Gregory Dickow - You ARE a Leader. Now Lead
Well, I want to welcome you to the inspirational podcast. Think Like a Champion. You know, we exist to create a community of champions, and that includes you. And we want to build a culture of champion level thinking. God made us more than conquerors. God, this is God's idea for you and me to be champions, to rule and reign in life. We've spent a lot of time training for reigning, and that's what we're doing in this Think Like a Champion podcast. We're training for reigning where we each are called to reign over areas of life that God's given us responsibility for. So let's do it. And I want to thank everyone who has written a review or shared this podcast on social media. I appreciate you partnering with me to help expand our community of champions.
So let's get right into this content today. And I simply titled this You are a Leader, Now Lead. You are a leader. Listen, we start with that. You are a leader. Now, I'm going to get into what you're called to lead. But we have to stop dismissing ourselves as leaders. We have to recognize that each and every one of us are called to be a leader in some form or fashion. And I want to show you why and how. Now, my sons and I talk about leadership all the time. We learn from each other. We share things with each other, and we're all committed to mastering our own lives, to leading ourselves first, because leadership is not being bossy.
Leadership is not being the top dog. Leadership is not even being recognized or acknowledged, feared or respected. It's none of those things. Leadership is about doing the tough work on yourself, and I'll get into that more in a little bit. But as leaders, as sons and daughters of God, that's how we need to see ourselves first as sons and daughters of God. In first John, chapter three, verse one, it says, What marvelous love the Father has extended to us. Just look at it. We're called the sons and daughters of God. We're called the children of God. That's who we really are. This is what I want to start with, because to be a leader, we've all heard that leadership is servant leadership. And I believe that leadership is servant leadership. But I don't believe leadership is being a servant or just being a servant. Leadership starts with the right heart, the heart of a son, and then using our hands, the heart of a son or a daughter of God, and then using our hands to serve.
So in our hearts were sons and daughters in our hands. We're servants. Okay, I'll get to that as well. But this leads me to the question where does leadership begin and how can I say and how can I be so bold as to say to you, you are a leader now lead. How can I be so bold to say you are a leader and I'll lead? You might think I'm not leading anything. I don't lead anything. I don't lead, you know, a band. I don't lead at my job. I don't lead in business. You could go through a list of things that you don't lead, but here's what you here's what you do lead and here's what you're called to lead. In Proverbs 16, verse 32, it says He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty, The mighty, the mighty is a powerful word in the Bible. It's a warrior. It's a word of a conqueror. It could use the word champion here better. Is it better to be slow to anger than to be a champion or to be mighty? Frankly, being a champion is learning to be slow to anger. And then he says, and better is he that rules his own spirit. Then he who captures or takes a city.
Now I want you to think about what it would take for you to take a city. I want you to think about what it would take for me, you or anyone to take control of a city, to take to take control of Los Angeles. And boy, we need to take control of cities like that. To take control of Chicago, we need to learn to take control of cities like this. But imagine what it would take for you to take over and rule a city. And it would be like a military coup, right? It would be. You had control over the technology. You had control over the military. You have control over the finances. You have control over the flow of traffic and the flow of of incoming and outgoing people into that city. It would be a major, just impossible odds of taking over a city if you had a big enough army to do it and you had a big enough military power to do it, then I guess you could do it.
But notice what he says. It's such a it's such a daunting task to take a city. But he says here you're better if you just rule yourself. He says that is a greater accomplishment. It's not a harder accomplishment than taking a city, but it's a greater accomplishment. It's a better accomplishment. It will serve you better. It will it will last a lifetime. It will it will go beyond your lifetime, because it will be an example to so many other people after your lifetime. You are a leader now lead. Some people think no, there's leaders in their followers. No, there's leaders and there's leaders of leaders. Well, there's three levels of leadership that some of you have heard me talk about before. Number one is to lead yourself.
So this is what we're really focused on. You are a leader of yourself. You're a leader of your thought life. You're a leader of your body. You're a leader of your relationships. You're a leader of your emotions. You're a leader of your money. You're a leader of your words, your leader of your tongue. You're a leader of the of your appetites. You're a leader. We have to realize what leadership really is, is that it starts with leading ourselves. So one, the first level of leadership and the most important level of leadership is to lead yourself. The second level or the next level of leadership is to lead others. And then the third level of leadership is to lead leaders who lead others or to develop leaders who develop others.
This is exactly what Paul the Apostle was saying to Timothy in Second. Timothy Chapter two. I want to read this scripture to you In verse one. He says, You therefore my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, not be strong in yourself, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and then use that grace to strengthen yourself and to lead yourself right. So be strong in the grace that is that is in you, in Christ Jesus are the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things which you heard from me in the presence of many witnesses. Watch what he says here. The things that you've heard from me. So from Paul to Timothy, the things you've heard from me in the presence of many witnesses.
