The Leadership Drop Podcast
This is a podcast for Pastors, leaders, and anyone who wants to grow to be all that God has called them to be.
The Leadership Drop Podcast
Uncovering True Leadership through David’s Triumphs and Failings
Uncover the timeless secrets of true leadership as we explore the fascinating story of David with Pastor Jackie on this episode of the Leadership Drop Podcast. Learn how David’s journey from shepherd boy to king exemplifies leadership qualities such as promise, courage, and loyalty. Through his early recognition by the prophet Samuel and his fearless battle against Goliath, David’s life teaches us that true leadership is rooted in character and heart rather than outward appearances. Pastor Jackie provides insightful commentary on how David’s actions, even in his youth, offer valuable lessons for today’s leaders.
Welcome to the Leadership Drop Podcast. In each episode, pastor Jackie, along with selected guests from time to time, aim to drop some leadership insights that are designed to help you thrive, whether you're leading a church, a business, a team, a family or simply yourself. So lean in, listen, laugh and learn as we drop some leadership truth, and watch out for that leadership mic drop moment. Let's go.
Speaker 2:Hey there, and welcome to this edition of the Leadership Drop podcast. We're filming this and recording this near the end of the summer. As a matter of fact, this is the first day of August that I'm talking to you, and we're so excited about this season of the year and all the leadership opportunities that it presents. Over the next couple of podcasts, I want to deal with two similar thoughts. I want to talk to you about the heart of the leader, and then I want to talk to you about the head of the leader, but let's talk about the leader's heart for just a few moments. And here's a thought about leadership that we don't often hear, but I think is very clear Leaders have the capacity to make big mistakes. Leaders are never perfect and, as a matter of fact, as we're going to see in this podcast, some of the things that make someone a really good leader can also open themselves up for really bad mistakes, and so for this, as an example, I want us to go back into the Old Testament and look at a really good leader by the name of David, who made a really big mistake, and I want us to think about his heart. He's a great one. To think about the leader's heart, because the Bible says of him that he was a man after God's own heart. He had the qualities and the character not only of leadership in front of others, but also he had the quality and character of someone who desperately and devotedly followed God. Let's think about all the great things in David's life, and there are a lot of them. First of all, he had promise. There was just sort of this air about David that he was going to do something. He's like one of the young persons in your youth group or in a class that you may teach. You just look at that guy and you're like man. That guy has that. He has that it capacity. He's going to do something great in his life. And that was discovered very early in David's life.
Speaker 2:The prophet Samuel went to Jesse's home that's David's father, and he was there to anoint the next king of Israel Would have been the second king in the history of all of the nation of Israel. And he was there to anoint the next king. And Jesse brought all of the older brothers of David in and God wasn't approving of any of those to be the next king. And finally Samuel, out of some sort of disillusionment, he said is this all the boys you have? And he said, well, I have one more. He's the youngest. And Samuel said, well, bring him to me. And when he brought him to him, it's like man, this guy has that it quality. He's going to be the next leader and we see some things about leadership early on in David's life that many times it is contrary to human reason whom God chooses.
Speaker 2:No one expected David, but Samuel saw in David something unexpected. Leaders are many times conditioned upon our heart response. The Bible says God looks upon the outside, but man looks on the heart. And Samuel, with the eyes of the Lord, looked at the heart of David and said this young man has something different about him. And then it is characterized by heavenly recognition. God is going to validate the choice of David over and over again as he grows older. And so the first thing you see about leaders is they have that promise about them. Everybody kind of sees that person or that guy or that gal as someone who has the stuff, if you will, of leadership they're promised. They also have courage, and David had courage in spades.
Speaker 2:I mean, david killed a lion and a bear and then he came to the camp of the Lord, where the army of the Lord was encamped against the army of a large giant by the name of Goliath in the Philistines, and Goliath was taunting the armies of the living God, haunting the armies of the living God. David's older brothers were, like the rest of the soldiers, seasoned soldiers. They were scared to death of Goliath. And David said man, I can take him. I've killed a bear, I've killed a lion. With the help of the Lord, I'll kill Goliath too. And he did it. And he released that rock with the speed and the precision of a bullet being released from a Colt .45, and it found the head of Goliath, struck in between the eyes and he fell dead. You know the rest of the story David cuts his head off, brings it back to the camp and they celebrate. He cuts his head off, brings it back to the camp and they
Speaker 2:celebrate. When you lead an organization, you lead a team, you lead a church, you lead a business, if you're the primary leader, it will require courage. Leadership requires courage. It requires risk-taking. It took some risk to kill a lion and a bear and certainly even more to kill Goliath. It requires us to go out on the edge and do things that others wouldn't do necessarily. The Bible says in Joshua 1.6, be strong and courageous, for you will distribute the land I swore to your fathers. And it said again in verse 9, haven't I commanded you to be strong and courageous? Those were the instructions to the new leader of Israel, joshua Twice, it said be strong and courageous. Why is that? Because leadership requires courage. David had that. He had promise, he had courage. He also had a deep sense of loyalty, and I love that about
Speaker 2:David. David was loyal to the core. He was a servant of the king of Israel at the time, saul, who was the first king. He was head and shoulders taller than anyone else around him. He was tall, dark and handsome. Saul was, and yet he was insanely insecure. And when he would hear people say that Saul has killed his thousands, but David has killed his tens of thousands, he saw that as a problem. Saul did, and he responded in jealousy. And many times during the staff meetings when Saul and David were together, saul would get so bent out of shape that he would try to pin David against the wall with one of his own spears. And yet David continued to be loyal to a guy who, honestly, was trying to kill
Speaker 2:him. I think loyalty is a big component in both future and current leaders. Here's a thought If you think you're too big to take orders, you'll never be big enough to give orders. Write that one down. I think that's good. If you think you're too big to take orders, you'll never be big enough to give orders. And for a season, david was just taking the orders of Saul, doing what he told him to do, even though Saul did not have the best intentions in mind for David. And if you're in an organization you're like, well, I want to follow the leader. I don't like him or I don't think he likes me, that really doesn't matter. You should follow the leader that God's placed in your life because of this sense of spiritual loyalty, and that you're going to take orders so that one day, when you give them, they'll be well-received. But having said all that about David's life, he had courage, he had loyalty, he had promise, and I'm sure we could just go on and name a litany of other things positively that David had in his
Speaker 2:repertoire. But there's one thing that we really see in David's life, and we see it in a lot of leaders' lives David had a blind spot, david, you know, eventually, in the time of the year that kings go off to battle. David stayed home. He saw a woman bathing the bathing beauty by the name of Bathsheba, and he asked her to come to his house while Bathsheba's husband was away doing the work of the king fighting the wars, while David stayed behind. And David had an adulterous affair with Bathsheba. She got pregnant. They tried to cover it up and eventually led to the murder of Uriah, bathsheba's husband. Finally, nathan, the prophet of God, confronts David with his sin and David thought he'd covered it all up, but David had a blind spot, blind
Speaker 2:spots. I would suggest that all of us have them, areas that cause us to be vulnerable to future success, that we're just blind to. My wife and I used to own a Kia Optima. It's a nice little car, enjoyed it, but I could never get the mirrors lined up to where I didn't have a blind spot to the rear left fender of mine, and there were several times. I almost pulled out into traffic, oncoming traffic, because I had a blind spot and I got very careful when I drove that car because I knew I had a blind spot. You see, having a blind spot isn't the worst thing in the world Not knowing about it and not recognizing it and not preparing for it. That can be the worst thing in the world. And here's the lesson that I want to attach to David, for you, current and future leaders Leaders, remember I said in the beginning have the capacity to mess up big
