Episode 193: When Faith Meets Grief: Abraham’s Journey in Genesis 23

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Today Counts Show Episode 193

Preview

Jim: I had a really rough boss on my first true tour of duty as a leader. And there was more than once or twice that I went into the men’s restroom as a young man, closed the stall, sat on the toilet there, and wept because I couldn’t handle it. There’s this invisible weight that comes with leadership that it’s hard to explain to younger leaders what it is.

Matt: I believe 100% the scripture is teaching us integrity. There are things that are required, and this is why some people can’t handle the weight of leadership. There are certain things I believe required of leaders.

Appreciation of our Supporters

Winston: Hey, before we jump into the podcast, we want to thank all our donors and supporters who make the Today Count Show possible. It’s through your generosity that we’re able to shape leaders through this content and this podcast. And be sure to like, subscribe, and follow wherever you find yourself coming across this content. All right, let’s get to the podcast.

Introduction

Jim: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Today Count Show. We are back in the Genesis project, and I have with me today Pastor Winston and Pastor Matt, and yours truly. Gary must be fishing somewhere. I forgot what he told me, but he is not with us. We are looking at Genesis 23, and we are considering leadership lessons from Abraham’s burial of his wife, Sarah. And if you’ve been with us, that has been a whole soap opera for a long time, what these two have been up to. And yet, God’s hand has somehow been on them. So again, hopefully you will want to listen in as we learn leadership lessons from this event and situations.

Genesis 23: Leadership Lessons from Abraham’s Grief

The Humanity of Scripture in Leadership

I am reading from Genesis chapter 23 in the New Living Translation. “When Sarah was 127 years old, she died.” That’s a great way to start a chapter. “At Kareth Arba,” I don’t know if I pronounced that right, “now called Hebron or Hebron in the land of Canaan. There Abraham mourned and wept for her. Then leaving her body, he went to the Hittite elders and said, “Here I am, a stranger in a foreign land.” Now, think about that for a minute. “With no place to bury my wife.” Think about that. Okay, that is a problem. “Please let me have a piece of land for a burial plot.”

The Hittites replied to Abraham, “Certainly, for you are an honored prince among us.” Wow. “It will be a privilege to have you choose–” Wow wasn’t in the Bible there, guys. “Certainly, for you are an honored prince among us. It will be a privilege to have you choose the finest of our tombs so you can bury her there.”

Then Abraham bowed low. He got low before them and said, “Since this is how you feel, be so kind as to ask Ephron, son of Zohar, to let me have the cave at Machpelah” That’s my guess there, down at the end of the field. “I want to pay the full price, of course, whatever is publicly agreed upon, so I may have a permanent burial place for my family.”

The Power of Public Accountability

Ephron was sitting there among the others, and he answered Abraham as the others listened, speaking publicly before all the elders of the town. “No sir,” he said to Abraham, “please listen to me. I will give you the cave and the field here in the presence of my people. I give it to you. Go and bury your dead.”

Abraham bowed again to the people of the land. And he replied to Ephron as everyone listened. “No, listen to me,” he insisted. “I will buy it from you. Let me pay the full price for the field so I can bury my dead there.”
Ephron answered, “The land is worth 400 pieces of silver, but what is that between friends? Go ahead and bury your dead.” So Abraham paid Ephron the amount he had suggested, 400 pieces of silver as was publicly agreed. He bought the plot of land belonging to Ephron at the Machpelah near Mamre. This included the field, the cave that was in it, and all the trees nearby. Then they became Abraham’s permanent possession by the agreement made in the presence of the Hittite elders at the city gate.

Legacy in Loss: Establishing a Permanent Place

So Abraham buried Sarah there in Canaan in the cave of Machpelah near Mamre, which is at Hebron. It’s funny how they constantly repeat the place. The field and the cave were sold to Abraham by the Hittites as a permanent burial place.

We’re going through the book of Genesis chapter by chapter. We’re getting close to halfway, and we run into this situation where Abraham loses his bride, and real things like this happen to real leaders.

Matt: Yeah. Again, the humanity of scripture comes through. This is, if we’re not careful, we will paint the characters of scripture as supernatural, and they’re not. We get to see real hurt, real pain, real life in this situation. So I love these nuggets of scripture where it brings the humanity to my level, to your level, and realizes that here was a patriarch, a great leader, and yet we take enough time to tell the story of something so tender and intimate as the death of his wife and then the process of trying to bury her in a foreign land.

