48 Ducere Est Servire: THE LEADERSHIP JOURNAL OF DALLAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY is at the core of understanding who God created us to be and how he wants to use us – both in good times and in times of crisis. AFFECTIVE FACTORS The second factor in a Christian leader’s own spiritual resilience is his/ her affective feelings of trust, closeness, and attachment to God. While Christians may say that they “trust” God in good times, it is another matter to implicitly trust Him when a bevy of worries are at one’s doorstep. As Jesus reminded his disciples in Matthew 6:25-27, 33-34: Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?…But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. In many instances, this trust is rooted in a strong affective attachment to God that is built on a lifetime of seeing God’s trustworthiness in action in one’s own life.5 Just as the ancient Israelites could look back on the “stones of remembrance” that reminded them of God’s miracles (Joshua 4:1-10), so, too, do leaders gain a deeper level of trust when they see God’s hand throughout early struggles in their lives that serve as reminders for them later. Much as children learn to trust their parents each time they cry and are cared for by a parent, so, too, does a Christian grow to deeply trust the Lord when he/she experiences the Lord’s presence and provision in the midst of trials early in life.6 This reminder that God is with us even in difficult times is echoed in a variety of verses throughout Scripture (e.g., Joshua 1:9, Isaiah 43:1-3, Zephaniah 3:17; Matthew 28:20). SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES The third factor in resilient faith is a leader’s commitment to spiritual disciplines which keep the leader close to God and His Word. While a leader may be able to look back on a lifetime of examples of God’s trustworthiness and may have a solid foundation of cognitive beliefs
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