Claiming the Promises (5)

So when Moses’ father-in-law saw all that he did for the people, he said, “What isthis thing that you are doing for the people? Why do you alone sit, and all the people stand before you from morning until evening?”  Exodus 18.14

Seekers and leaders
Inherent in the command to seek first the Kingdom and righteousness of God, is the assumption that, as we live toward the promises of God, we will be leading others in the direction of God’s blessings. We seek the blessings of God, so that we might be a blessing to others, and help them to know more of the blessings of the Lord in their lives. We are followers of Jesus Christ, and we want others to follow Him as well, and seek unapologetically to lead them onto new paths.

So we pray, plan, purify our lives, preserve whatever of goodness we can, and plunder all things for the sake of knowing God’s blessings, blessing others, and offering gifts of praise and thanks to Him. This will by definition make us leaders in our Personal Mission Fields.

Living toward the promises will find us moving in a specific direction by specific means. As we seek God’s Kingdom, we will move through, or past, or ahead of others, who will discern in us a direction and approach to life that some might regard as threatening (Acts 17.1-9), but others will want to emulate (Acts 6.1-6).

So as we seek God’s Kingdom, and live toward His promises, we must be prepared to lead others to follow Jesus with us. We’ll need all the help we can get in this, and, happily, there is help to be found “out there” where God’s truth about leading others has been discovered as acorns of blessing among unbelieving thinkers and leaders.

Great leaders
Some of the greatest leaders in human history have been unbelievers. They have not always led people in ways agreeable to the divine economy; however, they have led effectively, commanding the attention, respect, admiration, devotion, and lives of multitudes of followers. Many have left records of their leadership style, some even in the form of books instructing us in the fine art of moving people in one direction or another.

We may expect to benefit from such principles of leadership, to the extent that those principles are consistent with the teaching of Scripture, and are used as part of our work of claiming the promises of God.

Consider, for example, Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law. He was a Midianite, not a Hebrew, and a priest of the Midianite gods. But he also owned many flocks and had a large family. Over the years, he learned effective principles and practices for getting work done with and through others. He led and watched over those who served him so that all might realize maximum benefit from their labors. When he saw Moses, sitting in the judgment seat of Israel day after day, he knew this was not an efficient use of his son-in-law’s time. So he taught Moses to select and train qualified men, and to organize the nation under those men so as to expedite the practice of justice for all the people (Ex. 18).

Jethro may have been a pagan, but his principles of leadership were valid, and served the people of Israel well.

Gifts of God
Jethro’s advice to Moses was the salvation of his calling – and of the people of Israel. God Himself took Jethro’s teaching, which He had revealed to him in practice, and applied it to organizing the cities in Israel, where judges were appointed to rule over the people locally. This system even included a means of appealing from “lower courts” to higher ones when a case was too difficult to judge at the local level.

This same approach to overseeing the people of God translated into the experience of the early Church in the book of Acts. Elders were appointed to shepherd the flocks of God and to lead local congregations to unity and maturity in the Lord. The principles of local church organization go all the way back to Jethro, and the gift of leadership insight granted to him by the Lord.

All valid principles of leadership are gifts of God, to be discerned, practiced, and improved. We should expect much truth of God to be “out there” in the leadership books, teachings, and principles of the unbelieving world. Each of us is a leader in his or her Personal Mission Field, showing others the way into the Kingdom and blessings of God. We must use every available, reliable resource – all those which pass muster Biblically – to improve our skills as leaders. Whether those skills be in the areas of conversation, work, organizing, communicating, writing, or maximizing productivity, we must strive to excel in every leadership tool that will enable us to fulfill our callings to seek the Kingdom and live toward the promises of God.

For reflection
1.  Do you think of yourself as a leader? Explain.

2.  How do seeking the Kingdom and living toward the promises naturally make you a leader?

3.  What kinds of things do leaders do that make you want to follow them?

Next steps – Transformation: How can believers help one another be more effective leaders in their Personal Mission Fields? Talk with some fellow believers about this question.

T. M. Moore

This is part 4 of a 5-part series, Living toward the Promises. You can download this week’s study as a free PDF, suitable for personal or group use, by clicking here. You can learn more about living toward the promises of God by ordering a copy of the book, I Will Be Your God, from our online store (click here).

We invite you to register for the free online course, One in Twelve: Introduction to Christian Worldview. In this course we provide a sweeping panorama of how life in the Kingdom of God unfolds in an age in flight from God such as ours. Set your own schedule and study at your own pace. Learn more, and register for One in Twelve, by clicking here.

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.