Christian Leadership Foundations 5 - FaithSample

FAITH AND COURAGE

Leadership Devotion

Joshua was not new to national leadership, and neither was he new to battle leadership. He had been Moses’ right-hand man ever since their escape from Egypt. Soon after the Israelite’s exodus from Egypt, he led the forces in a skirmish with the Amalekites (Ex. 17:9), 40 years earlier. Joshua certainly knew how to lead. It was no surprise he was designated to take over from the recently deceased Moses and finally lead Israel into God’s promised land of Canaan.

Joshua had his marching orders directly from God. He had his revelation, his faith vision (1:1-5). God was going to give this land to the Israelites. He even mapped out the boundaries for Joshua. God would stick with Joshua, and he and his army would be invincible. You can’t get a much clearer faith vision than that. Joshua knew exactly what he had to do.

The fulfillment of this faith vision was going to be a huge struggle. There would be great victory and progress (e.g., Josh. 6), but there would also be times of failure and disappointment (e.g., Josh. 7). Sometimes the faith vision would seem easily achievable, and other times it would feel impossible. This is the way it always is with big faith visions from God. Your faith is tested along the way. It’s never plain sailing.

God knows this. So as Joshua stood nervously on the verge of his life's biggest leadership faith vision, God came alongside and encouraged him directly. God repeated his call three times to Joshua: “Be strong and courageous.” Faith requires courage. Courage to believe when everything yells, “Impossible.” Courage to keep going when you feel like giving up. Courage to ignore the critics who flare up when things are not going well. Courage to pick yourself up after another failure. Courage to trust God when he seems distant.

There are times when courage can be blatant stupidity when we will not admit failure, ignore wisdom, or move out of line with God. These are not times for forcing our way forward fixedly but for listening again to God and recalibrating our faith vision. God’s call for courage included a command to imbibe and obey God’s laws (1:7-8). We need to check whether we are doing things God’s way constantly.

Real faith will always require courage.

To Contemplate

Where is God encouraging you to step through fear into hope and action in your leadership journey?

Leadership Reflection

Faith and prayer

Christian leadership is inevitably saturated with prayer. So it comes as no surprise there is a vital prayer component in Faith. If we are to find what God wants, we need to ask him. Not just once or occasionally, but continually. We persistently seek God to make his direction clear. This is not the only purpose of prayer, but it is vital. Finding God’s direction on major leadership issues usually requires significant periods of prayer. There is no shortcut.

We pray personally; we pray corporately; we pray sacrificially (sometimes with fasting); we pray incessantly. We pray, listen, and interact with God until peace comes, and we believe we have found what God is saying, no matter how costly or impossible this may be. For example, just hours before his crucifixion, Jesus was still confirming with his Father through prayer that the horror of the cross was the Father’s will for him (Matt. 26:36-42). He needed to be sure about such a costly call.

Sometimes we pray, but we don’t get clear revelation from God. This could mean we need to move forward, and God’s faith vision will come as we pursue him. On the other hand, this often means we should wait. Most leaders are keen to move on decisions, but God has more time than we think. Try not to hurry major decisions about direction. It’s healthy for us to learn to wait on God. Be patient.

On other occasions, decisions need to be made. In these cases, I use wisdom (mine and the wisdom of others) and humbly pray for God to intervene if we have got it wrong. I firmly believe God is for us, and if our motives are correct, he will guide us.

Faith and courage

Significant faith visions will constantly be tested. Here are a few ways this happens, illustrated from the experience of Abraham:

1. Costs. Very few faith visions are achieved easily. The path towards God’s fulfillment is lined with problems, struggles, setbacks, and costs. When Abraham set out from Ur to travel to God's promised land (Gen. 11:31), he was risking everything. He left his wider family, culture, religion, security, and lifestyle to travel to the other, unknown side of the world of his day. The cost of faith was huge for Abraham and his immediate family.

2. Waiting. Pursuing faith visions often includes times of waiting when nothing seems to be happening. This can be very frustrating and discouraging. It feels like you are going nowhere. You wonder whether you heard God’s revelation correctly. Abraham and his little family made it to Haran, and there they stopped (Gen. 11:31). We’re not sure exactly why they settled there. Probably it had something to do with Abraham’s dad because as soon as he died, they were off (Gen. 11:32). It must have been very frustrating for Abraham, who knew God’s promised land still lay to the south, but he could do nothing but wait. For years.

3. Discouragements. Sometimes, it feels like you’re making significant progress towards your faith vision, and then something happens that causes you to go backward. You may be further away than you were at the start. Things get worse rather than better. It is so easy to despair when this happens. Finally, Abraham arrived in God’s promised land. You can imagine his excitement about achieving this element of his faith vision. God had fulfilled his promise. He surveyed the land and celebrated by building an altar to God (Gen. 12:5-8). Home at last. Then the land was hit with a severe famine (Gen. 12:10), so he had to move on to Egypt. What? He seemed to be going backward.

4. Opposition. It would be encouraging if everyone supported your faith vision, but this is seldom the case. Some people lack faith, some hate change, some have other agendas, and others refuse to be led anywhere. The bigger the faith vision God gives you, the stronger the opposition. Sometimes the opposition is from without, but usually, it’s from within. It hurts when those you share life with reject your influence and oppose your faith vision. For Abraham, the strongest opposition to his faith vision came from his family. His wife Sarah gave up on God’s promise of a child and proposed that Abraham (at 85) sleep with her servant (Gen. 16:1-4) to produce the promised offspring. Abraham caved into the opposition.

5. Failure. Our brokenness and failure sometimes challenge our faith. We make poor choices, disappoint others, break promises, misbehave, and fail morally. You know what it’s like. We’re pursuing this brilliant promise from God with passion when we come face to face with our weakness and stupidity. It seems impossible that God would use someone like us to achieve his purposes. We’ve blown it. Abraham, the man of faith, is such an encouragement here. Twice, he tried to palm Sarah off as his sister when he was threatened (Gen. 12:12-13; 20:2). Then there was his massive failure leading to the birth of Ishmael and the ensuing family chaos (Gen. 16). He could easily have given up in self-disgust. Yet God fulfilled all of His promises to Abraham. We have a merciful God.

6. Impossibilities. As we pursue God’s faith vision, times will come when its fulfillment appears impossible. There is just no way forward. The vision seems like “pie in the sky.” At these times, it is easy to lose faith because there is no human hope that it will ever happen. God’s promise about the birth of a son may have seemed plausible to Abraham when he first received it, but it became more and more impossible as he and Sarah grew older. The progression of time took them further away from any chance of having a child. A couple in their nineties don’t conceive.

These are some of the challenges to faith. Your faith visions will be tested, and it will take courage to continue to believe through it all. We need Jesus, whose walk of faith on earth required constant courage against all odds. I love how the Jewish leaders noted the courage of Peter and John and immediately traced it back to Jesus:

When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. (Acts 4:13)

Christian leaders may or may not be visionaries, but they need to be able to hear God’s voice and courageously step out in faith even when the circumstances aren’t supportive. They need to hold on with faith despite the opposition and disappointments. Mainly this involves small steps of faith taking us outside our comfort zone, but sometimes God will ask for huge leaps of faith that stretch and test our courage.