Every leader will make mistakes but they don’t have to prove fatal to your leadership career. Read Psalm 51.

The Bible’s record of King David, Israel’s second king, indicates that he made some major moral and ethical mistakes but God allowed him to stay on the throne until his death. One of David’s mistakes was so heinous that it violated many Jewish laws, several of the Ten Commandments, and could have been punished by death. David’s sin was done in secret from people in his own court but God knew all about it. God sent His prophet Nathan to confront David concerning his adultery and resultant pregnancy with a woman named Bathsheba and to also confront him for arranging to have her husband murdered to cover up his sin. Psalm 51 is David’s response to that confrontation.

Every leader will make mistakes. The effects of those mistakes can be minimized by a humble spirit that allows acknowledgement of the mistake and that allows forward progress to be restarted or it can be compounded by pride that demands to hold on to bad decisions and continues to put actions to the original error in judgment. Read 1 Samuel 14:24-46.

Jonathan and his armor bearer had separated themselves from the rest of Israel’s army and had attacked a Philistine outpost. God used Jonathan’s victory over this small contingent of Philistine soldiers to create confusion among the rest of the Philistine troops and put the entire Philistine army into turmoil. The confusion was so wide spread that when “Saul and all his men assembled and went to the battle. They found the Philistines in total confusion, striking each other with their swords” (v 20).

There is hope for every leader with a teachable nature and little hope for any leader that has a self-centered, undisciplined, arrogant, unteachable nature. Read Judges 14-16.

There are several leadership principles we can learn from Samson’s unteachability: