Posts Tagged ‘Leadership’

Day 316: Jeremiah 37:1-39:18; Philemon 1-25 — Influence

Friday, November 12th, 2010

We have read and written about leadership recently in the context of elders and deacons. Today in Philemon we see an excellent model of leadership in Paul’s relationship with Philemon. The word is influence. Paul made it very clear that he was not ordering Philemon to accept Onesimus back kindly even though he had a right to do so. He used his influence with Philemon to persuade him into a course of action that would benefit all. By doing more than merely following orders, Philemon would be given a chance to mature as a Christian and develop a different kind of relationship with his servant. And the servant Onesimus would get a first hand glimpse of the kind of mercy that God gives through the actions of his master.

I love the quote from Josh McDowell “Rules without relationship leads to rebellion.” The key ingredient of a leader is the relationship with the followers such that they desire to follow not out of compulsion or even duty, but out of trust and love.

What a stark contrast with the mushy spined leadership of Zedekiah in Jeremiah 37-39. He bends to the whims of whoever is in front of him waving the biggest threat. He is scared of everyone (God, Jeremiah, Babylon, even his own officials). And in the end, he loses everything he has.

A struggle for me is maintaining that relationship with those I lead whether it is at work or at home with my children so that I may have the right kind of influence and not lead people down a destructive path like Zedekiah.

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Day 118: I Samuel 8:1-22 — “Precious”

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

It has never been easy to live in a covenant relationship with God. No matter what period of time we live in, we want to be like the world. God led Israel out of Egypt and saved them, protected them, and loved them. Israel looks around at other countries and decides they need a king. Forget the fact that they had the Almighty as their king. Things haven’t changed much in thousands of years because we in America are not much different. We need a government (“our precious”) to take care of us. There are those that stand up and talk of a worship alternative, governmental alternatives, lifestyle alternatives. We all want an alternative lifestyle. We want change (“our precious, we must have our precious!”). We don’t want to recognize God’s sovereignty, which did not require hierarchical forms of leadership in the human community or in His spiritual church. But the lure of conformity is seductive, and the pressures toward cultural accommodation are great. Is this our “precious?” “Appoint for us a king…like other nations” (1 Samuel 8:5). The people said to Samuel, in effect, “We don’t want to be different anymore. We want to be like everyone else (“our precious”). The pressures of alternative living are too great.” One of the issues raised by this episode for the community of faith in every generation is the lure and the danger of cultural accommodation (“our precious”). Isn’t this just a big slap on the face of God? Samuel raised his rejections to having a king and God settled him down and reminded him that the people were rejecting God and not Samuel (1 Samuel 8:7). Samuel tells the people what the consequences are of rejecting God as king and getting a man to become their leader (Read 1 Samuel 8:10-18). It’s funny that these are some of the same complaints we hear today about our government.

I get a kick out of us today. We think we are so much greater than the ancients. We think we are more sophisticated. We think we have evolved but we haven’t. We still make the same mistakes and most of all we reject our God and are surprised that He gets angry at us. We want our “precious”!

Questions: When does trust in human power become a rejection of divine power? To what degree have we let our trust in human authority overshadow our trust in God? Have we become like Gollum/Smeagol searching for “our precious”?

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Posted in 1 Samuel, Anger, God | 1 Comment »

Day 13: Matthew 9:18-38 — Leadership

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

Throughout this early section, we have been introduced to Jesus’ ministry of teaching, preaching, and healing. We have a recap in Matthew 9:35. In Matthew 9:36-38, we have a transition to Matthew’s upcoming “Mission Discourse” in chapter 10. I think this section is very sad. We see Jesus looking on the crowds with compassion. Two images are given. The first is that of sheep without a shepherd. The second is a great harvest without enough workers to bring the harvest in.

The biblical image of sheep without a shepherd is a figure of speech that shows the depressing state of a nation that does not have true leadership. Look at some of the Old Testament references: Numbers 27:16-17; 1 Kings 22:17; 2 Chronicles 18:16; Jeremiah 50:6; Ezekiel 34:1-16; Zechariah 11:15; 2 Samuel 24:17.

The image of a shepherd is more than our desire to be consoled, listened to, or be taken care of. Remember in Psalm 23, the shepherd has a staff and a rod – he pokes and prods with them. He teaches, he disciplines, he restores our soul, he leads in paths of righteousness. The shepherd is concerned about the sheep growing spiritually and protecting them from the evil one(s) that seek to devour them through confusion, deceit, and false instruction.

I have heard once that a shepherd in the field would break the legs of a straying sheep and carry them over their shoulder until the sheep healed and became so close to the shepherd that the sheep would never go far away again. What an image!

Question:

I wonder if spiritual, we might need our proverbial legs broken. What do you think?

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