So we have Paul Timothy and many witnesses who he's shared this in front of. He said the things you've heard from me in the presence of many witnesses in trust, these two faithful men or faithful people who will be able to teach others, also teach others also want to teach others how to lead themselves. So I'm leading myself to help you lead you. You lead yourself so that you can then lead others and the things you've heard from me and trust these two people who are faithful people at leading their lives to and they will be able to teach others to lead their lives too. And really, so we have here not just for generations, for leadership, generations or generations of leaders we have. Paul That's one. Timothy That's two faithful men or faithful people. That's three. And then teaching others that's four. And obviously this pattern will just continue to repeat itself.
So those others that are the fourth level or the fourth generation of leaders will then give birth to a fifth generation and it'll just keep perpetuating itself. If I just lead one person to the Lord every year, I can lead 20, 30, 40, 50 more people to the Lord. In the next 30, 40 or 50 years. But if I lead one person to the Lord and teach that person to win one person to the Lord and teach that person to teach that person to win, and each of us keep teaching somebody else to lead somebody to the Lord or how to lead their own lives. Use this, apply this to anything. Then it begins to be multiple multiplied rather than just additional rather than addition, it multiplies and at some point it becomes like compounded interest where after a few years there's just so many people reproducing themselves, multiplying themselves into others, and helping other people learn to lead themselves and others as well. It's just it just blows up in supernatural exponential multiplication.
So when we lead people, we need to be thinking about leading them to a place of leading them, leading themselves and leading others who will then lead themselves and lead others and so on and so on and so on. Maybe you feel like the only place you're ever going to experience leadership is leading yourself. That's a good enough place to start because you know, it's the best place. It's the only place to start when you learn how to rule yourself, then it will be it will have a ripple effect in other people's lives, whether you're intentionally trying to teach them, intentionally trying to lead others or not, you will still be a leader of others because you're mastering leading yourself. And this is something I really want you to commit yourself to. It's not easy to lead yourself. It's easier to boss other people around, but it's not as easy to lead yourself and do the tough work on yourself.
Re-parenting yourself. Learning how to have emotional intelligence, learning how to build the right habits in your life, learning the right associations, and, you know, discovering where your weaknesses are and looking to God to help you in your weaknesses and to develop your strengths where you're strong and trust God, whether you're in both your strengths and your weaknesses. But I want you to see that Paul goes on to say after he explains this, he says in verse three, He breaks this down even more. He says, Suffer with me as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier.
So you see, he says, Suffer hardship with me. Be a good soldier who doesn't entangle himself. Notice he saying this is where leadership begins, as we are leading ourselves to not entangle ourselves in the worries and getting caught up in the regular affairs of everyday life. He's saying instead, be a soldier instead. Lead your life rather than be in bondage to your life or be caught up. And he tells us here, being entangled in the affairs of everyday life, in other words, that the things that are happening in your life are controlling you and entangling you and slowing you down and preventing you from making progress. He's saying that's that can end when you make a decision to be a soldier in your life, make a decision to be regimented in your life, make a decision to have discipline. As we've talked about in life, we have it the gift of discipline. We have to apply it now in our lives.
You see, it's really important that you get a hold of this, that if you want to be successful in any area of life and the most successful, the most important area of life to be successful in is our relationship with God. But if you want that to spill over into other areas of life, you have to learn some really good habits and it starts in our thinking. Our thinking becomes our beliefs. Our beliefs become our habits. Our habits become our lifestyle and our character. And then our character lodges us into our destiny. It's really important that you get a hold of that. Leading yourself will cause you to be successful financially. It'll cause you to be successful relationally. It will cause you to be successful emotionally. It will cause you to be successful in in every area of life.
If you'll take responsibility, if you'll take responsibility to lead yourself to rise to the top of whatever you're capable of it takes four things. I've talked about these things before. Pardon me if I'm repeating myself again, but these are things that really need to be repeated over and over and over again. You will, I'm prophesying now to you, and then I'm going to break down the prophecies and how it comes to pass. I prophesied to you that you're going to rise to the top of whatever you're capable of. You are going to rise to the top of whatever you're capable of. You're going to rise to the top in your field of study, in your in your areas of strength, in your business, in your job, in your career. You're going to rise to the top in your health. You're going to rise to the top in your finances. You're going to rise to the top in all these things.
