You have the right book if you want to know the fundamental values, principles, and tools that help you orient your life to be a leader like Jesus Christ.
Acknowledgements
With this material, you can grow life skills to experience the abundant life you have been given (2 Peter 1:3). It will benefit all your relationships, including those you serve when leading. These godly principles will prepare you for leading here and in eternity.
This information has no foundation in fads—it is proven, practical, and powerful—built on God’s Word. Applying this material shifts your focus to Jesus Christ’s example to help you become a REAL Servant Leading Servants.
Everything in this book is a compilation of material from “GR8 Relationships” (https://gr8relate.com ) and “GR8 Leaders” (https://gr8leaders.com). The GR8 Relationships material helps you create superior biblical relationships by “Pursuing Their Best—Freedom in Relationships.” The GR8 Leaders information helps leaders “Build superior cultures with great leaders.”
Each website has nearly five hundred online, instructive, short videos to help you apply what you learn. Both have hundreds of informative blogs, and the GR8 Relationships information is entirely FREE—all courses, TV shows, podcasts, and blogs. Both have benefited from the hours of labor from Paul Moore, Karl Munt, and Matt Montgomery for years.
But none of this would exist without the grace, strength, and work of Jesus Christ, the support of my dear wife, Louie, and the generosity
of Tim Dunn, who provided the resources for the Next Step Discipleship Ministries studio.
Additionally, James Bobo has played a significant role as an encourager for two decades through his feedback and prompting to teach and develop the material. He equips pastors and teachers in Africa and other parts of the world. He wanted to have material with clear
leadership information for churches worldwide, and he is the one who gave me the excellent title.
James added each of the Addendum articles and encouraged me to include my article about divorce. He found those issues essential to the pastors and leaders he has taught.
Finally, the Moment of Truth information comes in Chapter 7: “Servants Leading Servants Create a Culture of Truth.” It is an overview
of the Moment of Truth process. If you want all the details from the creator of the process, read the book Managerial Moment of Truth by
Robert Fritz and Bruce Bodaken.
Introduction
We hope you will only need the contents of this book to learn the principles and tools presented. More importantly, we desire that your study and the power of the Holy Spirit within you will make the content part of you.
If that happens, you can share the truths with those around you. That is what God, through the Apostle Paul, desires for all Christians, as he said in Philippians 2:12 (NKJV):
Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
That is one of my wife’s favorite verses because it presents a great picture of the power of Christ’s life working through us. He is in you to “work out” the good news of the abundant life that He has given to all believers (2 Peter 1:3).
Yet most Christians talk about how hard it is to live as God desires. How could that be true when Christ’s life is in us and the Holy Spirit is in us to energize us to live Christ’s life? I do not believe that is true, but it is what Satan wants you to believe. If Satan can help you think that the Christian life is hard, that multiplies the probability that you will give up and wait until you go to heaven one day.
That flawed thinking prevents you from living the abundant life that God has given you.
With that in mind, nothing in this book is difficult for the Holy Spirit to do through you. It will be tough to do it in your power. As others have stated, the Christian life is impossible if you try to do it without the power of God. Again, so many Christians live with little
evidence of the fruit of the Spirit.
Reality and truth are the focus of this book. Nothing in this book is about new theories and ideas because the essential information uses the reality of God’s Word. Despite my circumstances, these principles and tools have added joy and contentment to my life. And that is my prayer for you.
If you want to follow God’s model for putting this material into your life, I suggest you read 2 Peter 1:1-11. That passage is covered in
depth in course 10 of GR8 Relationships.
In that passage, God gives you eight steps to follow if you want transformation. We summarized those steps into three phases.
- Learn (faith, virtue, knowledge)
- Apply (self-control, perseverance, godliness)
- Serve (brotherly kindness, love).
That is our prayer for you! We pray that you will learn this material, apply it to your life to enjoy the fruit of God’s wisdom and love, and then serve others by sharing what you are learning with them.
If you follow that process, God transforms you!
May God richly bless you as you trust and follow His ways and reject your ways and the ways of the world.