Leadersight: Seeing the Invisible to Create the Impossible

By Jurgen Matthesius

If you desire to lead, then sharpen and develop your LEADERSIGHT. This book will open your eyes to see what resides in the people that have been placed in front of you and around you. Learn how to develop your vision with greater precision and clarity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781947165892

Book preview

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INTRODUCTION

Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into the ditch?

-- Jesus (Luke 6:39)

The only time Jesus spoke about leadership, He introduced its prerequisite qualification: VISION.

Vision is more than just physical sight; it is the ability to see. Leadership requires us to be able to see what lies beyond the obvious, to see what can be possible. I call this ‘leadersight.’

Biologists have recently discovered that we actually do not see with the eye so much as we see through it.

In other words, the heart - our inner machinations and dispositions - shapes not just HOW we see, but more importantly, WHAT we see. That is why two people can be looking at the same situation, but one sees obstacles of impossibility, while the other sees opportunities of possibility!

This book is written to help you become the latter.

Many years ago, I heard a story about a US shoe company that desperately wanted to generate market share internationally and so appointed a young sales clerk to travel abroad and make this dream a reality. They put this young man on a freighter and sent him to the dense and populace nation of Africa. Months went by until a letter came across the desk of the Executive of Sales back at the head office. It was from the young man. The letter read, Please send me my return fare. This is Africa; nobody wears shoes here!

Somewhat despondently, the company sent him his return fare, and the young sales clerk returned to mainland USA where he took up a position within a branch of the company. Years passed, and a new Vice President of Sales stumbled across the original vision to create international market share. Again, another young sales clerk was selected for the mission and was sent to the same location in the same nation. After several months had passed, a letter reached the head office and landed on the desk of the Executive of Sales. However, this time, the letter did not ask for a return fare. Instead, it read, Please send as many shoes as is humanly possible! Africa is a gold mine; nobody wears shoes!

In both occurrences, the two sales clerks encountered the exact same situation, yet one saw obstacles and impossibility, while the other saw opportunity and limitless possibilities.

You may say, Well, it’s easy for you to see opportunity and limitless possibilities because you were born an optimist with a positive disposition. While this may appear to provide a slight advantage, I have good news for you. The Bible, which is the most powerful book on earth, says in Psalm 119:130, "The entrance of Your words gives light, and in Psalm 119:105, it says, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path."

When the Word of God enters your heart, it will begin to illuminate and create an awareness of the God possibilities in your life. I say ‘God possibilities’ because I believe that God made you with a soul that bears a unique expression of His image.

Everything that is created was designed with intent and purpose in mind. When you see a chair, you know that it was designed and created to seat someone who is seeking rest. When you see an automobile, you know that it was created to transport people from one place to another. Similarly, planes were created to carry us across vast terrain over mighty seas or high mountain ranges. In fact, nothing that exists was created by accident. Everything has a purpose. Art brings joy and pleasure to the beholder; bees pollinate flowers to spread beauty throughout the earth. In the same way, you are here for a divine purpose, and you are here by divine design!

This book will examine and unpack seven instances in Scripture where God specifically uses the word ‘SEE’ to help us understand ten basic principles around leadersight. In the first instance, God sets the precedent for us to SEE (Genesis 1:3-5). In the next six instances, God instructs us to SEE (as a preview, see 1 Samuel 4:15, Genesis 1:29, Genesis 13:14-15, Exodus 7:1, Jeremiah 1:10, and Joshua 6:2). I believe that God intentionally included these six commands in Scripture so that you and I could become the powerful leaders we are called to be. In fact, deficiency in one or more of these areas greatly reduces our potential and fruitfulness.

When God directs us to SEE something, He’s not asking us to look at the thing at first glance or even at first sight. What God is actually telling us to do is to fine-tune our hearts. When I was a kid growing up, there was no such thing as cable television. To get television, you had to have an antenna attached to your house to pick up signals, which by the way, could not be too far away. If the weather was good, you could pick up fuzzy and blurry viewing from stations that were a bit farther away. However, if the weather was bad, if there were storms or high winds, the images on the screen would be greatly affected. In my home, we had a booster (it was like a set of ‘rabbit ears’ sitting on top of the television). These ‘rabbit ears’ could be manipulated and repositioned to improve the quality of the television signal.

My goal in writing this book is to help you move the ‘rabbit ears’ of your soul to a position that improves both WHAT you see and HOW you see the things that you are seeing. This book will graduate you to a place where you can lead because leadership requires you to see with greater precision and clarity!

CHAPTER 1

SEE INVERTED ORDER

"Declaring the end from the beginning,

And from ancient times things that are not yet done,

Saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,

And I will do all My pleasure.’"

-- Isaiah 46:10

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there!

-- Lewis Carroll

God sees the end of a thing from the beginning. In other words, God sees what He wants the thing to ‘be’ and then backs up to the beginning to create it. Everything we see in existence first began in the imaginative, invisible realm and then was created and manifest in the visible and natural realm! Whether it’s an iPhone, a television, a movie, or a piece of art, like God, we are called to be creators. That’s what human beings do. We create things.

Leadersight is SEEing what you want, then going to the beginning (where you are right now) and creating a road map to get there. Leadersight is closing your eyes to see ‘what can be,’ or more accurately, ‘what you believe God wants there to be,’ and then setting out to create it. What do you see when you close your eyes? The strength of your leadersight depends on your ability to see the end picture when obstacle after obstacle comes against it. In fact, your ability to see through the obstacles to the end result determines the strength of your leadersight!

When we first saw what is now our ‘central campus,’ it was an old, run-down fitness center and gymnasium. It had been many years since anybody had been in the building, and the overwhelming, stale, musty smell burned in my nostrils as we walked through it. It stank like old gym socks that had been left damp and put into a microwave after a skunk had sprayed them. There was debris everywhere. The broken tiles, run-down hot tubs, damaged walls and floors, racquet ball courts that looked more like cells in Guantanamo Bay, make-shift locker rooms, bathrooms, toilet, and shower blocks, and mess everywhere you looked made it quite easy for me to become overwhelmed and think, Let’s just move on and look for something else.

Holding my breath, I closed my eyes and began to see. I saw a 750-seat sanctuary filled five times on a Sunday. I saw a magnificent foyer with an awesome café buzzing with chatter, laughter, and life. I saw a children’s church facility with the latest electronic biometrics check-in system. Then I opened my eyes and thought, I want to go back to my fantasy place! Ten months and $3.5 million dollars later, we walked into what was our brand new central campus with state-of-the-art everything. Six months later, our central campus tripled in size, and to this day, it has continued to grow, spilling over into four