Christian leaders are to model and reflect in their life the same self-discipline God shows to us. Read Jeremiah 18:1-12.

The prophet Jeremiah had consistently delivered the message that, because the people of the nation of Judah had stopped obeying Him, had chased after foreign gods, and decided to run their own life totally ignoring God; the nation of Judah would be overpowered by Babylon and those that were not killed in the attack would be taken into captivity to Babylon. These first 12 verses of chapter 18 give us keen insight into God’s self-discipline.

Leaders cannot acquire enough “stuff” to fill an empty life. Read Ecclesiastes 2:1-11.

King Solomon pursued many unrelated goals attempting to satisfy his desires. He is a good example of a leader who got everything his heart desired but still had an empty life. Solomon couldn’t understand why he was unfulfilled when his achievements were more than any other human leader in the history of his nation. Primarily because he was out of touch with God, Solomon was miserable even with achievements that would be the envy of every leader. Sadly, he tried to solve an internal problem with an external solution.

Christian leaders must balance their identity as a child of God with their self-confidence. Read Psalm 8.

How self-assured should a leader be? When does a leader’s confidence become arrogance? God has stated that He hates arrogance and loves humility but leadership by its very nature requires a large dose of self-confidence and that kind of self-confidence can be dangerously close to arrogance. Additionally, leaders can display a healthy, godly self-confidence for years and then after a few successes begin believing their own press clippings and actually morph a healthy self-confidence into arrogance. This can be a very tricky area for Christian leaders.

It is a real temptation for a leader to feel they need all the answers or their team won’t have complete trust in their leadership. The danger for a Christian leader is they can project their thoughts as if they are directly from God and unless God has spoken directly to us on the matter this is likely a misrepresentation. Read Job 38:1-7.

God has heard all of the arguments on both sides of the issue concerning how He handles good and evil. He heard how Job and his friends projected their opinion as though they represented His mind. This is a real danger every Christian leader faces. We feel a great temptation to pretend we know everything; we have an unreasonable need to project self-confidence. We can paint our motives as pure but when we take a position of self-confidence that leads people to believe we have the mind of God, we are wrong. It never takes our team long to recognize pretense.