Leading well matters, because a leader’s life affects other lives. Living well also matters, to us and to others. Indeed, leading well requires living well.
And for Christians? Both matter even more – because everything we say and do reflects on Jesus Christ. When an action we take or an attitude we communicate looks like him, it honors him. But when we say and do what misrepresents our Lord, we profane his name.
So how do we lead like Jesus? And how do we know when the Christian leaders we’re following are leading like Christ?
In the movie, The Sound of Music, the Von Trapp children tell their new nanny Maria they don’t know how to sing. Maria responds with a song:
Let’s start at the very beginning.
A very good place to start.
When you read you begin with A-B-C.
When you sing you begin with do-re-mi.1
When Jesus walked the earth, God’s children didn’t know how to lead. What do you think he identified as “a very good place to start”? Where, in fact, did Jesus insist that we start?
Here’s a sad hint: You won’t find the answer anywhere in most current Christian books on leadership.
Some may think the answer so obvious that it needs no mention. Yet, Christ counted it crucial. He repeated it often. And the Lord Jesus demonstrated every single day:
“When you lead,
you begin with following me.”
Don’t omit the obvious
While on earth, Jesus called 12 men as his apostles. Ultimately, he would entrust the twelve with authority and send them out to be key leaders in his church. Yet, initially, Jesus said one thing to Peter, Andrew, James, John, Matthew and the rest: “Follow me.”
In Luke 9:23:
Jesus said to everyone, “All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me.” (CEB)
Or in The Message:
Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead.
Yet even a cursory look at all levels of leadership in US churches and ministries reveals that what should be foundational is often absent. People invested in leading may have cultivated the personality, skills, tactics and traits associated with leaders. Yet for all their learning, they often do not know how to follow Christ.
They may not know that they don’t know. For various reasons, they may not want to know. Yet the Lord warns of the result:
My people, your guides lead you astray. (Isa. 3:12)
If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit. (Matt. 15:14)
Jesus’ first call and his forever call to each of us is, “Follow me.” As we follow him, our Lord makes the way, step-by-step:
- for us to learn to lead – not perfectly or sinlessly, but well.
- for us to recognize when Christian leaders are following him – and when they are not.
Ah, but when we seek to lead people, or to follow people, without first learning to follow Christ – we hurt ourselves and others.
Don’t be fooled by counterfeits
Walking beside the Sea of Galilee, Jesus called to four fishermen, “Follow me.” Simon and Andrew “left their nets and followed him.” James and John “left the boat and their father and followed him.” All four responded to Jesus “at once” (Matt. 4:20, 22).
As they physically walked where Jesus went, they found that following him meant so much more. For example, if their feet followed, but their hearts did not, God didn’t count it as “following.”
Still, the first disciples had a visible, tangible starting place for learning to follow Jesus. Because our Lord doesn’t walk the earth today, we may talk about following Jesus without knowing at all how it looks. We may think we’re following him when, in fact, we’ve been fooled by counterfeits.
Follow God, not your heart
While it sounds inspiring to say, “Follow your heart,” it’s deadly to run indiscriminately wherever your desires lead.
Moses urged:
Remember all the commandments of the Lord and obey them so that you do not follow after your own heart and your own eyes that lead you to unfaithfulness. (Num. 15:39 NET)
Wise king Solomon wrote his own tragic epitaph:
The one who trusts in his own heart is a fool. (Prov. 28:26 NET)
Don’t lean on your own understanding
Many people think it’s foolish to pursue uncontrolled emotions – but safe to follow wherever rational thought leads, especially rational thought based on Scripture.
The Jewish religious leaders thought the same thing. They studied Scripture diligently and taught it meticulously. But when Jesus appeared on the scene, they didn’t even recognize their promised Messiah, much less follow him.
Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track. (Prov. 3:5-6 MSG)
What a paradox: Don’t follow your heart. Don’t follow your own understanding. But do engage both your heart and your mind in following God.
Don’t blindly follow others
God can and does speak to us through other believers. Proverbs 19:20 says, “Listen to advice and … you will be counted among the wise.”
While it’s good to seek godly counsel, it’s crucial to know which advice – which sermon, which social media post – truly reflects God’s heart.
Job’s friends spoke true principles. Ah, but they did not rightly apply those principles. Their counsel only frustrated and disheartened Job. Ultimately, God told Job’s friends, “You have not spoken the truth about me” (Job 42:7).
If I can’t recognize the voice of God speaking to me, then I won’t know when he is or isn’t speaking to me through others. If the only way I know to make decisions is to ask someone “more godly” or to copy what they do, I’ve fallen for a counterfeit.