I mean, there are so many nuances here and so many things to look at. But again, my take on the outset is the humanity of scripture because this does speak to the pain that Abraham went through. He’s not only grieving, it says he was mourning over Sarah and he was weeping over her, and he rose from– The scripture’s so clear in verse 3. He rose from beside his dead wife. Just in case you missed what was happening here. And he went to them and said, “Hey, I need your help.”

Negotiating While Wounded: Strength in Dependence

And it’s in moments of pain that no matter what country of life we’re in, no matter what area of life we’re in, whether it’s where we feel at home or we feel as a stranger, as a sojourn, as a foreigner, that we’re designed to ask someone for help in these moments. The scripture shows us early on in Genesis 23. It said it in Genesis 2 as well, but Genesis 1, 2, and 3, it’s not good for you to be alone. But here, we’re seeing that in our hurt and in the humanity of what we deal with and loss that it’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay to reach out to someone.
And we see him do that. And he’s negotiating. He’s trying to work this out with them and saying, “Look, I’m not asking for something for free here, but I can’t do this on my own.” And I think that’s a strong principle that we see right there from the onset.

Vulnerability, Authenticity, and Generational Shifts

Jim: Yeah. Let me ask you guys both a question. It seems today that there is a movement in the culture of leadership, if I can call it that, about increased transparency and vulnerability and authenticity. I think those are three words that seem to be– But that’s a little bit different from my younger days where signs of vulnerability were seen as weakness. Do you think that what we’re seeing in leadership culture today is more in line with what Christian leadership should look like, or what do you guys think?

Winston: I think that’s a really great question. I’d be interested to hear your perspective generationally because I think some of this is a generational issue right now. I think Gen Z, maybe some younger millennials, are desiring more authentic, more empathy, more transparency from leadership where maybe previous generations it was just kind of, “Suck it up. Don’t show emotion.”

Jim: Suck it up, buttecup.

Winston: Yes. “Always present this strong demeanor. Nothing moves you. You’re always on mission.” And so I think there is this current bridging of the gap. And I’ve seen some things almost meme-wise and almost comically presented in social media and different social commentaries where specifically HR, how HR generationally… I’ve seen some things where people are trying to make a joke about how things are handled: PTO, time off, even moments like this where we’re having to grieve but you still have responsibilities. All those dynamics are being handled and thought about differently generationally. And I think there’s a generation that is seeking a more Christian approach to difficulty and processing pain.

The Unspoken Rules of Leadership Strength

Jim: Yeah, I’ll go as far as to say back in my day, however far back you want to go, if one were to show anger, that wasn’t necessarily becoming, but it was not viewed as equal to someone emotionally breaking down in tears or exhaustion or sadness or failure. That was seen as, even though we didn’t use the term in those days, that would have been seen as someone not being well and therefore not fit for leadership, which I always thought was interesting because in the drama of life, you sometimes have your greatest moments just following short spurts or even longer spurts of defeat and disappointment and mistake.

Leadership Weight: The Pressure No One Sees

How many times have I seen on the athletic field, in the ministry, in business, where someone literally goes home on Friday thinking it’s all over, but somehow on Monday they’re a different person and they’re ready to go again. And that’s probably why when I was in my early 20s, and I think I’ve told this story—if I haven’t told this story audibly, I know I’ve written it somewhere—but I had a really rough boss on my first true tour of duty as a leader. And there was more than once or twice that I went into the men’s restroom as a young man, closed the stall, sat on the toilet there, and wept because I couldn’t handle it.

There’s this invisible weight that comes with leadership that it’s hard to explain to younger leaders what it is. But then, when you get older, what once felt heavy, you’re not even sure it’s a thing anymore. But when I was in those early 20s, mid 20s, and granted, the bank promoted me beyond my capacity, but nonetheless, I just knew instinctively it went beyond embarrassment. Sure, that played a role in it, but there was just a cultural unspoken law that a man doesn’t break down.

The Gen X Middle Ground: Authenticity vs. Oversharing

Matt: Yeah. And I’m that, I don’t know that we’re a very good bridge, but that Gen X generation that comes along that almost has a little bit of a “well, we just pretend like we don’t care” attitude. Enough. And I do believe some of it speaks generationally to how leaders react and respond.

I was formed by a leader who taught me the “don’t have close friends, don’t laugh, don’t cry in front of the followers” type. Always have a guard up, always be on guard, and vulnerability and authenticity were not encouraged. But I struggled with that. I didn’t fall in line with that. So I was in a generation that came along and said, “Well, wait a minute. I feel like I’m getting more out of them if I’m a little more authentic.” And then of course, there’s been plenty of books and resources around authentic leadership.

