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

by Peter Scazzero

God reveals himself to us, and to the world, through limits in unique and powerful ways — if we have eyes to see. Consider these examples from Scripture: • Moses was limited by the fact that he was slow of speech. He shares his concerns with God, who then says, “Who gave human beings their mouths? . . . Is it not I, the LORD? Now go: I will help you speak and will teach you what to say” (Exodus 4:10 – 12). God makes it clear that he is present in and through Moses’ limitations. Moses then leads three million people for the next forty years in the power of God. • Jeremiah was limited by a melancholy disposition. He cursed the day he was born and wanted to die. Yet God was present in and through the limits of his temperament, giving him insights about the heart of God that still touch millions of God’s people to this day. • John the Baptist was limited by his simple, semi-monastic life in the desert. But God was present in that limitation, granting John an ability to see something nobody else in his day could see clearly — the extraordinary revelation of Jesus as the Lamb of God. • Abraham was limited by having only one son with Sarah. He suffered under that limitation, yet he met God in extraordinary ways through his journey of faith. He became the father of us all (Romans 4:17), and his story provides us revelations of who God is — all of which came out of his limits. • Gideon was limited by the size of his army — just 300 Israelites going up against 135,000 Midianites. Bu...