Don’t trust in checklists
I once asked a wise man, “Why doesn’t God just give us a road map for life?” He answered, “Because then we would keep our eyes on the map, instead of on Jesus.”
Jesus blasted those who taught people to follow God by the checklist method. Like a road map, a checklist presents us with a predictable path. Do this. Don’t do that. Check. Check.
When we equate following a particular group’s rules with obeying God’s Word, we can settle into a comfort zone where generation after generation remains.
Settling doesn’t equal following. And anything we can follow on auto-pilot is a counterfeit for following God.
Don’t fall for fads
Just because it’s new, just because it’s trending, doesn’t mean God’s in it either.
In Mark 7:6-8, Jesus cried, “These people … just use me as a cover for teaching whatever suits their fancy, ditching God’s command and taking up the latest fads” (MSG).
Today, much that presents itself as Christian teaching offers us another Jesus and a different gospel – that lure us into thick fog and rob us of truth, love, life.2
So, whew! Our own hearts, our own minds, the counsel of others, trusted checklists and current trends can all lead us away from where God is going, while assuring us we’re following him. But you, don’t be fooled by counterfeits.
Instead, look to the Lord Jesus himself. Though you can’t see him with your physical eyes, he is just as able to teach you to follow him today as the day he enlisted four unlikely followers in Galilee.
Hear God’s voice
Following God requires hearing God. Hearing God requires knowing his voice.
The Lord promises, for example, to speak to us through Scripture. Yet no matter how faithfully we study his Word, it remains locked to us if we cannot recognize his voice. Ah, but God has made the way for those who know him to hear him.
In John 10, Jesus announced, “I am the good shepherd” (v. 14). How does the good shepherd relate to the sheep?
The sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out … and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. (vv.3-4)
When Christ is your shepherd, you have the capacity to know his voice.
Do you have ears, but fail to hear?
We might think, “It would be much easier to know his voice if we had lived when Jesus walked the earth. If we could hear him with our physical ears, we would understand what he says.”
As logical as that sounds, it’s not true.
While on earth, Jesus said to the religious leaders, who stood before him with folded arms and hardened hearts:
I have not come on my own; God sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. (John 8:42-43)
Jesus said of the crowds who gathered to listen to him teach:
Though hearing, they do not hear or understand. (Matt. 13:13)
When Jesus told his own disciples, “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees,” they thought he was scolding them for forgetting to bring bread. Jesus asked them:
Do you have … ears but fail to hear? (Mark 8:14, 18)
Even the disciples didn’t yet have the capacity to hear their Lord clearly and consistently.
The Holy Spirit will teach you everything
We hear God our inmost being. We commune with him Spirit-to-spirit.3
Before his death and resurrection, Jesus explained:
The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything. (John 14:26 NET)
Jesus said this, not to the religious leaders who openly rejected him, nor to the crowds, who followed him for the show. Jesus promised that his Spirit would speak clearly to those whose hearts were set to follow him.
Dear one, don’t let fear or pride, stubbornness, self-effort or anything else keep you from acknowledging your need to hear your Shepherd in order to follow him. He delights to teach his sheep to recognize his voice.
Follow Christ wholeheartedly
Oh, and beware of counting leading more important than following.
Down through time, church cultures have counted leaders as the higher-ups in their heirarchies. Today, we may determine a leader’s eminence by the number of followers he or she has. We may link this elevated status with the institutions or platforms, titles or positions, that appear to undergird it.
Such a mindset shouts to anyone who aspires to lead: “Get to that higher place and defend it at all costs!”
In addition, a well-known axiom warns: “If you think you’re leading and no one is following, you’re just taking a walk.”
Eager to be real leaders who have actual followers, we may go to great lengths to protect whatever has provided the followers we have. We may pursue with passion what promises to provide us more.
That mindset robs us of this testimony:
I have decided to follow Jesus …
no turning back, no turning back.
Believing leading is the goal, we pursue something other than Jesus. Believing leading gives us significance, we choke on the words, “Though none go with me, I still will follow.”
“If none go with me,” we think, “I won’t matter. Who will I be?”
“If none go with me,” we wail, “I’m just taking a walk!”
Though none go with me
Daniel had everything going for him. He was handsome, intelligent and of royal blood. Then Babylon conquered Judah, and Daniel was forcibly removed from his homeland, never to return. Probably emasculated, he was one of a number of young Jewish men of nobility chosen to serve the enemy king.
Born to lead – and now with no other apparent options for doing so – Daniel might have set his heart to secure the best position possible in the Babylonian court. He might have told himself that, in that way, he could do much good. Instead, Daniel set his heart to continue to follow God.
To obey his Lord, Daniel requested different food from the standard fare provided for the Jewish young men in training. Three friends joined Daniel in this request. Amazingly, the Babylonian official granted their request, on a trial basis first, then a permanent one. The result?
After the 10-day test period, Daniel and friends “looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men” (Dan. 1:15).
Yet, even then, none of the other Jewish youths chose to do what God wanted, when the king wanted something else. In their eyes, the king was the one who could promote, demote or kill them.
I wonder if Daniel was disappointed. Leader that he was, I wonder if he had secretly hoped all the Jewish young men would stand with him in obedience to God. Disappointed or not, Daniel continued to follow God, regardless who did or did not go with him.
I still will follow
This decision to follow and not turn back marked the entirety of Daniel’s life. When he had great favor and held great rank, he held all of it loosely and kept following God. When warned that anyone who prayed to God would be thrown into the lion’s den, Daniel kept following God. When cast away as aged and unimportant, he kept following God.
Time and again, Daniel refused to choose what might secure him position or gain him followers. As a result, the Lord held Daniel in high esteem. He entrusted Daniel with incredible insights and lasting influence, because Daniel never made leading his goal.
You too be blessed with a Daniel heart. When tempted, bewildered or afraid, stay before the Lord, wrestling as needed, until you can sing to him from your inmost being:
Though none go with me,
I still will follow.
No turning back. No turning back.
The Lord gives the grace
Years ago, I was offered a leadership role for which I felt utterly inadequate. As I sat before God, listing all the reasons why I could not do it, he led me to scripture after scripture that affirmed, “No, you can’t, but I will be with you. I’ll do it through you.”
Finally, I protested, “But, Lord, it doesn’t make any sense.”
In my spirit, I heard him quietly say: “So will you follow me?”
Quietly, I answered, “Yes.” As soon as I agreed to follow, the Lord made it his responsibility to show me how to lead. Faithfully, he gave me grace to overcome what hindered.
In the years since, he has continued to remind me: Any time I turn aside from following him, I also veer away from living well and leading well. Ah, but when I recognize my error, turn and follow him again, he gets me back on track.
He makes the way
It’s so tempting to pursue power and popularity. It’s so easy to believe the illusion that those who gain both are the real leaders – leaders to follow and emulate.
Yet godly leaders do not pursue popularity or power. Godly leaders follow Christ.
A year after the Exodus, a leader named Caleb faced a crowd of God-followers who had worked themselves into a frenzy of fear and unbelief. Caleb urged them to go where their Lord was leading. Their answer? Death threats.
God’s affirmation?
My servant Caleb … has a different spirit and has followed me fully. (Num. 14:24 ESV)
In the same breath, the Lord made Caleb a promise the man didn’t see fulfilled for 39 years. Like everyone else, Caleb spent those years in the desert. But he didn’t wander. Oh no. That leader lived. And he prepared a new generation to follow God and not turn back.
Then, the Lord kept his promise: With the new generation, Caleb entered the land of promise. Still filled with strength and wisdom, he led his clan to receive their inheritance in full.
Living well. Leading well. From start to finish, it all comes down to following the God who has revealed himself in his Son. For as we set our hearts to follow Christ fully, each next step, he gives us grace. And he himself makes the way.
Photo by Sevgi Gümüş on Pexels
See also
- A spirit like Caleb’s – fully following God
- Mary Magdalene stuck her neck out
- Submit to such women in the Lord
- Trauma and truth-seeking: Desperation, spirit, life
- Journey to a divided heart
- Obsession with power, in the church
- Celebrity culture in the church
- Defender of the forsaken – this is God
- People of God, befriend the forsaken
- Counting the cost, going with God
Footnotes
- From “Do-Re-Mi,” lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, music by Richard Rodgers. ↩︎
- I learned this the hard way when I connected with the “New Apostolic Reformation” (NAR). See 2 Corinthians 11:3-4 and the posts, Abusers like Ahab & Jezebel use one another, and, Counting the cost, going with God. ↩︎
- “Spirit can be known only by spirit – God’s Spirit and our spirits in open communion” (1 Cor. 2:14 MSG). I’ve written a lot about this crucial subject. See the post, Spirit to spirit: A matter of life and breath, and the links there to other related posts. ↩︎
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