Leadership in the Crucible–Introduction

I have to admit I have a fascination with leadership characters in the Bible.  I particularly have a fascination for characters that God has put through the crucible, whom God is preparing for something big.  These are characters that spent a large part of their life as complete nobodies but all of the sudden come onto the scene.  Characters like Joseph who was sold into slavery as a seventeen year old and emerges as a thirty year old man of character.  Paul meets the Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus and spends some 14 years in obscurity before going out on his first missionary journey.  Moses spent a third of his life as a nobody as a shepherd in Midian.  What was God teaching him?  What did he have to learn?

What does God intend to teach those of us who aspire to be leaders?  I know the risk of presuming some intent by God to mold character.  You have to draw some before and after pictures.  Moses flees to Midian and we pick up the story 40 years later.  What was he like before and what do we see after?  Like the before and after pictures of weight losers, we see a different person.  What changed?

We see many in leadership crash and burn due to their sin.  These people render their leadership and ministry ineffectual.  Yes, they can emerge from it, but they are mostly tainted.  That is not the case with Moses and many characters in the Bible.  Yes, Moses committed murder but that was the symptom that put him in the desert.  It was pride that put him in the desert crucible.  He was not useful until God caused him to look upward.  We will look at this in the coming weeks.

The crucible of God’s leadership training program is painful.  It can also mean long periods of ineffectiveness, almost boring monotony.  Do you aspire to be a leader in God’s program?  You will go through it, I can almost guarantee it.  Why?  Because as flawed human beings, we want the glory.  It is only when we become weak that we discover the unbelievable strength that God provides.  To be successful in sports, you must pay the price for training.   The gymnasium is painful, but it produces fitness.  So we see how God will train these leaders to be godly.  I hope by looking at their stories you will appreciate the opportunity to go through the same program knowing it will make you a better leader at the end.  Stay tuned!