The Challenge of Leadership
When you're in leadership it is tempting to think your job is to get the people to the Promised Land. But that's actually God's job. Your job is to bear their burdens while they're in the wilderness. We prefer just the opposite. Let God love the people and we'll just move them along.
But pastors are called to serve as wilderness guides, wandering through the ordinary with their people, loving them enough to point to the manna that keeps them spiritually alive even when it is unappreciated. We have to choose to keep embracing this high calling.
The most dangerous rabble are not the complaining people around us, but the rabble that live within the leader's heart. This is why I have never understood the advice that says, "Just trust your heart." If your heart is like mine, most days there's a bad committee meeting going on in there. So you have to make choices about which inner voice you're going to honor, or the rabble of anxiety will overwhelm you.
Here's the scary part: God will honor your choices. As Moses eventually discovered, if you get fed up with wandering around and keep asking God to get these people to the Promised Land without you, you'll get your wish. Moses wasn't with them when they finally crossed the Jordan. And it didn't make him as happy as he thought it would.
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