The Positive And Negative Aspects Of Anger In Leadership!

On the surface, it seems that anger and leadership only mix in a dictatorial environment. While it is true that dictators, whether ministers or CEO’s, often have anger as a fault, being righteously indignant is a quality that all spiritual leaders need. A classic example of this would be when Jesus drove the money changers from the Temple with a whip. No level-headed person would overlook the fact that Jesus was angry. His anger was not sinful. It did not overrule His emotions where He lost control of His temperament. His righteous passion for the dignity of the Temple, including all of its functions, caused Him to conclusively end the deceitfulness of those who were in violation of God’s Law. Thus, He was angry at their sin. This anger led Him to serve His Heavenly Father in a constructive and holy way! Every leader of God’s people must have anger as a spoke in the wheel of their character.

Just as anger can help a man deal with a disturbing situation and keep him in the battle until the smoke clears, it can also hurt him; costing him everything. There are high stakes in this arena of anger. A hot-headed man, who is always boiling over, will not mature in character. Rather, he will regress and eventually lose the respect of those with whom God has placed into his care. Anger can behave much like a termite does in wood. On the inside, inch by inch, the core is being eaten up. After a while the signs show up on the outside. Sooner or later, the structural integrity of the building will collapse. So it is with the spiritual leader who fails to utilize anger in the right way.

Which Model Of Leadership: Peter Or Paul?

Leadership comes with a high price tag. In either case to pick from, both Peter and Paul’s model came through tremendous suffering, and hardship. If I had to pick one, I would pick Paul’s model. He seemed to have the intellectual capacity from his natural abilities that, when God saved him, were grafted into service for Christ. He tended to be an example of one who led without scandal. He led in such a way that he could say, in the words of the Holy Ghost, “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.” Paul, indeed, was such a close disciple of Christ that you could say that as you were following Paul you were, in effect, following Jesus for they were “nose to tail” in the road to Glory. Paul led from principle and practiced what he preached, while Peter tended to be more failure driven. In other words, he had so many blunders from his “foot in mouth syndrome” that he led from learning from them. That is not bad, but Paul did not have many instances of that nature. Paul was leading remembering what he was before he was saved and what he had done previously to the church of God. I would like to follow Paul’s model, but I find myself being in a part of Peter’s model of leadership.

What Made Noah A Great Spiritual Leader!

Noah is a great example of a godly, shepherd of people. By the world’s standard he was not a leader of individuals, however the world has the wrong measuring stick. God makes it plain in His infallible Word that Noah was a unique man who had character. It was his character that enabled him to be the leader that he was. I want to share three portions of his character that should serve to instruct us about godly leadership.

First, we should notice that Noah was godly. Genesis 6:8 states that Noah found “grace”. This signifies that Noah was a saved man. The Bible teaches that one who is saved has the righteousness of Christ imputed to their account. This was certainly the case with Noah. Out of his salvation experience, Noah began to apply the godly principles that were taught him by his godly forefathers. The Bible goes on to describe him in verse 9 as one who was “just”, “perfect”, and one who “walked with God”. To me when God describes Noah as “just” He meant that he was righteous and that he performed acts of righteousness. In other words, he served God! “Perfect” means that he was mature or “complete in moral excellencies”. Noah was a man of maturity. This developed as he applied the principles of God’s Word to his life and walk. The terminology that is often used to describe agreement is that of “walking”. Noah is said to have walked with God. In other words, he agreed with God on everything and just followed the leadership of God in his life.

Second, Noah was a man of obedience. I believe that Noah’s obedience in the midst of such perversity is the clearest indication that he was a saved man and that he was destined for leadership. You find that after God gave the instructions to build the ark, the plans on how to build it, and the reasons for the construction, Noah just went right along with it! Genesis 6:22 declares that Noah obeyed “according to all that God commanded him”. As the children’s song says, “Obedience is the very best way to show that you believe, doing exactly what the Lord commands, doing it happily” thus Noah would be a great example of what this means. Noah simply obeyed God. A true leader must be able to obey or he will not be what God intended he should be.

Finally, Noah was consistent. Spiritual leaders must be consistent. For 120 years Noah labored bi-vocationally, through the construction of the ark and through the preaching ministry. The ark and the subsequent travels of the animals to the ark were all an object lesson of the fact that God was doing something and that people must be saved! For 120 years the people derided him and caused him grief. They mocked him, but he kept building and preaching. When it was all said and done, only his family made the ark their place of safety. Some would say Noah failed, but I hasten to point out that God was pleased and that is all that matters. He won his family after all of those years. Many today, as spiritual leaders, overlook their families and win everyone else. May we all seek to win our families as fervently as we do others! If Noah was not a consistent man, he would have never finished the work God gave him to do.

In conclusion, we see that Noah was a great spiritual leader. He had character when no one else did. He sought after righteousness when it was not popular, he labored for God when it was not profitable in the world’s economy, and he sowed the seed of God’s Word in spite of the soil conditions. Character is what enabled him to win his family and be used of God in such an earth changing way!