If you will learn to govern these four things, what are they? Your temper. We have to learn to govern our temper. We have to recognize that leadership begins by leading our emotions in the right direction, leading our temper, leading our anger in the right direction. The Bible says, be angry, but don't sin. Don't go to bed on your anger. In other words, resolve the conflict before you go to bed. Settle unresolved conflict in your life, unresolved conflict with yourself, causing tension and stress, unresolved conflict with others. There's somebody that you need to forgive. Forgive them. If there's somebody you need to ask them to forgive you, ask them. And don't say it. Forgive me. It's not a you can't demand somebody to forgive you. Oh, forgive me. Oh, just forgive me. Hey, just get over it. Forgive me. Hey, you're supposed to forgive, so forgive me. That's not how you ask for forgiveness.
You say. Listen, I. I really realize here where I hurt you, where I violated or trespass you, or where I wronged you in some way. And I want to ask, will you forgive me for that? I'd like to ask for your forgiveness. And I'm not assuming that you're going to give it. That's why I'm asking. You know, if you will approach relationship problems there, if you will approach it that way, you'll see so much softening. It's like the a soft answer turns away wrath. Forgive me, it creates wrath. Would you forgive me? Because I really screwed up? Would you forgive me? That turns away wrath. Forgive me. You need to be like a Christian. That forgive that stirs up wrath, that stirs up anger, that just makes the problem worse. We we have to stop demanding of others. Well, we haven't even yet demanded of ourselves. And when we demanded of ourselves, that's never demanded of others either.
Let's just show them the way. Only time we should ever be looking down on anybody else is when we're bending over to help them up, when we're when we're bending down to to pick them up, to help them up, to encourage them. But if we will learn that these four things in our life, these four things, it governs everything. If you govern these four things in your life, you will see so much success in every area of your life, your temper. That's your emotions, that's your anger. That's that's letting your emotions get the best of you and others rather than you can feel those emotions. But you you govern them, you control them, you direct them. You know, I used to be active in the game of golf.
I used to like to play golf all the time. I haven't played it in years. But when I did, I like to drive the cart. I didn't like to walk right, do my walk in some other way. But I drive a cart. But what they have on these carts, they have the capacity to go faster than they actually go, but they have these governors on the little motor of these of these carts that prevent them from going too fast because a lot of people get injured. My kids would fall out of the car when I take them golf when they were little. They roll out, they'd roll out of the car, be gone down a hill because you get gained speed going down these hills. So they put these controls on these golf carts so that they they have the capacity to go faster, but they don't trust you to take them faster because you're just an amateur golfer. Right. And you're amateur driver when it comes to golf carts. Otherwise, you'll be driving so fast and running into each other, running the trees.
The point is, is there's power there in that motor, but it has to be governed and controlled and directed in the right way. And your emotions are powerful. And it's okay to have powerful emotions, to have even powerful emotions swings. You could be really happy, You could be really sad, you could be really angry, you could be really soft and kind. But what the key is to all of it is controlling it, controlling it so that it's not offensive. When you're so happy that you're condescending towards everybody else, you might not be at the same level of happiness that you're at. So that's you've got to control it then. And when it's anger or when it's sadness that you don't display it to everybody else where you're, you know, just poor, you know, just letting your emotions be worn on your sleeve and affecting everybody else and, you know, contaminating the atmosphere, the culture around you, at your your family, your business, like resolve that stuff and learn to govern it.
So first, we have to learn to govern our temper and really focusing on anger and addressing it from God's point of view will really do a lot of good. Maybe we'll talk about that as a specific, you know, one one time podcast and we devote the whole whole podcast to it. And it's enough of a topic to be able to devote many podcast to it. But there are some simple ways to govern your temper. And and one of them is to take your emotions and your feelings to God and express them openly and fully and blow up with God because He knows he can handle it, number one. And number two, he knows you feel that way. And number three, he's he's the safest place to go to. He's our safe place right. So number two, we need to govern our tongue. Our tongue.
Now, why do we need to govern our tongues? You and I both know people that they just keep talking and they just say whatever comes to their mind and they have very few filters. But that means that they're going to they're going to have less power in their life because death and life are in the power of the tongue. Proverbs 18, verse 21 says, Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those that love it will eat the fruit of it. Those that if you attach your tongue to words of life, you're going to eat the fruit of life. If you attach your tongue to words of death, disappointment, discouragement, depression, darkness, despair. If you attach your words to those things, to the dark side, to death, then you will. You will eat the fruit of death. You'll eat the fruit of those negative things, those negative forces, because our tongue is the is the the I guess, how would we call it the the distributor of our life of life and death, the activator of death in life.
The activator, the tongue causes words that are inside of us to be activated outside of us and bring to pass what we're saying. If we say I'm broke, I'm a loser, I'm a failure. If we keep talking that way to ourselves, that is what we're going to become. And if we talk to ourselves as the disciplined people that God made us to be, I God is not giving me a spirit of fear, but power, love and a sound mind. Now, when you say things like that, you're directing life out of your tongue. You're activating life from your tongue. If you can't stand, you can't stand what you did. You blankety blank. You're creating death with your tongue. You're activating death with your tongue. You're activating. And I don't mean physical death necessarily, but you're activating darkness. The dark side. We're called to create light.
