On December 5, 2019, Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church spoke to the student body of Wheaton College. The video of his message is shown above. The focus of his time was spent building a biblical framework for The 3 Temptations Every Leader Faces and The 3 Antidotes To Those Temptations.
As he says in the video, no one has trained more pastors than Pastor Rick and his team and what he deposited into the lives of these future Christian leaders cannot be measured. Ironically, those same principles still apply to seasoned leaders like many of you reading this post as well.
The following are 22 statements which provide his conclusions on these subjects:
- “I have people tell me all the time, ‘My problem is I just don’t love Jesus enough.’ But that is not actually the issue. Your problem is you don’t realize how much He loves you. Because if you really understood and you felt how much He really loves you, you can’t help but love Him.”
- “Your number one job in life is to let God love you.”
- “You must build into your life three character qualities – Integrity, Humility and Generosity. They are the antidote to the three great traps of leadership and are the antidote to the three great temptations of life.”
- “The only thing good we can say about Satan is he is entirely predictable. He doesn’t have any new temptations… 1 John 2:15-16 says, ‘Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.’”
- “God has never made a person He doesn’t love… God never makes anything without a purpose.”
- “We are to love the people of the world and hate the value system (of the world). You know what the problem is? We do the exact opposite. We hate the people and love the value system.”
- “The lust of the flesh is the temptation to feel. I want to feel pleasure… Hedonism.”
- “The lust of the eyes is the temptation to have. I see it and I want it… Materialism.”
- “The pride of the life is the temptation to be. I want to be admired. I want to be envied. I want people to think I’m God… Secularism.”
- “The first is passions. The second is possessions. The third is positions/popularity/prestige/power.”
- “(This first temptation is) Sex. (The second is) Salary. (The third is) Status.”
- “God wants you to be Godly in character but you’ll never be a god.”
- “Temptation always builds on a natural desire… The temptation is to use your own gifts to satisfy your own flesh. This is the first temptation of leadership and you’re going to face it many, many times in your life.”
- “I don’t care if you love to preach. I care if you love the people you preach to. That’s the real test of a pastor.”
- “The second great temptation will be the temptation to sell out what God has for your life for money… To sell out what God created you to do to make more money.”
- “(The third) temptation is to show off, to do the spectacular… All your life your going to be tempted to show off in a spectacular way.”
- ” The antidote to the three great temptations of life are humility, integrity, and generosity.”
- “Integrity means what you see is what you get.”
- “The first step at authenticity in your life is for you to admit your inauthentic attempt to be authentic… Stop taking pictures of your quiet time… The moment you start staging your quiet time, God says, ‘I’m out of here. You’re just showing off.’ You’re glorifying yourself glorifying God.”
- “Sin may be private but it is never personal. It always affects another person even if they don’t know about it… No secret sin is actually a sin.”
- “Humility is not denying your strengths. Humility is being honest about your weaknesses.”
- “You are both infinitely valuable and infinitely flawed, both are true… God only uses flawed people.”
So to recap, The 3 Temptations Every Leader Faces are:
- “The lust of the flesh is the temptation to feel. I want to feel pleasure… Hedonism.”
- “The lust of the eyes is the temptation to have. I see it and I want it… Materialism.”
- “The pride of the life is the temptation to be. I want to be admired. I want to be envied. I want people to think I’m God… Secularism.”
The 3 Antidotes To These Temptations are Humility, Integrity, and Generosity.
Are you ready to make the changes needed to become the type of leader God created you to be?
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