The Inspired Leader: 101 Biblical Reflections for Becoming a Person of Influence (35 page)

On October 31, 1925, Bertie gave a speech to a large gathering in which he stammered painfully throughout. He was humiliated. The following year, he began meeting with an Australian speech therapist named Lionel Hogue. His father would later observe, “Bertie has more guts than the rest of them put together!” When, in 1936, Edward VIII abdicated the throne to marry Wallis Simpson, Bertie was thrust onto center stage to become King George VI. Unbeknownst to the world at that time, World War II was rapidly approaching and the king would be called upon to make heroic efforts on behalf of his nation, including making a number of crucial speeches to uplift his people’s morale. Bertie had no idea, as he worked to overcome his natural weaknesses, that one day he would be given a history-making role to play.

The apostle Paul declared that Christ is “
able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond anything we could ask or think, according to the power that works within us”
(Ephesians 3:20). Paul knew full well the impossibility of a former murderer and blasphemer being used mightily by God, yet Christ had accomplished that very thing. The world desperately needed Paul to become more than anyone thought possible. It took much work and study on Paul’s part, but it wholly depended upon God’s grace and power to accomplish the feat.

Our world desperately needs people who believe that with God,
all
things are possible. Too many assume they are limited by their weaknesses, or circumstances, or previous mistakes. Yet opportunities may come that invite us to accomplish something significant. Those moments may catch us by surprise. But when they knock at the door, we must be prepared. Have we worked hard to better ourselves? Have we sought to overcome our weaknesses? When our moment comes to undertake an important task, will we be ready?

REFLECT FOR A MOMENT

1. What are your greatest areas of personal weakness? What have you done to overcome them? How hard are you trying to improve yourself in those areas? If called upon to work in those areas of your life, would you be prepared?
   

2. What are your expectations for your life? Do you assume God will use your life for His purposes? Or, do you believe you are too “ordinary” to accomplish anything important? When we claim we are too “ordinary,” we are saying more about our belief in God than about our own limitations.
   

3. Have you allowed other people’s expectations and evaluations to determine what you expect for your life? People’s opinions should not set limits on your life. Take time with God and let almighty, infinite God share with you what is in His mind for your life. With God, ALL things are possible! Live like it!
   

JOHN ROCKEFELLER WAS a devout Baptist who religiously abstained from alcohol and tobacco. At the age of 78, he finally dispersed his spectacular wealth to his heirs and to charities, retaining a paltry 20 million to finance his final years. This appeared almost meager in light of the fact the retired tycoon would live another 20 years to be 98. Likewise, Henry Ford, a contemporary of Rockefeller’s, would reach the age of 83. Yet great wealth and business success were not always accompanied by strong health.

J. P. Morgan, though he lived to be 75, was a chain smoker. When his health began to deteriorate, his doctor prescribed that he decrease the cigars he smoked to only 20 per day! Cornelius Vanderbilt lived to be 83, but he lived his life in excess and died from complications of syphilis he had contracted through his wanton lifestyle. Walt Disney lived to be 65. He was a chain-smoker whose constant, hacking, cough became his trademark. His staff knew when he was walking down the hallway by the sound of his cough. His daughter once asked him not to attend her performance at a school play for fear his constant coughing would cause her to forget her lines.

For others, the stress of business is what ultimately killed them. William Vanderbilt, the heir to Cornelius, inherited almost 100 million dollars in 1877. His father had regularly referred to him as a “blockhead” and a “blatherskite,” and as a result, William desperately sought to be a good steward of the enormous wealth that had been passed on to him. His assets doubled in less than nine years to 200 million dollars. Yet in his early 60s, he confessed, “The care of $200,000,000 is too great a load for my brain or back to bear…It is enough to kill a man.” At age 64, while in the middle of a meeting, he collapsed to the floor and died from an apoplectic stroke.

Scripture exhorts, “
Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s”
(1 Corinthians 6:19-20). We are meant to live our entire lives in a manner that glorifies God. We do that not only by our moral lifestyle and our church involvement. We can also honor God by our business ethics and the way we treat our families. We further glorify God by the way we care for our physical bodies.

At times businesspeople live paradoxical lives. They care deeply for the health of their company but they shamefully abuse their own physical well-being. They keep their companies lean, but they allow themselves to gain many unnecessary pounds. They eliminate wasteful practices in their business but refuse to relinquish bad habits in their personal lives. Yet one could wonder how someone who kills himself with overeating, alcohol, or tobacco could be entrusted with the health of a company.

