LEADERS ARE ACTIVE AND PURPOSEFUL

As a leader you have the capacity to see beyond your current circumstances, to develop a vision for a preferred future, and then intentionally implement strategies that will change each circumstance in your life and the lives of those around you.

To be active and purposeful is an essential, core quality of leadership. Leaders are keenly aware of the circumstances around them, good, bad, ugly, and difficult. But as active and purposeful agents, leaders do not passively surrender and cave in to these conditions. Rather, leaders develop a vision for how things can, will, and should be different.

In a very real sense, leaders can see into the distant future. They have the ability to analyze what is (or is not) and conceptualize, that is, vividly see, what can be. Leaders intentionally design and implement the strategies necessary to achieve this hope – this longing – this vision. Leaders see and shape a preferred future for themselves, their families, communities, and organizations.

As a unique, image-bearing creature of God, you, too, are active and purposeful. Right now, you possess the full capacity to be active and purposeful in every situation in your life! Yes, your environment acts upon you, tragically at times. But you are not a helpless victim of life’s circumstances. God made you to be His image. You possess the God-given ability to purposefully act upon your environment and each circumstance in your life.

In fact, you have been charged to do so. You are to fill the earth, to subdue it, and to have dominion over it. You are to lead by being active and purposeful in every circumstance of your life. The trouble is that you may have forgotten that you possess this ability. This trait has atrophied from lack of use. Even so, being active and purposeful is a trait you are to rediscover and cultivate as an image bearer of God.

The Apostle Paul’s said it best:

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.
II Corinthians 4:8-9 (ESV)

Now, pilgrim, go out and lead!