Today is Father’s Day, but I would like to call it “Fathering Day”. Do you know why? Just because you have children, it does not make you a father. Get your children to tell you how you did in the parenting field. It might not have gone how you thought it did. Your children have a completely different view on things.
The biggest thing in parenting is discipline. Don’t be too strict, but do not be too lax, either. There is a balance between the two. Discipline realistically. You should let your children make decisions for themselves, but teach them what they should do, first, and warn them about what is out there and what could happen should they get themselves stuck in it.

Throughout all of Paul’s letters, he tells the churches to be like Christ, however, in verses sixteen and seventeen, he tells the Corinthian church that he is their spiritual father, and that they should imitate him. He brings correction into the here and now, telling them to do as he does, not as Christ did in the past. The Bible doesn’t do the hard stuff for us; we do it. We show our children how to live by what we do. If your children see you treating your wife or husband badly, that is how they will treat their spouse. Take responsibility for your life and the actions you take.

There is a difference between instructing and fathering. Fathering requires heart. Do not only tell your children what to do, and how to live their lives. Love them. Affection is modeled. If you do not show the love you have for your children, then they will have a hard time farther down the line, when they try to show affection of their own. Speak well into your children’s lives. They want it. Be honest and real; make sure that they know that correction comes out of love.

Father’s Day is either the best day, or the worst day. Many people have horrible memories of their fathers. Many fathers out there are either missing or abusive. However, the greatest redemptive moment is when you use your mess to help someone else who is going through it. There is a point in time, and it becomes easier to forgive and forget the hurt and pain that was caused to you.

Never forget that your children are watching you, and that what you do in life will become apparent in their own lives. Be real with them. Show them that they are loved, and make sure that they never forget it.

There is a big difference between being a believer and a disciple. Most people probably don’t stop and really think about this. Most people probably picture a bearded man in sandals when the hear the word disciple. What’s more, most people probably tend to think that the end of their faith journey culminates in their belief, in their salvation moment. A lifetime spent away from God pivots upon the events of one morning, wherein a person’s heart becomes inexplicably soft—by a pointed sermon or a moment of worship or even the power withheld in the very name of Jesus himself—they respond to that altar call, confess their sins, give their life to Christ, and then for many, they’re done. Not so for the disciple.

Getting saved by Jesus is the easiest task one could ever hope to perform. One doesn’t have to accomplish anything by their own cleverness or effort. One doesn’t need to do anything period. Except surrender their pride and accept the gift. It is, after all, the Holy Spirit who is doing the saving anyway. It’s his work to his glory; not yours. Consider it this way: if salvation were the goal for humanity, if it alone was the charge of the Great Commission, then Scripture would read, “Go into all the world and save people.” Instead it reads, “make disciples of all nations.” Disciples, unlike Christians, are not born. They are made.

Concerning the passage from Matthew above, before the charge to his disciples to go make more disciples, Jesus commands the remaining eleven to go to “the mountain” in Galilee. Scholars have debated to which Galilean mountain he directed them. Some have argued that it was perhaps Mt. Carmel, where Elijah slew the false prophets of Baal. Others have suggested Mt. Table. I personally believe that it was Mt. Hermon, a coastal mountain overlooking Caesarea Philippi, where Jesus had once taken his disciples and proclaimed “I will build my church” (Matthew 16: 13-20). It is this same mountain that Peter, James, John, and Jesus ascend in Matthew 17, where the Lord appears transfigured and meets with Moses and Elijah. Mt. Hermon is, in short, a significant site to the disciples, and thus likely the one mentioned in this week’s passage.

So here Jesus takes all eleven disciples and, overlooking the pagan colony of Caesarea Philippi and all the sinners within, he commands, “Go and make disciples of all the nations.” What, then, is the difference between the saved and the disciples? For one thing, discipleship is necessarily beyond salvation. It’s the next, big step in one’s faith walk. Again, being saved is easy; becoming a disciple, on the other hand, takes work. It takes, according to this passage, first being baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now, this naturally constitutes an actual physical water baptism by which one publicly and symbolically demonstrates their physical death and rebirth in Christ, but it also suggests that we are to be baptized in the name, or, in other words, immersed in the spirit of God. God has a hand in our salvation, to be sure, but He also guides us toward discipleship after He finally gets His hands on our lives.

We must get out of His way so that He may do so, however. One must never underestimate the power of his own will. As C.S. Lewis once suggested, the spirit of God “cannot ravish. He can only woo.” So if the God of Heaven, who merely spoke the cosmos into existence, can approach the door of your spirit but cannot (or rather, will not) force His way through, then we can conclude that a man’s will is a strangely powerful thing. So to become a disciple, finally, we must allow God to take our hand and lead us deeper into Himself. Once this happens, we’ll begin to feel convicted about our sin. We’ll begin to actually want to spend time in prayer, in worship, and in the Word. Getting saved, you see, cleanses our spirit but doesn’t change our bad habits or attitudes. Going deeper into God’s teachings and truths is what ultimately transforms our lives from believers to disciples. We begin to talk differently, act differently. We begin, in short, to live our faith as well as believe it.

A challenge facing Christianity today is that we have a great many Christians and too few disciples. We need more disciples in the kingdom, more Christians walking out, not just believing in, their faith. If the original eleven disciples multiplied and, in time, transformed the the Roman Empire from a land of unrestrained paganism to the site of the early Church, how much more of an impact will a kingdom of disciples have today? Certainly have we more than eleven disciples at the present moment. Our focus, then, as a Church should be to foster a community of discipleship, and not belief only.

Leadership is about heart-to-heart connections. How do you relate to other people? These attitudes that Jesus lists are the realities of living. These are the basic ideas of how we as humans can positively affect the people around us. Attitude changes the atmosphere around you, and it begins by being honest and self-reflective. Be honest with yourself. What do you struggle with? What are your weaknesses? Don’t fall into a victim mindset; don’t start to blame; just be real and honest with yourself. Determine to change and move forward.

Now, this teaching from Jesus is very powerful. It helps us to get in touch with our emotions, and through that, we find parts of our world that need change in order to influence the world. Influence is a common denominator in leadership. First, you influence yourself, and, second, you influence others. What you do in life effects the people around you very deeply.

The life we live is not about us. Everything we do has an affect on other people. It is critical that we honestly lead ourselves and work out what is holding us back. One of the hardest things you will ever learn is how to view a conflict outside our own perspective. It is hard to see beyond our grid–the way we view the world forged by our past and the condition of our hearts–and try to understand the other person’s perspective. How do they view this moment? Conflict is causing a reaction in lives of the people. And we, as humans, are self-centered in the idea that the conflict is all about us. Christianity is about looking beyond yourself. We say often enough that, when one get’s saved, our lives are no longer our own but become God’s. But how often do we live that? It is hard to shift out of yourself and to realize that you affect everyone around you with everything you do.

Being self-aware is essential. Being emotionally tuned in means you are aware of the emotions of the people around you. It is called being empathetic. It helps you to get along in a diverse group of people. In being empathetic and self-aware, you know immediately who you are in the ranking of the people around you, and you can cope with your position with grace and humility. Submission and accountability are important, especially when in leadership. Leaders are just as accountable–if not more so–as those who follow. Know who you are and where you rank in each situation you find yourself and remain submitted to the authority in your life. Self-leadership will allow you to adjust your behavior according to your rank in the room.

Pride rises up to blind us to the truth of our situations. Pride comes before the fall, as it says in the Word. Pride will rise up when we have to submit to authority in our lives. Pride will drive us to act like we are more than we are. The Bible warns against acting like you are higher in the ranking than you truly are. Beware of your pride. When you bring the Kingdom of God into your life and embrace empathy and become emotionally and self aware of the world around you, your pride begins to die and the doors are opened for true heart-to-heart relationships.

Relationships are no clinical. They are on an emotional level. There has to be a heart-to-heart, emotional connection because that is where the influence is transferred. Bossing people around is not leadership. A bossy leader will lose his followers, and a leader without followers is just someone walking alone. It is a heart thing. Leading requires the forging of relationships. Relationships break down due to pride. Lower yourself and soften your heart. A hard heart–a prideful heart–cannot receive from God. Let go of your stuff and let God have His way with you and your life. Don’t get all your ducks in a row; cry out to God for help. He loves that!

Take the Kingdom of God out of your church world and place it into the middle of your work world and watch what happens. God will unleash His supernatural powers out there. Let Him help you tune into the emotions of the world around you. Let Him help you to serve the people in your world. Serve those in authority over you. Serve those who are in submission to you. Serve and forge relationships; that is the key to leadership.

Influence brings with it the ability to inspire people and to bring them hope. People need hope. Life is hard; many people don’t have hope. Inspirational leaders can influence the masses to change. When a leader becomes honest, self-aware, empathetic, and emotionally in tune in his relationships, the chance for influence and inspiration will come, and the relationship will grow in equity and become sound. The relationships will become so strong that the storms of life will not shake it. You give in relationships. Relationships are give and take. If you constantly take, you will not influence or inspire anyone. Give in a relationship; serve in your relationships; deposit into your relationships; and you will gain the ability to influence and to inspire.

Inspiration is guiding and motivating with a vision. Of you don’t have a vision, you can’t inspire anyone. God will give you a vision. He wants you to discover the vision He has placed in your heart. You can’t take anyone into their vision unless you are living your vision. You have to put your money where your mouth is; you need to walk the walk; you cannot inspire someone to do what you are not doing yourself. Jesus pressed this point time and again. If you are going to inspire the world with the message of Jesus, you had better be living it!

Self leadership requires a lot of us. Every decision we make is under the microscope of the world. Everyone around you is watching you. Children watch their parents. Co-workers watch their bosses. Bosses watch their co-workers. Friends watch friends. Every single action of every single day influences those around you. It is challenging, yes, but we have God on our side. Know and have faith in the fact that God is strong when we are weak. He is the one equipping us to live our lives for Him. He is the one guiding us and teaching us how to live the Kingdom of God out there in the world. Our connection to God is the key to everything. God teaches us to self-lead, and He will continue to guide us as we walk it out. So have faith. And go for it!

This is the passage in which Peter gets a revelation of who Jesus is. What I really want to focus on is this: in the moment in which Peter gets a revelation of who Jesus is, Jesus turns around and gives Peter a revelation of who Peter is. When you get a revelation of who Christ is, you find out who you are. You will never know who you are until you know who Jesus is – when you understand that he is the Messiah, that Jesus is God, that Jesus is the master of your life. When you come into that understanding, you find out who you are and you can start moving towards the future God has for you. If you don’t find out who you are, you can never fulfill the plans and purposes God has for you. We all have fruitfulness and destiny inside of us. Jesus is the key – the keys to the Kingdom that unlocks everything inside of us so that the Kingdom begins to flow out of us.

When God unlocks you, that is an incredible day. A lot of Christians are still locked up by ritual and religion and have never discovered God’s freedom. I know a lot of people that are emotionally locked up and guarded. They aren’t free in who they are. Keys are designed to one thing – lock and unlock. That’s all they do. So if Peter’s revelation of Jesus and subsequent revelation of himself cause Jesus to say now I am going to give you keys, it makes me wonder what the keys are for. Then Jesus starts talking about binding and loosing, but I think it is much deeper than that. It goes to this whole concept of knowing who you are.

Let me put it another way: Knowing who you are could also be called being self-aware. It’s almost like sometimes you understand yourself so well that you have these “out of body” moments where you step back and observe your life. You can look and see how you act, react and function in life, and look at yourself honestly, you can get a good perspective on where you are and where you are going. You will know your strengths and weaknesses. You will understand your giftings and the traits inherent in your personality, temperament and makeup. You want these moments. Until you can step back and observe, you are traveling through life blindly. We start to get really real with who we are as people, which is the true context of this passage.

Self awareness means having a deep understanding of your own emotions, strengths, limitations, values and motives. With regards to your emotion, it’s good to know how you function in relationships and what makes you feel pressured emotionally. Until you understand your strengths and limitations emotionally, you are going to have difficulty in all of your relationships, including your relationship with God. God is emotional. He gave you your emotions. God has a heart for people. If we are constantly trying to lock down our emotions, we are going to struggle in every relationship. Emotional intelligence is highly powerful for connecting with other people.

People with a strong self awareness are realistic and honest with themselves to the point that they can laugh at themselves. They are “self absorbed” or proud. Emotional self awareness means that you can read your own emotions and recognize their impact. Being self aware means that you can be tuned in to your inner signals. You are a three part being: physical, spiritual and our soul, where our emotions live. The spiritual dimension of me longs to do what’s good. The physical and soul elements of me house the sin. With training and strengthening of my spirit, I gain the strength and ability to control my body and soul and do what is right. The spirit is constantly warring with our mind and body. We have to feed it and give it strength, just as we do with our mind and body. The term “you are what you eat” also applies to the spiritual, if you are feeding on untruths or old revelation. This also applies to the soul. What you read and enjoy affect who you are and how you act. Be careful what you absorb or take in. Fill your emotional world with things that are going to gear you towards a kingdom mindset.

Emotional self awareness means that I am tuned in to my principles and my guiding values. That is what integrity is – living within the principles I have laid out for myself. Principled restraint is a kingdom principle – it helps you get strong and move forward. Emotional self awareness means that you can see the big picture in complex situations. You are candid and can speak openly. Self honesty is critical in leadership. You have to be able to be honest about your shortcomings. If you can’t, you develop a dysfunctional view about what reality is. If you can’t get real with yourself and identify what is wrong, you can grow, change or move forward. Don’t cop out and say “That’s just who I am – you have to accept it!” You are who you are from past experiences and learned behaviors, but when you connect to Christ, you have to let the old things pass away and establish new things in your life. It begins by getting real with your self. The only person that can get real with you is YOU. It’s hard to watch someone’s life unravel, because you can’t change them and they don’t want to listen.

