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In your leadership role, whatever it is you're doing,

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first of all, has God given you the grace to be a leader?

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Second of all, if so, multiply other leaders.

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Bring men and women around you

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in whatever that vision is that God's given you

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and be thinking about not just,

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oh, wow, I've got 200 followers

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or I've got a church of 1,000 people.

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No, how many leaders do you have in there?

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How many leaders are you raising up?

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We are looking at 2 Timothy 2

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on kingdom of God, principles of leadership

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by the apostle Paul.

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And when we look at the book of Acts

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and we look at the New Testament epistles,

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one thing we see from Paul and his writings

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is how much he valued people,

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how much he valued other pastors that he had raised up.

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And then how quickly he was able to multiply leaders

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with these men and women that were around him.

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I mean, it's a case in point, actually,

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in the last chapter,

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the last verses of the last chapter of Romans,

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where Paul lists like 20-plus names

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of people that he gives commendations to in Rome.

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He's writing from Rome.

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He's writing to the Romans.

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And he knows these people.

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And in so doing, you see he can name them off

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one right after another.

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Tremendous modeling of what it means

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to be a good leader in stewarding your people.

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So the last time I talked about the fact

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that in this passage, he's talking about the grace,

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the gifting of leadership.

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But then I mentioned,

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and I'm gonna talk about this continually,

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there's a multiplication aspect of leadership.

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Now, this is probably one of the hardest things to do

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for most leaders.

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Most leaders have no trouble leading

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because they're just innately gifted that way,

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either with natural talents or spiritual gifts

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or acquired skills.

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But to take what you know and multiply that into others,

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takes an intentionality that's really, really difficult.

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So in verse two, 2 Timothy 2.2, this is what Paul says.

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And the things that you heard from me among many witnesses,

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commit these to faithful men

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who will be able to teach others also.

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So number two, under leadership principles from Paul

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is multiplication of other leaders,

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raising up other leaders.

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In our passage, just this verse,

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four generations of leaders, four generations.

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He says, things you've heard from me,

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so that's Paul to Timothy,

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commit to faithful men,

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that's the third generation, faithful men,

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to teach others also.

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So there's four generations of leadership

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right here in this verse.

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Paul, Timothy, faithful men, others.

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Well, that takes a lot of work, men and women,

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to be able to have an intentionality

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with the men and women you're working with

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that you could train them to take what you're teaching them

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that they might teach others also.

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And yet this is what Jesus did.

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Paul got the idea from the early disciples,

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because remember, he was a late,

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you could say he kind of was a late bloomer

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in the sense that he was not one of the original 12.

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He was not following.

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As a matter of fact, he was persecuting the early church.

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Then he gets radically saved

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and he starts to hear the stories.

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It appears in Galatians,

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between 14 and 17 years after he came to know the Lord,

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he was kind of meditating in, reading,

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rehashing his views from the Old Testament.

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Also said that he began to hang out with James

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and with Peter and others.

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So probably during that time, I would imagine,

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they were telling Jesus stories.

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Jesus did this and Jesus did that.

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And one of the things that Paul obviously picked up

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is one of the highest priorities of Jesus

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was raising up disciples.

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And so his ideas for discipleship came from Jesus.

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And then he commits himself

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to going after men like Timothy and Silas

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and Barnabas and others,

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with the intentionality that they would go after

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their own Barnabases and Timothys and Silases

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and so forth down the line.

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And that's why men and women

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that we have the multiplication of the church

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all over the world today

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is because of the multiplication of leadership.

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That's key.

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In your leadership role, whatever it is you're doing,

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first of all, has God given you the grace to be a leader?

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Second of all, if so, multiply other leaders.

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Bring men and women around you

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in whatever that vision is that God's given you

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and be thinking about not just,

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oh, wow, I've got 200 followers

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or I've got a church of 1,000 people.

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No, how many leaders do you have in there?

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How many leaders?

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are you raising up?

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Paul is telling Timothy,

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this is key in the church in Ephesus

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where you're pastoring is multiply leaders.

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Verse three,

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you therefore must endure hardship

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as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

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No one engaged in warfare

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entangles himself with the affairs of this life

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that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.

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Wow, this is pretty militant language.

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So number three,

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under leadership with Paul

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is you gotta have a warrior mentality.

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You have to have a warrior mentality.

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He mentioned soldier twice.

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He mentions warfare once.

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So these are soldierly military terms

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to describe leadership.

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Pretty obvious here in verse three,

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you therefore must endure hardship

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as a good soldier of Jesus Christ

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that Paul saw leadership as hard work,

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super hard work.

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And I would agree after 40 years of this stuff,

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it is a battle.

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The leader is often the tip of the spear

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and we are called by God to send us go into places

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that nobody else wants to go,

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that we have to be the first one in and the last one out.

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And that's part of leadership.

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So leadership is brutal at times

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because you take the hits.

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I'll tell you when you are making a tough decision

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in a church or a company or anywhere,

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the leader is the one that's gonna take the shots.

