What is standing between you and your greatest potential as a Kingdom leader? The answer might surprise you. In this episode of the SALLT Leadership Podcast, Wes Lane talks about what’s actually holding you back from becoming the leader God’s calling you to be.
Episode 8 Show Notes
What Holds You Back From Being The Leader God Calls You To Be? Could It Be Unforgiveness?
“Before we were even born, he gave us our destiny; that we would fulfill the plan of God who always accomplishes every purpose and plan in his heart.” - Ephesians 1:11 TPT
“Righteousness and Justice are the foundation of Your throne…” - Psalm 89:14`
“Blessed are the peacemakers…” - Matthew 5:9
“So if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.” - Matthew 5:20-23
Key Takeaways:
Did you know that God moves at the speed of relationship?
Righteousness = Being “right with God and therefore committed to putting right all other relationships in life.”
Did you know that your refusal to be “righteous” can be a problem in your own relationship with God?
You can’t control other people – only you. But if you’re unwilling to forgive someone – you may be your own worst enemy. Your refusal to forgive may be a ball and chain to your being a success in God’s view.
Unforgiveness is the only poison YOU drink hoping the other guy will die!
Your next step:
00:09: Well welcome to the SALLT Leadership Podcast, a show for men and women who want to grow in their faith, live a purpose filled life, maximize their abilities and influence for the Kingdom of God. I'm Wes Lane. So just in case you've forgotten what the context for this podcast and for your life is about since our last episode, keep this in mind. You have been designed built by a living loving God, sent into a moment of history to a geographic location, as a part of His overarching strategy to redeem and restore the earth to Himself. Your life matters. It has purpose, and God has a vested interest in seeing to your success.
00:56: And the adventure of all this is it is something for you to discover if you'll dare. Remember this verse before... This is Ephesians 1:11 from the passion translation, "Before we were even born, he gave us our destiny; that we would fulfill the plan of God who always accomplishes every purpose and plan in his heart." So that's a wow. Well, the title of today's show is this. “What Holds You Back from Being the Leader God Calls You to Be? Could it Be Unforgiveness?” Well, did you know that God moves at the speed of relationship? I mean, love and relationship are at the very core of His being. I mean, just think about it like this. He is all about community. Think Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit, three as one. He's modeling community from the get go and you and I are hardwired for that relationship.
02:01: I mean, the whole idea of Biblical righteousness is relationship. You should know that. In fact, a lot of people think that when you say, “What's biblical righteousness?” Well, in fact, somebody answered that question when I asked them, “So what do you think it is?” And they said, “Well, it means about being right.” And well I said, “No, it's actually not.” Biblical righteousness is this, it's not about being right in my answers like, “Oh, I'm always right.” No, not like that. It's about being right with God and therefore committed, committed to putting right all other relationships in life. And so if you think about that, I mean, the Bible is chock full of talk about the righteous man or God saw this person as a righteous woman, or that man is a righteous man. It wasn't about them just being uncannily correct all the time. It was about them being all about relationship. Me and God, and me and the people around me and doing everything I can to keep those things good.
03:13: So I bet all of you all have observed what it's like and have experienced what it's like to have strained and broken relationships and how difficult those are. Aren't they? I mean, aren't they? But even in the midst of having those, does God still see you as a righteous person? In other words. Are you navigating those difficult relationships, and everybody has them, are you navigating them in such a way that you are seen by God as being a righteous person? Or does He see you as being committed to getting things right on that? And in fact, did you know, and this is where you really need to listen up and be concerned. Did you know that your refusal to be righteous can be a problem in your own relationship with God? So I may think, “Oh, I'm... I got it all good with Him,” but I am just refusing to restore a relationship that I actually have the ability to impact. Now, we can't do anything about people who just won't have anything to do with us, no matter how hard we try, you've got no control over that, but you can control you.
