Keeping Right Things in the Right Place

https://jdsimcoe.medium.com/advent-luxe-2020-5306692a050b

A prayer I wrote using quotes from chapter 4 - Balance - of Paul Tripp's Lead:12 Gospel Principles for Leadership In the Church

Lord, God, the one who alone is worthy of our worship,

Help me find important what you find important.  Help me trust you for what you know I need, not what I think I need.  May my treasure be what you treasure, God.  

Lord, help me not exchange your glory for the glory of the things you created.  I don't want the good things you have given to become the rulings things.  I pray that I would not work longer, try harder, control more, delegate less, and take more credit, in my attempts to get from ministry what it is not meant to provide

May the leadership communities I am and will be part of always consider and regularly discuss the question of balance in the lives of its leaders.  I pray these communities would have God in his rightful place and people and things are in their appropriate places in our thoughts, desires, and actions.  Help us remember the appropriate place of authority, money, power, position, gifts, marriage, children, theological insight, and biblical literacy.

God, thank you that Jesus' first act of restoration was to restore our relationship with God.  Because of this great truth help me and the leadership communities I am part of to put everything in its right place. 

Amen. 

"What is balance?  It is everything in its right place doing what it was meant to do."  (87)

"What is important to God isn't always important to us.  What God knows is needful for us isn't always needful to us.  What God says we should treasure, at street level we don't always treasure."  (88)

"Idolatry is when the glory of God the Creator is exchanged for the glory of the created thing."  (89)

"In ministry good things become ruling things."  (89)

Leaders are tempted to look to ministry to provide for them what it was never intended to provide.  Leadership position, power, respect, acclaim, and success begin to take on more weight in our hearts than they should ever take."  (90)

"In the fear of not getting things we think we need, we work longer, try harder, control more, delegate less, and take more credit.  Good godly habits get left behind in our ministry drivenness.  Necessary relationships are not properly maintained.  Private worship becomes perfunctory, if not abandoned altogether."  (90)

"A spiritually healthy leadership community should be always considering and regularly discussing the question of balance in the lives of its leaders."  (91)

"It is only when God is in his rightful place in my heart that people and things are in their appropriate place in my thoughts, desires, and actions."  (95)

We've seen shocking materialism; abuse of authority; misuse of God's money; love of power and position; the use of gifts, power, and position to seduce and misuse others; the hiding of wrongs; the building of cults of personality; broken marriages; angry children; beaten-down fellow leaders; unwillingness to submit to counsel, confrontation, and loving discipline; using theological insight and biblical literacy to defend what should not be defended; etc."  (95)

"[Jesus] first act of restoration was to restore us to God, because it is only when God has his rightful weight in our hearts that everything else is appropriately weighted." (98)