The Biblical Leadership Show

Job's Journey: Enduring Leadership, Integrity, and a Touch of Humor

Tim Lansford and Dr. Dean Posey Season 3 Episode 60

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Unlock the timeless wisdom of the Book of Job and discover leadership principles that transcend the ages. Can adversity truly be a stepping stone to greatness? As we explore Job's story, we reflect on how this ancient narrative shares profound insights into leading with integrity, maintaining faith, and supporting others through life's trials. This episode promises to guide you through a transformative journey, challenging your perspectives on suffering, resilience, and the role of steadfast belief in leadership.

We dive into the essence of integrity and vision, drawing parallels between biblical leaders like Job and Noah, and today's challenges. What role does faith play in navigating the storms of life and leadership? By examining Job's unwavering commitment and the questionable support from his friends, we encourage you to reflect on how to stand by those around you, offering support and understanding, much like the Good Samaritan. Through these reflections, we aim to inspire you to act with integrity that influences not just your path, but also those you lead.

But it's not all serious—laughter has its place, too. We wrap up with a dose of humor, sharing some classic dad jokes to lighten the mood and bring a smile to your face. As we prepare to journey into the Book of Psalms next, we invite you to engage with us, share your own thoughts and jokes, and stay connected in exploring the depths of scripture. Join us for a meaningful yet entertaining exploration, and as always, thank you for your support and participation in this ongoing conversation.

Speaker 1:

Welcome, welcome. I'm just going to start out that way.

Speaker 2:

Just start out that way.

Speaker 1:

Tim. Welcome to another exciting episode of the Biblical Leadership Show. With me is Dr Dean.

Speaker 2:

Posey, hey Tim, how you doing and.

Speaker 1:

Mr Tim Lanceford, doing great, doing great on this fine day.

Speaker 2:

Yes, here in Texas, texas, it's a beautiful day.

Speaker 1:

Good weather, we're excited. So how are you doing? What's been going?

Speaker 2:

on for last week. Well, we can't talk about the trip anymore. I talked about it way too much last week. You can't talk about the trip, you know yeah.

Speaker 1:

How about you've been running, exercising, swimming, you know? Are you nippy in the water? You've been swimming outdoors or anything. No, no, it's a little too cold to swim in the water.

Speaker 2:

Even though on our vacation I did swim in the water in Memphis, it was 67 degrees.

Speaker 1:

Nice.

Speaker 2:

I didn't have a wetsuit on, so it took a little while to get used to the water. But once you're used to it and everything's frozen, you don't feel a thing no 67 degrees. It was a little cool, but after you do several laps you warm up and you're good.

Speaker 1:

I understand. Well, I guess that's what motivates you. Yes, I'll not swim in the cold lake for one, I think you know as far as that. But yeah, it's good. So I'm excited. I'm excited about this day. You know we made it through last week talking a little bit about Chronicles, right.

Speaker 2:

We did.

Speaker 1:

Now this way we move on. And if you're not familiar, you know I think hopefully you guys have been listening the whole time, but for some reason you found this one that might be new and everything.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 1:

We've been doing this for a while, but what we're doing on this season is going through each book of the Bible and telling you a little bit about each book of the Bible, tying that into leadership principles that you can use in modern day life. And, of course, if you're new, we throw dad jokes in. Whether it's cringeworthy or not, you're going to get it, you know, and it's just what it's going to be right.

Speaker 2:

You're going to hear that more than once. If I have dad jokes, yes, but other than that.

Speaker 1:

what are we talking about today, dr B we're?

Speaker 2:

going to talk about the book of Job and the leadership principles of the book of Job. Now I know we've been doing this for several weeks now. If you look at some scholars, if you look at the chronological order of the books, some scholars put this right after the first 11 chapters of Genesis because they said this was potentially the very first book that was written in the Old Testament. They don't have a time like when it was happening, when it was written, but they just believe it was a lot older than the rest of the Old Testament. So you have the first 11 chapters, which is the creation story, the flood story, tower of Babel, those kind of things. Chapter 12 starts with Abraham. Okay, abram and Sarah, before they moved and changed their names, and so they put the book of Job in right there.

