The Daily CHEW™
Moving God’s Love from Head to Heart for Christian Professionals
You are sitting alone in the conference room Tuesday morning, and through the glass wall you watch your senior direct report doing the thing he does effortlessly — the team gravitates to him, the room loosens when he walks in, decisions land smoother when he is in them. You hired him for that. You are proud of him. And there is a second thing sitting underneath the pride that you have not said out loud: what if his ability to connect with the team makes me redundant? A senior executive I worked with admitted exactly that last quarter — he had started to see his strongest direct report not as a gift but as a threat to his own leadership, and the resentment had begun to leak. He was shortening replies, withholding visibility, second-guessing the man’s calls. Two months later, his best hire was already updating his LinkedIn. When he finally named it, the resentment broke — and he started building on the gift instead of around it.
The reason Christian executives lose their best hires is rarely performance. It is the unnamed resentment that starts as a flicker and ends as a slow withdrawal of trust the direct report cannot explain but absolutely feels.
“Love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant.”
— 1 Corinthians 13:4, ESV. Scripture reveals that envy is the counterfeit of love that pretends to be vigilance. God secures your seat at the table — your direct report’s strength does not threaten the role He has already given you. Trust that God’s love is fierce enough to make you genuinely glad for the gifts in the room you lead.
Here is the question for this Tuesday: If I really believed God’s love has firmly secured my place in the role He has called me to, how would that change the way I see the direct report whose strengths I have quietly started resenting?
One move before Wednesday: Name on paper the one person on your team whose gift has begun to feel like a threat. Then write down two specific ways their strength makes you more effective, not less. Send them one sentence of genuine, specific appreciation today. If this is the only thing I do from this CHEW today, it is enough.
With you on the journey,
Ryan
If you had to put this into one sentence for today, what would you say God is inviting you to rest in or return to?
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