When I was a kid, my mom gave me enough candy to give to my entire 4th-grade class. I cannot remember what holiday it was, but it was so fun to share what had been given to me with others. With that gesture, my mom taught me more about living out my faith and leadership than I learned in Bible college, Seminary, and Grad School combined. Here is the lesson:
“Freely you have received, freely give.” These words were spoken by Jesus right before he sent his friends on a trip to “give” the good news and power of God to others. The nature of our faith in Christ might not have any better expression than that is found in these six words.
What God has so generously given, and you have grabbed hold of with your heart, mind, and hands, now go give that away, just like He did. I am always inspired and cut by those six words.
If it were broken-down, it would look like this:
“What you did not deserve, I provided for you in abundance, you took hold of it, immersing yourself in it, and now go give to others what they do not deserve so they can take hold of it.” - Jesus.
“Freely you have received, freely give.”
The nature of Christian faith is not religious in nature but is relationally responsive and then relationally generous. It looks like this. What has been done to and for you must go through you, to and for others. What you have been given is to be shared. What you have been provided with must be used to provide. The Bible’s way of saying it: “We love because he loved us first. Freely you have received, freely give.”
If you are just now finding us, welcome! But if you have traveled along with us, you know that God is inviting us to be his friends (freely you received) and then to be his partner (freely give) and that this invite stretches to the entirety of the Bible. The entirety of living a Christian life is in saying “yes” to these invitations.
This is not only the nature of our relationship with God; it is also the nature of what makes a great leader. Power, influence, status, success, and accumulation are not the goal of a Jesus-style leadership but rather generosity. More than that, a generosity that recognizes the generosity of God to us and then stewards that generosity to others.
Let me see if I can wrap this up with a couple of strategic insights. First, great leadership’s lasting impact is found in what we give away, not in what we accumulate. This is a bit counterintuitive. Getting is the battle cry of the human heart. Get love, get wealth, get power, get status, get, get, get. I was in another country and sharing American candy (this is like gold there), and some fell on the floor; I watched people dive, wrestle and begin to be aggressive in the “getting.” In contrast, several parents said, I am not eating mine; I want to GIVE it to my kids and their friends. In God’s economy, getting is for giving.
Second, this was not some divine pearl of wisdom Jesus was dropping on his friends, but rather, this was a part of their training. He was teaching them to be the kind of leader who gives generously because he has received generously. What Jesus was saying was, “You guys are getting ready to go, and as you go, the strength you have in going will be in giving what you have received.” This is training for leadership.
What would happen if you took the words of Jesus and embraced them with abandon? Let me rephrase his words one more time: I have given you love, give love away. I have given you grace, give grace away. I have given you hope, give hope away. I have given you the Son of God, give the Son of God away. Add your own list of God’s generous gifts and use this sentence:
God has given me _____, and it is my turn to give _____ away.