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Key Bible Verse: So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the … things of God (1 Corinthians 4:1). Bonus Reading: 1 Corinthians 3:21-23

In Christ we find the answers to two great ego problems. The first is fear, the sense of inadequacy. Sinful pride can make us shrink back from responsibility.

Several years ago Richard Halverson left his long-term pastorate at the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland, to became chaplain of the U.S. Senate. In a talk, he described his first day at the powerful institution: "I felt like a non-person, a mascot to one of the most powerful political bodies in the world. I wondered what I was doing there." That evening he read the words of Jesus: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. … And surely I am with you always" (Matthew 28:18-20). As he meditated on those words he realized, "I am a garment which Jesus Christ wears every day to do what he wants to do in the United States Senate. I don't need power; my weakness is an asset. If Christ is in me, what more do I need?"

The second and opposite temptation is the power-hungry self wanting to lord it over others. Sinful pride can make us want to be puffed up and to exalt ourselves.

—Leighton Ford in Transforming Leadership

• How can you view weakness as an asset?

Thought to Apply:The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

—FREDERICK BUECHNER (author)

Credits: Adapted from—Thursday: Transforming Leadership (InterVarsity, 1991)

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity. For reprint information click here.

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