I am so glad to welcome you to today's edition of Leaderview, I hope your week has been great. Last week we began a new series titled The Leadership Trip to The Book of Genesis or otherwise you can call it The Leadership Trip to Genesis. We began to consider how a man could become an effective leader, how a man could become an effective leader in his generation. And we simply saw that does not happen by chance, it happens because at the beginning the man is first an effective leader before he provides effective leadership. So last week we examined "In the Beginning An Effective Leader". I am sure God has blessed you with that message, I am also meditating on it to glean more lessons and to grow more by the revelation in that few moment we shared together.

            This week by the special grace of God we will be looking at something again from the book of Genesis and we will continue our series the Leadership Trip to Genesis by considering today Leadership Responsibilities. We want to look very quickly into the seven laws that influences the leader's decisions. Leaders don't just do the things they do, leaders do the things they do simply because there are some invisible principles or codes of conduct that coordinates and guides their decisions. You see there are laws that you and I cannot see but yet determines or influences the choices and the decisions that we see our leaders making. So if you want to become an effective leader and such that must be reckoned with in your own generation, I think it is important you consider these seven (7) laws that are potentially able to guide your own decisions.

            You see when you follow these laws and you obey them, people won't just see you as a woman or a man occupying a position, they will consider you to be a leader simply because you are doing what leaders do. I pray that God will help us to really be open to these words in Jesus' Name. Amen! So we want to begin from where we stopped last week. We looked at the book of Genesis chapter one and we concluded in verse three. Today we will continue from verse four and we trust the Holy Spirit to open things up to us. Now let us consider that Genesis chapter one from verse three to four so that we can see the link between the two verses.

³ Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. ⁴ And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.

            The first law that cannot be seen, but yet determines the things that leaders do and that are seen by people is The Law of Good. Now until you consider something to be good, you do not see a need to accept it, you want to change it. You are worried, you are not contented simply because you do not think or know that it is good. But if you appreciate or accept that something that you have or produced or as created by you is good, number one, you will want to sustain it. Good things are not expected by the way to be replaced. Good things are expected to be sustained.

            If you are good person, you are not expected to replace your good nature with an evil nature, you are simply expected to keep it up. I remember when I was in primary school at the end of every session, I normally read something on my report card that says "He is a good boy; although, he could be playful, let him keep it up. Everytime they say I am a good boy, they normally use the word "Keep it up." I am sure we must have seen it from our children too. And those of us who haven't given birth to children we must have seen it in our own report cards when we were in school, perhaps up to even secondary school. Good things are expected to be kept up.

            Now if it is not good, it is to be replaced. You could think it is easy to recognise that something is good but it takes a leader to see something and to recognise that it is good. Now it is not difficult for anybody to see something that is bad and not recognise it. It is only leaders that can see a good out of a situation and out of a creation. And so perhaps if your life has been in a way that everybody considers you to be bad, nothing good seems to be attributed to your life, maybe a leader has not yet been given the opportunity to look at you really the way you are.

            You see, there is something good with your life that should be kept up and sustained. Your life is not to be thrown away. You only need a better leader to help you and speak the goodness into your life. So the first law that guides the words and actions of leaders is the law of good. Leaders recognise what is good, leaders discern the good, leaders praise the good and they are also always on the lookout for the good. When they see the good they don't keep quiet, they do something to sustain it, and they praise it. That is the first law  that guides the decisions of leaders which we call the responsibilities of leaders.

            You see I have encountered the Scriptures that says, in the books of proverbs, that when a foolish person keeps quiet, such a foolish person would be considered to be wise. When you do the things that are inconsistent to your nature, you will be described by your new conduct and actions. When you are not a leader and you do the responsibilities of leaders, you could be mistaken for a leader. Now perhaps you are even a leader, and you now know what leaders do and you do it, then you will be called an effective leader. So the first things that leaders do is that they see good and how did they see good, because they obey the law of good.

            The Second law that leaders obey, and we will see it too in the same book of Genesis chapter one verse five.

⁵ God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day. ⁶ Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” ⁷ Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. ⁸ And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day. ⁹ Then God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. ¹⁰ And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

            Don't forget that we started from the law of good and you can see that God deemed everything that it was good, if it was not good, He would have changed and replace it. Maybe because many of us are being considered by God as good, that is why He has sustained us on the earth. Maybe many of us would have been recalled by God.

            Now the second law that guides and informs the decisions of leaders is The Law of Meaning. It means a thing does not have a meaning until a leader gives it meaning. See from that verse five, light appeared; but assuming some of us are to be in a situation where we have never seen light before and suddenly we see light, the question we would be asking is what is this for? This light, what is it for? That is what we would do. But leaders don't do like that. They simply give such a thing meaning, responsibility and functions. Leaders are not just committed to creating new possibilities, but when those possibilities arrive, they give meaning to them.