Speaker 2:time. And here's why Write this down as a key thought that the very things that make leaders great can also break leaders greatly. Think about that. The very things that make a leader great can also break leaders greatly. Think about that. The very things that make a leader great can also break leaders greatly. Think about it. Leaders, by nature, need to be risk takers. They need to be people of courage. By nature, they need to be able to do things that other people maybe wouldn't normally do. Leaders are driven by passion. They're passionate about the work that they do and they are people that are willing to step out and take a risk and do bold things that others sometimes shudder to do, and do bold things that others sometimes shudder to do. And that is what is at the heart of many failed leaders. The things that make us great at our job courage and risk-taking, and passion and boldness are the very things that make us at risk for doing stupid stuff and when we do that, other people are negatively
Speaker 2:affected. Wine, brenner and Frazier, in their book when a Leader Falls, tells the story of a pastor by the name of Jim who suffered a moral failure. It says when Jim chose to fall and yes, it was a choice and always is a choice, they write everyone around him fell as well His wife, their children, the relatives, the church leaders, the congregation, his past congregations, friends and acquaintances, the community. Their falls were different from his. They didn't fall into sin necessarily. Some fell into disillusionment and some into distrust and anger. Others fell into rationalization of their own immoral behavior, gossip, hate and even loss of faith. One after another, they all fell down the hill and into the heap because a leader this case named Jim and in the Old Testament named David messed
Speaker 2:up. So what do leaders need? More than anything, we need to guard our hearts and we need to create some guardrails. Guardrails are hugely important. Sometime ago my wife and I, back when we had a motorcycle, I did a little podcast. I said there's got to be a point where you sell the bike and we literally sold the bike after that podcast. But before we sold the bike, we went to Telluride and Durango, and between Durango and Telluride there's this highway called the Million Dollar Highway, and you're going up to Ouray on the Million Dollar Highway from Durango and everything narrows and everything gets smaller, but the cliffs get steeper and you get to a place on the Million Dollar Highway, just outside of Ouray, where the lanes are so narrow they don't even have room for a guard rail. And there you are trying to traverse in this case, my wife and I on the back of our Harley Davidson, trying to traverse this very narrow, very crowded highway with very steep cliffs. Think about that Steep cliffs and no guardrails. Steep cliffs and no
Speaker 2:guardrails. Unfortunately, that is true of many of our lives as leaders. We work beside steep cliffs with no guardrails, and so we need to work very carefully into creating guardrails guardrails of accountability with our time, with our finances. Guardrails with our spouses, giving them access to all of our technology, giving them access to all of our time, our calendars. We need those things. Those are not burdens, those are blessings, and I would encourage you as a leader, because you, as a leader, have the capacity to do great things, but as a leader, you also have the capacity to mess up really profoundly, because what makes a leader great can also break a leader
Speaker 2:greatly. And so what happens if you do mess
Speaker 2:up? What happens if you do slip over the edge of a cliff without a guardrail? Here's what you need to do. Here's what David did. You own it. You own your failure. You did what David did. He owned what David did. He owned it, he repented of it, and I love his response in the 51st Psalm, one of the most famous passages in all the
Speaker 2:Bible. Be gracious to me, god, according to your faithful love, according to your abundant compassion, blot out my rebellion, wash away my guilt and cleanse me from my sin, for I'm conscious of my rebellion and my sin is always before me, against you and you alone. I have sinned and done this evil in your sight. So you are right when you pass sentence, and you are. You are blameless when you judge. In other words, own up to it. And when you do, you repent of it and you ask others that you've offended to forgive you of
Speaker 2:it. And and sometimes it's not a huge moral failure that causes a leader to mess up. It's sometimes it's just, uh, simple arrogance or because we're rushing to something, we rush past someone else and we offend people and we don't intend to do it, but we do it nonetheless. And when we do that, we need to own it and we need to ask their forgiveness and ultimately, we need and the leader's heart. The very things that make you a great leader also have the potential to break you greatly. Until next time and next time we'll talk about the leader's head, but until next time, guard your heart.