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I've been in hundreds of situations

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that I wish I could just run to the hills.

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But when we stick in there and we stay in there,

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one of the things that's helped me through the years

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is to ask the question,

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A, is God calling me to make this decision?

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Have I really, really, really heard from God

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to make this decision?

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Number two, do I have enough other men and women around me

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that we're making the decision together?

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And with teamwork, we're gonna walk into this battle

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or this decision that we're gonna make together,

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not gonna do it alone.

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Somebody's gotta have your back.

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Thirdly, that you have the skills

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to be able to manage the decisions, choices, changes

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that you're bringing into a system or to people's lives.

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So do you have the skills?

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If you don't, Google it.

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No, I'm only kidding.

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You gotta figure it out.

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And the best way to figure it out

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is to get around people who are smarter than you

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and get wisdom from them.

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I'm in a situation right now here at the church

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where I'm leaning in to three other men

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with a decision that we're making

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where I feel like at least in two of the three guys,

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they've got probably more wisdom than I do

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on this particular decision.

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So I'm leaning a lot into their wisdom,

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but it's a warrior mentality.

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You gotta be a fighter.

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You gotta be able to look at the direction

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and the vision God's given you

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almost with a view that this is a war.

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There's demonic principalities and powers that oppose you.

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And you are leading based on the commands

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of the commander in chief, Jesus Christ.

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Paul goes on.

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And also if anyone competes in athletics,

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he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.

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The hardworking farmer must be first to partake of the crops.

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Fourthly, follow kingdom laws of success.

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Follow kingdom laws of success.

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And he says that leadership is a lot like competing in sports.

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You're not gonna get crowned

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unless you compete according to the rules.

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And there are kingdom rules.

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I would say there's like kingdom laws

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that determine the universe.

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So if you're lying and cheating people in your leadership,

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you're gonna be found out.

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And you are going to lose that which you've built.

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But if you're treating people with integrity,

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if you're walking in holiness,

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if you're keeping short accounts with people,

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if you're receiving as well as giving forgiveness to others,

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you have integrity in your life.

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There's so many things we could go into

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about kingdom laws of success.

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Some people have called them the software and the hardware.

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I don't necessarily like that term.

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Here's what they mean.

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Hardware and leadership are the skills that you come with.

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If you go to college, you're gonna get hardware.

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You're gonna get a degree in engineering.

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You're gonna get a degree in computer science.

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You're gonna get a degree in criminal justice,

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whatever it is.

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That's a hardware skill.

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Software or the soft skills are people skills,

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relational skills,

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the ability to navigate a difficult situation with skill

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using your voice, using your heart with others.

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The reason I don't like that is because hard and soft

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seem to be opposites.

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They're not opposites.

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They actually work together.

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One way to think of it is acquired skills and human skills.

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So I'm gonna say it that way.

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Acquired skills would be the hardware.

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the hard and fast, knowledgeable things you need for that job,

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and then the human skills, or what some call software.

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Human skills are how you relate humanly.

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So here's what you find in leadership.

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Initially, most people are hired because of the hardware,

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because of the acquired skills,

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because it looks really good on the resume

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that they've done these things.

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But you get fired because you lack the software

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or the human skills most of the time.

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Most of the time, people do not get fired

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because they didn't know what to do on their job.

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They got fired because nobody likes them.

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You come in with acquired skills,

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but you have to go on to success with the soft skills,

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with the human skills.

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So I want to challenge you to grow in your human skills

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and your acquired skills.

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You got to grow in both.

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But of the two, the most important is your human skills,

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the ability to relate to people,

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the ability to forgive when you're offended.

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I was in a situation three days ago

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where a person basically lied to me, okay?

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They told me one thing they knew wasn't true.

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They said it, and I knew they were lying.

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And I had a choice.

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Okay, I can get really upset and call them out,

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or I can call them out without getting really upset.

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So I chose the latter.

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And I said, you know, it doesn't seem to line up

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because it seems like I recall that we said this,

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but now you're saying that,

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and I'm not sure I know which to believe.

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And then he was like, well, I kind of got blown away.

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And he said, yeah, you're right.

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And I gave him an out.

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I didn't call him out, I gave him an out

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to be able to move forward with the project

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without everybody getting upset

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and breaking the whole thing up.

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Well, that's almost daily in my life.

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And so as you grow in leadership,

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you're gonna be called by God,

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by the gracelets of God, by the power of God,

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to be in situations with people

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where they're gonna offend you.

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They're going to offend you.

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They're gonna say things that are like really dumb.

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And when you hear that, you're gonna have a choice.

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You're gonna get upset and angry,

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or you're gonna be unoffendable,

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move forward, and maybe at a later date,

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you can talk to that person about some character issues

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that they need maybe some guidance in.

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So I hope this is helpful to you.

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I think Paul is giving us some clear,

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easy to follow principles for kingdom leadership

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that I think are helpful for all people at all times.

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I hope it's helpful to you.

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I hope it's helpful to you.