It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations, that you may distinguish between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean, and that you may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the Lord has spoken to them by the hand of Moses. ~Leviticus 10:9-11
God does not take it lightly when the leaders He calls disregard His commandments. When Nadab and Abihu broke God’s laws (Leviticus 10:1-7), He executed them on the spot.
Sounds harsh, you say? Consider this. Any movement in its infant stages must set a standard or pattern of operations. If God allowed compromise at the beginning, things would surely grow worse. The same principle came into play in the new church when God took the lives of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11).
Nadab and Abihu broke the Law of Solid Ground, which states that trust is the foundation of leadership. As holy priests and trusted leaders, they were supposed to model obedience for the people. God could not permit them even the slightest renegade move, the smallest maverick act, for that would give permission for others to compromise as well.
Color My World
Thus Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with David, and that Michal, Saul’s daughter, loved him; and Saul was still more afraid of David. So Saul became David’s enemy continually. ~1 Samuel 18:28-29
Nearly everyone has emotional filters that prevent them from hearing certain things that other people say. Your experiences, both positive and negative, color the way you look at life and shape your expectations. And particularly strong experiences, such as traumas or incidents from childhood, can make you tend to react strongly whenever you perceive you are in a similar situation.
If you’ve never worked through all your strong emotional experiences, you might be filtering what others say through those experiences. If you’re preoccupied with certain topics, if a particular subject makes you defensive, or if you frequently project your own point of view onto others, you may need to spend some time working through some of your issues before you can become an effective listener.
Sigmond Freud said, “A man with a toothache cannot be in love,” meaning that the toothache doesn’t allow him to notice anything other than his pain. Similarly, any time a person has an axe to grind, the words of others are drowned out by the sound of the grindstone.
[tags]Leadership,John C Maxwell, Bible, Law, Leader, Personal Development, Success, Seld Improvement, Character Building[/tags]