Releasing the Leader in You Part II

“Preparation, (how to…)?”

Synopsis of Bible Study 1/13/16

Delivered by Bishop Walker III

Every leader needs to understand how to be a leader.

Ezekiel 38:7 says “Prepare yourself and be ready, you and all your companies that are gathered about you; and be a guard for them. – As a leader it is important that you understand the importance of being prepared.

It is not only important that the leader be prepared; It is equally as important for the people around you to be prepared too. For example: A race car driver has 4 people in the pit. 3 of them are prepared, but one is not. During a tire change, the 3 prepared pitmen completed their jobs flawlessly, but the one that was not prepared, left 2 lugs of the tire. With two lugs being the only thing holding one tire on, the wheel flew off during the race. The moral of the story is, no matter how prepared the 3 were, the actions of the one unprepared pitmen cost them the race. We have to have a willingness to prepare the people under and around us.

Jesus said to the disciples, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men”. In other words, Jesus was saying that he would prepare them for the tasks they were about to undertake.

Living a Balancing Act

You complain that you can’t balance everything after asking the Lord to bless you with all of this stuff!

How do we balance everything we are required to do?

1. Plan to work – You have to be disciplined. John 9:4 says 4 I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work.- In order to have balance, you got to be prepared and operate in discipline. If you don’t plan you will wonder why you can’t get everything done.

Planning means:

2. You have to plan ahead. Bishop Walker plans his sermons. He writes his messages months in advance. He doesn’t have the luxury of waiting until Saturday night to try and hear from God. When you do this, you end up with sermons that are not relevant all the time. In addition, if he doesn’t prepare his sermons in advance, then his life will collide with his destiny. As a leader you always have to think and plan ahead.
3. Proverbs 20:4 says ⁴ The lazy man will not plow because of winter;
   He will beg during harvest and have Proverbs 6:6-11(MSG) ^6-11 You lazy fool, look at an ant. Watch it closely; let it teach you a thing or two. Nobody has to tell it what to do.All summer it stores up food; at harvest it stockpiles provisions. So how long are you going to laze around doing nothing? How long before you get out of bed? A nap here, a nap there, a day off here, a day off there, sit back, take it easy—do you know what comes next? Just this: You can look forward to a dirt-poor life, poverty your permanent houseguest! – Because you don’t have balance, you are throwing stuff up at the last minute. You got to plan ahead! You can’t lay in bed all day, wasting too much time.
4. Plan to win. Proverbs 16:9 (NKJV) says ⁹ A man’s heart plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps., Proverbs 16:3 (NKJV) says ³ Commit your works to the Lord, And your thoughts will be established. – God is a covenant keeping God when you commit yourself to him. God will tell you when, how, and where. All we have to do is be prepared. God works for prepared people. When you are not prepared, you limit your options.
5. Jeremiah 29:11 (NKJV) ¹¹ For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.-God has great plans for us!

7 things to ensure success in leadership

1. Organization – Organization is critical. If you organized you are prepared for what’s next.
2. Motivation – You can tell when a person is prepared, because when you are organized, you can motivate people to go towards what you are trying to achieve.
3. A great leader is self-motivated! What you are after is enough to keep you going.
4. Delegation – Whatever God gave you to do, he didn’t give it to you to do all by yourself. You have to ask yourself, “Who can I delegate things to and trust that they will make it happen?”
5. If you have people that work for you, that you pay and you don’t trust them to take the torch and run with it, then why do you pay them?
6. Jesus used delegation. He could have got that donkey he needed that was tied inside of town, but he sent the disciples to get it. When he rose Lazarus from the dead, he delegated the people to lose him from his burial clothes. You need to learn the effectiveness of delegation.
7. Collaboration – Work with each other and work outside of each other. There are people doing what you are trying to do. Why not collaborate with them and not reinvent the wheel. A lot of churches can’t come together today, because we worried about who will be in charge. We can’t just do something good for the hood. We have to take the credit for
8. Consecration – I step back and ask God to bless it, before I move further into that thing. Don’t go in on your own strength.
9. Manifestation – This is making stuff happen, producing it. The bible says you shall know them by the fruit that they bear. Leaders have to produce things.
10. Ex – Bishop Walker says that when he started preaching, there was one thing that he vowed he would never do as a Pastor. That was he would never be that pastor that would have a building fund and never build a building. If you speak it and it is of God, then it should manifest.

1. 3 letters to remember.

MSH – this means you need people that make stuff happen!

• If you are baking a cake, you have to mix up all the ingredients and put them into the oven. If you come back for cake and it is in same shape it was when you left it, then something is wrong with the oven. In like manner, if you give an assignment or a vision to someone, and you come back 6 months later to find it in the same shape, then something must be wrong with the leader.
• Leaders manifest stuff. They don’t do stuff after the due date. The problem with us is we get too used to grace periods.

1. Evaluation – Wait to see what people say about what you have produced. This helps you determine if you’ve made any kind of progress. It also establishes where you are.
2. Place value on your time – You have entrusted your Pastor so much so, that you come all the way down to the church to get a word. This is why Bishop only keeps his members for only an hour (without going over). A good leader values his member’s time.
   1. Some people like to argue that you can’t set a time limit on the Holy Ghost. They argue that you need time to allow the Holy Ghost to move. Our answer to this is simple: Every time the Holy Ghost moved in the bible, it was instantly. All the extra time that we spend in church is not the Holy Ghost, it is us.
   2. Psalm 39:4 (NKJV) says ⁴ “Lord, make me to know my end, And what is the measure of my days, That I may know how frail I – If you are going to be effective, you have to understand the importance of time. Be at the right place at the right time, with the right equipment, ready to concentrate! If you are on time, you are late. Traffic, accidents, and etc, should be factored in. You got to break that trifling spirit of not being on time for stuff. You want your check to be on time don’t you? Then make preparations to be on time for your engagements.
   3. Our time, is money and we don’t have neither to waste. If you got time to waste, you got money to waste. You know how man weddings we have had that people missed, because they thought the wedding was going to startd late? Bishop believes on being on time no matter what.

Modify your life and prepare for your destiny

1. You are predestined. Prepare your mind for your new destiny. Proverbs 23:7a (NKJV) says ⁷ For as he thinks in his heart, so is … – When your mind expands, what you tolerate becomes smaller. We often feel guilty because we think different than we used to.
2. When your mind changes; your apparatus changes. On Jefferson Street, we had gold plates used to take up the offering. Bishop keeping telling them that we needed to get baskets for receiving the offering. See, you are only going to receive what you are prepared to receive. What is in your mind comes out your mouth.

3. You got to have a strategic plan to meet your goals. Luke 14:28 says (NKJV) says ²⁸ For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it— You learn how to make a strategy. Strategy is asking yourself, what is my plan to make it happen?
   1. Steps for making a strategic plan
4. Determine where you are. You have to know where you are so you can measure any kind of progress.
5. Identify what is important. You can’t boil the ocean. Identify import milestones.
6. Define what you must achieve. When you build a house, you got to lay a foundation. If the foundation is not good, then the house will not stand.
7. Determine who is accountable. There are many ideas, but nobody wants to own it. Success is in the follow through.
8. Review, Review, Review! Go back over everything and make sure you have not left anything out.
9. Remain focused on the main objective. Henry David Thoreau quotes, “What are you busy about. It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?”
10. You can’t expect what you do not inspect. Delegate stuff, but know that some things get lost in translation. You got to inspect to make sure your intentions are taken account of.
11. You got to break attachments. Remove dead weight. Genesis 13:5 (NKJV) says ⁵ Lot also, who went with Abram, had flocks and herds and tents. ⁶ Now the land was not able to support them, that they might dwell together, for their possessions were so great that they could not dwell together. ⁷ And there was strife between the herdsmen of Abram’s livestock and the herdsmen of Lot’s livestock. The Canaanites and the Perizzites then dwelt in the land. ⁸ So Abram said to Lot, “Please let there be no strife between you and me, and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen; for we are ⁹ Is not the whole land before you? Please separate from me. If you take the left, then I will go to the right; or, if you go to the right, then I will go to the left.”- There comes a moment that you realize that everyone can’t go the full length of the journey with you. You can’t get too emotionally attached as a leader. Even launch rockets fall off of the rocket ship at a certain time.
    1. Even though some people are not meant to go full length with you, if you leave them with you too long, they will frustrate you.
12. Establish rules of relationship engagement. Learn how to disconnect properly. Don’t burn bridges. Genesis 31:39 (NKJV) says ³⁹ That which was torn by beasts I did not bring to you; I bore the loss of it. You required it from my hand, whether stolen by day or stolen by night. – What you may not know is competitors often have coffee and breakfast together. They all talk about who not to hire sometimes in their conversations, because you didn’t leave right. If you going to quit, just quit. Thank them for the opportunity and leave right. Don’t curse everyone out on your way out the door. As a leader, don’t break relationships by leaving wrong.

Everything that God created was prepared for prepared people and heaven was too. Heaven is a prepared place for prepared people. Everything that is for you, God will prepare for you. The question is, how prepared are you for it? Preparation always needs opportunity. Whatever class you got to take, make sure you are prepared. You can’t believe God to do great things in your life, if you are not ready. Think about it, do you think the Lord is going to tell us when he is coming back? No, because he wants us to be prepared.