Chapter 12

Proverbs 12 (Allen)

Never Give In

"Work hard and become a leader; be lazy and become a slave." Proverbs12: 24

Over the years it has started to become especially clear to me that truly great leaders are not born but rather forged. Sure, some people seem to have a natural sense of being good with people or organization or direction. That doesn’t however qualify them to be a leader. It barely qualifies them to work the drive thru at Wendy’s.

Really, really good leaders I’ve come in contact with in my life worked very hard to get where they were. The positions they held were not just served to them on a platter, they intensely pursued the goal set in front of them and did not relent until they achieved their objective.

Just because we set a target in front of us and we don’t get there in the time frame that we think we should is no excuse to stop going after what God has for us. There may be areas in our life that God is not finished working on yet and knows that if we acquire our goal before our time, we will be ill fitted for the task that is then given to us. Maybe God wants to show us how just how serious we are with your pursuit. It may even be that God has a totally different path for us and the only way he can get our attention to his direction is to put a brick wall in front of us.

God wants all of his people to be good leaders. Not just a select few but ALL of his people. Don’t just sit there and expect things to magically happen. If you do this, life will quickly slip through your hands and at the twilight of your days you will be full of statements like “if only I would’ve…” instead of “wow, I really did…”.

Winston Churchill made a statement that has stood the test of time. A statement so amazingly simple yet so profound that it touches the very core of not only how to be a leader but to be a human being:

“Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

Never give in indeed…