Live. Love. Lead.

     My school year is almost done...more importantly my rookie year as a leader is at its close.  I cannot believe how much I have learned, how much leadership was/is more than I expected, and how much inner work truly goes into this role.  The list could truly go on and on.        During a particularly trying part of this new chapter of leadership I was reading a passage in I Kings 12 that so resonated with my everyday that it truly revived my prayer life and stimulated me to act with such courage and confidence.  It was when King Solomon had just died and his son Rehoboam has stepped into his place.  The people of the successful nation that Solomon had built came to Rehoboam and essentially asked him, "How are you going to lead?"  He asks for some time and then consults with the elders that served his father.  Those elders told him to listen to the people, speak kind words to them, and become their servant.  Then he went to his buddies and they essentially told him, "

     Lately, I have been re-studying the times of the kings of Israel and Judah to re-visit the narratives that I had not read in some time.   As I studied the kings who were just 2-3 generations removed from the whole-hearted King David, I was struck with the realness of how our past truly impacts our present.  In chapters 15 & 16 the phrase "he went in the way of all the sins of his father" or something to that degree, came up often in such a short stint of Bible space so to speak.       This recurring phrase also brought to mind some recent situations that I have encountered with young people that I mentor who often use the excuse of, "Why should I do what you're telling me; you did exactly what I am doing" in reference to bad choices.  Honestly, I am still at a loss for words when I hear such a weak justification for not doing what one knows to be right.         Both the biblical reference and the everyday reality of trying to influence young adults (