A leader is only able to lead others because he disciplines himself. The person who does not know how to bow to discipline imposed from without, who does not know how to obey, will not make a good leader-nor will the one who has not learned to impose discipline within his own life. Those who scorn scripturally or legally constituted authority, or rebel against it, rarely qualify for high leadership positions.

It is obvious that Paul did not regard prayer as supplemental, but as fundamental-not something to be added to his work but the very matrix out of which his work was born. He was a man of action because he was a man of prayer. It was probably his prayer even more than his preaching that produced the kind of leaders we meet in his letters.

True leaders must be willing to suffer for the sake of objectives great enough to demand their wholehearted obedience.

Leadership is the ability to recognize the special abilities and limitations of others, combined with the capacity to fit each one into the job where he will do his best.

The man of leadership caliber will work while others waste time, study while others sleep, pray while others play. There will be no place for loose or lazy habits in word or thought, deed or dress. He will observe a soldierly discipline, diet and deportment, so that he may wage a good warfare.

It is very possible to be proud of the spiritual gifts God has entrusted to us and to strut about ostentatiously, forgetting that we have nothing which we have not received, that grace is a gift, an undeserved favor. We can actually be filled with pride at the eloquence and brilliance of our sermon on humility.

Faith never knows where it is being led, or it would not be faith. True faith is content to travel under sealed orders.