the waterline, how will we ever find the time to explore what is below the waterline? Just how does one stop and allow sadness to undo us when we are spinning all the plates of life, money, work and stress?Busy people send text messages when someone dies. There is no time to bake a pie. There is no time to give the hug that says more than words can ever communicate. We “Like” something on social media when we what we really want to say is that we don’t like it at all that you may be in a coma in the hospital and near your last breath. But a “like” or a text seems to do.[tweetthis]We do not mourn. We do not lament. We do not grieve. We have forgotten how to allow our sad hearts to bubble up to our overly made up external appearances.[/tweetthis] In Jewish culture, when someone died, people dressed in black for a whole year. That seems so endless—perhaps even ridiculous. We have parties and cookouts to attend. We have things to do; people to see and places to go.Yet in the midst of all of this living we try to do, Jesus turns the world upside down when he says, something very good will come from mourning that will in fact, bless you. I have to admit that sometimes, many of the teachings of Jesus seem like he is speaking in a foreign language—like Chinese. It seems so way out to say that there is a blessing that will come when we take the time to mourn. Is it Chinese?
[tweetthis]When we take the time to allow our sad hearts to catch up with our breathless lifestyle we soon see that we are addicted to pleasure.[/tweetthis] Ours is the age is numbing pain, not entering it. Yet, Jesus calls us to not only enter pain but to realize that when we enter pain—either our own or someone else’s that a sheer, unadulterated comforted will be ours. Jesus is calling us to enter pain, not try to go around it and more, he says, by entering pain, we assuage it—or God does.There is no escaping suffering. Sooner or later it is going to bite us all on the butt and drop us to our knees. When we mourn this; when we slow down and recognize that suffering is one of the great ties that bind us all together as humans, then we stand on level ground. There are no hierarchy’s in pain. We all stand low; kneel low and beg low, don’t we?This past year, my own family has been baptized in the cesspool of pain. The death of a child—our grandson broke us. Some people texted us. All the texts made us more sad. Can I just tell you that texting or the use of social media is probably not the best form of entering someone’s pain. When my father died, someone who I thought knew better sent a text while I was putting my suit on to take my father’s body to the grave. Rather than be comforted, I was outraged. His text broke the frozen grief in my heart. I wanted to text back, “I don’t need your text. I need you!” But like so many times, I swallowed that grief only to see if morph into a distancing and emotional estrangement today—years later.
Mourning is something even the church does not know how to do anymore. In our mega-ness, funerals are now happening in side rooms or no room at all. They are relegated to businesses that make a lot of money when we are most vulnerable. Some churches are so concerned with the lost, they have forgotten those who are lost in their grief. For many, the state of the church is worthy of mourning and lamenting.This saddens me and sickens me. I mourn about our society. I mourn about so much that seems to be happening so quickly in our country. [tweetthis]I mourn that we seem to have lost our way and I am wondering---if not mourning-- that we may never find our way again and like Rome, perish and soon. I mourn that.[/tweetthis]I mourn that so many of the folks I know are now the unchurched—a label once thought only reserved for those who never went to church. Now, I am seeing more don’t then do. I mourn that.I mourn over a lion that was killed this week. I mourn over hearing the words of a Medical doctor employed by Planned Parenthood choosing to use the words, “crush” when it comes to the skill that is now implemented in an abortion. I mourn that.I mourn that my own children cannot live in the same community and have Sunday dinner’s together. I mourn that often we live in different countries, not counties. For me, I mourn that we cannot get together enough. We never will. Times have changed. We will not be there for the birth’s of our cousins; not be able to celebrate anniversaries; not able to light candles or eat sliced, ruby red watermelon on the 4th of July. I mourn that.I mourn that my wife at 60 is having to work through the childhood issues of being raised in a Boarding School in Africa—that childhood issues become adult issues. I mourn that.I mourn that at my age I have found no way to slow time down. I only am a witness now of it's speed. I mourn this deeply. And with this mourning comes the realization that for me, one day soon, time will itself stop and I will pass like every other mortal life passes from this earth. I mourn this because I have loved my life.I mourn that I can’t call my Mom and ask her about what Dr. Oz (her favorite show) said on his TV show every day. She died. I miss her still. I mourn that. I don't know what Dr. Oz says anymore about anything. Does he ever tell us how healthy it is to mourn?There are so many things to mourn if we stop and and enter whatever it is that is happening---there is a deeper perspective. And this deeper perspective makes us love life, nourish life and protect life with every fiber in our body and soul. When we get things "out" something else comes "in" and this is what Jesus and all the Biblical writers called--peace. To get things out is to mourn whether it is the giving out of a tear, a groan, a sigh or a blog.I have never found any better words than these to help us understand the power of mourning: [tweetthis]When life is heavy and hard to take, Go off by yourself, Enter the silence. Bow in prayer. Don’t ask questions; Wait for hope to appear. Don’t’ run from trouble. Take it full-face. The “worst” is never the worst. Lamentations 3:28-30[/tweetthis] (I have been living in the Beatitudes of Jesus for a year and am just now blogging about the insights, gold and comfort I am finding in them.)
