September 17. Can My Loss By A Gain?

As a leader, what is your attitude when your team suffers a loss? Losses might be a team member leaving, contracts lost, bids not awarded, relationships destroyed, or even losses to your reputation. So, what is your attitude like at this critical time? As leaders, our attitudes can have exponential effects on our team.

If we show panic or fear, would you expect the same from your team? If you show inappropriate thankfulness and celebration, it might warn your team about their performance as well thinking, “I wonder if they will be happy to see me leave?" I think that the best attitude we might have is to be curious.

With each loss, we can ask what will it require of me and the team in the next ninety days? With this loss, should we consider a different tactic or strategy? What are the three things we could do to mitigate the costs of this type of loss? Where is your biggest risk for a loss in the next ninety days?

How might you mitigate the loss and create a questioning attitude right now before it happens? What is the first thing you can do about it in the next seven days?

As brothers and sisters of the cross, we know the loss that was suffered for us. But that suffering does not mean to imply that we ourselves will not suffer losses. Surely, we will have losses, but what attitude do we carry to the world at those times to the people that are lost?

Our example is being watched. We read, "‘The time is coming when everything in your palace—all the treasures stored up by your ancestors until now—will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left,’ says the LORD.” Isaiah 39:6 NLT. If you lost everything today, what would you be prepared to say to God?

It might be a real challenge for us especially if we are getting upset over the minor or even trivial losses that we suffer on a weekly basis. It just might be that in losing something today we make room for Jesus in our lives tomorrow. We take Christ with us whenwe go in service to anyone, including those being struck by a natural disaster?

Where have you lost something in the last ninety days? What attitude do you want to share with your family and teams about it? What is the first thing that you can do about it in the next seven days?

Let us pray, Jesus, we thank you for taking up the cross for us. Your loss is our gain. Be a light unto our path today to find you whenever we have a loss. May our suffering only be as long as our attention span takes to get refocused on you.

May we flip our attention to you, faster than we can suffer losses. In the name of Jesus’, we pray. Amen,