If I am totally honest, I never really thought of myself as a leader. I was more comfortable serving in the background. I wasn’t seeking the power, acclaim, or the position. Perhaps that stemmed from my own sense that others were likely more capable and knew more than I did.

Even so, at many points along my path, leadership came to me. In each case, I discovered reasons why it did not attract me. It wasn’t the responsibility that weighed too heavily or even the energy it consumed. The thing that troubled and created weariness in me was how so many serving with me were jockeying for power, position, and influence with me and those we served.

That certainly is not new to anyone who has ever served. We see it in the Word also, most notably when the mother of James and John sought positions of power and influence to be seated on either side of Jesus in His kingdom. We see it in other places as well.

Thankfully, we also see leaders (though imperfect in many ways) who seemed to show us some of the qualities the Lord was looking for in those He elevated to leadership.

Some of those we see it in include the lives of Ruth, Esther, Joshua, David, and Daniel to name a few. In looking at what I see in their recorded lives, there are some things that stand out even though their stories are different, as are their leadership styles and responsibilities.

What were the qualities of leadership?

First, they each seemed to lead by example. They were their own persons, doing what they felt called or led to do. They didn’t set one standard for themselves and another for those around them. They asked those whom they led to simply do what they were already doing.

Second, each recognized the value of repentance and accountability. Even when accountability came as a result of failure as it did with David, he humbled himself before the Lord rather than justifying his deeds.

Third, they sought the Lord before they moved on what lay ahead of them, trusting His counsel and confirmation for the direction they were to take. If they failed to seek His counsel first and followed their own path, they discovered quickly the folly of such a choice.

Another quality that seemed evident in them was humility. They did not think so highly of themselves they would have presumed to think they should be the one who led. When they sensed clearly the Lord’s direction, they were obedient.

Last of all, they valued what the Word taught them, showed them, as a standard to guide them in learning who the Lord was, fearing Him more than man. Each gives us a glimpse of that in their story.

Ruth overcame her culture and religion to follow Naomi and embrace her mother-in-law’s faith in a foreign land. Esther risked death at the hands of a king to spare her people from slaughter. Joshua had been a lieutenant under Moses and knew well what happened when he slipped from following the Lord’s path. Daniel refused to bow down to any manmade image or to eat outside his faith’s dietary restrictions. David learned the sacredness of the Ark of the Covenant when he sought to return it to Jerusalem without following the Word’s instructions.

None of these appeared to be courageous at the outset. The courage came after they faced their fear.

 How did Jesus lead?

Clearly, He didn’t seek power. Power lay within Him, from the Father. He didn’t seek position to confirm who He was to himself. He already knew. He didn’t seek to be an influence, as He spoke and taught, influence came when hearts were moved.

Jesus never sought the trappings of leadership. Seeking the best house, the best seat at the table, hobnobbing with the leaders of the day, or the high echelon of the religious leaders were not things He showed any interest in. He was ever obedient to  the Word, the will of His Father (even unto death).

Jesus was the epitome of integrity. Nothing in or about Him was incongruent.

When we become leaders, Jesus models more clearly what that role should look like than any book or seminar on leadership.

How will we respond to that standard? Only by following the qualities noted above and trusting Him to shape us into the leader He desires.

It’s also important to note, He often chooses the least likely so His power and image can be more evident.

  Jesus models what we should also seek when we look for leaders to follow.

What would it have been like to be one of Jesus’ disciples, walking along with Him on the dusty roads of Galilee? What was it like to see what they saw?

When I consider those questions, it seems easy to understand why they would have written as much as they could in the gospels to give us glimpses of their journey to give us help for our own.

The Lord used each of the disciples’ voices to try to give us a fuller orbed understanding of the story of His ministry here on earth.

Time and again if we take a moment to imagine it as we are reading, we can come up beside them on the dusty road and possibly get a glimpse of what it must have felt like. Often it seemed that even though they were there, they were often seeing and yet not seeing at the same time. Little wonder that our vision can be blurry.

Reading in Mark 8 today I see Jesus teaching the crowds and then expressing concern for how hungry and weary they must all be. What a gift of hospitality He had. He never failed to see to every aspect of those He sought to reach and in this passage He multiplies seven loaves to feed the crowd that had been gathered with Him for three days.

He feeds their spirits and hearts and then He gives them food for their physical hunger.

Later in that chapter they all arrive at Bethsaida and some friends of a blind man bring him to Jesus and beg that He heal the man. They have heard of His power and miracles. There was no question He could, if only He would.

Jesus responds and in this healing, He puts spit in the man’s eyes as He lays hands on him. Then He asks him if he can see anything.

I can only imagine the man squinting and squeezing his eyes opened and closed trying to regain perfect sight; but no matter how hard he tries, he tells Jesus he sees men who look like walking trees.

So Jesus lays hands on him again and when the man looks carefully, he discovers he has perfect twenty/twenty vision.

Sometimes He healed instantly and sometimes He showed us that healing could be progressive. Commentaries make note that He was also showing the disciples (and us) that spiritual blindness might not be healed instantly.

What hope that gives me! My limited vision also can be healed to see more clearly, to understand more deeply, to know Him more completely, to begin to see more as He sees.

When Jesus looked at someone, He saw beyond what everyone else saw.

Remember. He looked at the woman at the well and saw not only what she had done, but also what she could be. He looked up in a tree and saw a wee man; a tax collector hated by one and all, and yet saw the hunger in his heart and went to his house for dinner. He noticed the widow dropping in the two coins and considered her sacrifice.

He saw what lay beneath the surface and saw possibility, a precious soul needing healing. He never diminished those others passed over or shunned. He respected each one.

What do we see?

How do we learn to see more like that?

Maybe we who know Him need another touch of His hands to heal us so our eyes and hearts can see beyond what we see now when we look at those around us.

Ken Gire writes in Windows of the Soul, “we must learn to look with more than just our eyes and listen with more than just our ears”.

To do that, we need to put down our phones, lay aside our assumptions, deal a death blow to our prejudices, pride, and biases, and see in ordinary moments each day that we have the opportunity to see things of eternal worth, people of eternal value. It will take time.

There are moments when we slow our pace and get glimpses of that through artists, music, or written words. We get bigger views when we peer closely at the raindrops on a lacey spider web or observe a mountain range come into view. We see it in a star-spangled sky or a rosy sunset.

But do we also see what He saw when we look at others?

Most of us have faced one time in our lives (if not more) what we might call a “desert experience”. Such a time is easily remembered as a benchmark of sorts where we were stretched and challenged, a time where we struggled to hope. Some of you may be there now.

The dictionary describes a desert as “a dry, barren area of land, especially one covered with sand, that is characteristically desolate, waterless, and without vegetation”. Some of us might refer to the time as a “wilderness experience”.

I don’t think we arrive there as a destination of choice. But our lives shift, our circumstances change, our moorings let go, and whether spiritually, relationally, occupationally, or physically, we find ourselves there. We feel disoriented.

Being in this place seems to cause us to lose our bearings, at least for a time. Everything about the landscape is unfamiliar to us. We scan the horizon looking for which way to go, but the path is unclear and no landmarks point the way. Because we didn’t plan to be there, we often arrive unprepared and lacking in supplies.

The challenge of the desert is the uncertainty of how far it goes and how long we will be there.

We feel utterly alone, abandoned by those we thought would be there with us and sometimes we sense the Lord has left us as well. The sun scorches us by day and when darkness descends, cold etches itself deep within our bones.

We are weakened by the extreme conditions in which we find ourselves. We experience hunger, but especially thirst until a certain dullness relieves the ache and we become almost numb. It is then when we find the enemy most seductive, formidable, and unrelenting in his assault upon our minds and hearts. His whispers cloud the truth of who we are and whose we are.

Jesus too had a desert experience. It was a time when Satan came to taunt, tempt, and test Him in every conceivable way. The desert environment weakened Him too. He was tempted to call God’s care for Him into question.

In referencing the enemy’s devices, Ken Gire notes in Moments with the Savior that the temptation was “not to make Jesus doubt himself but to depend on himself”. At a time Jesus most needed to depend on his Father, Satan tried to persuade Him to depend on himself, to doubt his Father.

I think we can relate to that temptation as well. We cry out for an answer, but the heavens appear silent so we are tempted to be unwilling to wait for an answer, a direction, and we launch out on our own. Any direction seems better to us than waiting here in the middle of nowhere with no one.

One day slides into another. We lose track of time. We have difficulty with focus. We are tempted to lie down and sleep, but also know that could be the end of us if we do not stay on the alert.

How we fare in the desert is impacted by a number of factors:

• What was our condition before we arrived there? Had we been fed and nourished daily prior to this?

• What skills and disciplines had we practiced routinely?

• How well did we know the Lord’s voice? Had we spent regular time listening for Him, to Him, so we could distinguish it from other voices?

Each of these, if answered in the most positive way, will make our survival in the desert more likely. Being equipped for the desert happens in the days, weeks, months, and years before we arrive there.

We must be armed with the truth. Jesus certainly demonstrated that to us. His knowledge of the Word was key when the enemy’s voice and devices were swirling around Him. He also knew his Father’s voice.

What was most crucial for Him in addition to this was whether or not He would be obedient to the Word, whether He would follow the path his Father directed.

 

As we all know, He would face the test again in Gethsemane and at the cross.

The issue of obedience is crucial for us as well and our response will be strengthened by our knowledge of His Word and His voice.

If we have knowledge of the truth and a clear sense of His voice through regular time with Him before we arrive in the desert, we will be more likely to trust Him, more likely to follow Him.

 We will also be strengthened, even as Jesus was, for the next desert experience.