Authenticity vs. Transparency: Learning Where the Line Is

The challenge I think we run into, and this is with the onset of social media for sure, is there’s a difference in authenticity versus transparency versus “I’m an open book.” Well, I’m a firm believer that your authentic self should show up, that who you are and how you’re designed and how you’re wired should show up in your leadership and when you lead others.

In our organization, I’m more on the minority side of the ways of leadership. I’m not as bullheaded as “go, go, go.” I have my own engine that runs, and it runs hard, but it just looks a little different and it’s okay. With social media, you take a generation that is raised taking pictures of their food and every moment of what they’re doing, and they don’t know where the line should be in leadership of, “Okay, I don’t need to share that part,” or, “I don’t need to share that with everyone.”

When I talk about mental health struggles, emotional and spiritual struggles, I say things like this: You need to tell someone, but don’t tell everyone. That’s wisdom. There’s wisdom in that.

As we lead, I think sometimes we’ve all seen the pendulum swing so far that you’re not even sure who the leader is at that point because they’ve blended in. And that is where… just out of whatever word they want to use—transparency, authenticity. They’re not being the cold person, the jerk of the leader from generations ago: “Oh, suck it up, Buttercup.” But now they’re just Buttercup. And it’s just like, where are we going? How do we get there?

Friendly but Not Familiar: Wisdom in Relational Boundaries

Jim: Yeah. I tend to agree with what one of my mentors tried to talk to me about, and his phrase was, when it comes to your direct reports, the people you are influencing, guiding, leading, providing care for—he used the phrase “friendly but not familiar.” And I tend to like that. I don’t know what like means; I just tend to, only because I think I crossed that line one time when I was in my early 30s.

I told someone I had become close to, someone I was leading, and what I shared with him, I don’t remember what it is now, but what I shared I didn’t think was that big of a deal. But to him, it was a big deal. I literally crushed him when he found out that I struggled with such-and-such, whatever it was at that time. And that kind of goes back to that capacity thing—the weight.

And then I’ll shut up here for a second. I think what’s amazing here is his mourning wasn’t hidden. And he simply wasn’t one of the boys. He’s called a mighty prince. And so to me, the question I ask is: Are there areas in my life where I need to humble myself? In my worldview, how much of what I believe about being a leader, the face of a leader, s true, and how much of it is untrue? What do I need to re-examine and re-look at through the story? That’s kind of where I went.

The Myth of Problem-Free Leadership

Matt: One of our talking points and thoughts around this is that there’s also a false idea—again, generationally—that “Well, if I get to this place, let’s call this one leadership. If I become the leader, then I have no problems.” Well, no, because we watch people crash and burn from that all the time. They get there and think, “Dear God, this is hard.” Yes. Yes, it is. And so it’s not the absence of problems or the absence of pain. It’s the ability– True leadership shows up when I have the ability to walk through it faithfully and honestly and deal with it. And people have a pattern to follow.

Some people have the title of a leader and some have the identity of a leader, and there’s a difference. The identity—it’s who I am. It’s how I lead. When I have the title, that’s when I bounce all over the place. “I don’t know if I should be vulnerable, completely open, completely closed off. What do I do? I’m the leader. What do I do? I’m not going to say anything. I’m going to say everything.” But when who I am is a leader and I’m leading, I’m able to give people a path and a pattern to follow through hard decisions, hard moments, hard difficulties.

Humility, Help, and Growing as a Young Leader

Winston: Yeah. And I don’t know which one of y’all mentioned it, but I think it was you, Pastor Matt, about being humble enough to ask for help. And even as, obviously I’m the younger leader on the call, but–

Matt: Easy now.

Winston: A fairly young leader in general, having to recognize when I’m experiencing pain and I don’t necessarily know how to walk through that, instead of trying to figure it out myself or stumble through it or just make poor decisions in the midst of pain, being willing to reach out to leaders who have had experiences far beyond mine. You two on the call being literally those who I reach out to, among others. But I think that humility that it takes to say “I need help.”

There are a lot of reasons, especially for younger leaders, that you might not say you need help because you want to be seen as competent or strong, or saying “I need help” may feel like weakness, and you have something to prove or x, y, z. And so I think that humility is a huge piece, especially for young leaders, where you miss out on gaining wisdom from those around you, those God has placed around you specifically for such a time as extreme pain or mourning or loss.

