{"id":4652,"date":"2014-09-18T00:00:25","date_gmt":"2014-09-18T05:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=4652"},"modified":"2014-09-17T22:22:19","modified_gmt":"2014-09-18T03:22:19","slug":"appreciation-or-emulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=4652","title":{"rendered":"APPRECIATION OR EMULATION?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Martin Luther King Jr NYWTS.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/8\/84\/Martin_Luther_King_Jr_NYWTS.jpg\/220px-Martin_Luther_King_Jr_NYWTS.jpg\" srcset=\"\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/8\/84\/Martin_Luther_King_Jr_NYWTS.jpg\/330px-Martin_Luther_King_Jr_NYWTS.jpg 1.5x, \/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/8\/84\/Martin_Luther_King_Jr_NYWTS.jpg\/440px-Martin_Luther_King_Jr_NYWTS.jpg 2x\" width=\"220\" height=\"267\" data-file-width=\"2473\" data-file-height=\"3000\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Recently, I was doing some thinking about Martin Luther King, and by way of extension, other courageous leaders. \u00a0As a young Christian, I read King&#8217;s collection of sermons titled <em>Strength to<\/em> <em>Love<\/em>. \u00a0I kept thinking, &#8220;This is my favorite sermon. \u00a0No, this one&#8230;&#8221; King&#8217;s famous <em>Letter from<\/em> <em>a Birmingham Jail<\/em> is remarkable in so many ways, not the least of which is its courage, clarity and conviction.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>In any case, it got me thinking how we appreciate courageous leaders, but we don&#8217;t necessarily want to emulate them. \u00a0King, of course, was far from perfect. \u00a0His adultery and plagiarism are well attested. \u00a0However, his courageous leadership at a formative time in American history is worth more than appreciation. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Are we willing to be courageous in the places God has placed us? Too many of us are motivated by the fear of man. \u00a0If we fear God, we will be the types of leaders who not only appreciate courageous men and women, but seek to emulate them.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, I was doing some thinking about Martin Luther King, and by way of extension, other courageous leaders. \u00a0As a young Christian, I read King&#8217;s collection of sermons titled Strength to Love. \u00a0I kept thinking, &#8220;This is my favorite sermon. \u00a0No, this one&#8230;&#8221; King&#8217;s famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail is remarkable in so many [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,90,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","category-character","category-leadership"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4652"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4655,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4652\/revisions\/4655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}