Are you using your power to serve others? (93-2)

Leaders generally believe that if they were somehow given an abundance of “personal power” in their position many of their problems would be solved. Equipping power can work to a leader’s advantage but the danger of “power abuse” only becomes real when a leader has an abundance of power. Re-read 2 Samuel 11:1-27.

In The Maxwell Leadership Bible, John Maxwell gives us Five Expressions of Power Abuse:

Pittacus (Pittacus of Mytilene lived 640-568 BC and was a statesman and Mytilenaean general in ancient Greece and was known as one of the Seven Wise Men of Ancient Greece) wrote, “The measure of a man is what he does with power.” When David used Bathsheba for his own selfish purposes, he began a long spiral downward into deceit, adultery, and murder.

Second Samuel 11 tells the story of a king who forgot that leaders wield power for one reason only: to serve. Consider the “Path to abusive Power” in leaders:

Stage one: Surprise – “I get this?”
Stage two: Self-Esteem – “I need this.”
Stage three: Satisfaction – “I deserve this.”
Stage four: Selfishness – “I demand this.”

By watching King David weave a tangled web following his sin with Bathsheba, we notice five common abuses of power that still trip up leaders today. Calvin Miller describes them this way:

1. Drifting away from those disciplines we still demand of our people (v. 1).
2. Believing that others owe us whatever use we can make of them (vv. 2, 3).
3. Attempting to fix things up rather than make things right (v. 6).
4. Refusing to accept that we could be blindly out of God’s will (v. 11).
5. Believing that people in our way are expendable (v. 14).

The quote from Pittacus is worth repeating. “The measure of a man is what he does with power.” God-honoring leaders understand the true source of power and are humbled by the trust put in them by allowing them to steward His power.