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Integrity and Generational Decisions in the Transaction

Jim: Yeah. What do you guys make of the transaction? Then we read about the transaction of the purchase where the gentleman wanted to give it to him, but he insisted on buying it. What do you think the significance of that event is? Is this just a historical fact or is scripture trying to teach us something here?

Matt: I believe 100% that the scripture is teaching us integrity, and especially as a leader. Let’s come back to what our central focus is here. There are things that are required, and this is why some people can’t handle the weight of leadership. There are certain things required of leaders that may not make sense to everyone else. A lot of people would be like, “Oh, great, they’re going to give it to me.” And Abraham says, “No, no, no. We’re going to do this on the up and up, and we’re going to do it publicly.” Because it lays that out. We’re going to make everyone aware.

Because what Abraham needed– I’m allowing a long pause there because I’m trying to find another word. I was about to make it rhyme and I did not want this to rhyme. Hopefully enough time has gone by. But this property would become deed to Abraham.

Winston: Come on.

Matt: No. That’s not what I wanted. Stop. Strike from the record. There’s no way I could back up on it. I was stuck. I could only go forward. He wanted this deed in his name. The land would become deeded, and it would become the burial ground of the patriarchs.

Generational Thinking vs. Short-Term Fi

So integrity here is– Again, this is longevity as a leader. Understanding: this is a moment. I read in a commentary. I didn’t know this. I’ll share so everyone else can know this listening: Sarah is the only woman in the Bible whose age is given at the time of her death. It just shows the respect of how mighty a woman of God she really was and as obviously married to Abraham.

Whether he knew it or not in the moment—that this would become the place where Abraham would be buried. This would be the place where children were buried, the patriarchs as we know them would be buried there.

And so on the front end, if they let you– I don’t know how you borrow a graveyard, but if they let you borrow, if they loan it to you, then you don’t have a place to bring the others back to. You’re not sure. And so this is—you could stretch this into a leadership principle—but I have to make decisions that are generational, not in the moment. In the moment, a lot of people would have said, “Yes, give it to me.” But Abraham’s thinking generationally because it’s a big deal, especially in that culture, for the families to be buried together. That was not like today.

And so he’s thinking, along with integrity, generationally in his decisions, not just in the moment. And again, that shows the maturity of a leader. An immature leader would try to fix the issue right now and move on, where the maturity of a seasoned leader says, “No, we’re going to do this and think generationally.”

Leading With a Clear Conscience

Jim: Yeah. I think if we really work hard at being people who live righteously, the kind of idea is that whenever someone wants to check the historicity, wants to go back, they’re going to find the same story. It’s consistent. It’s sleeping with a clear conscience.

Matt: Yeah.

Jim: And if I made a mistake, I made a mistake, but there’s no deception here. I might have got a good deal, I might have got a bad deal, but there’s no deception here. I didn’t use the situation to be a ploy on these people to feel bad for me and then do this. So at the same time he was mourning, he was still able to keep his wits about him and keep what is right in the midst of this devastation.

The Three P’s of Leadership: Person, People, Place

Integrity in the Transaction

Winston: Jim, you’ve shared this in other spaces before, but the person, people, place idea—maybe having the same voice no matter where you’re at. Can you touch on that maybe a little bit?

Jim: Yeah, that’s the whole idea of the three Ps of life and leadership, that if I work on—and there’s a statement that just kind of popped out of me. Isn’t it interesting how hard we work on our jobs and how that can lead to how little we work on ourselves? And the inside-out proposition of leadership looks something like this: we don’t want to work on ourselves because that’s the hardest work. It’s tough when you have to tell the truth to yourself—how weak I am, how this, that.

But if I work on a healthier self, a healthier person, then the odds of me having healthier relationships go up exponentially. And if you combine those two things—healthy person, healthy relationships with people—then I’m going to have a lot more power to stand in my place, wherever that might be, and do what it is.

Questions Behind the Questions: Coaching Through Curiosity

So yeah, that comes with the same kind of voice idea there. And I just wish I would have understood that when I was younger. The opportunity I have now in working with younger men and women is where they want to immediately jump into their place and ask me to help them untangle things. I purposely and sometimes forcefully reverse engineer and go, “Hey, let’s talk about you. Let’s talk about where you went to high school. What do you love?”
Sometimes it’s just slowing things down and remembering, “Oh, I’m a person. I’m a soul. I feel, I think, and I behave.” So yeah, that was a good point, Winston.