04:38: And so let me just share with you a time in my own life, in my own experience in which God made it crystal clear that He was very interested in my being a righteous man. So this is probably, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago. I am at a conference and I have taken with me a little book, and the book is called, How to Have a Powerful Prayer Life. And it's by a guy named Greg Frizzell. And there's one piece of it in which it talks about one component, one thing that's very important is making sure that you've got nothing that you need to confess before God as being a problem. Maybe a relationship. I mean, just something that... Because He's into holiness. I mean, God is a holy being. And so He wants us to be seeking to be like Him in that as well. So, the question was, do you have anybody that you need to make things right with? And then he said this, "If you can't think of anybody, ask the Holy Spirit and see if He'll tell you." Okay, so I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, "Well, I can't think of anything or anyone.” So I just said, “Okay, well, I'll ask the Lord.” I asked the Lord. I literally closed my eyes sitting on the bed in that hotel room. And I asked Him, "Is there anybody that I need to deal with in some way?" and I'm telling you as clear as a bell in my head, I heard the name, “Steve Faubion,” and I went, “Oh, crap.” I mean, I hadn't thought of Steve in a decade. And the moment I thought of him, I just wanted to growl because it made me… even the memory made me mad because Steve had hurt my feelings badly. Years before in a broken relationship that I had, I'd reached out to my... Steve was my best friend in high school. And so, years later after high school, maybe a decade later, I had this broken relationship and I was reaching out to my friend, Steve, who was living in another city, “I wonder, can I come and hang out with you?” And he just said, “No.” There wasn't even any explanation. He's just like, “I can't do it.” And it crushed me. It was like, man, I was already crushed. And then he added on it and it made... And I let that just... I bet some of you have done this. You've just let that offense become this, almost like this infected sore.
07:40: You just, you don't deal with it. You just get angry and angry and angry. And pretty soon anytime I would think of him, I would get angry and all that sort of thing. So that was Steve Faubion, my best friend, to then I'm offended by him. And I don't even want to think about him and hadn't thought about him in over a decade. So I think, “Wow, the Lord brought that to my mind. I knew that was the Lord, I hadn't even thought of that guy before for a long time.” So I just say, “Well, Lord I'm okay. I forgive. I forgive Steve Faubion and I think I'm going to let it go.” So there we're done, right? I'm all done. Then the weekend passes, I return to my office and my assistant comes to me. This is back in the olden days in which we didn't have nice little cell phones and all that sort of stuff, but we had these pink message slips. So she meets me at my office and she says, she's giving me the messages that people have left for me while gone.
08:55: And she says, “Oh, a Steve Faubion called you while you were gone. And he wants to get with you. He's going to be in town this week.” And I looked at her and I said about getting together with me. I said, “Over my dead body.” So, clearly I still had a little forgiveness issue going there, unforgiveness rather. And so I went, what are the odds of that? I mean, the guy lived in California for crying out loud. So that night at home I realize that only the Lord could have orchestrated that, only the Lord. I hadn't seen him in forever. So there I am in my man cave. I am on my knees by my easy chair asking God, I did this multiple times in which I would say, “I forgive Steve, help me forgive Steve.” And then I would test it by trying to imagine myself as actually being with him and not wanting to like throw up.
09:56: And so there I was, I did that and I did that repeatedly until finally, finally I was able to let it go and actually envision myself at dinner with him and it'd be a joyful experience. And that took a while, but it happened and it happened that night. I let go. Okay. So then we get together and now here's what's remarkable. Well, it was already remarkable. It was already a miracle in the first place, but what even made it more so, and I had determined, I wasn't going to say anything to Steve about my being all puffed up and angry with him. He had no clue about that and I wasn't going to ruin it, but then here's what was interesting. So we're at dinner with our wives and I said, “Well, how is it that you reached out to me?” And then he said, “The Lord told me to,” and I went, “Oh my gosh.” And so then it was that I had to tell him the rest of the story to let him in on what the Lord had orchestrated on my end. And you know what was really wild?
