Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
As we come to the close of another year, we face the beginning of a new year. As leaders, we look to each new season with the eyes of leadership. We don’t look forward to seeing what we can see to simply know something we didn’t know before. We listen to the voice of God in our hearts to hear what He is saying for the sake of the season that He calls us to lead others into. Leadership is a responsibility not an identity. God calls, anoints, and appoints leaders for the sake of others. Leadership is not a gift unto oneself. Leadership is for the sake of those we lead.
Jeremiah 31:31 “Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 32 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
Hearing God for the sake of others is an Old Covenant form of leadership. Hearing God to inspire everyone to hear God also is a New Covenant expression of leadership. Hearing God is not merely about knowing what to do. It’s about knowing God. This is the objective for each believer, even of the least. Hearing God for each new season of our lives is about being transformed in our hearts and minds to become an expression of Him to our world in some way. Surely God has specific things He desires to communicate with our world in every new season. Those specific things are not disconnected from the general themes of His heart for mankind in the progressive river of His life-giving grace. God’s presence will reveal to us His promises for each new measure of His purpose in and through our lives to our world.
As leaders, we don’t take people by the hand to lead them. We hear God and then we inspire those we lead to hear God also. We live in and from the presence of God in our lives to hear Him that we might turn to see Him. We turn to see Him that we might be changed by Him to lead others forward into the place of being changed by God’s grace for His glory in all things. Hearing God should lead to an encounter with God that transforms our hearts and minds in some way. Leaders are the first to be transformed to inspire those they lead to experience a life-transforming encounter with God on their own.
As leaders, we don’t simply seek revelations from God for what we believe to give inspiring words of Scripture. A word without a transformation in our lives makes us a runner with some form of information. Without a transformation in our own hearts and minds we are no different than the letter of the word. We give what we believe to be messages, but the fruit is death. Only the Spirit gives life. The letter of the word can only bring death. It is only by becoming a message that we can be messengers of God.
Leaders are not simply messengers unto the people. Leaders lead others into becoming a message to their world.
2 Corinthians 3:2 You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men; 3 clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart.
What God determines to be written in the heart of His children is written in the hearts of those who lead. The first to respond to the voice of God must be those who lead. The first to yield to the working of Holy Spirit within their hearts and minds are leaders. What God is saying to us, He is saying to us all in specific ways in each one’s heart.
As we face the continuing and unfolding seasons of God’s will, let us seek God’s presence to hear His promise that we might walk in His purpose in all things.
Food For Thought,
Ted J. Hanson
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House of Bread Ministry
3210 Meridian St.
Bellingham, WA 98225-1728