Winston: That’s why you never answer my questions. You just ask me a question, and it’s something else, and I’m like, “What are we even talking about right now?”

Jim: Well, maybe there’s some insecurity there where that way I know I didn’t give him the wrong answers.

Adding Personal and Professional Value to the Team

Matt: That’s good. That’s good. Hey, Jim, recently I had the opportunity to sit and talk to a sales and construction team of a great organization, and they produce high-quality product for their customers. And I’d forgotten about the story. When I stepped in to talk to them, they wanted some team alignment, leadership talk, or whatever. And so I started, but I started purposefully, and I said, “Today I want to add value in two ways. One, I want to add personal value, and I want to add professional value as a team—how you can operate better.”

And while I’m talking—it wasn’t in my notes, it’d been years since I’d heard this story—but it fit in the moment and in what you just said. I remembered the story of– Because they were having some issues. We all have issues at work, some home, and whatever.

The story came to mind while I was standing there in front of this group about the man on Sunday afternoon who wanted to take a nap, and his little boy was bugging him, saying, “Dad, let’s go play. Let’s go play. Let’s go play.” And he’s like, “Son, just a minute. Let me get a nap.” And the little boy, “Let’s go play. Let’s go play. Let’s go play.”

The Story of the Man and the World: Getting the Person Right First

He said the Sunday paper was sitting right there and it had a picture of the globe and all the countries. So the dad tore that up into a lot of pieces and threw it on the floor and said, “Hey, when you get the world put back together, wake me up and we’ll go play.” He knew his little boy would take a long time because he didn’t know where countries were. He had to figure out all these shapes and what would fit.

And the dad had just dozed off, and just a couple of minutes had gone by, and the little boy’s tapping him again. “Dad, I’m finished. Let’s go play.” He’s like, “How in the world?” He holds it up and it’s perfect. The world is in perfect shape. And he said, “How in the world did you do that?” And he said, “Well, on the back of it, there was a picture of a man, and I knew if I got the man right, the world would be right.”

And exactly what you’re saying—when I get my place right, when I get my person right, it’s amazing how all of a sudden the sales job becomes right, the construction job becomes right, the relationships become right, the volunteer—whatever I’m doing becomes right. The world starts getting right because I got the man right.

Appreciation of the Three Ps

I love your three Ps. You’ve probably got that copyrighted or trademarked, but I’m going to steal that and use that on occasion. I’ll give you credit publicly when I do it.

Jim: Oh, that’s fine.

Winston: Oh, that’s publicly though. You gotta give it to him publicly.

Matt: Yeah, I’ll do it publicly. I won’t print it in a book. I won’t print it in my next book, but when I say it—anyway, that story came to mind. And that’s what we see with Abraham here. We see the man, right? The integrity. Integrity comes from the root word “integer,” which means whole, whole number. It’s got to be whole, right?

Integrity in the Transaction: Ownership, Cost, and Character

Jim: I think Abraham is modeling the idea that in this life, you don’t get something for nothing. It’s just a good understanding of that. I remember when I was a younger man and could barely afford the old beat-up pickup truck I had. I’d see the other guys who were going into debt and buying their new cars and all of that.

But when I would spend that Saturday morning washing that old truck, vacuuming out the inside, the weirdest transformation would happen. Almost every time I washed and cleaned that truck, I would say stuff: “This is a good old truck. There’s nothing wrong with this truck. It’s a nice truck.” It just shows the difference of ownership. I paid for it. I’m taking care of it. There’s something supernatural in purchasing the field in this story. He could have got it for nothing.

We’ve heard it said a lot—when kids, whether 20, 30, or 50, are left with a ton of money, if they themselves haven’t earned it, haven’t figured out how to steward it, they don’t know what to do with a ton of money. We hear that over and over again. Like the lottery. How many have declared bankruptcy? It’s been a while since I’ve read an article on that, but I remember reading one not too long ago. I was astonished at how–

Then of course, we’re trying to help professional athletes out more than we used to. Same kind of thing, they get this signing-on bonus when they get out of their rookie contract, and they get their big bonus. They don’t know what to do with it all, especially since most of their life is pushing weights around, practice, playing. They don’t really think about tomorrow.

Stewardship vs. Windfalls: Handling What You’ve Been Given

When my boss told me in my early 20s that if I saved this much per month and put it in an IRA when I turned 50, well, as soon as he said 50, I shut my mind off. Fifty?

