What may come

November 8, 2008 by amanda.stebbins.

I have heard from many sources that we have a new president. I’m kinda bummed that I missed the significant acceptance speech as well as will be missing the inauguration of our 44th president. Political views aside, I do look forward to what is to come for our country and feel a respect and love for our new leader to be. I am learning what it looks like to respect and love a person, even if I don’t agree with everything that they think or do. Love is not contingent upon anything or else it is not love. I am concerned for the wellbeing of our new president, for the safety and the health of him as he comes under this new time of his life as well as a new time for our country, and I think more than ever, I want to support him in prayer. My hope is that the church as a whole in the United States will find unity under love in this time and come together to pray for this man and the trials that he will undergo as our president.

I continue to learn a lot about leadership, both in doing and in reading. I worked my way through Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and 1 Samuel over the road trip, and I continued to learn heaps about what it looks like to be a leader. Some principles I’ve taken away from my reading:

1) Leaders themselves are always in submission to someone or something else. There is not a person on this earth who is not in submission to something whether it is God, work, money, other men, their personal struggles, etc. There’s a Bob Dylan song that says, “You’ve gotta serve somebody.” So true. What defines the way a person leads is what they submit to, and those things or people or God that they submit to will in turn affect the way that they lead and the ultimate outcome of their leadership. God told the Israelites that if they would only submit to Him as their leader, they would find that all nations would be driven out before them and that they would find every one of His promises fulfilled. However, if they didn’t submit to His authority, God would turn away from them and be against them. This, of course, is a loving act from a just God to bring them back into righteousness, but that’s a letter in and of itself.

2) Leaders are not perfect. We talked some this week about leadership and the ridiculous demands that it can place upon the individual in the position, to the point where the person feels as if they need to be perfect. Leaders are to be beyond reproach, but this will be a natural result of living a life of intimacy with God. Once again, that which we submit ourselves to will ultimately define the way we live our lives… it’s just the natural outworking of submission. However, God’s grace does cover us for the times when we do mess up as leaders. The unrealistic expectation for leaders to be perfect is damaging at best because, really, who can live up to an expectation of perfection? Even the best person in the world has messed up at one time or another (apart from Jesus). Now, this is also not a way to excuse poor behavior on part of the leader; leaders are people of character, which leads me to the next thing that I learned.

3) Leaders are not elected by people, but rather by God for the way that they live their lives. People throughout the Bible were chosen for leadership by God. Many times, the leaders could not have even existed apart from God; a recurring theme in the Old Testament is that leaders were born to women whose wombs were barren. Many leaders were selected from unlikely circumstances. Some leaders were considered to be the least of those who were even options for the job at hand. God sees beyond what men see; he sees the heart and the integrity of the people. We are drawn to people who lead well because there is wisdom in that person. Elections aren’t bad, but elections also don’t always describe how a person lives their life.

4) Good leaders are well versed in servanthood. The leaders that God gave us to look at in the Bible served, and they were pictures of what Jesus would be the complete picture of in the New Testament. The Old Testament is a sign pointing to who Jesus is, and I’m reading it right now as that very thing. There is something to the concept of knowing how to serve those you are leading. Leaders gain the respect and honor of those that they lead when they can serve well. People know that they can trust their leaders in this very position. It is a very backwards way of approaching leadership because this world teaches us that to lead, you must push everyone else down and you must elevate yourself. I don’t know why it works the way it does, but I do know that these principles actually do work. God is the source of all wisdom and knowledge, and I trust that what He says is actually the best way of doing things. Put it to the test and see what happens yourself.

That’s just a little of what I gleaned from my reading this week. I think a lot about leadership because I’m in that position at the moment and I’m seeing the implications of A) the attitudes I have and B) the attitudes those whom I lead have. I do hope to find the church unite together more and more as days, months, and years progress, but I think that unity is something we will have to fight for. Unity is something that the enemy hates and thus it will be attacked greatly. Unity in families, in small groups, in nations will be under even greater attack than before. To defend ourselves is also to defend each other. Leadership is not so much about flexing our accolades muscles as much as it is about teaching one another how to walk together and to defend each other, about serving so that others may learn to serve. It’s something I do not want to take for granted, but rather to treat with sobriety so that those I lead will in turn go on to lead even better than I ever could.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »