Called to Live
New Wine Conferences
Steve Nicholson – Called to Live
This CD is one of a set of three, the others being:
Lessons in Leadership: dealing with yourself
Lessons in Leadership: dealing with people
Background to Steve:
Senior Pastor of the Vineyard Christian Church of Evanston,
Evanston, Illinois, USA. He is the Vice-President of the Association of Vineyard Churches (AVC), USA and also directs the Church Planting Task Force for the Association.
All three of the CD’s talk about leadership, so if you are in leadership in any way then you should listen to at least one of these CD’s.
This particular CD majors on the beliefs and attitudes of the Spartan City State and in particular what was expected of their military. This is timely writing as the film ‘ 300’ is now on the big screen.
In short, the Spartan males were trained from around the age of 8 to be soldiers. The training was severe, even brutal, and for those who survived had learnt to conquer and even despise any element of fear in their lives. Steve talks about that one battle that made the Spartans famous, Thermoplae.
Darius the Persian King invaded Greece with a gigantic army, truly huge. Numbers vary between 300,000 and 1,000,000. The Greeks put around 7000 against them. What odds would you give the Greeks?
The pass at Thermoplae is a few hundred yards across, sea one side, mountain the other. This means that the Persians cannot use their huge strength as there is just no room to manoeuvre, so they have to put man and against man. So here at least the odds against the Greeks are dramatically reduced.
The Spartans have no concept of fear, they have faith in their abilities and stand their ground.
Fear and faith are opposite sides of the coin.
Steve reads the story in Numbers 13 of the spying of the land of Canaan. All but two sent to search out the land saw only fear, so they never reached their full potential. This is a case of fear over vision. Only Caleb and Joshua were faithful to what God had said, the others rebelled. Guess which ones left the desert alive?
So when faced with giants, what will you do? Live in faith and courage, or, fear?
Fear based thinking:
? Maximises the obstacles
? Magnifies the enemy
How is faith spelt?, ‘r-i-s-k’, not security.
God says ‘It’s not about what you can do but what I can do’.
Fear minimises movement. There is no growth in standing still! Choose each day to stand against fear, and like the Spartans, it will diminish when you look at the source of your strength.
So what does all this mean. If you are a leader you will be expected to have a vision for who you lead and deliver the vision with clarity, conviction and with a clear objective. Leaders always have a vision for how it could be, followers see how it is. Your job is to look at what God is doing and energise your people to say ‘that is what we want to do as well’.
Make no mistake – the enemy spots leaders and WILL attempt to take you out. If you study leaders in history, none have been faint hearted, not one. They have been convicted in whatever they have chosen to do.
God has foreseen all of this. He has spoken about His armour to protect and encourage His people that will stand in a place of victory.
Conclusion
Steve speaks quite directly and with an authority that comes with paying the price of being a disciple. Jesus is the definitive model of what leaders can and should do. Follow Him.
The CD set is available from Jim.
John Burns 2007
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