Living in the Beatitudes
"The poetry of history lies in the miraculous fact that once on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing after another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone like ghosts at cockcrow." G. M. Trevelyan 
If you’re like me, you’ve read the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-11) a thousand times. You learned them in Sunday school as a child and perhaps tried to memorize them. You may not recall what I'm even talking about here. It not, take a moment and read them. I've given you the reference. Someone, perhaps a teacher, parent or grandmother just knew, a long time ago, re how important they are in life. For a long time, people have been trying to get their head wrapped around what Jesus intended in these short statements.For a year now, I’ve been parked right at their address in the Scripture and read them multiple times a week trying to dig in and suck out the marrow they offer. The fact is, I’ve been nourished and impacted in a big way.These eight paradigms uttered from the mouth of Jesus, himself offer today’s busy worker a whole new way to view life. The Beatitudes lay down a foundation of how to “do” life. In my work with leaders for 35 years now, what I’m going to say is sad and sobering. [tweetthis]Few leaders in the marketplace and ministry are happy. Discontent is epidemic. Stress is out the wazoo. We have more monetary success than ever before in this history of the world but our inner worlds are in disarray.[/tweetthis] [tweetthis]Few leaders in the marketplace and ministry are happy. Discontent is epidemic. Stress is out the wazoo. We have more monetary success than ever before in this history of the world but our inner worlds are in disarray.[/tweetthis]We have all been programmed with a way to be happy. The beatitudes fly in the face of our programming. The wheels of the bus come off of our lives when we come face to face with Jesus’ own words and his heart for us as his brothers and sisters and his friends.Yet, Jesus, the One who had the audacity to say that “I am the way, the truth and the life…” offered us eight foundational planks upon which we can build a new platform and perhaps really taste and discover—if not really live the life that is truly a life.[tweetthis]What I am finding is that these Beatitudes---there really is something up with them and as I move on with me life, I want these to be the markers of my life.[/tweetthis]What Jesus said in these short, pithy, life-altering statements are primarily two things: Live this way and you will be living in counter-cultural way. And live this way and you will be living in a counter-intuitive way.The Beatitudes are counter-cultural because they simply flow against the stream of our every-day, surviving life. In Jesus’ wisdom, he offers us a way to turn our ordinary life around and live with new ways of looking at life, people, tragedy, success and genuine health.Take the first Beatitude as an example. Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Rock my world, right here! Today, everyone is an expert. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone is selling something. Yet poverty—that posture where you have more questions than answers is the way to live. Cultivating a healthy ignorance can become more life-giving than knowing it all or pretending to know it all.What if pastors could become more poor on Sundays and in Sunday's sermons and simply say, "I've been way too busy this week to even listen to God--much less read my Bible. Perhaps you've had the same week. Could we just sit in some silence? Could we then just do some deep listening to a passage of Scripture. Sing a song and go home and eat lunch with our friends and family?" I'd like that kind of honesty rather than having to listen to a message that seems canned; seems stolen from the internet yet spoken with such authority that it is more shocking than real? Let's get poor here!What if a business leader could attend a seminar which would help them become more poor than rich—more humble than prideful; more less of a know it all than an arrogant person who people are repulsed by privately but never say so publicly. What if a leader would lead by listening to his team more; his clients more; his competitors more. That kind of poverty would yield something rich, I'm sure of it.
[tweetthis]Being poor in spirit is an invitation to become more reflective and not so reactionary. It is learning to live with wonder not facts.[/tweetthis] It is leaning more into mystery than linear thinking. It is giving up the 7 steps and the 21 habits and all that nonsense.Poor folks respond when something of worth is handed them. They respond with gratitude not entitlement. Spiritual entitlement and spiritual greed has become one of the markers of so many Christian leaders today. Spiritual greed is coveting more knowledge, more content; more insights and you hoard it. It’s not assuming the posture of being impoverished by all our books, notebooks and note-taking church. Spiritual entitlement is thinking because you’v been raised in the church or gone to seminary or something like that they people NEED to listen to you. That’s entitlement. To think people NEED your opinion or perhaps even want you opinion. Being poor in Spirit is walking around with palms up not fists clenched. Palms up living is living every day to receive whatever it is the Good Lord might want you give you that day. Then being grateful for it not holding a grudge that “they” got more than you or “they “ got something better than you. Our spiritual greed has not served us well. We are not the envy of other nations. We are not the answer to every problem and the guardian to everyone’s crisis. God is. We are not. That is spiritual poverty.Being poor in spirit for me means shifting how I look at people—especially leaders who seem to fixed---so obsessed on becoming a better something; an even higher status of a being known as a “high capacity leader.” To be honest, that term sickens me. It’s really not a compliment to say such things of anyone; especially one’s own humble and poor self. What is that way of talk anyway? A poor in spirit leader is simply not comfortable with that kind of label wearing, resume taunting person. A poor in spirit leader just shows up and says, “God, what do you have for me today?” It means dumping your plans and living with a dailiness in mind…simply to become so low that you’d say over the loud speaker in your complex. “People, today, we’re just going to do one thing! We’re going to do someone some good today.” That’s it. That’s poor in spirit.[tweetthis]For those of us who can learn this kind of spiritual bankruptcy, ours is the promise of everything.[/tweetthis] Jesus tells us the people who are low; the people who live humbly; the people who act like they are not more than they really are inside; the people who abandon their false, veneer ways of living and simply just choose to be themselves actually get everything. These kind of folks get the Kingdom.Now, for me, this is counter-intuitive. It goes against everything my daddy taught me and everything I sense in the committee meeting that goes on inside my head.Becoming poor in spirit means to walk lowly; it means to live with a daily humility that is grounded in that I am but a vapor here and I will too, soon pass from this earth. I will be replaced. I am not invincible. I am not important. It means to relish in my own belovedness as a chosen child of God—a very important person in God’s eyes and in God’s economy. It means a every day laying down in trying to promote myself and make myself to seem more important than I am. With this kind of living there is a richness—a richness that compels me to become more poor than every before.
Navigating the Turbulence in Life
Turbulence is when things in life become unstable. It happens whether you are flying high in great altitude or moving fast in life—you hit a bump and everything is in uproar. There is commotion, confusion and hullabaloo.You don't feel stable. You feel like you are out of sync with yourself and everyone around you. You feel nauseous and sick. It takes a while to recover and you may find you're moving so fast in life, you simply don't have time to recover, so you press on. You press through and you call it all the abundant life.It’s called, “when all hell breaks loose” as the saying goes because when someone experiences the turbulence of a sudden change in life; a new move, a new job, the death of a loved one or the disappointments we so often in experience in life, our world is suddenly jolted and lose our equilibrium. It’s dizzying.[tweetthis]Here are five things we can do to regain our equilibrium after we have experienced turbulence in our lives. [/tweetthis]By the way, none of these are new—they are all based on ancient wisdom and practiced by countless people who came before us. These are the five practices I am choosing to incorporate into my life--after having felt the turbulence of my re-entry from a time off from work--a sabbatical ( I wrote about this in the last post on feeling jolted. ):
- Choose to return to some form of rhythm. When life is spinning and confusing, make the choice to get off the spinning hamster wheel by embracing a slow—or slower speed that you are experiencing. Some rhythm is better than being strapped to a fast moving rocket. Any rhythm is better than no rhythm at all. Take a break. Take ½ day or a full day and practice the art of slowing. Take your day off—a Sabbath—a day of ceasing and not moving fast. Rhythm resets your internal world and recalibrates the heart as well as the mind.
- Choose silence every day.Move away from words and noise—even music in the ear buds and be quiet. Without some sense of silence, it is virtually impossible to re-establish a healthy soul. We live in a noisy word and for many of us we have a continual “committee meeting” going on inside our heads. Silence assuages the noise and dizzying voices we navigate.
- Choose Stillness. Take 20 minutes one time a day and choose to listen to God. The “still, small voice” is so often drowned out in our speed, busyness and plate spinning. Sit still. Be intentional about choosing to be still and to listen.
- Choose to pray. Praying is where you voice your deepest longings, desires and yearnings to God. Consent to having a conversation with God. During our four month sabbatical, I focused on prayer partly because I knew I needed to deepen my prayer life which nearly all spiritual masters talk about; did and enjoyed. AFter four months of focus in this one area, I'm here to say, I'm so glad that by practicing prayer more--I am seeing and experiencing the fruit of prayer more.
- Choose gratitude. You can complain about being out of sync with yourself and everyone else. You can be a spectator. Or you can choose to express thanksgiving. Thanksgiving melts the hardest of hearts and softens the soul to enjoy. To give thanks is the most God-like and Jesus like activity we can participate in. To withhold thanksgiving is perhaps the ultimate form of selfishness.
It may sound all to simple. But these five practices are now a part of my daily routine as I re-engage with my work and try to get myself unstrapped from a speeding rocket and also move away from spinning plates and live a life that I want to enjoy--a life I really want to live. [tweetthis]Each choice: choosing rhythm; choosing silence; choosing to listen; choosing to pray and choosing to pray establish our daily equilibrium.[/tweetthis] Each of these choices are also counter intuitive and counter cultural. To choose to do any of the five practices is choosing to go against the flow and work ethos embedded into our minds. By practicing any or all of them will be a prophetic all for you to swim up stream and to live in a different way and to be a different person. After all, if you feel so dizzy from all the turbulence you are experiencing, then you know the current way you are choosing to live is simply not working for you. [tweetthis]There really is a different way to live from all of the craziness we are experiencing and it begins with simple choices to live in different ways.[/tweetthis] For more on this, please read the Chapter in Inside Job on Rhythm and do the exercise in the accompanying workbook available at www.myinsidejob.org
More about "The Jolt": Finding Peace when Jolted
A dear friend of mine read my blog about being so jolted after returning to my work life after our sabbatical. I've been sitting with these words all day and I just wonder now, if these words might not really be an encouragement to you. What do you think?
"What can you say about maintaining inner peace, and finding it again when we have lost it, in our busy world?—I should start by saying that I wish I myself were better at this. I do travel and it is a struggle. But there is a principle in the Orthodox life: that [tweetthis]peace travels with you if it lives in your heart and isn’t simply a set of circumstances.[/tweetthis] If what I identify as peace is a quiet room, a lack of busywork, a lack of noise, a lack of people, a lack of distractions, it’s easy for that peace to be taken away from me the moment that I’m removed from that nice quietude into a bustling environment. If, however, peace is a condition of interior quietude, where the heart is resting in Christ even in the midst of a city, then you have a peace that cannot be taken away, a peace that travels with you.Now, this is not at all to go against the saying you mentioned. Even St. Anthony, so many centuries ago, said “a monk out of his cell is like a fish out of water.” Yes, of course there are places that God gives us specifically to foster peace, and when we depart from those places—like a monk from his cell, or a priest from his parish, or a husband from his wife—when circumstances force a person to move away for a time from the environment that God has given him to create peace, of course when you go back there are long periods of readjustment to get back what you had lost. But that doesn’t negate the fact that [tweetthis]peace travels with you if it lives in your heart and isn’t simply a set of circumstances.[/tweetthis] This is the peace that we see in the martyrs, who remain peaceful when they are at home or when they are in the arena with the lions; who remain peaceful when they're preaching amongst friends, or when they’re on the pyre and the flames are licking their feet—the peace that passes all understanding, as the Scriptures put it (Phil. 4:7). And that’s what we have to foster if we are to even remain sane in the modern world, because the modern world strives to steal our peace from us all the time. The world is a constant hive of distractions; and if our peace is external, then the world will win. It will always win, in that sad circumstance. But if the peace of Christ lives in the heart, then the world can’t defeat it.How do we attain that peace? We attain that peace by striving to live the life of the Church, praying so far as we can with consistency, every day letting prayer infuse our lives. That’s not to say everyone needs to have a three-hour prayer rule, but whatever one’s rule of prayer, it has to be consistent so that that breath is there every day. Confess regularly, frequently, because that empties the heart of the enemies of peace. It empties the heart of turmoil and torture and pain which prevent peace from residing in the heart. To confess frequently, regularly, to pray every day, so far as is possible to go to the services as regularly as one can, to be compassionate to other people, forgive those who wrong us—these are the things which create peace and which can be exercised anywhere. You can forgive your enemies on the bus just as easily as you can at home, if you, at that moment, in your heart determine not to hold onto your bitterness. So the whole world can be an avenue of gaining peace, if you understand peace to be inward. Of course it’s much easier in the places that God anoints for peace-making—in a temple, in a cell, in a marriage—which is why God blesses those things. It’s why God gives us temples and marriages and monasteries. But God has also created the world, and as much as we distort and disfigure the world, it is still His world. God will use even this fallenness that we have fashioned, for our redemption. [tweetthis]So in the midst of society, in the midst of a city, there’s the opportunity for peaceful hearts.[/tweetthis]"-While visiting Moscow during the month of June, Archimandrite Irenei (Steenberg), rector of the Sts. Cyril & Athanasius Institute for Orthodox Studies in San Francisco and an Archimandrite of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, visited Sretensky Monastery for an interview with Pravoslavie.ru. Father Irenei, a scholar of patristic and early Church studies, is also known as the founder of the Monachos internet forum, dedicated to the study of Orthodoxy through its patristic and monastic heritage, and as the host of the “A Word from the Holy Fathers” podcast on Ancient Faith Radio.
