Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
I am continuing to address the role of leaders in the church. I have presented that leaders lead by being an example to those they lead in their way of life. This is in their character, nature, way, power, and authority. They are examples of Spirit empowered and transformed people who give life to their world. Leaders are servants and not hierarchal leaders. They are not above others in value but take on the form of servants to give their lives to give life to others. Leaders have been given a grace from God to equip believers for the work of ministry. That work is to love others in being sent and established, being a voice of God’s life to their world, assisting others in knowing the grant of God’s salvation and life in all things, caring for one another with a pastoral grace, and discipling others in understanding and knowing God in the transformation of their hearts and minds before Him.
A fourth role of leaders is to lead others in knowing God in an intimate and powerful way. Leaders don’t hear God for the people, they assist those they lead in hearing God. They don’t take others by the hand and lead them; they inspire them to give their hearts and minds to the will of God’s Spirit from within them.
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.”
The new covenant is not a different way of informing us concerning what God desires in our lives. The new covenant is a granted gift from God that puts His desires in our hearts and minds by an internal supernatural power of grace. Our knowing God is not the result of new instructions from God, it is an internal transformation of our hearts and minds by Christ within us. Knowing God is not a matter of understanding His instructions, knowing God is a matter of internal revelation and intimacy with God in our hearts. Leaders set an example in receiving this gift and they inspire others to receive the life-transforming gift of God’s grace that brings about this internal change in everyone who comes to believe. It is a grant from God. Knowing God is a matter of knowing His love that forever changes us. That process is not just a one-time event. It is a way of life that changes us from glory to glory as we each turn to God in Christ.
Christ in us is the source of life for a changed and enlarged heart. Leaders lead others in knowing the power of Christ in them. Each person must know the testimony of God’s grace that gives them a changed and enlarged heart that increasingly becomes a testimony of God’s law of love.
leadership cannot take people by the hand and lead them and expect to see New Covenant transformations in the lives of those they lead. We must inspire people to live from their hearts in loving God and we cannot lead them through mere accountability to godly principles and rules. A covenant of accountability will not change the hearts of those we lead. It must be a covenant of love and relationship. We must lead in a way that inspires people to live from transformed hearts and mind towards God. It must be a covenant based upon a revelation of God’s love. Even the least in a covenant of love can know Him. We must lead in a way that we inspire a culture that is shame free. We need God’s manifest presence that transforms the weaknesses of people’s hearts by the greatness of God’s love and the power of His grace.
We cannot put God’s way into the hearts and minds of those we lead. We must be more dependent upon God’s manifest presence in the lives of those we lead than in merely teaching them godly principles. We must be dependent upon God’s presence in order to lead others into His presence as well. We must teach people what God is like in His character, nature, way, power, and authority, but we must depend upon God to be the one who makes those things real in the lives of those we lead.
Food For Thought,
Ted J. Hanson
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House of Bread Ministry
3210 Meridian St.
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