We are all intended to lead. As men, fathers, brothers,husbands.

You can lead from a position of authority, but the most effective leaders lead as they build relationships of influence…Tony Dungy THE MENTOR LEADER.

I mentioned in the previous post that it is important not to allow things that have historically divided us such as race, religion, even politics,  bring divisiveness to the conversation. So I want all of you to feel comfortable speaking from where you are in sharing your story and thoughts. We are each at different places in our lives, spiritually, maturity, experiences. However each of us has something positive and constructive to bring to the conversation.

You will find that I have chosen www.menlikedavid.wordpress.com as the name of my site. The reason for that is two-fold. First the David of the Bible is such a great example. He was not perfect. He committed adultery, murder to get what he wanted and yet the Bible quotes God as saying David was a man after his own heart. Then there is my son David, named after the David of the Bible. My David  was what the doctors called mildly mentally handicapped, although I can tell you with absolute certainty that he was much smarter than I about getting along on the street.

One day he and I were coming home from work (he was my helper for a while). I looked over next to me on my left and saw a car driving along side of my door. The driver was focused past me and on David to my right. He was flipping his hands around with fingers poking in odd directions like it was some kind of sign language. I didn’t get it for a second, but when I looked at David he was signing back at this guy and the guy didn’t appear to appreciate it very much. I could see that things were beginning to escalate, so I skewed my face all up, stuck my tongue out the side of my mouth and put one hand in front of me and simulated a similar string of signs to the guy. He looked at me like I was crazy and sped off never to be seen again.

My point here is that neither of these David’s were perfect, nor am I, and  I am also pretty sure that most of you would be the first to say that you are not perfect either. That does not mean we can not reach for perfection or set higher standards, to exceed the expectations of others or even ourselves to achieve great things and influence lives for the better. So let’s work together with the understanding that there is more that we can do than what we are first able to see. Some of us would call that faith.

I will speak from a position of faith. I have no agenda to convince you to accept my belief system in this blog. At the same time I have been a christian for about 50 years, so it is impossible to share life experiences and suggest ideas that are free of any impact of what God has done in my life. I am not ashamed of my beliefs, I just want to be fair in presenting the ideas in this blog, so that those who are not of my faith or belief system may feel free to express themselves, without being judged or disrespected.

So I have been looking at some of my relationships over this holiday weekend and the opportunities within those relationships to mentor and lead those I have interacted with. I have had opportunities with my granddaughters, my Service manager at work, my wife, friends on facebook and assorted strangers with whom I have interacted in the last two days. Some of these I have a perception of success, some not so much.

The best might be my interaction with my service manager at work…we were to have Thursday –Monday off. My service manager called me Thursday evening to ask if I would work Friday morning with him to take care of a good customer of ours who had no water. I could have refused with no consequence. But he would have had to work alone and longer, or possibly lost a good customer in a somewhat competitive business. I discussed this with Nelene because it would impact our time together as a family and with her blessing helped George get the job done in 1/2 the time and we both got back to our families in time to share most of the day.

There were a lot of places this could have unraveled and fallen apart. Most of you have been in similar situations and know what I am talking about. It helps to have a wife that supports you and your attempt to lead and encourage the men in your life. Had she been unwilling to share our time with work, I would have stayed home, but her willingness to give up a couple of hours here allowed us to be a blessing to an entire family. The place where I failed in my perception was later in the day in passing conversation. I made a comment to Nelene about housework that was said jokingly but hurt her just the same. I saw it in her face, went to her right away and apologised for what I said and for hurting her feelings.That cleared the air right away and we have enjoyed our time with the girls so far this weekend but it has caused me to look hard at some things.

How often do I say hurtful things without catching them? How can I prevent those things from happening? How did those words come out of my mouth without realizing the potential for harm?  You see I believe that because I love her, everything I do and say should build her up and encourage her. It always has to be about her. Sometimes conversations have to take place that are difficult, somethings things might need to be said so as not to enable, but always in love and with the objective to encourage and build up.  I Corinthians 8:1.”….knowledge puffs up but love builds up…”

Let me encourage you to be consistent and intentional about looking at how you interact with those around you. Everything we do and say has an impact either negative or positive. Do we miss opportunities to build up those around us. Do we take advantage or neglect those relationships closest to us with the people we say we love the most?

Something to think about…