Sensitive to the right things

The other day I had an honest conversation with a dear friend of mine. It was good—I was challenged in just the right places to think through some of my assumptions. I left without taking any offense whatsoever; if anything, I was encouraged to grow to be a better leader.

A few hours later he sent me an email asking my forgiveness for pressing so hard. While I honestly felt that there was nothing to forgive, I thought his response to his conscience was fantastic. Too often we feel what might be the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and we blow it off. We do this for many reasons, but one of the chief ones is that we think people will think we are just being overly sensitive.

Our biblical friend David faced a situation in which his conscience-sensitivity didn’t match that of his friends. In 1 Samuel 24, when David fell into a perfect opportunity to kill Saul (who, by the way, was trying to kill him), his men egged him on to do the deed. But instead of killing him, David just secretly cut off a corner of his robe.

It seemed that David had every right to preemptively defend himself against Saul, and that taking a little souvenir was harmless. But he was conscience-stricken for doing even that, and he subsequently rebuked his men for their insensitivity… then he went on to essentially expose his life to Saul.

I’m not sure his men ever understood why he took that action, but this episode was just one in a life-long series of events where David displayed a sensitive, surrendered and soft heart before God.

Usually our sensitivity isn’t to the Lord, however, it is to our pride and our flesh.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to a young man who feels called to leadership and he was sharing how he had felt wounded by something a more mature pastor had told him. As we unpacked the cause of this pain, it turned out that a godly elder had delivered a very appropriate word of loving correction and rebuke. But the young man was offended and hurt. He was more focused on his pride and flesh than he was on the opportunity to be trained and developed. I told him that unless he repented of that and softened his heart, there was no healthy pathway to leadership available to him.

My continuing refrain to developing leaders is this: “learn to develop a soft heart and a tough skin”. A soft heart maintains sensitivity to respond to the correction of the Spirit and the correction of others. A tough skin doesn’t allow every instance of criticism by others—whether appropriate, totally misguided, or, more usually, somewhere in between—to destroy you.

It may be embarrassing to admit fault or receive correction, but it’s even more damaging to become insensitive to the Lord. On the other hand, if we cultivate sensitivity to our own pride, that will eventually take us down.

So let’s remember to be sensitive to the right things.