Leadership and Sacrifice

If I asked you to name a leader, who would you say?

Maybe the president of a country? Or a revolutionary like MLK or Gandhi?

While you would be 100% correct, leaders aren’t always those in the spotlight who are the heads of nations or movements.

You, my friend, are a leader as well. What kind, you may ask? Well…

Who are you and what do you stand for?

Leadership as a commander means to fight alongside your soldiers. It’s making the sacrifices you’re asking them to make.

Leadership as a parent is guiding and disciplining your kids to develop a strong moral compass. It’s continually nurturing a relationship built on love.

Leadership to yourself means continually pursuing your passions and serving those around you. It’s following the burning desire to become the person you’re called to be.

And leadership requires another virtue: Sacrifice.

John 15:13 puts it perfectly:

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” _NIV

I ask you, dear reader, how are you serving those around you? Yes, your friends and family but also the cashier at the grocery store? How about a stranger on the street?

Are you so busy thinking about yourself and your own needs that you’re forgetting the beauty in the people around you?

This week, I challenge you to sacrifice something to help someone else. It can be as small as donating 5 bucks to charity instead of getting an iced caramel vanilla frappuccino latte or whatever the heck you get from Starbucks.

There is a great lack of leadership and sacrifice in our world today. Not the kind that breaks, but the kind that builds.

And if not you, then who?

Like most of my posts, this topic is just as much a reminder to myself as it is to you.

Lately, I’ve been way too focused on myself and less so on those around me. This post is a wake-up call for myself, and hopefully for some of you out there as well.

As always…

Keep making progress. Change for the better. Live the Heming-way.

Til next time,

Trevor