The Jolt of Re-Entry
When our sabbatical ended, I was not prepared for the jolt I would experience upon re-entry to my “normal” life. I had hopes that my sabbatical would be life altering. We really needed and wanted “things” to change. But then the unfolding of the fact that our sabbatical had ended: Finished. Completed. It was culture shock. I was taken back by the harshness, abruptness and violence I felt from leaving one world of rest and renewal and now entering a world of work I had left.I wish now, that someone would have warned me about this jolt. I could have used a longer, more gentle ramp to enter my life again. I needed a ramp to reengage with my work. I wanted life to be kind. Not violent. Without a ramp offered me, I got back on the freeway of life. Sabbatical stopped and I felt as if I have been strapped to a rocket speeding through the air. I have felt out of orbit and out of sync ever since I started my work again--if I am honest with you!
When I enter an express way or interstate highway in my car, there is always a ramp where I am suppose to accelerate my speed gradually. The longer the ramp…the better it goes. I am not expected to go from stop to seventy miles and hour in less than ten seconds. Finding no ramp for me to gain momentum to re-enter the work world I had left, I just got back on the face track of work and it has not gone well for me. I think it has not gone for the dear folks around me. I see it in their faces. I have felt distress. I have oozed distress and I’m confident that my distress has centrifuged out of me into the fast lanes of those I encounter.The sweetness of my sabbatical feels now like a land I once visited years ago—a foreign land with a foreign tongue that I had learned to speak--sort of. I have a recollection of my extended times of reading, reflection and comprehension. Everything then seemed to make sense. I practices going slow. I was unhurried. There was time for everything that brought me life. I had a different perspective. My heart was renewed in a sort of “first-love” fascination with God, nature and all things spiritual.Now, I feel as if there is a steady leak in my soul—a leak that I fear will drain me. I do not feel as if my feet are on the ground—that I do not yet have my feet back under me to travel well. It does not seem I am living well right now despite the sabbatical. In my dark times, I wonder “Was Sabbatical even worth it?” “Was it really worth me taking that kind of time off and being away if now, upon re-entry, this is what I get for that precious time off?”If I had my sabbatical to do over, I would have built a longer, more steady ramp back on to the freeway of my life. My sabbatical revealed how much I disdain the freeway life anyway. Sabbatical offered me the time to "ruthlessly eradicate hurry" from my life and enjoy life not survive life. I would have built more time into my time off to prepare more to re-enter my life. I think I would have liked to be more kind to myself and also to others. My swirling seems to be contagious I find. When I speed up, the wake behind me gets bigger and seems to topple people I never intended to topple. Perhaps, I would have designed a way to work part-time for a couple of weeks—perhaps a month. What is the hurry about anyway?Did my hurry to re-engage stem from my own need to be needed---a sickness that drives so many leaders?I remember looking at my calendar with concern as the end of sabbatical approached. I recall thinking, “Well, it’s going to be full. It’s going to be busy. But, Steve, you can do this. This is life. This is reality.” I remember thinking and being coached that after sabbatical, the big word is this: integration. Integrate all you’ve learned from sabbatical into life and you’ll do fine. Well, that word “fine” is what I’m trying to find—attempting to experience. Things have not felt fine. It’s been a jolt and the jolt has dropped me to my knees and humbled me in a way to feel more powerless than confident. And the word "integrate"--just how do you fold in, blend in and absorb such life giving times when now everything feels like clock work and making me feel so "chop-chop".Within our first three weeks back in the saddle, I had spoken ten times; sat with 25 people in one on one sessions listening to their life and worked diligently with my publisher to make sure I was doing every necessary for the release of my new book, Inside Job. It was too much. For lack of finding a ramp, I found myself back on the fast lane.It dawned on me that I am being taken to the mat of life—now wrestling with everything I wrote in Inside Job. I am having to live it—to live the message in this book as if I never wrote a word printed on each page. It is for me. This is the time for me to continue my own Inside Job of redefining what success looks like, smells like and feels like and adjusting—yes—adjusting my new definition of success to my life and lifestyle. I’m being forced to find my own rhythm of walking to the cadence of a beat God has set for me—not humanity. My desires are on the surgical table it seems. My heart is being opened wide to having my longings filleted and exposed and forcing me to think like this: What do I really want? What is God’s best for me? How can I engage in my life with the hope that my own life will be marked by a robust sanity and a daily resilience.I greatly underestimated the jolt of re-entry. Perhaps you have too when you came back from a trip; a vacation; a time off where it seemed you tasted a different wine that was so good—so renewing that you vowed to never drink any other wine but that one wine you just discovered. It really is odd how we as humans make vows like that and then go buy the cheap stuff hoping it will taste the same. Cheap is never the same, is it?Now that I’m in the saddle, my work within my own work is to find my stride and now walk in that cadence with renewed determination and a deeper conviction. It’s just that it is far, far harder than I ever anticipated.The truth that discovered me in my sabbatical will, through time and in time, be integrated into my life—into my work. I feel like all is not loss--not loss at all. But it does reveal my need to continue to do my own 'work within my work. It will be a slow integration. It will be a process. This is to confess that I am not fixed; perfect and I am not yet where I want to be. What I know is this: I am not like I use to be. I am on my way. This is a journey. Not a race, right?
Outer vs. Inner Markers of Success
One of the great problems of our day is that nearly all of the markers of success are external. We don’t look within to define success. We look outside. What size is their office? What kind of car does she drive? What neighborhood do they live in? Where did they go to school? Does she have her MBA yet? If all we have are external markers of success then we are complicit in promoting a bloodthirsty culture—one that is about domination, power, and control. We speed up so we can get the validation we think we need. We become aggressive in our pursuits of making life work. We both make choices and use people for our own ends. Success cannot be truly enjoyed because if you stop, slow down or smell the roses, someone—somewhere, might get ahead of you. One business executive confessed to me “When one of my colleagues succeeds at something, a part of me dies. I can’t be happy for her because I know I’ve just been bypassed.” It’s a sad state of the soul.When these external markers eclipse any other guiding values available for us, we become servants to the bitch-goddess of success and our hearts become enslaved one quadrant at a time until we lived dead to honor, enslaved to money, and paralyzed to move in any different direction.It seems that aspirations to be great and to be first are as old as the stories within our Bible. It’s interesting to find even the early followers of Jesus caught in plotting their own legacy so as to be remembered as one among the greats. In five short verses, Jesus shifts their paradigm and stretches their understanding of real leadership.They came to Capernaum. When he was safe at home, he asked them, “What were you discussing on the road?” The silence was deafening—they had been arguing with one another over who among them was greatest. He sat down and summoned the Twelve. “So you want first place? Then take the last place. Be the servant of all.” He put a child in the middle of the room. Then, cradling the little one in his arms, he said, “Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embraces me, and far more than me—God who sent me.”First place is last place. That’s a radical shift in understanding—one enough to make the proud fall and the humble to be exalted. Jesus’ model of leadership was something that the eager-beaver emerging leaders found difficult to grasp. Surely it would be about power! Most certainly it would be about grandeur and greatness. Wrong! This radical new paradigm of leadership took years for the early followers of Jesus to develop and it is no different for us today. Every definition of leadership that you think you already know—already assume and perhaps already embody is turned on its head.[tweetthis]Every definition of leadership that you think you already know is turned on its head.[/tweetthis] (This is an excerpt from Inside Job: Doing the Work within the Work IVP 2015 Chapter 3)Please consider ordering Inside Job through:Amazon: Buy through AmazonorBuy through Potter's Inn: Download a FREE Chapter, Download a FREE Session in the Companion Workbook and learn more!Buy and Learn More about INSIDE JOB through Potter's Inn3 Ways to Help in the Launch of Inside Job:1. Using your social media (Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Instagram, et) to quote the book, take a pix of you and the cover (a contest for this will be launched soon) and more.2. Think beyond buying 1 copy--buy several copy and give copies to your friends, spheres of influence.3. Start a group study and use the workbook.Get the WORKBOOK and download a FREE Session!4. Share this post now on your own social media platforms. We'd be very grateful for the "SHARE".Thank you for all of your consideration!