God said, let there be light. Light be. And it it went into motion. He activated the light that was inside of him. He activated it with his words. We see that throughout the Bible. If you'll say to this mountain, be removed. He doesn't say if you'll think about this mountain or if you'll pray to God to move this mountain. He said, If you speak to this mountain, be removed and cast into the sea, it will obey you. Well, there's power in our tongue. There's power in our words. There's power in our in our in us. Keeping our words to we need when we say something we need to do it. We need to honor the words we say. Because when we do, we will begin to validate in ourselves that we are reliable and that our words can be counted on and our are the things that we speak words to when we keep are when we learn to keep our word.
When we speak to mountains, the mountain says, You know what? You've kept your word here. Everything that you've said obeys you. So I got to obey you. The mountain like says, you know, Yeah, I will comply with your direction for me to be moved to Castle to see. But if the mountain talks back and says you don't, none of your words, you don't follow through with any of your words, so you don't have the power to move me, That's that's that happens too, in life. So learn to harness the power of your tongue. Learn to govern your tongue. You decide. You get to decide. That's the beautiful thing. You get to decide if you're going to speak death or you're going to speak words of life. You get to decide that. Nobody can decide that for you. Nobody has the responsibility to govern these things for you. The third thing is we have to learn to govern our appetites.
Now, our appetites aren't just what we eat, but they're also what we watch, what we listen to, what kind of conversations we involve ourselves in. Sometimes we have an appetite for gossip. Sometimes we have an appetite for lustful things that can habits that can damage our soul. And listen, I'm not a freak about never failing, never making mistakes or never having fun or never doing anything that's a little edgy. I'm what I'm saying is you can't let anything control your appetites. You have to control your appetites. You have to control what you consume in your eyes and your ears in your mouth, what you take in, what food you eat, what you drink, what you write, what you allow into your eye. Gates to your ear, gates to your to your body gate, which is your mouth is a powerful well, this is powerful stuff that you have.
You have the power to govern these things, your temper, your tongue, your appetites, and forth, your spending, your money. You have the power to govern your money. You say, well, no, the government takes my money, but the government takes a portion of it for taxes. I get that the less they take, the better would be for all of us. Right. But also, there are some good things that the government does with our money, like maintaining a great military to defend ourselves, to protect our country. The best defense is a strong offense that you never have to use because nobody wants to mess with you. That's what makes our country one of the things that makes America anyway, and some of the other great countries powerful is they don't want to take over.
They don't want to fight, but they have the ability to, if forced. This is something that's so important that we realize our money and our habits and what we do with our money is really up to us. And we have the power to put God first. We have the power to spend less than what we consume. We have the power to do that. And when we govern our money, you should have a budget, You should have it written down, you should have it on an app. You should make every dollar, you should make every dollar count. You should know where every penny goes. If you took real note of that, you'd realize where you're spending things that are a waste of money and you'd find better ways to accomplish the same things like making your own coffee. If you're a coffee drinker, rather than paying $6 for a cup that you can spend pennies on by doing it yourself.
Yeah, that's just one example. And if that's, Hey, I budgeted drinking a cup of coffee, you know, from a coffee shop once a day for every day of my life. That's part of my. But fine. Let it be part of your budget. As long as is not robbing some other area of your life that could actually produce something rather than just a quick buzz or a warm feeling. Huh? All right. I didn't mean to get on that topic, but if you can learn to govern these four things, you have the power over these four things. The one who governs these four things is the one who will rise to the top in life. Get a hold of your temper. Get a hold of your tongue, get a hold of your appetites, and get a hold of your spending and direct those in positive ways. There. It's not like abstaining from all things.
Controlling these things doesn't mean never having fun or good things. It means invest, being in the right things, investing in good things that I'll bet if you spent money on investing in a certain stock, that is something that you know is going to grow. You'll feel better about the rewards of that five years from now than you felt. If you would have used that money to go on a vacation or if you would have used that money to buy a new code or whatever and buy all the things you believe you need in life and want in life. I don't have an issue with that. The more you have the the more you can give and the more generous you can be. But you can't be generous if you don't have a budget.
So get control of your money, get control of your appetites, get control of your tongue, get control of your temper, and use these things as powerful forces for life that will elevate you and catapult you into living the life of a champion. Because you master what champions master and you govern what champions govern. All right, Good enough for today. I hope that you receive this. I hope that you feel this vibe of you've got this, You can do this. This is simple. Anybody can do this. You're better than a person that takes a city because you decided to govern yourself. You deciding to rule your own life. And that's where the power is. Ruling yourself is what catapult you to ruling and reigning in life.