In Your Role As Leader Watch Your Language And Attitude And Then See People Around You Change!

In your area of leadership how do cope with vital issue of forgiveness? How do you forgive people who have messed up your programme or let you down or hurt you in some specific way?

The best way to learn something well is to learn from an expert. Jesus Christ is best and finest and highest expert there is on any topic of leadership and especially forgiveness. After all, this was the main reason for His coming into the world at Bethlehem.

In my recent reading and study of Matthew Chapters 5 and 6 in the Sermon on the Mount, we learn how this 'expert' trained and prepared men for leadership

Jesus assumed His disciples would give and fast and pray. The Jewish people prayed regularly but in many instances it had degenerated into what was nothing more than words. There was no depth.

Jesus teaches His disciples to pray with sincerity, not like the hypocrites, who were doing it to be seen and for show.

Jesus is not criticising public worship or corporate prayer, but He is warning against praying for the wrong motives, when men might be hoping that others will be impressed by our spirituality.

There is also the sense of privacy, or even secrecy, where there will no distractions, and no admirers, and where in our private praying we will not be disturbed. Jesus mentions going into your room and closing the door. It is the word for the store room where treasures are kept. That is where we have that privilege of encountering and meeting with our Creator God.

And be simple. Hypocrites prayed with wrong motives and pagans prayed in a wrong manner. It is all there in verses 7 and 8.

Jesus was not against repetition, but He was against mindless repetition. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus repeated the same prayer three times.

Father - Pater - we are to remember we are speaking to Almighty God.

We honour His Name, and we pray for His Kingdom to come, and for His reign and rule to transform our world, in the political arena, and in the economic, banking, financial, and family world. If leaders prayed more think of how some of the social injustices might be corrected, and how the atmosphere in our schools, and even in international situations, might be transformed. This is the task of leaders no matter where they are leading.

We pray for His will, and that will is Good, Pleasing, and Perfect. We read of this in the opening words of Romans Chapter 12. Most people do not realise that the Will of God is good, pleasing and perfect.

There is almost a realising of brokenness when we pray for forgiveness.

There is no hardness, nor harshness towards others, if we come in need for forgiveness.

We come in need in repentance and in humility. There is a seriousness.

Just give me the bread for today - no - we need the forgiveness too. Sin can keep a man away from asking God for forgiveness.

Leaders need Provision and Forgiveness and now Protection. We need to be protected from the evil one, throughout our every path of life.

Do not let us be so tempted that we will be overwhelmed.

Deliver us from the one who would infect us with his evil and rip Your Truth from our minds.

Deliver us from the one who is out to destroy us.

The best thing to do with the Lord's Prayer is to pray it.

If you are a leader pray for your people. Pray for you business. Watch your language and attitude. Be authoritative but kind and gracious and aware of the needs of those around you and watch productivity increase as the workplace atmosphere is changed and transformed, for the better.