The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and the World

by Peter Scazzero

Bearing fruit requires slowing down enough to give Jesus direct access to every aspect of our lives and our leadership.

Remember, Jesus doesn’t say we can’t lead or build a church without him. What he does say is that our efforts are worth nothing unless they flow out of a relationship of loving union with him (John 15:5).

although what we do matters, who we are matters much more.

I know the experience of doing good things that helped a lot of people while being too busy or caught up in my own whirlwind of leadership worries to be intimately connected to Jesus.

The only mark of genuine spiritual maturity and ministry effectiveness, Edwards concluded, is the outworking of agape — a self-giving love for God and others.

Cultivating this kind of relationship with God can’t be hurried or rushed.

You Can’t Do God’s Work Your Way without Paying a Steep Price

You Can’t Live at Warp Speed without Warping Your Soul

An important, yet often overlooked, New Testament story illustrates the dangers of rushing to have a powerful ministry without slowing down for loving union with Jesus.

In an effort to capture some of the prestige that was bestowed on those who released God’s power over evil spirits, they took a spiritual shortcut. They skipped over making a long-term investment in a life of loving union — the source of Paul’s miracles — and rushed headlong into spiritual realities they did not understand and were woefully ill equipped to deal with. As a result, they barely escaped with their lives.

Deliverance ministry fascination. Shortcutting relationship in love with Christ for a dramatic power ministry.

Whenever we find ourselves wanting the ministry impact of Jesus while simultaneously resisting spending time with Jesus, we are positioning ourselves for a beating and some variation on being run “out of the house naked and bleeding.” The seven sons of Sceva tried to speak and act on truths that were not rooted in their lives. They did not have sufficient strength in their life with God to support the level of spiritual warfare in which they were engaged.

But I do know the empty feeling of speaking truths to others that I had not digested myself. I have borrowed insights or ideas because they worked for someone else. I was impressed by how powerful the words sounded when a particular person said them. Why wouldn’t they also be powerful for me?

Jesus spent over 90 percent of his life — thirty of his thirty-three years — in obscurity. In those hidden years, he forged a life of loving union with the Father.

The observable greatness of his three-year ministry is built on the foundation of the investment Jesus made in those unseen years.

Jesus models contentment under pressure, calmness in the face of betrayal, and power to forgive at his crucifixion — all of which is the fruit of a long history of oneness with his Father. I am convinced that a significant reason so many Christian leaders lack the qualities Jesus modeled is because we skim in our relationship with God. Instead of contentment and calm, our leadership is marked by discontent and anxiety.

At the annual denominational meetings, it is always the achievements of the larger churches that are celebrated. As much as he knows there is more to church leadership than attendance numbers, he feels he is measured by how many people he has. It gnaws at his gut and he frequently feels anxious.

Find Your “Desert” with God

Moses spent forty years in the desert before God called him to lead his people out of Egypt.

Later in life, he retreated again, this time to an “inner mountain” in the wilderness where he lived alone for the rest of his life. Here is how one author described him: “It was not his physical dimension that distinguished him from the rest, but the stability of character and purity of the soul. His soul being free of confusion, he held his outer senses also undisturbed . . . he was never troubled, his soul being calm, and he never looked gloomy, his mind being joyous.”13

finding a space — a park bench, a library, a bedroom, a chair facing a window, a retreat center — where we can disengage from people and activities to be alone with God.

He was called to grow into an “Abba,” a father of the faith, who would have an impact on those he served in relative obscurity.

But that is hardly the case. In fact, this tendency to blindly seize more and more opportunities for God has destroyed many a leader whose good intentions lacked a strong foundation in and with God. In order to establish this kind of foundation, we need to embrace the gift of our human limits.

The love of God itself is located at the center because, unless I am receiving and relying on God’s love all through the day, I have nothing of lasting value to give. Keeping the four areas in balance prevents me from adding activities or commitments in one area that would prohibit me from maintaining my commitments in another.

What do you currently do that nurtures your spirit and fills you with delight?

What people, places, and activities do you need to avoid because they deplete you or make it difficult for you to remain anchored in Christ?

What “have to’s” impact your rhythms in this season of life?

I seek to be silent in God’s presence for twenty minutes a day.

Consolations are those experiences that fill us with joy, life, energy, and peace. Desolations are those that drain us and feel like death. Consolations connect us more deeply with God, ourselves, and others. Desolations disconnect us.

Sabbath is a twenty-four-hour period in which we cease all work in order to rest and delight in God’s gifts.

The problem with too many leaders is that we allow our work to trespass on every other area of life,