PaulStiver.com

The four things that the book Strength Based Leadership says that people want (and follow) in leaders: 1. Trust 2. Stability 3. Hope 4. Compassion (From my paraphrase): 1. Trust - the leader inspires trust 2. Stability - the leader provides a sense of stability, resolve 3. Hope - the leader produces hope and points to a greater future 4. Compassion - the leader demonstrates merciful thinking and a compassionate heart For anyone in any form of leadership during COVID-19, these four traits will be critical. Do people trust you? Have you demonstrated strong character? Are you stable? Are you caring for yourself well? Do you inspire hope in others? Are you an opportunist? Are you compassionate? When we are pushed to our limits and put to the test, our true character shines through more clearly. Will we step up with resolve and resiliency? Will we remain hopeful? Will we consider others and show mercy? The truth is, we can't. We panic. We get anxiety....

Have you heard about the boy who died? There is a scene in Acts chapter 20 where Luke records something miraculous that occurs in the ministry of the Apostle Paul. Late one night in a well lit upper room, Paul is sharing the good news of the Kingdom of God with a group of disciples in Troas. As night wears on, a young listener named Eutychus is overwhelmed by sleepiness and tragically falls out of a window to his death. Paul descends the stairs of the building and hovers over the boy. In the same way that Jesus assured the ruler whose young daughter had died, so Paul issues forth comfort in his speech, saying, “Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him” (Acts 20:10 ESV). This calls to mind life-giving resurrections told of in the ministries of Elijah and Elisha as well. The miraculous happens again, and they took away the boy alive. How can this be? How can the dead be made alive? Who invests this resurrection power to defeat this solemn and universal enemy? Truly this is t...

In Edmund Morris' robust biography, Theodore Rex , which chronicles Theodore Roosevelt's ascendency into the office of President and his first term, we get a window into the mind of the man. At this point, Roosevelt has solemnly sworn his Oath of Office, shortly after President McKinley's assassination, and has begun to reign in what would be his first term. After a couple years, Roosevelt embarks on a massive train tour of the nation. One of the stops on his tour was through the Dakotas. Morris writes, "When the train drew near the Badlands, darkness already had descended. The President went onto this rear platform and watched coulees etch themselves into the grassland, black out of silver, like a giant printer's block. Medora lay the deepest cut of all, a clutch of houses by the sand-choked Little Missouri. Here, twenty years before, he had come to shoot his first buffalo, and found himself "at heart as much as Westerner as an Easterner." (...