Speaker 2:

Now we're not doing that, obviously. We're going to more like the order of the Bible. And so we now come to the book of Job. We'll talk about Ezra and Nehemiah and Psalms, proverbs. We're going to do that in the next couple of weeks and all that. But the book of Job. Some of us might think. Where in the world can you get leadership principles from the book of Job?

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

Well, let me just.

Speaker 1:

I mean, we did it out of Kings and all that right.

Speaker 2:

Yes, we did.

Speaker 1:

We pulled these things out, right, yeah, so let's just.

Speaker 2:

Look, I'm just gonna read the very first chapter, starting with the third verse of Job. And just think about this. He's talking about Job here. Third verse of Job, and just think about this, he's talking about Job here. He possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen and 500 female donkeys and many servants.

Speaker 1:

So there's no way he could have done all that by himself.

Speaker 2:

No, he had to have a team in place. He had a huge ranch, as we would say, in Texas, right, so he had employees.

Speaker 2:

He probably had managers, he had people that would work his fields. You got to have all this food to feed all the animals, so it was like he must've had a lot of the property. We don't know that for sure, but we know he had lots of animals. And so, right here, 11,000 different animals. That takes a lot of work, that's right. And so, yeah, you had to have a large workforce. He had to be a good leader to make all that happen. He was obviously a very generous individual and then, all of a sudden, he lost everything. I mean, all his kids died, he lost all his animals.

Speaker 2:

And it is a story that, let's just say, confronts us with maybe one of the most profound questions of all of life, and that is why does God allow good people to suffer? We might hope that this book answers that is why does God allow good people to suffer? We might hope that this book answers that question. It never answers that question, and so, even today, we still ask that question why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? When is God going to fix this? And God, never. The Bible doesn't answer those questions in this book, and so.

Speaker 2:

But if we go through the entire book and Job has these friends that basically say, hey, this is all happening because you did something bad, and Job said, no, I didn't. And he gets upset with his friends and he questions God, but he never curses God, and so, but we look at a summary and at the very end everything comes back to Job. God blesses him. But the real challenge is can we trust God even when bad things happen? And obviously we're speaking—this is the biblical leadership show. So we're obviously, you know, leaning towards a biblical worldview and we encourage other people. If you're not in that position or believe that way, we'd love to have a conversation with you about it. We don't have all the answers. We're speaking from our experience, which is very limited as far as world experience is concerned, but we do have several years of experience in your construction.

Speaker 1:

We have an invitation. We've got an extra mic here. God wants to show up and Jesus wants to. You know We've. And we have an invitation. We've got an extra mic here. God wants to show up and Jesus wants to. You know, we've got a couple extra mics here.

Speaker 2:

But this whole book is are we going to be trusting God only when good things happen in our life, or are we going to trust God no matter what happens in our life? And so that's where we leave. That's kind of a summary of the book and I encourage people to read it. It can be very challenging to read but it brings up some really good points and we can learn a lot, I think, from Job as far as leadership, and so that's kind of where it is kind of a summary of it. And you know Job, his faith is tested, he suffers. He has some friends three eventually and then a fourth comes in Not positive friends, are they?

Speaker 2:

They're not positive friends.

Speaker 2:

They're not positive friends are they? They're not positive friends. They're not positive friends. And so just think about that from a leadership point of view.

Speaker 2:

In my experience and opinion, having a positive attitude as a leader is huge. I know the old saying is your glass half empty or half full? If you walk in and your glass is always half empty, you're always down, you're always looking at people and criticizing people. You don't bring with you a positive attitude, because our attitude is a choice, no matter what happens in our life. Our attitude is a choice that we make. No one makes that for us. We make it for ourselves.

Speaker 2:

So if you're the leader and you don't bring that in, even at difficult times, you just look at the down things. It's going to just invade your company, it's going to trickle down and it doesn't mean you have to be dishonest with people, but you can still have a positive attitude even though you had a difficult. You know some difficult times. I mean business might be slow, you might have lost your best customer. You know different things and the question is are you going to let your emotions dictate your leadership? And Joe, I think what we can learn from Joe is he didn't allow his emotions to dictate his decisions. You know his decisions. I'm still going to follow God. I'm still going to believe in God.

