The Lord's Prayer is an excellent model, but it was never intended to be a magical incantation to get God's attention. Jesus gave this prayer as a pattern to suggest the variety of elements that should be included when we pray.

Whenever you see something going well - whenever light begins to chase back the darkness that threatens to engulf our world - look closely. There stands a leader who is holding that candle.

A leader's most valuable asset is not their time but their energy and ability to energize others.

Effective leaders do not fear passion. They welcome it. But from time to time passionate discussions digress into personal attacks, and real people get really hurt. In my view, leaders must head that off before it happens.

Prayerless people cut themselves off from God's prevailing power, and the frequent result is the familiar feeling of being overwhelmed, overrun, beaten down, pushed around, defeated. Surprising numbers of people are willing to settle for lives like that.

If you're living a yielded life, and if you have the preaching and teaching gift, and you're yielding that to God on a continual basis, that's one of the signs that you're in the right place doing the right thing for the right reasons. If you're doing something in the kingdom, and you rarely feel that, that's a red flag. Something needs to be looked at. Are you using the right gift? Are you using it in the right way? For the right reasons? At the right time? In the right context? If I didn't feel it consistently, that would be quite troubling to me.

You can never underestimate the amount of energy and frequency you must give to vision casting. You can never underestimate it.