7Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. 12No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us.
1 John 4:7-12
If we sacrifice just to become great, eventually we will give up. Or we’ll so thoroughly enjoy our greatness once we do achieve greatness, we’ll stop sacrificing.
We must have a why behind our sacrifice.
Love is not visible.
Talking about Love doesn’t make Love visible.
Saying you Love doesn’t make it visible.
Telling others to Love doesn’t make it visible.
Love becomes visible through Sacrifice.
God has always Loved his creation. He had a preferred future for his creation. But until it was made visible through the Sacrifice of his Son, people had a super hard time seeing his Love and his preferred future.
Sacrifice is how others see the preferred future you’re leading them towards.
Purpose, mission, values all are fine and dandy written on plaques and walls and board rooms.
Until we Love core statements enough to Sacrifice for them, then we don’t really see them as the preferred future. And those we lead won’t see them as the true preferred future until we Love them enough to Sacrifice.
And as a Follower of Jesus, when you Love through Sacrifice, then you make God visible to everyone around you.
Don’t be a Christian.
Don’t be a Christian Leader.
Don’t have a Christian business. (No such thing anyway.)
Be someone who Leads well. Who leads like your Heavenly Father. Lead through Sacrifice so that others will see what really matters to you.
And Who really matters to you.
The goal is to lead you to engage with God’s Word so you can Hear & Follow Jesus in the everyday…especially in your leadership. Sign up for daily emails at the button below to receive the content in your inbox. You’ll receive a 1-minute email read with a link to a 5-minute blog read each day.