Speaker 1:

He stayed true to himself.

Speaker 2:

He stayed true to that, and so sometimes we allow our emotions to dictate our decisions and we'd have to look back and say was that always a good principle? So I think good leaders don't allow that to happen, or they let it happen rarely.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think you're hitting right on there. I mean, you have to have the positive, you have to have the optimistic to be a good entrepreneur, a good leader. And if you don't, because a lot of people might struggle with that I know some great leaders that are not optimists in the world right, but if you look at it, most of the time they have a support system whether they're friends or they're family, they're spouse that helps them get over those humps. You know, because not every good leader is that half-full person. Some of them are half empty, but you can see they usually have somebody that's balancing them out, keeping the checks in balance and a lot of times and that's why a lot of times you look at who you hire.

Speaker 1:

You know I don't hire people that are me right. I don't need the optimist. You know, go out and hug the baby, kiss the babies and hug everybody and all that. I can handle that. I need the people to get the done right. I need the detail people, and they don't have to be. They can see the pessimistics die all they want, because that balances me out. I'm always going to see that. But they might keep me in check too to make sure that I'm not just projecting something that's not possible. They sort of keep that balance on there, and I think that's one of the big things that we learned from leadership is there is a balancing act Now, as more of the gray hair you get in your head or the lack of hair you know one of the two.

Speaker 1:

The ways you want to look at it, you sort of get a balance yourself. You know, through experience and through things. But I mean, I think back when I was young and I started companies 30 years ago. It was a whole different scenario, you know, and I had a lot of people keeping me in check, even though I had the desire to go out. I mean I didn't know how and this and I'd have those down times, you know. But you just have to, you know, keep going and stay true to yourself and go. This is going to make it. You know we're going to do it.

Speaker 2:

We're going to do it. And so I mean everybody turned on Job, I mean his spouse turned on him, his friends. They all tried to accuse him. You know, hey, curse God, you know those kind of things. He stayed true to that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And so that would be another leadership principle In the midst of challenging times. And you just said that. Really well, are you going to stay true to your vision? No-transcript. But he said this good leaders know outside reputation should never be greater than inside character. And what a great message from the book of Job. That comes from his book Learning from the Giants, and so one of those chapters on Job, he talks about that. And so the real question is how is our character? How are we doing with that? So many times we focus on profit or whatever, this or that, and our character is the last thing we focus on.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and he even says that by integrity is a non-negotiable foundation, right? So you have to have your character, your honesty and everything. It's non-negotiable if you want to be successful as a leader.

Speaker 2:

I agree with that, because eventually it will catch up with you if you're not.

Speaker 2:

Okay maybe not today, maybe not a year from now, but eventually it will catch up with you, and so keeping your integrity is so crucial. And I think, if we look at now, he did have a little conversation with God there at the end where he was critical of that, but then he realized I'm wrong and he just realized, hey, that's not right, this is not right for me doing this, and I'm obviously paraphrasing, but it's like okay, he kept his integrity. You might have think he stepped over the line, but he came back and he said no, I'm not, this is not right for me to do this. And so what an example of integrity. When everything in his life was falling apart, he had every reason in the world to throw in the towel, to quit on himself, to get upset at his friends, to get upset at God, and he said I'm not going to be that kind of person. And so all of us eventually will go through challenging times. We might be going through something right now. The question is are we going to lose our integrity because of what's going on? And Joe's a great example of the ability to not Now. He had a great prayer life before that and I think that's one thing that helped him get through the challenging times is he had a great relationship with God prior to the struggle.

Speaker 2:

Some people gravitate towards God only in the struggle, and I would say, you know, we don't know when that struggle's coming. That's not the reason you have a relationship with God to get through this struggle, but it creates a great foundation. And you might not be going through a struggle right now, okay, but what about your next-door neighbor or someone in your family, or maybe in your church or your business? They're going through a struggle and you can be that foundation for them. And so it's not always about ourself. Integrity is about ourself, but it's not just about ourself. Keeping our integrity is also what we portray to the people that we work with or work for or people that work for us, and so it does come from the top down, and if the leader has integrity, you know, and those kinds of things, then it does filter down eventually to the whole organization.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I another one that I sort of took out of this and I think it's sort of a reoccurring theme in a lot of this you know is is, you know, trust in the big picture. You know and and what the big picture is, and you know you think back of all the series we did and you know you wrote a book on Noah and I mean think of the struggles he had of just seeing the big picture at the end.

Speaker 1:

And here is. You know all the trials and stuff that he was going through to see the big picture and know that you're right in this. And you know and I've said it before and I had a dream one night about this, the vision and all this stuff, and I was like, well, how's that going to work? And you know, because you were still actively in ministry and knew that wasn't going to be that you're going to be hanging out with me doing a little podcast in my place and then a series of events within a couple months we were in here just hanging out doing a little podcast, right? And it's just one of those things that you have a vision. You have a thing just stay true to the vision, stay there, don't deviate and just trust that it's going to be what it be.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and the thing about what you just said about that vision, your vision for this podcast is you just shared it and then you just kind of let it percolate you know in my mind, and then we talked a little bit about it percolate a little bit more, and so one of the things that we can see from Job going back to tying all this together is good leaders realize that victory doesn't always come quick or easy. You know, sometimes you have to look at the long road and say you know, this is the way we need to go. We might not get there for three to five years, but this is the direction we're going to go. And so Job didn't know at the end that how he got his money back and those kind of his animals back and those kind of things got to restore his life. That doesn't always happen.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

You know, and sometimes, especially if you're going through a challenging physical issue or financial issue, you don't know how it's going to end up. But the question is are you going to stay faithful to God? Are you going to stay faithful to your integrity, even in the midst of challenges? Your integrity even in the midst of challenges? And as one author said I can't remember who it was, but the quote comes to mind we need to have long obedience in the same direction.

Speaker 2:

You know, it's not just obedience for today or obedience on Sunday or this week or this month. We're going to start on this path and we're going to take one step at a time, one day at a time, sometimes one moment at a time. And it's not just about us. Like I said earlier, there might be other people along the path that our job is to pick them up and, just like the Good Samaritan, help them get down the road. And so if we're a leader, or even if we're not the leader in our business and we see someone that we work with going through a difficult time, maybe God put us there for that reason, to help that person get through that. Maybe they just lost a parent or a spouse or a child, or something's going on with their health, or something.

Speaker 2:

And if you're aware of those kind of things, then you can walk alongside them and not be like the friends that Job had. They were criticizing him, telling him, hey, that you've done all this wrong. That's why all this bad stuff is happening to him. Sometimes, just bad things happen.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And it's good for us to be there for one another when things happen like that.

Speaker 1:

Well, you know, and it goes back to seeing adversity as a stepping stone for leadership, right, you know, sometimes, you know, I think of all the things that I've went through as an entrepreneur. You know it wasn't all roses. You know, there was times I was trying to figure out how to eat. You know, per week, you know and you know and you grow, you learn from it and then I think that's one of the things that you emerge a better leader, more resilient when it's all said and done, and I think that's one of the things that, you know, Job took out of this. You know, a lot of the naysayers are saying blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but he remained true to himself. He saw that. You know, I'm going to figure it out. I don't know why this happened, but we're going to get through it. I'm going to come out on this as on the top of the rainbow, you know, and go from there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So one of the things that I've heard and you've probably heard and probably most of our listeners have heard is that hindsight is 20-20. I don't agree with that 100%. Hindsight can be 20-20, but it's not 20-20 if you don't learn from your past. Okay.

Speaker 2:

So if we look at something and we don't do some self-reflection, we don't look at the mirror and say, okay, what did I do wrong? What could I have done differently, Then we're going to make the same mistake. So hindsight is not 20-20. If we look at it and say, you know, I could have done that differently, or maybe I should have gotten some more advice, or, you know, I didn't handle that properly Next time I'm going to do this better Then hindsight can be 20-20 and we can learn from our mistakes. Every leader's had issues. You know. They've had challenging decisions to make. They've probably been defeated, you know, faced opposition at some point, and one of the reasons they're good leaders is they've overcome that and kept focused on what they wanted to do, or what God called them to do, and they came out as a good leader.

Speaker 2:

I think, Job of all the people in the Bible. He is a great example for keeping the faith, keeping the focus on the big picture, which is, you know, god's wisdom and his faithfulness, even though you had a challenge. You're going through some challenging times.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think it's part of it. So you know one thing that caught me and I don't know. You know it said that Job had a lot of animals, right, but there's a lot of references through the Bibles of this through the Bible, through Job, and they referenced a lot of different verses, referenced a lot of different the behemoth, the behemoth.

Speaker 2:

We don't really know what that is, but it had to be a pretty big something yeah, so. And the Leviathan. Is that a crocodile alligator? Is it a big snake? We don't know. Is it Nessie? I think that was Nessie. It could be the first Nessie, yeah it could have been.

Speaker 1:

And here's the thing I've said that many times. There's so much stuff that we don't know. I mean, if Fireball hit the earth and did that, I mean there's got to be stuff living in the water that's Nessie size right.

Speaker 2:

Doesn't it only make sense it?

Speaker 1:

just went deeper. I don't know. There's so many wonders of the world that we don't know. It still just fathoms our. You know bothers our brain. Sometimes it does, and we know more about space than we do about our own earth a lot of times. So it's crazy.

Speaker 2:

Yes, so there are. You know, in the last part of the book of Job, when God is talking to Job and he's basically saying hey, where were you when I created the world? Who decides where the oceans go and when they stop at the tide, and all this kind of stuff? And then he starts describing all of these animals you know well the lion, the eagle, the horse, the behemoth, the Leviathan, just the ostrich, the hawk, the deer, the mountain goat the donkey yeah, the donkey yeah.

Speaker 2:

So he describes all of this and you're thinking what is that all about?

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And God, I think, was basically saying hey, I'm the one that created all of this. Now, my original design of the earth was so there would be no suffering, but I gave man a free will and because of man's free will, and men and women have chosen to disobey God. That doesn't account for everything that's bad and tragic in the world, but it does account for a lot, and so you know it doesn't explain everything.

Speaker 1:

I think it was powerful what you said about you tell kids right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I've told this to a lot of kids over the years and that is we are free to choose to do anything we want to do. We are, we can choose to do anything we want to do, but we can't always choose the consequences.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

And sometimes we want to be able to choose what we want to do and then also choose the consequences. Well, choosing the consequences is not always for us. Sometimes, just because of the decisions we make, that starts the first domino and the consequences just happen. Sometimes we experience those consequences and other times.

Speaker 2:

Other people experience our consequences, which can be tragic, and sometimes they're good, and sometimes they're tragic. And sometimes people we don't even know experience our consequences. Sometimes the consequences are immediate, and sometimes the consequences last for two and three generations, and so we just have to be careful. I think what we learned from Job Job is that he made some wise decisions to not do certain things. Okay, he didn't curse God, he didn't put down his friends, even though they were really trying to put him down. He finally realized at the end hey, I've been accusing God of being unjust and unfair, but I'm really wrong, you know and.

Speaker 2:

I'm sorry, god. And so those are the kind of things that happened, and I know we're running out of time and we need to throw in some dad jokes, but I just want to say one last thing as we finish talking about Job, one of the things that to me, was a big part of Job and his integrity. We read that in chapter 31, verse 1. He says this and this is not you know just this is the version that I quoted from. Job said this I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman. I'm thinking, wow, he had already made that.

Speaker 2:

And so I'm just thinking how many leaders make a different decision than Job and it causes all kinds of problems in their businesses, in their families, their marriages with their children, because they don't choose sexual purity and sexual impurity.

