How to Grow your Faith, Character & Leadership

My personal mission statement I have tried to follow the last 10 years is “Growing in Faith, Character and Leadership. Most people would probably say they also want to grow in these areas of their lives. What I have learned is that I cannot grow in these areas on my own. I can learn about these areas, but to grow and actually live it out, I can only do that with the help of Christ.

In John Chapter 15 Jesus talks about the vine and the branches. He is the Vine and we are the branches that produce fruit. Jesus talks about remaining or abiding in Him in order to bear fruit. In other words if we stay joined to or close to Christ, He produces fruit in our lives. The key is to stay close to Him, to stay connected to Him.

Abiding or remaining in Christ is just another name for intimacy with Christ. He wants to express His life through us, which comes through your attachment to Him. If our prayer life is just a matter of shooting up an occasional SOS as emergencies come up, we are missing that intimacy or closeness. If we just have our devotions in the morning in order to get it done and check it off our list, we don’t understand abiding.

In order to stay connected or close to Christ we must first understand how much He loves us. That should be our focus, love. Later in this same chapter Jesus says, “Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. You are my friends when you do the things I command you.”

Our faith, our character and our leadership can only grow if we stay close to Christ. When we submit to Him and talk to Him on a regular basis. When we regularly read, listen or speak His words from the Bible. When we spend time worshiping Him and soaking up His love, we grow. When we meditate or focus on Jesus some amazing things start to happen in our lives. We have more wisdom, strength, courage, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, righteousness and self-control.

So if you are looking to grow in your faith, character, leadership or other areas of your life, the best thing you can do is focus on Christ and discover how much He loves you. We cannot manufacture Character, Christ produces it when we stay close to Him. We cannot love our spouse unconditionally, but Christ can through us. We cannot lead people as we should, but Christ can direct us and lead through us. We cannot have great faith on our own, but Christ can grow our faith when we stay close to Him. When we are close to Him, we see things more like He sees them and He can do things in us we could never do on our own.

I can’t but He can, should be our prayer every day.