Greetings,
I believe that the core of being a leader is revealed through a leader’s heart. We often think of our heart as being the inner part of us, but if we give our heart to something it involves our soul and our physical actions as well. When something has our heart our soul will embrace it as well as our body. The heart determines a good leader and the heart determines a bad leader, but the heart is exhibited in all that we are and do. A strong leader knows how to flood their soul with the inner strength of passion. A strong leader knows how to impassion their actions through the influence of their desires, thoughts, reasoning, imaginations, and emotions. A leader’s ‘heart’ includes their emotions, and all of their spiritual, mental, and physical life. When these things are united it releases a powerful force of life or death, depending on the motive of the heart. When we are God-seeking in our hearts and envisioned to live for the wellbeing of others these things become a powerful influence of life.
2 Samuel 6:14 Then David danced before the LORD with all his might; and David was wearing a linen ephod. 15 So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the LORD with shouting and with the sound of the trumpet. 16 And as the ark of the LORD came into the City of David, Michal, Saul’s daughter, looked through a window and saw King David leaping and whirling before the LORD; and she despised him in her heart.
David knew that he needed the manifest presence of God in Jerusalem in order to rule as the king of Israel. He knew that God was the source of his leadership so he gave his heart to moving forward with a God-influenced direction. He was not bound to the past, but embraced a walk of faith in following God. When he brought the ark of God’s presence to the tent he had place in Jerusalem, he demonstrated a full connection of his spirit, soul, and body. He was demonstrating the spirit, attitude, and actions of a leader. He gave his whole being to following God in the direction of life. He wasn’t going to the tent of the past, but to the tent he had seen in the imagination of his own mind. The tabernacle of David was a God-inspired idea, but it was David’s idea. In his process of carrying the presence of God to the place of the future, David wore the clothing of trust and worship of God. He didn’t hold back but was confident and bold in his ability to release a prophetic sound. That sound was one that inspired victory. It was a confession of the wind of God’s Spirit in his life. His wife Michal didn’t give her heart to the future. She was bound to the past. Her heart was still devoted to her father’s house. She didn’t see herself as David’s wife, she saw herself as Saul’s daughter. Because her heart was not focused on the future her mind and her actions were bound to the past. She became barren and never bore any fruit of generational inheritance.
When we embrace a connection of our spirit, soul, and body in leadership we release a strong influence of leadership. God gives life, breath, and all things (Acts 17:25). As leaders, we must know how to activate life-giving substance and direction God’s Spirit in our hearts. We must know how to be full in our spirits and then actively allow that life to impassion our attitudes, desires, passions, thoughts, focus, strategies, deliberations, purposes, and endeavors in our role of leadership. This process causes the testimony of our character, nature, way, power, and authority to influence our God-given sphere of leadership.
The process of uniting our spirit, soul, and body involves stirring our spirit with the life of the Holy Spirit within us. The presence of Christ in us is most important to the source of direction in our role as a leader. We must then give our thoughts, reasoning, imagination, and emotions toward what is stirring in our spirits. It includes taking actions to discover the path of life. God directed me through several building locations in the twenty years as a senior pastor of a church. Whenever God gave me a word about buildings, it didn’t just involve praying about a building, it involved looking at every possible building in the city to see if it was it or not. It included writing out plans, designing possibilities on paper, and imagining the potential outcome.
Jobs don’t come by prayer alone, they come through filling out job applications or taking actions toward business ventures. You have to be looking before employers know they are looking for you. You have to make steps towards new business before the market knows there is a demand for what you have to bring. I believe that vision comes before provision. How can there be substance to provide for vision unless there is a vision first? We must know how to write the vision so that it can be read, laid hold of, and run with in life. If we don’t, haphazard laziness will consume the vision.
Habakkuk 2:1 I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart, and watch to see what He will say to me, and what I will answer when I am corrected.
There must be expectancy in our attitude towards God that inspires actions in our lives that make our hearts available for all that God wants to do. This is a key element in being able to lead something that God makes us responsible to lead.
Habakkuk 2:2 Then the LORD answered me and said: “Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it. 3 For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.
We must endeavor to put our desires, thoughts, reasoning, imaginations, and our emotions towards all that God reveals to us in the direction of leadership. We must then take steps to run with what we see for the sake of those who will run with us. We cannot just run; we must run with what we see. If we don’t see anything, there is nothing to run with. A runner with substance is a messenger. A runner with out a message is just a runner. God declares the end from the beginning in all that we do. Let’s be leaders who are inspired by God in our spirits, souls, and bodies and let’s lead others to be inspired by God in the same way. It is only then that we can say, “Follow me as I follow Christ!”
Food For Thought,
Ted J. Hanson
