Take 5 Series - Read it and Reap

Readers are leaders and leaders are readers. Three things I would say to our Journey leaders about this.

 

1. I don't fancy myself to be an avid reader or a fast reader but I am developing the daily discipline of reading widely and wisely.

 

2. I have found that iBooks on my iPad has revolutionized how I read books and compile notes. Digital books can transform the way you read making it easy, inexpensive, and extremely profitable.

 

3. I find that reading for a few minutes each morning and evening gets me further, faster as I am finishing article after article and book after book,. Consistency is the key.

 

I read a 5-minute devotional emailed to me called Tozer on Leadership. I could not recommend this any higher - click here.

 

Here is a quick-read post from Tozer this week that I wanted to share with you.

 

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"Read or Get Out of the Ministry" by A.W. Tozer

 

A wise man will hear and increase learning, and a man of understanding will attain wise counsel. —Proverbs 1:5

 

When a very young minister, I asked the famous holiness preacher, Joseph H. Smith, whether he would recommend that I read widely in the secular field. He replied, "Young man, a bee can find nectar in the weed as well as in the flower." I took his advice (or, to be frank, I sought confirmation of my own instincts rather than advice) and I am not sorry that I did.

 John Wesley told the young ministers of the Wesleyan Societies to read or get out of the ministry, and he himself read science and history with a book propped against his saddle pommel as he rode from one engagement to another. Andy Dolbow, the American Indian preacher of considerable note, was a man of little education, but I once heard him exhort his hearers to improve their minds for the honor of God. "When you are chopping wood," he explained, "and you have a dull axe you must work all the harder to cut the log. A sharp axe makes easy work. So sharpen your axe all you can." The Size of the Soul, 33.

 
"In the busyness of life, Lord, help me to always guard time to sharpen my axe. Amen."
 

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 Reprinted from Tozer on Christian Leadership by A.W. Tozer, copyright © 2001 by Zur Ltd. Used by permission of WingSpread Publishers, a division of Zur Ltd.

 
Tozer on Christian Leadership is protected by copyright and may not be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, translated, transmitted or distributed in any way.