The Pastor's Soul Volume 5: Leading With Integrity

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INTEGRITY GROWS WITH PROPER ASSOCIATION. Our friendships not only define us but develop and energize us. I have found a new, profitable companion—Francois Fenelon, the French mystic of three hundred years ago. He and Oswald Chambers are my daily counsel. They differ in that Oswald Chambers was a teacher expounding principles to a group with each person applying it to himself or herself, while Fenelon was a mentor to an individual and focused on specific situations.

For forty-one years I have read Chambers's My Utmost for His Highest. I discovered Fenelon's The Seeking Heart a short five years ago. After just a few pages, I was hooked. Fenelon was a contemporary and friend of Jeanne Guyon, and both suffered for their faith—she in prison for ten years and he exiled to oblivion after rising to one of the highest offices in the French court.

I include seven themes of Fenelon's that have been most helpful to me. Other themes of his are woven into the fabric of the rest of this book. With our lives rooted in these immutable principles, we can be like the willow tree, with branches and leaves flexible to the changing winds and the roots stable in the realities of life.

I have a friend who points out how self-love constantly changes to keep from being recognized. It is like the way a virus changes to avoid extermination. For example, self-love can come in the guise of guilt: "How could anyone as good as I do anything that bad?" Or a desire for purity might be evidence of self-love—in our wanting God to make us a showcase example, desiring to sit on the right hand of God. Even the desire to be significant, rather than the desire to do significant things, can be a form of self-love.

Fenelon says, "Do not listen ...

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