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While God initiates and provides the core ingredients for change, you and I can’t be passive. We are called to take responsibility to join in partnership with what God is doing and desiring to do in our lives. In God In My Everything, Ken Shigematsu helps to describe and differentiate between God’s role and our role. Ken writes,

The growth of our spiritual lives is primarily God’s work. On our own, we can no more produce the fruit of Christ’s character in our lives than we can squeeze pebbles into diamonds (John 15:5). Yet despite our foibles and failures, God calls us to play a role in our transformation. He invites us to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling,” precisely because “it is God who works in [us] to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13–14). Grace, as Dallas Willard observes, is not opposed to effort but to earning. We cannot earn our life with God—it’s a gift. But we are to “make every effort to add to [our] faith goodness...knowledge…and love (2 Peter 15–7).”³

Our contribution to this partnership is highlighted in 1 Timothy 4:7, where Paul admonishes Timothy to “train yourself to be godly.” Paul isn’t calling for the fruitless exercise of personal willpower. Paul also isn’t advocating a solo effort apart from community. He’s calling for Timothy to take personal responsibility for his development and to engage in an intentional systematic approach empowered by God’s grace and with the support of community.

Every Christ-follower and Christian leader needs to take responsibility to partner with God in his or her growth, development and transformation. Taking this role seriously is incredibly important, but we need to take it on by God’s grace and with God’s strength.

Before we move on to exploring eight key practices for leading yourself, it’s critical that you don’t miss the starting place. The starting place is King David’s prayer.

You might expect that David’s resume would produce some swagger, pride and independence. Instead, we find one of the great prayers in Scripture. It’s found in the psalms—twice, in case we might miss it. Here’s the prayer: “But as for me, I am poor and needy; come quickly to me, O God. You are my help and my deliverer; LORD, do not delay” (Psalm 70:5).

When I read this passage, I see three prerequisites for effectively leading myself. The first is humility. David firmly proclaims that he is not a self-made man. Instead, he is both poor and needy. He’s a man who desperately needs God’s help. The second prerequisite is dependence. David acknowledges that, above all things, God is his help and his deliverer. He chooses to depend on God rather than his own limited strength. The third is trust. David chooses to trust in God. He not only declares God as his help and deliverer, but he trusts in God’s coming provision.

In contrast, it’s very interesting to look at Saul’s posture. His posture is exactly the opposite of David’s. Rather than a posture of humility, Saul exudes entitlement. He believes he should be king no matter what. Rather than dependence, Saul tries to independently maintain his reign by attempting to kill David and by being disobedient to God’s instructions concerning the Amalekites. Rather than trust, fearfulness is the driving force in Saul’s life. This is demonstrated in his paranoia toward David as well as his frantic and at times bizarre attempts to take matters into his own hands.

David’s prayer and posture of humility, dependence and trust are the starting place for getting traction on leading ourselves well. We simply can’t manufacture any significant or lasting change on our own.

As we look at humility as a starting point for personal leadership, it’s interesting to read Jim Collins’ work for his groundbreaking book Good to Great. He reviewed 1,435 Fortune 500 companies and identified just 11 that achieved sustained greatness, with stock returns at least three times the market’s for fifteen years after a major transition period. One common factor for each of these 11 companies was their top leader. Each company had what Collins’ calls a “level 5” leader. One of the two core characteristics of a level 5 leader is deep personal humility. In contrast, Collins’ notes in two-thirds of the comparison companies “the presence of a gargantuan ego that contributed to the demise or continued demise of the company.”⁴

Though some would see David’s posture of humility as weakness, it’s actually a strength in God’s economy. It invites and depends on God rather than self. It brings freedom rather than a burden that is impossible to carry.