11:04: So Steve had become a pastor in California and probably a couple of months later, he sent me the recording of the sermon he preached on reconciliation, the story of Steve and Wes. And it was incredible. It was incredible. So what do you think I learned from that clearly supernaturally charged experience? I learned that God wants me to be a righteous man. It's important. He dredged up from my deep past an unresolved relationship problem and brought it to the fore and orchestrated the whole thing for only one reason. He finds it important that you and I pursue right relationships. The Bible states that righteousness and justice are the very foundation of God's throne. That's Psalm 89:14. I mean, that's pretty darn important there. In fact, we’ll talk about justice another time. Because they're both intricately interwoven, but justice basically means to treat people fairly and impartially.
12:22: It's giving people their rights. But again, we're not going to get off into that too deeply, but being right with God involves our commitment to putting together all other relationships. I mean, think of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount saying, “Blessed are the peacemakers…” So what can hold you back as a leader sent by Him, by God, is how you are addressing your relationships in your life. Matthew 5:20-23 says this. “So if you are presenting…” This is Jesus talking. He's saying, “if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice…” In other words, don't even give that to God. Leave it at the altar, then He says, "Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God." Well, that's a pretty good clue right there. As I said earlier, you can't control people, you can only control you, but if you're unwilling to forgive someone, if you are unwilling, you may be your own worst enemy. I remember, just very briefly, I remember a friend of mine coming to me and he was thinking about a relationship that he had had, a business relationship quite some time before. And he shared with me that this guy, his name is Virgil, that he just... he really wanted to resolve that, he wanted to make that whole again. And I happened to know this Virgil, and so I called Virgil up and I told him that this other fella really, he wanted to meet, he wanted to make things right, he wanted to do that. And I'm telling you Virgil flat out said, "No, not going to do it, not going to happen." That guy on the other end of the phone remained like a puffed up toad and he's just not going to do it, not going to do it.
14:34: And I just... I went, “Wow.” So, your refusal like Virgil, your refusal to forgive may well be a ball and chain to your becoming a success in God's view. Don't let that happen to you. Don't be a Virgil and remember God pays attention. God pays attention. I had, like I said, I had forgotten about Steve Faubion but He had not, God had not. Unforgiveness is the only poison you drink hoping the other guy dies. Boy. So, what's your next step? Here's your next step. This is the next right step for you. First thing you've got to remember is that, there is always a choice to be made, this is all about choices, God lets you... He's not going to make your choices for you. He's going to let you make it. So your choice to first decide is this, who do I want to be? Who do I want to be? And God's sent as these prospectively powerful transformative agents of change. Do I choose to change the world? Or do I choose to just look like it? Because folks, you look around, and all we hear about on the news and all. It's all contention. It's all about us versus them. It's all about getting an advantage. It's all about shafting the other person. It's all about one upmanship and that is not in the... That is not the kingdom.
16:08: So if you want to look like the world, have at it. But if you want to look like Jesus, you have got to choose that, and that's going to go against the grain, and that might even make you some enemies. So go before God and help Him. Just like in my story with Steve, I needed God's help, I needed His help, because otherwise it wasn't going to happen. God has always been looking for salt and light men and women. Jesus has always been looking for what He called cities on a hill, that's never changed. Cities, communities that are filled with men and women who are salt and light. And the light is just so profound from their looking so countercultural that they're a beacon to the world. And that kings and nations, as the Bible said, are drawn to that light because it is so unlike the darkness that surrounds everything else. We have this capacity in this city, this greater metro city to be that kind of place. A city on a hill, a spiritual epicenter, a spiritual capital to a nation. Why? Because the light is so profound because God's kids are in town, and we are not going to go dark anymore. That's the moment you're living in. Those are the choices that you get to make. That is your context. I just want to encourage you to rise up. Rise up and take your place and that by the grace of God you can do it. I'll see you next time.