I had to get really honest with myself early in my marriage. My family was well to do and I was an only child, so I got everything I wanted and was very self centered. When I got saved, I had to change all of that. When I became a father and a husband, I had to change my self centered nature. The first several years of our marriage was a nightmare, but what helped us was learning to get real with ourselves and each other. The more we got real, the better we did. The trigger for getting God to work on me was getting real with myself and my emotions. The more I got honest and recognized my shortcomings, the more God’s word went to work in my life. Moral excellence brings me closer to God. We often think the opposite way – if I get to know God better, my life will change. But God says “No, here are the principles. Live according to those and you will get closer to me.” I draw near to God and he draws near to me – not the other way around. I get honest about my world and the word of God becomes real to me. It becomes powerful and starts changing my world.

One of the highest forms of leadership that you will ever walk in is when you can empathize and make adjustments to connect with others rather than making them connect with you on your level. As leaders, we want to teach people how to get moving on the journey, but we have to connect with and communicate with them where they are. Prayer for me lately has been all listening – less talking (“God I need, God I want”) and more listening (“God here I am – show me, teach me”). The more I have done that, the more God has shown me things about myself and shown me things that are holding me back and stopping me from reaching goals and dreams.

With self awareness you have to have accurate self assessment, biblical self confidence, emotional self control. You have to have transparency. You have to be open, adaptable and flexible. You have to be optimistic and take initiative. When I am emotionally self aware, I position myself for God to use me and do something powerful through me.

“You are the Christ” – that was an amazingly powerful statement, made in the center of a symbol of Roman power and oppression. Ceasaria represented Rome’s worship of Caesar. Amidst all of this, Peter says “No you are the Messiah – you are the object of worship.” And then Jesus says “This is who you are,” and once we get that revelation of who we are in Christ, our lives begin changing so quickly. Things move and change so quickly! When you get honest and decide to make changes – when you stop being a victim and decide to start working on you – you position yourself for God to something mighty in you and through you.

If we want leadership in any area of our lives, we have to climb the mountain. As a leader, we want the ability to influence people in our jobs, our families etc. There will be times when we are in the forefront and WE have to make a decision – its just us and God and sometimes God won’t even say anything! He is waiting for us to decide – He directs our STEPS, not our standing.

“The leaders went up the mountain” (Ex. 24:9) – leaders are able to exert themselves. Leaders do things that are difficult. There are “mountains” in the kingdom that you have to be able to climb as a leader. For any Christian, the first mountain to climb is prayer. Then, we have to climb the mountain of God’s word…otherwise, we are being spoon-fed. We have to get to the point where we are feeding our spirits. Children can feed themselves by the time they are one year old – we must learn to do things for ourselves and not always rely on our pastors or leaders to feed us. We have to climb the mountain of attitude – pick any kingdom principle you want to conquer and that is a mountain.

God lives on the mountain. When we climb the mountain, we find God. When we are down here, we are living our daily lives – God doesn’t care about what color shirt we wear. He wants us to exert some energy and get to the top of the mountain where He is. God isn’t just ON the mountain – He is doing supernatural things.

Its always good to go up the mountain with other people (they shared a meal together – Ex. 24:11). We are people of the table – we eat and fellowship together. After we go through things together, we have a new sense of bonding – it changes your life. This church is about building a community of people that are doing life and discovering life together. This building that we are building is like a mountain that we are climbing together. God is building us through this project. The transfer that goes on in the lives of the people doing something together is powerful.

Exodus 24:13 – Moses and Joshua went further up the mountain – God had something more for them up higher. This isn’t a life where we sit back and think we’ve arrived. God is ALWAYS going to be calling us higher. Moses & Joshua had a meal in the presence of God and still went higher. God will visit us and give us instruction for our lives. Moses went even further up the mountain and a cloud covered him for 6 days. He stayed on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights – no food, no water. There are lots of supernatural things going on in the natural – Moses was sustained on the mountain.

While Moses is with God, the followers down at the bottom were getting restless. They created a golden calf and began to worship it. They wanted something they could SEE – idol worship is about not having enough faith to believe in God that we can’t see. 3000 people died that day, and coincidentally, 3000 people were saved on the day of Pentecost. Don’t be a person that doesn’t have faith to start climbing the mountain. If we don’t climb the mountain, we look to carnal things.

The people crossed the Red Sea, which is symbolic of our salvation experience. Even in the wilderness, God still fed them manna and provided for them. There was still more water to cross – the Jordan River. We don’t actually possess anything until we go through the Jordan and get to the Promised land. God didn’t stop the Jordan until they STEPPED in. Leaders are constantly stepping out and trusting a God that they can’t see…except when we climb the mountain, and see God – our faith and trust comes from our mountain experience. Climbing the mountain will change us.