The Leadership Mind by Teddy A. Jones

Have you ever had a sudden urge to do something, something that you had been asked to do maybe... or of your own volition you had decided to do and forgot to do or didnt get to do due to the multiplicity of activities that are oh so important? Or so you think. What happens when the request was to pray for an elderly gentleman? In all earnestness you planned to go and just didnt get to go. Oh there are so many things to be done, legitimate things to be done, all pressing needs. The request came just about three weeks ago... I planned to go, just didnt get to go. Out of the blues, this week, Maybe Tuesday it came back to me very stronly that I need to go to pray with that man. I planned in all earnestness to go again. Set the time to go and just didnt get to go. Then this morning, or no it was last night, I was told that he died. There has to be a reason, its not sixth sense, its not premonition, it was the Holy Spirit prompting me. Lord I hope he made it right with you... Lord forgive m...

"You are only young once, but you can be immature indefinitely." - What is maturity? Who determines it? In the natural realm maturity is open to wide subjectivity, influenced by all manner of factors, varied from culture to culture. What is clear is that whatever the parameter used in a particular locale it is frowned upon to be considered immature. In the spiritual realm, maturity is measured against the plumb line of Christ likeness. We were created to become like Christ. Evidence of growth and maturity is the extent to which we are becoming or have become like Christ. Each day we experience many opportunities, many challenges. To hold to the sovereignty of God is to hold to the view that nothing happens by chance, that there are no co incidences. It follows then that each moment of the day we are being taken through experiences designed to make us mature. We learn to love by being tested to hate or to respond in love, we learn self control by being allowed to ...

Saul of Tarsus had a destiny. a destiny for which he had been uniquely qualified. A destiny that was characterized by zeal, energy, passion, desire and excellency. A destiny that involved a sharp mind, boldness. Something deep within him longed to serve God wholeheartedly. His studies at the feet of Gamliliel seem to have catapulted him into a deep recess of the grip of religion. He sought with all his might to please God by excelling in the religion of his fathers, he fought valiantly and unapologetically against the Christians because their message was a threat to the survival of the Jewish religion. Until the day had his date with destiny and he came face to face with the one that he had been trying so hard to please and was unknowingly hurting. His encounter with the living Jesus brought him to the threshold of his destiny. He embraced it gladly, and he became doubly zealous, double brave, double excellent as he finally was doing that for which he had been born. You too hav...

Typically Jesus taught in parables. One of those has to with the labourers reporting to the master that they had gone to inspect the fields and they found that the wheat that they had laboured to plant had been contaminated by tares that appear to have been sown during the night by a ruthless enemy. I have never seen a wheat or a tare plant, but what is clear is that they had a striking morphological resemblance. S much so that unless one painstakingly scrutinized them, he/she could unintentionally destroy a wheat plant thinking it was a tare. I am still in the hermeneutical process with this passage to arrive at the precise meaning behind this parable. What i will say at this juncture is that a cursory examination of the church will certainly cause one to seriously question the validity of the discipleship of some members. There seems to be in every congregation some persons who have all the external trappings of a genuine disciple yet they are a constant source of problems in t...

So whats the big deal anyway. We each have 24 hrs each day... or do we. We assume that we have 24hrs in our day when we wake up. What In the first place when you wake at 6 a.m hrs out of that 24 has already been gone never to return. If you die at 10 a.m it means that God would have allocated 10 hrs of that particular day to you. How well do you spend your day. Should we be spending our days or should we be investing them? Our days, our time is a charge that God gives us to manager to be stewards just as with everything else that He gives us. How well then are you at being a steward of God's time, note God's time, not your time! A good measure of this is to ask yourself, how much of the day do you spend doing things that have eternal value? Sleeping, eating , watching television... Do they have eternal value. How much of your typical day is spent in communion with Him? how much is spent sharing the Good News with someone who needs to hear? How much is spent bearing ...

Give till it hurts! Can giving hurt? Should it hurt? In the famous sermon on the mount Jesus teaches us that we are to give to everyone who asks of us. We are to give even more than they ask of us. We read of the Macedonian church, who gave beyond their ability to give, we read of the Galatians who regareded Paul with such love that they would have plucked out their own eyes to give to him if it were possible. Can giving hurt? Should it hurt. I wonder if there is any one living in Jamaica today who can say that a day goes by (while they're out and about- not locked away in a house)- that they are not met by a beggar who is doing just that begging. From the boys and the stop lights, to the ones staggering in the New Kingston Parking lots, to the ones on the street corners kneading a spliff in their palms(who somewhere think that every male that they approach has a child since they address you as fadda or dadz), to the ones who come knocking on office door or ringin the buzze...

Have you counted the cost? Luke 9: 57 - 62. What is the cost of discipleship? We live in an age of easy believism...cheap grace...mouth only committment...shallow discipleship. Have you counted the cost of following Jesus? Jesus is walking along teaching as he usually does and this bright scribe pipes up form the crowd, "Lord I will follow you wherever you go." Jesus must have smiled to himself. Maybe the scribe thought that was the proper thing to say, maybe it was the religiously correct thing to say, maybe it would have made him look good in the eyes of the crowd, but Jesus knowing the need for a distinction between mouthed commitments and commitments of heart and mind and body and will placed the reality of the cost of discipleship right before the Scribe. "Foxes have holes and birds have nests but the Son of Man has no place t0 lay His head"... This statement by Jesus flies in the face of those who teach that Jesus was rich and that if He were alive today he...