Morningside Devotionals

View on Vocaroo >>   Initiative is a strange characteristic. Because a person who takes initiative is a different kind of individual. And we all know that because we see people who are going to the front, to make sure that things take place, and we wonder, where does that come from(?); initiative can be a learned characteristic. Because if you stand back and you look at a picture image and you think, you know, that skyline would be perfect. If it only had one more tall building in there, initiative is drawing in that building, and then painting it in; so that the painting will be complete, or another way to look at it is an individual with initiative; sees that something needs to take place.   For example, if there's a lack of general education about how to repair things initiative goes toward trying to help others learn how to do that. I have a friend who's a plumber And what he discovered is that other plumbers weren't being created weren't being taught, were...

View on Vocaroo >>   As we go through these characteristics of a leader, these are all pronounced characteristics. They are things that leaders have learned to emulate, and to teach others how to emulate, and for they themselves as leaders to emulate, but most normally, these are characteristics that individuals possess, because as they've grown up, they've been educated by leaders as leaders.  But that is kind of changing in our culture. It's hard to explain the difference between a family that is patriarchal with a father who is present. Who is himself a leader and is teaching his children leadership and a non patriarchal family that is not centered in that way. So those lessons aren't passed on in that way. I'm thinking about such men as, for example, Gen. Patton and the relationship that he had with his father see those kinds of dominant leading men.  Well, I think that they are changing in our culture, and I believe that in our culture, we need to...

View on Vocaroo >>   Endurance is easy to say very difficult to prove out. What does endurance mean? If you really want to test endurance, just to see how long your endurance actually is, get somebody with a gallon jug of water in a car. And just take off, walking and let them follow you and just walk until you can't walk anymore. You may make 3 miles, you may make 5 miles, but at some point you're gonna say, this walking is getting old, get in the car, have a drink and you'll know your level of walking endurance, you'll know how long you can keep on walking without it being to the point where you don't feel like walking any more.   We view endurance with several different aspects of perspectives and vantage points. Endurance is also easily associated with long distance running. People are familiar with the idea of building up endurance, but in Christianity, building up endurance, takes on an entirely different meaning we think of and usually hear sermo...

View on Vocaroo >>   Dependability means more than just being able to be trusted to be somewhere at a specific time and event. Dependability means that you have shoulders that can be leaned on. You have strength of character that can be trusted, that you can be depended upon, to act and react to certain circumstances in certain ways.   Dependability in a leader means that when you suggest to folks, or even order folks that something must be done; that you've thought it through that you're not going to ask them to do something that you yourself would not be willing to do. So that the reason that you're delegating is not because you don't want to do it, but because you have the idea. And it needs to spread, and it needs to be done by other people. In order that the overall progress of the organisation can be furthered, so dependability in a leader is an essential trait, and it is fundamentally a trait that can be learned.   All of my life. because I gre...

View on Vocaroo >>   Years ago, there was a movement in business, especially in business schools, universities and colleges had to do with just make a decision! Because after the decision. Obviously there's going to have to be adjustments and there are always adjustments in every project that's ever proposed. So the big statement was just make a decision.   Well, here's the thing about decisiveness. It's not so much that you're just making a decision, it's actually taking into consideration the factors that need to go into the result that you're considering. So decisiveness is a learned behaviour and it's very much a behaviour that can be improved upon.   I love to play Chess. And more than loving to play it, I love to win and I hate to lose, but I also just love to play the game. Well here's the thing after learning a style of opening in Chess. You can win an awful lot of games because it's a very hard opening to combat against. So t...

View on Vocaroo >>   Courage is a word that gets thrown around a lot. And people have a lot of interesting pithy, sayings about courage, courage is not the ability to just stand there and fight without any sense of fear, courage, is the ability to fight in the face of fear.  I personally like Winston Churchill's quote that says "Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen." I really like Winston Churchill when it comes to statements about courage, because if it weren't for Churchill, I'm not sure that we'd be speaking American in America, I think we might be speaking German. But I don't know for sure, history has been kind to us in America. History has been very kind. We are a fortunate nation. We are a nation, however, founded. I believe personally on courage.  If you had to take one of the traits of leadership from bearing courage, decisiveness, dependability, endurance, enthusiasm, init...

View on Vocaroo >>   47 years ago. November 11th 1978, I received the Gen. Douglas McCarthur award for distinguished leadership from the Bad Toelz NCO Academy, Seventh Army NCO Academy.   It was a high point a real high point, because what they instructed us in was bearing, courage, decisiveness, dependability, endurance, enthusiasm initiative, integrity, judgement, justice, loyalty, knowledge, tact and unselfishness. The characteristics of a leader.  And the shocking thing to me was that the staff sergeant in charge of teaching leadership said that in the opinion of most military greats such as Eisenhower, Patton Marshal, etc., the greatest military leader of all time, was Jesus Christ Because with 12 men, he changed the world forever.   Now That was a little bit shocking to me, because you would expect, great military leaders, Alexander the Great; Hannibal things like that. Marcus Aurelius out of Rome, but no in their opinion, in these real mili...