5 Ways to Avoid the Trap of False Power, Pt. 2

The Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality

Newlifefellowship, Religion & Spirituality, Leadership, Richvillodas, Petescazzero, Emotionallyhealthyspirituality, Christianity, Faith, Peterscazzero, Churchleaders, Spirituality, Emotionallyhealthy, Newyork, Pastor

4.8 • 673 Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

📝 Free Church Culture Assessment: How is your church doing in these 6 core areas? https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/churchhealth

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Are you leading out of true power—or false power?

Far too often, we mistake activity for effectiveness, urgency for wisdom, and influence for true authority. When we operate out of false power—power rooted in our own ambition, hurry, or need for approval—we’re actually moving backward, not forward. We might look like we’re leading well, but deep inside, something is off. Anxiety rises, peace disappears, and we start measuring success by numbers instead of names, by comparison instead of calling.

In this episode, I unpack five countercultural ways to guard your heart and leadership against the trap of false power. We look at Paul’s struggle with the “super-apostles” and how weakness—not strength—is the pathway to true kingdom power. We explore why embracing slowness, humility, and deep discernment is the only way to keep your leadership aligned with Jesus.

If you’ve ever felt exhausted, driven, or subtly addicted to success—this episode is for you. True power is found in surrender. Let’s learn to lead from a different kind of strength.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, my name is Pete Scuzaro. I want to welcome you today to the emotionally healthy leader podcast.
0:06.9	So good to be with you. Our theme today is five ways to avoid the trap of false power. It is a part two of this podcast.
0:15.8	So the reason this is so important that we avoid the traps of false power is because when we do so,
0:22.4	when we're leading or living out of a place that's really not true power, we end up living
0:27.9	out of a pretend self, a false self.
0:30.3	We make poor decisions.
0:32.4	We're investing our time and energy, our resources in the wrong direction.
0:36.1	We're thinking in the wrong way.
0:37.4	We're taking engagements. We're thinking in the wrong way. We're taking
0:38.3	engagements. We're initiating ministries and programs. We're launching events prematurely or out of
0:44.8	God's desire. We're hiring people or putting people in place that really are not probably the right
0:50.0	people. And we end up hurting the people that we love and are seeking to serve in it
0:54.7	overtly. We and on top of all that, when we live out of a false power, we actually lose our
1:01.3	joy. We end up in anxiety. It just, it's, there's not joy. There's not peace. There's not a piece
1:06.6	of Jesus. It just feels lousy. And on the inside, we're not congruent living out of who God uniquely made us to be.
1:15.6	And we actually, we think we're progressing sometimes, but we don't realize we're actually
1:19.4	going backwards.
1:20.7	And it perpetuates a worldliness, not simply in ourselves, but in those around us, our
1:26.7	teams, our ministries, our churches.
1:28.5	And we just have a vision that's cloudy in all the wrong, in all kinds of ways.
1:35.3	And we end up measuring the wrong things. And so we actually fall into the temptations of the
1:40.5	desert that Jesus confronted in Matthew chapter four, in Luke chapter four, where he was
	...

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