            When the dry land appeared, God was not shocked. He simply gave it a meaning - earth! The gathering of waters together was not a shock to God, but He simply called it, Sea! So it couldn't function otherwise because it had been called Sea, Earth and Firmament. So whatever name God called them became the function they performed. It became the meaning that are given to them. So they derived their meaning from the name God called them. So things around and under leaders find meaning simply because the leader take responsibility to give them meaning. If a life has no meaning, maybe it has not yet been under the right leadership. A right leader is expected to give meanings to the people and things around him or her. So if you have things hanging around you and you are only curious about what is going on, why this and that; maybe you are not a leader. If you are a leader you are expected to see what these things can do and to give them meaning and names. That is the second law that guides the decisions of leaders.

            Let us continue again from where we stopped from verse eleven.

¹¹ Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so. ¹² And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. ¹³ So the evening and the morning were the third day. ¹⁴ Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years;

            Now if you start from verse three and you go to verse six and nine and eleven and verse fourteen that we stopped, you will notice that every new thing was preceded with then, God! God would do something, He would see it manifest and then concludes that it is good. Doing a new thing is God's nature. But He does not do new things haphazardly just for the sake of them, He does new things because He knows they are the next things to emerge.

            Now the third law that guides the decisions of leaders especially effective leaders is The Law of The Next. You know, many people knows what is wrong, but few people know what must be done next in order to arrest the situation. Effective leaders don't just do effective things, but they know the next effective thing to do. I remember when Jesus taught some multitudes and they were hungry because they had been with Him for three days. And so He told the disciples, feed these people. But the disciples responded by saying what do we do, we do not have food to give them.

But the Bible recorded that He Himself knew what He was going to do. Now that is what we are talking about. Even when a leader is throwing out questions about what must be done, that does not mean such a leader does not know what must be done. Such a leader is just trying to sample the opinions of others to confirm the things that he has understood as things that must be done. If you are a leader, you must know the next thing and you must do the next thing. It is not enough to know it, you must do it. Procrastination does not go with effective leadership. You must learn to carry out the next assignment without waiting for people to shout on you, people to beg you or even threaten to impeach you. An effective leader will do the next thing without being shouted at, being begged or even threatened. The man or the woman would take the initiative to do the next thing and he would be considered a leader indeed simply because he knows the next thing to be done.

            Let us see the next law that guides the decisions of leaders. We have so far seen the law of Good, the law of Meaning and the law of the Next.

¹⁵ and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so. ¹⁶ Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. ¹⁷ God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, ¹⁸ and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. ¹⁹ So the evening and the morning were the fourth day. ²⁰ Then God said, “Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens.” ²¹ So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. ²² And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” ²³ So the evening and the morning were the fifth day

            Now if we look at that and also considers what the bible says in verse twenty eight, then we would see another law that guides the decisions of leaders. Let us quickly go to verse.

²⁸ Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

            Now one thing that we notice that is consistent in that verse twenty two and twenty eight is that the intention of God was that His influence would remain on the earth. He created everything, He started with the herbs the plants and Bible says that the herbs that He created had in it cells for reproduction. Don't forget that! In verse twenty two the Bible says God blessed them by pronouncing fruitfulness into them. If something is fruitful, that means that thing is producing something. if you want to see very clearly how God as a leader intended to sustain is influence, was by the creative capacity He put at the beginning in the creations that He made.

            If your influence would not go into extinction, then it means there is a creativity in you that pushes and drives you to create new things. And so we would look very quickly at The Law of Creativity. It is the next law that informs the actions and the words of effective leaders. Effective leaders don't just do the things they do and say the things they say, they do and say things simply because they needed to be creative. You see, if you cease being creative, then you will cease spreading your influence. If your influence must increase from where you are to the new level, and realms, then you must create new things.

            Leaders indeed don't just do things, they do things simply by the laws that guides them. So if you must become an effective leader and increase in your capacity of effectiveness in leadership, then you must build your capacity to be responsible in leadership and you must understand that there is a law of Good that guides leaders, there is a law of Meaning that guides leaders, there is a law of the Next that guides leaders and there is a law of Creativity that guides leaders. You ceased to produce new things, then you cease multiplying your influence.

            Don't forget, be fruitful comes before multiplying. Until a new thing is born, nothing will be multiplied. So if you must multiply your influence on the earth, in your city and in your organization, then you must create new things. Don't stop producing new things and never settled with just an idea and claims that is all that your life can produce. If you do that, your influence would be limited. Have you not seen singers who are not remembered across the world again simply because they stopped releasing new albums?

            Effective leaders are not begged to release new things, perhaps they are even been implored to calm down in order to sustain many new things that have been produced. This is what has been laid in my spirit, next week we will continue again from what we have started today. We have been able to examine four laws today that guides and informs the responsibilities of leaders and next week, we would round up with the remaining three as the Lord helps us. I am so glad for reading this piece from today's episode of leaderview, I hope you have been blessed, and I hope to hear from you through your comments by sharing your experience with me.

            I would be glad to know more about your leadership and the influence that you are making in your area of specialty and calling. God bless you and see you again next week.

    Source: [Leadersoil]

Thanks for the gift of your time, I am Gboyega ADEDEJI!

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