The challenge for many businesspeople is that their schedule and work demands require much time. Business travel can be wearisome. Business lunches can challenge the best-intentioned of eating regimes. We must remember that our bodies are a divine gift. We are stewards of them. How we treat our bodies reflects on our Creator. How does your body currently reflect on God?

REFLECT FOR A MOMENT

1. How would you rate your current health? Are you overweight? Do you properly exercise? Do you eat and drink healthily? Do you maintain unhealthy habits? How do you think your physical health and lifestyle are currently reflecting on your Creator?
   

2. What are your greatest challenges to living healthily? How does your work life make it difficult to take proper care of your body? Take some time to list ways you can take better care of yourself. Then enlist a small group of friends, tell them your goals, and ask them to hold you accountable for achieving them.
   

3. Have you considered your physical health to be a spiritual issue? Scripture calls your body the temple of God. If you cannot control your physical body, how can you expect to control your emotions, or thoughts, or actions? If you cannot be e
   ntrusted to care for your own body, why should someone entrust you to care for their business?
   

PETER ARNELL IS the founder of Arnell and a leading branding and design expert who has worked with such companies as, Samsung, Chanel, Reebok, Mars, Pepsi, Home Depot, and Fendi. Paradoxically, as he was helping companies rebrand their image, his own personal appearance and health was completely out of control. His weight ballooned to over 400 pounds. He eventually decided that if he was to ever enjoy his grandchildren, he had to drastically change some of the destructive habits that were destroying his life.

Arnell suggests that, “True change springs from an idea whose time has come” (Peter Arnell,
Shift,
18). Arnell chose an unusual method for altering his life. He claims, “I started looking to oranges to transform my life.” He would eat up to 50 of them
a day.
As he began to adjust his eating habits, he started to lose weight. He eventually shed 256 pounds and settled on his ideal weight of 150 pounds. Arnell found an unusual means of rebranding himself into the person he knew he could, and ought to be.

For followers of Christ, we have a source of help that is far more powerful than even the tastiest orange. It is the power of God. Paul stated, “
For the kingdom of God is not in word but in power”
(1 Corinthians 4:20). Christianity is not meant to merely be a religion of words, but a lifestyle characterized by divine power. There is no bad habit or sinful practice or human limitation that is beyond the God’s power to set us free. The writer of Hebrews urged believers to “
lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us”
(Hebrews 12:1). The problem for many people is that they have developed harmful habits and routines that continually trip them up and robs them of God’s best. We may have acted the same way for so long that we feel as if we cannot break those habits, regardless of how important it is for us to do so.

John Jacob Astor, the founder of the Astor fortune, claimed, “The man who makes it the habit of his life to go to bed at nine o’clock usually gets rich…It’s all a matter of good habits and good habits in America make any man rich.” Peter Drucker intoned that routine “makes unskilled people without judgment capable of doing what it took near genius to do before.” The key is to eliminate unhealthy routines by God’s power, and then to cultivate healthy practices, also by God’s power!

The Gospel of Luke notes that Jesus often withdrew into the wilderness to pray (Luke 5:16). Apparently he also regularly went to the Garden of Gethsemane to commune with His Father, as Judas knew right where to find him on the night of his betrayal. It was a routine Jesus developed in His life that guided and strengthened Him throughout His ministry.

There are two areas of life on which businesspeople must focus. The first is to eliminate habits that hold them back from God’s best for their lives and business. The second is to develop healthy routines that strengthen them physically, emotionally, and spiritually. As Drucker says, when you have healthy routines, you are able to accomplish as much or more than can undisciplined people of genius. So what healthy habit will you, by God’s power, implement into your life in the coming days? What is preventing you from beginning today?

REFLECT FOR A MOMENT

1. Do you need to “rebrand” yourself? Do you like who you are and how you look right now? If not, why don’t you do something about it, now? Ask God what it is He would like to see in your life. Then, by His power, strive to become that person. Settle for nothing less.
   

2. Do you have healthy or unhealthy routines in your life? What are the defaults in your life? (Those behaviors you naturally resort to when you are tired or going through the motions.) What positive routines do you need to build into your life so you become a healthier person?
   

3. Is your life and your body a testimony to the power of God? The Gospel is not about words, but about power. Are you talking about the power of God while your actions and your health declare that God’s power is ineffectual for you? Trust in God’s strength to help you have victory in EVERY area of your life.