Leaders are not self-appointed. The best way of discovering whether or not you are a leader is by looking behind to see if anyone is following. As Christians, first and foremost, we should be followers of Jesus Christ. Unless your walk closely resembles His, leadership is the worst place you could be. We have all heard the common parental retort when faced with the child’s answer that someone else did it first: “If someone else jumped off a cliff, would you follow them?” That is exactly what occurs when we follow another person who is not following Jesus. All other roads lead to death and destruction!
In 1 Timothy, Paul explains the attributes required of leaders within the church, bishops and deacons. Bishops, according to Paul, must be:
“blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded, of good behavior, hospitable, able to teach; 3 not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous; 4 one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence 5 (for if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God?); 6 not a novice, lest being puffed up with pride he fall into the same condemnation as the devil. 7 Moreover he must have a good testimony among those who are outside, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. “
1 Timothy 3:2-7
Included in this section of verses is an example of God’s first assignment to the majority of Christians as leaders. We are to be leaders in our own families. When God blesses a couple with a child, their first responsibility is to lead that child to the Lord through teaching and upbringing. This is not exclusively a New Testament philosophy, as God instructed the Israelites to remember the past and to remind their children of the events that occurred in the exodus from Egypt:
20 “When your son asks you in time to come, saying, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies, the statutes, and the judgments which the LORD our God has commanded you?’ 21 then you shall say to your son: ‘We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, and the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand; 22 and the LORD showed signs and wonders before our eyes, great and severe, against Egypt, Pharaoh, and all his household. 23 Then He brought us out from there, that He might bring us in, to give us the land of which He swore to our fathers. 24 And the LORD commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that He might preserve us alive, as it is this day. 25 Then it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to observe all these commandments before the LORD our God, as He has commanded us.’
Deuteronomy 6:20-25
Part of teaching our children is to remind them of God’s Laws, God’s miraculous and merciful hand and God’s promises. Yet this cannot be accomplished without the fear of the Lord. Fearing God means exactly what it says, and is a reverence for the Lord’s unending power. In Proverbs, God gives us further instructions on how we are to lead in our families:
Train up a child in the way he should go,
And when he is old he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6
If you haven’t taught your children the way of the Lord, they won’t know it. “Train” is the same word for Chanukkah, which means to dedicate. We are to dedicate our children to the way of the Lord. God’s promise does not say that they never will stray from His ways, but “when he is old he will not depart from it.” There are many people whose parents did their duty, only to see their children follow the ways of the world. Sometimes, it is painfully difficult to watch the erroneous steps of those adults on the path to destruction, though they were taught God’s Laws as children. Sometimes, we lose sight of God’s promise that they will return to Him. This is a sweet promise from the Lord that should bring comfort to godly parents!
Are you fulfilling your duty as the leader God called you to be? The first priority is to follow God, the next is to lead in your family and only then, will God use you to lead in other areas. It all starts with the words to the old song, “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back!” Remember, a leader doesn’t need a following mob to make his position more important. A leader only needs one follower to do his job perfectly!
His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things.
Matthew 25:23
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