Leadership is not supposed to be easy. Let’s face it, if it were everyone would be a leader but that’s not how leadership works. Being a successful leader is committing to growth and change. If a leader has no growth than there is a stall and then follows a fall. As a leader you cannot afford to stop growing. The moment you stop growing and changing then you’re not a leader anymore.
There is a book in the bible called Hosea where Israel was being punished for turning their back on God. God ultimately says there will be judgement on Israel but tells them this one verse of how to get back to God. I was reading this verse and it that struck me because it so deeply filled with leadership material that I had to start writing down notes. I believe that if you put these three keys into play, just like Israel you can experience growth. I’ve seen it happen in my own and in many others and I want you to be next!
“Sow righteousness for yourselves, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground for it is time to seek the Lord, until he comes and showers his righteousness on you.” (Hosea 10:12)
3 Essentials For Growth
1. Sow Righteousness
By sowing righteousness we are putting in work that will multiply in the future. As leaders we must be intentional about pursuing growth for ourselves. Sowing righteousness in the form of personal growth will ultimately get us to the next level of leadership.
When we pursue growth we receive results
How To Sow Righteousness
I like to think of the term “sowing righteousness” to say “Investing in my leadership.” We get what we sow and I want to be on the end of receiving some good results! A couple of ways we can sow righteousness is by reading books, listening to podcasts, coaching from mentors and attending online leadership sessions. Those are some of the best ways to sow righteousness into your leadership because I promise you, that if you do these couple of things and sow righteousness, you’ll receive great results.
2. Reap Unfailing Love
What the heck does this mean? I had the same question! When we constantly receive God’s love and realize how powerful it is, we are filled with passion and drive to keep going. Because in the end, God’s love is the only love that never fails us.
When you understand this truth and pour it into the lives of the people who you lead it changes the posture from how can we outpace each other to how can we love eachother. When you have a team that is focused on loving eachother and serving eachother, that is the most powerful force on earth and it will not be stopped.
How To Reap Unfailing Love
The goal of our leadership shouldn’t be to grow just to grow, it should be to invest love into people throughout the entire journey. A team that loves each other will always achieve the greatest results. Love wins every single battle and the team that pursues a healthy love will achieve healthy growth.
A team that pursues healthy love produces healthy growth
3. Break Up Unplowed Ground
This is the one you don’t want to read because it might be a bit uncomfortable! But if we aren’t willing to be made uncomfortable than we’re stuck and won’t grow an inch. Breaking up unplowed ground is hard and it takes humility to do it. See, this is the part that most leaders miss out on and because they miss it, they don’t receive a growth pattern like they wish.
When dark areas are brought into light we flourish
Here is the cold hard truth —> If we don’t let the light shine on our dark areas we will never flourish to our full potential. What are the dark areas? Dark areas are the things that we don’t want anyone to know about. It’s the things that we keep hidden that light never touches. We know that if we just let the light touch the dark we’ll flourish but it’s hard. Here are some dark areas that you may have: Watching porn, lying, stealing money, drinking too much, skipping work to much whatever your dark area is it needs light.
How To Break Up Unplowed Ground
Here is the thing, when we let the light in and we really try to work on breaking up that unplowed ground in our life then we will see things so differently and because of it we’ll lead differently. If you are serious about doing this then if your dark area is porn, you might have a friend set up a lock on your phone that you don’t know the pass code to. If your dark area is lying, you might want to replace those lies with God’s truth and not say anything that is a lie until that becomes a habit. This is the hardest thing that a leader will face but I promise you, if you break through this barrier then you’ll experience growth like never before.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this leadership blog! If I can help you in any way feel free to leave me a comment and I will get right back to you. I hope you’ll put these steps into practice and may you flourish in your leadership! The best is yet to come.
Bryant Westbrook 