A-Serve-Tive-Ness - A Key to Living Your Calling

In leadership, I often watch people struggle to balance “nice” and “harsh.” Some hide behind platitudes like “clarity is kindness” to say whatever they want. Others go the opposite direction and never voice what they actually think or need. There is a better way: healthy assertiveness. And healthy assertiveness is not only about protecting yourself. It’s about freeing yourself, so you can focus on what matters and serve the people and the calling God put in front of you.

Healthy assertiveness…

• Frees you to give a clear yes and a clear no, so your time and energy land where God assigned them.

• Sharpens your focus. You stop spending yourself managing other people’s reactions and start spending yourself on the work itself.

• Strengthens relationships. When people know where you stand, trust grows, and you can serve them honestly instead of just placating them.

• Lets you serve from peace, because you are finally being yourself.

“Assertiveness” is not a popular word. It boils down to stating what you want, and letting your “yes be yes and your no be no.” But if you’ve ever struggled to speak up or say “no” without guilt, you’re not alone. Here’s my point, and why I’m writing about it: assertiveness isn’t just a personality trait. It’s the visible fruit of identity. And its purpose is not self-protection. Its purpose is focus and service. Dr. Henry Cloud defines assertiveness as “the ability to express your needs, thoughts, and boundaries clearly… without guilt or aggression.” That clarity is exactly what frees you to give yourself fully to what matters.

Below is what I’m learning about assertiveness, identity, and service.

1. There’s a difference between being “nice” and being godly.

For many Christians, assertiveness is a loaded word. We’re taught to be agreeable, to avoid conflict, to keep the peace at almost any cost. But that “Christian niceness” has a hidden cost. It scatters us. When we are busy managing everyone’s approval, we have little left to give to the work God actually called us to.

Most of us never heard, growing up, that our desires, preferences, and unique calling mattered to God. We learned to equate Christlikeness with never rocking the boat. If you’ve ever wondered, Is it even Christian to be assertive?, you’re not alone.

Edwin Friedman, in A Failure of Nerve, describes what happens when communities prize “niceness” over integrity. We lose our nerve. We adapt to the most anxious and demanding voices, and we mistake peacekeeping for peacemaking (note: peacekeeping is placating, peacemaking is a messy process of transfomation). In his words, “Peace will be valued over progress, comfort over novelty, and cloistered virtues over adventure.”

Ultra-nice people do not change the world, and they rarely end up at peace. The ones who do something with their lives have to learn assertiveness.

But how?

2. Maturity is being yourself.

When we avoid assertiveness, we don’t become more like Jesus. We just become less ourselves, and less useful to the very people we are meant to serve. Jesus was, in fact, assertive.

• He was clear, direct, and sometimes disruptive.

• He set His face toward His mission and refused to let the anxiety of others pull Him off it.

• He said what He meant.

• He was clear about His goals

• He did this while exuding and being unconditional love.

Jesus’s life, amongst its many other lessons, teaches us about focus, purpose, and assertivenes. Others have called this “self-differentiation,” which simply means having clarity about your own life and calling while staying connected to others. It is what let Jesus serve crowds without placating to them.

As Henri Nouwen wrote, “The spiritual life is a constant movement between the poles of loneliness and solitude, dependence and independence, belonging and individuality.” Christian maturity is not erasing yourself for the sake of others. It is being so rooted in who God says you are that you can give your truest self to them.

The Root of Assertiveness: Identity

Proverbs says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” (4:23)

Guarding your heart isn’t building walls. It’s knowing what’s inside: what God placed there, what He’s asked you to do, who He’s asked you to love. Assertiveness isn’t a technique. It’s the fruit of a rooted identity, and it exists to be spent.

When your identity is settled in who God says you are, you can say “yes” and “no” without second-guessing. You stop leaking energy into approval and conflict, and you start pouring it into your assignment. You begin to relate like Jesus: honest, present, focused, and free to serve.

3. Assertiveness is for service

The true fruit of assertiveness in the life of a believer is not doing what we want when we want. The true fruit is being free to focus, and to serve in our God-given assignment.

So when you hear “assertiveness,” hear it differently.

Break the word open: a-serve-tive-ness.

The center of the word is service. Assertiveness was never meant to be self-assertion. It is the freedom to spend your life on what God asked you to do, and on the people He entrusted to you. Assertiveness is not getting your way. It is being rooted enough to actively serve the assignment God placed in your hand while remaining undistracted.

That is a-serve-tive-ness. There is no assignment to see, no strength to serve, no will to act, until you know who you are. Clarity about who you are is what keeps you from misaligning your calling and pouring your one life into the wrong things and what allows you to lovingly say “yes” or “no” to things without an edge.