A few weeks ago I was with a group of friends playing a party game. The idea of the game was to get someone to guess what we were talking about by giving a brief description about the "thing." On this particular round the "thing" was our "best friend." Several people would describe attributes of their spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend. I didn't. Yep, I didn't use my wife as my example of my best friend.

In the last couple weeks I have been thinking a lot about this. Am I married to my best friend? Am I in a bad marriage? Is our marriage doomed? Am I a bad husband? Am I just a jerk? Now, the answer to the last two questions may not have anything to do with how I responded to the question in the game. 

The notion of being married to your best friend is a very romantic one. It places your spouse at the very top of your friend list, they are your most important friend in your life, they are your everything. That is a wonderful sentiment, but is it selling the relationship between my wife and I short? She is not my best friend, she is my wife. That is more. I think we have taken this idea of what our marriages are and what they are meant to be and have tried to apply the same standards of our other relationships to them. 

One of the things you will see if you spend any time looking at prominent pastors on the internet is that pretty much everyone of them considers themselves a leadership guru. Almost all of the biggest name pastors has a leadership blog or podcast or book or some combination of those three. They speak at leadership conferences and they tweet out leadership advice on the regular. ​I have worked in three different church settings as well as a large Christian camp. I have been led by many different kinds of leaders. I have felt a desire for some time to offer my own insight into leadership. However, I want to take a different approach. I am not here as the leadership guru/expert, I am here as the guy who has been led. I am here as the guy who has had several different types of personalities and styles of leadership that I have worked under. I am here as somewhat of a follower. I will add the disclaimer that I am not always a good follower. I don't always agree with the leadership. One of the interesting things is that the leaders I have worked with that are alright with me not agreeing are the leaders who have been the most successful, but I am getting ahead of myself. 

I want to focus on four particular thoughts and observations I have made as I've been led.

1. "In order to lead, people have to want to follow you."
I wish this didn't need to be said. But I have had experience with leaders who have not grasped this concept. They have operated completely from the idea that "you will follow me because I am the leader!" Let me tell you, these guys are the worst! There is no leadership that comes from this approach. It is about power, it is about position. True leadership comes from a desire to see the over all picture become beautiful. If no one wants to follow, then you aren't leading anyone. There may be people who stay part of the team, they stick around out of their need for an income, but you are not leading them. This is where we see companies or organizations moving backwards. Its where we see failure. If your efforts are centered around self-preservation or self-promotion your efforts are self-centered. There is no progress in self-centered leadership.

A few weeks ago a friend of mine, Jimmy, wrote a blog that got a lot of traction. You can read it here. It was in response to the conversations happening in the wake of the Supreme Court response to marriage equality. The blog went viral and had thousands of people sharing it and started some interesting conversations. Jimmy looked at the often tossed about cliche "hate the sin, love the sinner" and how it was being used in response to the ruling. From that blog, it got me thinking more and more about that phrase. 

Now, let me be clear, this is not a response to Jimmy's blog, not by any stretch. I was simply caught up in that one simple line, and it got me thinking. I think that what I am seeing far to often is that I tend to hate the sinner, and love the sin. Before you get to far ahead of this, and start to judge me for being a mean, horrible person, know this, the sinner I find myself hating is myself, and the sin I so love, to often, is my own. Perhaps you are guilty of this to. I sin. I sin often. I am very, very human. In that humanity, I do things I know I shouldn't, things I know do not please God. But I enjoy them. That is part of the problem with sin. Some of it is fun. Some of it brings some sense of pleasure, at least in the moment. Its part of the lie that Satan has us convinced of. Sin is fun. At times, I would say, its far easier and instantly gratifying to get lost in our sin.

For the last few weeks I have been thinking a lot on the role of the Holy Spirit. For many who identify as Christian the Holy Spirit is an aspect of our faith that carries some of the most mystery to it. And for people outside of this faith, it probably seems to be one of the most absurd aspects of all this. I mean if you really break it down, the whole thing seems nuts. First we have a God who created everything who then decides that He needs to come and be among his creation to help bring them back to their Creator. And when he sets in motion the ability to do that, He takes on another form so that He can be inside of us and be with us all the time.  And the reality is its probably even more absurd then that, but our human minds can't even beyond to comprehend the vastness of all the God is.

So we have the opportunity to have God with us in all moments of all things and at all times. We have been given the Holy Spirit. We have a direct, intimate connection to God. He is speaking to us directly, we just need to hear it. There is so much noise. There are so many things that we allow to drown out that voice. Sometimes we don't recognize the voice. Sometimes it sounds like a foreign language so we filter it out. Spoken word artist Anis Mojgani has an amazing line in his poem Shake The Dust. I love the image it creates: "This is for the two year olds, who cannot be understood because they speak half English and half God."