Isolated, Independent, Separated, and Self-hiding Christian Life?

A prayer I wrote using quotes from chapter 8 - Candor - of Paul Tripp's Lead:12 Gospel Principles for Leadership In the Church

Lord, God, Three in One, the one who said it was not good that Adam was alone,

Thank you for making us relational beings.  You want me to be comforted, warned, encouraged, rebuked, and instructed by others.  May my willingness to confess and share struggles not only be a help to me but also an encouragement to others.

God, make me aware of my own heart struggles and areas of weakness.

I pray that
  pride of personal maturity,
  the pursuit for the respect of others,
  functional Gospel doubt,
  ability to minimize sin, and 
  identity in ministry
will not silence me.

Help me and those I lead with to lead and live knowing the dark, despicable, destructive, and dishonoring nature of sin.  May we never attempt to rationalize sin and make it look o.k.

I pray that the fear of a lost leadership position will never be great than the fear of giving sin room to do its evil work in my life.  

God, I want my life and my ministry to be about you and your glory!!!

Amen!

An isolated, independent, separated, and self-hiding Christian life is alien to the Christianity of the New Testament. (148)

Biblical Christianity is thoroughly and foundational relational.  (148)

No one is so spiritually mature that he is free from a need for the comfort, warnings, encouragement, rebuke, instruction, and insight of others.  (148)

A spiritually healthy leadership community is spiritually healthy when it is a safe place for struggling leaders to speak with candor and hope.  (149)

"The ministry leaders I regularly meet with often share a personal experience, but they leave out how they themselves factor into it.  They talk about what happened and what other people did and said, but they give little sense of their own heart struggle as it was all going on.  (150)

It is quite possible to be committed to leading robust gospel ministries and yet be denying the same gospel in your leadership community.  (152)

A gospel-shaped leadership community will be a confessional community, where leader honesty is not only a constant protection but encourages a deeper and deeper dependency on God.  (152)

It is in the soil of the devastation and humiliation of confession that servant leaders grow.  (153)

What silences us?
1.  Pride of personal maturity
2.  Ability to minimize sin
3.  Must have the respect of others
4.  Identity in ministry
5.  Functional Gospel doubt

Every leadership community needs to pray together for grace to see sin as dark, despicable, destructive, and dishonoring to God as it actually is.  Every leadership community needs to regularly cry out for help, admitting that sin doesn't always look sinful.  (155)

If I have [the leadership community] in the appropriate place in my heart, I will see them as God-given tools of grace and be free to be candid with them about my real issues of heart and life.  (155)

The Gospel promises us that the good things God calls us to will produce good in our lives, even if that good looks different from what we hoped for.  (157)

Do we fear the loss of leadership position more than we fear giving sin room to do its evil work in our hearts and lives?  (157)