Leadership Lessons: Values & Pain

We’re into the first week of 2025! By now, many of us have swung between various emotions, reflecting on last year and considering the year to come. Nevertheless, this coming year will bring multiple experiences that will test our wills and reveal our love(s).

What are you longing for and dreaming about? What are you hoping for this year? What are you asking God to do in and through you…those you love…those you serve? Also, what bad habits do you want to break or diminish? What good habits and routines do you want to see implemented into your life this year?

Successful answers to these questions and more begin with leading ourselves. That’s one of my goals in writing this Leadership series.

This Leadership Lessons series is intended to be a thought-provoking guide and a framework that inspires and equips us to faithfully fulfill our responsibilities according to the Lord’s will and in the Lord’s way. These articles will equip and encourage us and then show and inspire us how to make the most of our time in the place where the Lord has placed us.

What is our leadership lesson for today?

Lesson two: Values & Pain

First, let’s define the terms:

Values are what you consider significant and a standard, while pain is the suffering and trials you have experienced and will experience.
- Values
  - Significant: things designated as most important (health, family, spiritual life, etc.)
  - Standard: a guide for decision-making (how you express–or not–things deemed significant).
- Pain
  - Suffering: the experience of discomfort (emotional, physical, spiritual, etc.).
  - Trials: the circumstances (long or short) where suffering occurs.

Second, let’s examine values and pain in more detail:

Values: topics, ideas, or character qualities (things) that arise and develop by teaching, modeling, experiencing, and self-assessment.
- Examples might include honor expressed in chivalry (how to treat a woman or a man), dignity (how to conduct yourself in public), family (spending a lot of quality time with your family), God’s Word (regularly reading), and more.
Pain: self-imposed or inflicted by someone or something.
- Examples might include an AC unit going out in your house or car, a wreck that you caused from distraction, being misrepresented, laziness leading to loss of job, and more.

Third, let’s consider three leadership challenges:

Challenge one: Actions without values, i.e., life without well-defined goals or purpose.
- This leadership challenge manifests in at least two ways:
  - Poor planning is a reactionary scenario. Usually, the word “No.” is not in the vocabulary. So, though well-intentioned, poor planning usually leads to unmet expectations and frustration in spheres of influence.
  - Overplanning is a confusing scenario. It involves busyness without accomplishment, similar to poor planning, and it may cause frustration when expectations are too many and out of reach.
- The goal is to define values that are also appropriate and well-understood.
Challenge two: Values without actions, i.e., failure to implement values in everyday life.
- This leadership challenge manifests in at least three ways:
  - Lazy: unwillingness to put in the time and effort.
  - Distracted: trying too much at once, resulting in unfinished and open commitments.
  - Slothful: doing the wrong things that don’t align with values.
- The goal is to have a daily/weekly plan to implement and live by your values on a regular and manageable basis.
Challenge three: Viewing suffering and trials as inconveniences, i.e., discouraged when things don’t seem to go your way or are not meeting your timeline of expectations.
- This is a hard one. No one likes trials and pain, yet we all realize that it is through pain that God shapes, fashions, and forms His instruments to expand His kingdom.
- If conforming to Christ’s image were easy, everyone would be a Christian. The Christian’s call is to come and die. That’s not an easy life, but it is the life of our glory and true contentment.
- The goal is to stop trying to control the future and focus on being intentional with your present God-given audience and authority.

Finally, let’s consider Jesus Christ as our Guide to establishing our values and appropriating pain.

Jesus’s values were clear and straightforward.
- He did not come to be served but to serve and give His life as a ransom for many.
Jesus’s actions were always aligned with His values.
- His life expressed the Father’s redemption plan, and He never once deviated from fulfilling that plan.
Jesus saw past the pain of rejection, abandonment, betrayal, denial, and more.
- Jesus could look past the sinful expressions of humanity inflicted upon Him because He knew the outcome of redemption would mean reconciling sinful humanity to the Father.

Thus, the gospel of Jesus Christ enables us to have clear, biblically defined values. It empowers us to accomplish them for God’s glory and gives us meaning and purpose in our pain as we do.

Does this mean that leaders will not change or refine their values? No. As we grow and mature, we discover and develop values that match the seasons of life.

Does this mean we’re failures if we don’t have or live by our values? No. Our identity is not in what we do but in Whom we have believed. If we are in Christ, we are new creatures. However, we all have values, whether we define them or not. The goal is to define them and then seek to live by them faithfully.

“Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”
Hebrews 12:1-3

Lord, help us define our values according to your Word, live them according to your way, and accept pain and trials as your means of shaping us more and more into the image of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

— December 30, 2024