Matt: And just for context, you just said young people, whether they’re 20, 30, or 50. That just gives us– You used 50 as young people.

Jim: Did I say that?

Matt: You did. I caught that because I’m 50, or almost 50. But yeah, I don’t think I’m a young person, but I appreciate that. And you’re exactly right, Jim. I mean, how many people— You could give $10,000 to one person and give 10,000 to the next, and if they don’t know what to do with it, man, it can be a blessing or a train wreck.

Winston: Parable of the talents.

Matt: Yeah.

When Scripture Slows Us Down: Hidden Value in the Details

Jim: Yeah. That’s good. That’s good. Yeah, it is interesting, right? All of these scriptures add value to our life. I just got done recording the podcast before this one, and I forget what Brett Kunkle said—you guys might know it—but it has something to do with an organization that has something to do with Bible reading, and they did a study of over 100,000 people across the globe.

A study of it, I should say, where they found that if you have four Bible touches a week—meaning that you don’t literally just touch your Bible, but you read it—the significant positive impact that it had on your life in the reduction of all kinds of negative behaviors and the replacement of positive behaviors was astronomic. Hopefully, it’ll be in the show notes on that.

But here we are reading about this lady dying, getting buried, and a lot of people go, “So what? I’ll skip that chapter.” But when you just take the time to discuss it and look at it there, and he’s also honoring this woman. Very, very important. She wasn’t just going to be buried in the field, but her ancestors were going to follow her in that. It was going to be a tomb for the family.

Public Integrity: Why the Gate of the City Matters

Matt: Going back to one of the things we said earlier again, these are the nuances in scripture in verse—let’s see here—18: “And to Abraham as his property in the presence of all the Hittites who had come to the gate of the city.” There’s something else: language here as we look at this. But in verse 19, “Afterward,” after all of this had been done publicly so there could be no question about it—afterward, in verse 19, he buried his wife Sarah.
He wanted to make sure the i’s are dotted, the t’s are crossed, that in the presence of witnesses—because this could become a point of contention down the road when you try to bury the next generation. And he said, “No, no, no. It’s been settled, and it’s right.”

And we just don’t understand. We don’t have context for culture to understand the power of when they came to the gate of the city. That was the gathering place, that was the town hall. That was the place decisions were made and declarations were made. Foreclosures were told. The good and the bad all happened publicly at the gate of the city. Before there was a local newspaper, there was the gate of the city. And so I just love the language around that. He just made sure, and then afterward Abraham buried Sarah.

Building a Legacy: What Will Outlive Me?

Jim: And so yeah, I don’t know if you have anything else, Winston, but I wrote here in some of my notes, it’s similar to a question I asked some men a couple weeks ago at a men’s retreat. The question that we put before everybody is: What do you want to do with the rest of your life? And we introduce that as something that should be a conversation between them and God, you and God.

As I’m looking through Genesis 23, I couldn’t help but ask this question: What am I building today that will outlive me and serve those who come after me? The temptation of course, for somebody at my age is: Do I have all my ducks in a row to retire? Do I have all my ducks in a row that will take care of my wife and myself as we enter— We’re not middle-aged anymore, so what does that look like?

But a better question, as we said at the retreat, when you ask the question, “What do I want to do with the rest of my life?” that question is relevant regardless of whether you’re 12 years old or whether you know that you’ve got weeks or months to live. It’s true for all of us.

And even this question: What am I building today that will outlive me and serve those who come after me? That’s what Genesis 23 did to me.

Doing Less, Doing Better: Wisdom for Younger Leaders

Winston: Yeah. One other thought there: I think as a younger leader, you often equate energy with execution, which makes you want to do more with all the “energy” that you have. But I think the question you’re posing forces you to use your energy to do less so that you can focus on what needs to be done well.

Jim: Yeah. And if you don’t, it won’t get done, right?

Well guys, I enjoyed that conversation. I think Genesis 23 was well worth the time, and we’ll be turning the page next time to obviously Genesis 24. We see this whole family tree begin to extend, and things begin to rapidly move toward more and more excitement that goes on in the foundation of our faith.

Matt: Yes.

Jim: You guys have a wonderful day and a wonderful time, and thanks for joining me.

Matt: Enjoyed it.

Winston: Yep.

Outro

Hey, thank you so much for joining us on the Today Counts Show. We’ve got so much more planned for you, so stay tuned and stay connected on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and subscribe on YouTube. And remember, today counts.

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