Inner Work: Ambition

The inner work is the most significant work of any leader.  Learning to lead ourselves is a precursor to leading others.  Learning to discern what is going on in our own souls is essential to understanding the hearts of others.  This inner work may be described in a few sentences, but it will take a lifetime of focus.

This inner work will include wrestling with ambition.  Why is your dream so important  Will you do whatever it takes to get to the dream, even violating your convictions?  Which is in the center of your soul, the dream or the dream giver? Ambition, Jesus taught, is not immoral.

Ambition, when used to power the act of serving others, becomes holy fuel.

Ambition is only one idol we must pull down and it will take years, even decades to demolish.  We may find it continues to resurrect!  One taste of success can re-energize what we thought, even hoped, was left for dead. One person standing in our way may release in us anger, even rage, that is sourced not in our passion for the Kingdom but in our own kingdom!  Finding ourselves blocked and rejected can stir depression.  Seeing someone else, someone less talented (yes we do think that way) can surface envy that reveals the ambition idol still remains upright!

If you are wired with ambition you are blessed.  It is fuel the Lord placed in you for your destiny.  But that drive, that passion, that vision must be sanctified again and again.  So begins the inner work of a leader!