Speaker 2:

You talk about not being able to control the consequences. That would be one area of life, and so I would say, for those of you, I would challenge people to look at that area of your life, and the vow that we took when I was ordained a pastor is that we would have fidelity in marriage and celibacy and singleness. I think that would be the message of the Scripture of that, and that was the vow that Job took, and when we don't take that vow and we break that, it does something to our integrity and we don't know all the consequences that happen. Most of the time they're really tragic. Know all the consequences that happen, most of the time they're really tragic, and we want to try to prevent that tragedy from happening in as many people's lives as possible, and so I would think that would be another lesson we can learn from Job about leadership. Have integrity inside and outside your body.

Speaker 1:

Integrity character.

Speaker 2:

Integrity character yes, faithfulness, yes so let's talk about some dad jokes you got some dad jokes for us.

Speaker 1:

I'm reaching over. The box from last week is still here. Emergency dad jokes.

Speaker 2:

The box. Oh my goodness, the box was still here in the studio.

Speaker 1:

Yes, it was in front of me. Usually it's over on your side of the table, right, so let's see what I got. You're keyed up. He's got a notebook.

Speaker 2:

I've got like an encyclopedia of the best dad jokes of 2024.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that one's not going to work, that one's not going to work.

Speaker 2:

Okay, here we go. Here we go this one. You're going to get this one. Get ready with the yellow button over there.

Speaker 1:

Oh, all right.

Speaker 2:

We just had this conversation. I know why did I start telling dad jokes only when I got older. Why here let me rephrase that why did I wait to start telling dad jokes until I got older? Why did I wait to start telling dad jokes until I got older?

Speaker 1:

Got some ideas, but I'm not for sure.

Speaker 2:

Because now I'm a grown up, I tell you, get the yellow and red. I just saw one a second ago.

Speaker 1:

I can go that. What do you call a movie star with salt and pepper hair?

Speaker 2:

A zebra.

Speaker 1:

A well-seasoned actor.

Speaker 2:

Oh, well-seasoned. Oh, there we go.

Speaker 1:

This is the best one here. What's brown and really sticky. What's brown and really sticky.

Speaker 2:

Peanut butter.

Speaker 1:

What's brown and really sticky, what A stick A stick.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, you get to choose the button. I love that one.

Speaker 1:

I saw that one that made me laugh.

Speaker 2:

Okay, okay, why did the woman name her. You're going to get this. I think we've shared this before.

Speaker 1:

All right.

Speaker 2:

Why did the woman name her puppies Rolex and Timex?

Speaker 1:

Oh.

Speaker 2:

Because they were watchdogs. I give it to you, oh gosh.

Speaker 1:

Why do the French eat snails?

Speaker 2:

Why do the French eat snails? Yes, why do the French eat snails? Why?

Speaker 1:

do the.

Speaker 2:

French eat snails. Yes, it's got to do something with escargot, but I don't know the answer.

Speaker 1:

Because they don't like fast food. All right, one more. Dr Boney, dr Posey, what do you got? You got a good one over there.

Speaker 2:

No, I don't, you don't oh my gosh.

Speaker 1:

Let me do a random draw on the emergency stack. This is what it is. Oh, let's do another one. Not everyone's good.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I've got one more. All right, good, I've got one more. Why is Peter Pan always flying? Why is Peter Pan always flying?

Speaker 1:

I don't know.

Speaker 2:

Because he never lands. Oh, I get the groan every time. I ain't going to get you there All right, we're done.

Speaker 1:

We're done with dad jokes Woo yeah.

Speaker 2:

Our audience really appreciates the fact that we're done.

Speaker 1:

All right, guys, check us out biblicalleadershipshowcom. Send us any prayer requests. You have any dad jokes that you have, that you want to hear the rim shot instead of the trombone in there. Other than that, reach out to us, say hi, chat with us, text us all that good stuff and next week we'll be coming back with let's see the Book of Psalms, psalms right yeah, there's 150 psalms.

Speaker 2:

There is some incredible.

Speaker 1:

Are we going to sing?

Speaker 2:

No, please no. We want our audience to stay with us. All right, guys, you can sing, I'm not going to sing.

Speaker 1:

You definitely don't want me to sing. Maybe in high school, not now All right guys, I'm going to say bye and I'll let Dr Posey take us out. Make it a great day, all right, thank you guys.

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