Leadership

Leadership is learned. Leaders listen. Leaders lead.

We all face moments when we’re called to lead. A new opportunity arrives, and our heart shouts, “Let’s begin!” But deep inside is a whisper of fear: “Am I ready? What if I fail?” The scriptures meet this tension with an ancient pattern: leadership is learned, leaders listen, leaders lead.

Leadership Is Learned

God’s people slogged through a desert for forty years so a new generation might become leaders through hunger, dependence, and memory. Moses reminds Israel to “remember” that the Lord led them through that wilderness to humble and test them. There was no rushing to the Promised Land. Every day of manna and thirst taught them to trust and obey. In that long, slow school of obedience, leaders were formed. It’s a counterintuitive message: God shapes us through humbling trials, not by giving us a head start.

This pattern holds in the life of Jesus, too. Hebrews says plainly that even the Son of God “learned obedience from what he suffered.” Jesus did not skip formation. He, perfect and eternal, became human and moved from untested to proven obedience through suffering. Every temptation in the desert, every sleepless night under the stars, every thorn’s prick was his lesson. And in the end, the cross itself became his “classroom”. Learning obedience through suffering was the path that certified him as our high priest. Formation was not a detour but the very road to authority.

Leaders Listen

In 1 Samuel 3, a boy named Samuel serves under old Eli, the priest. One night God calls in the darkness and Samuel, thinking Eli called, runs to him; three times in a row. Only when Eli instructs the lad to lie back down and say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears” does Samuel realize God was calling him. In a whispered voice through the darkness, young Samuel learns to recognize God’s voice. From that point on, listening is the bedrock of his ministry. A leader first learns to be quiet and attentive.

Jesus uses the image of sheep and shepherd to say the same thing: “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me” (John 10.27). Only the sheep that know the shepherd’s voice will follow. In John 10, hearing and following marks who belongs to the Good Shepherd. Belonging to God comes before speaking for Him. A leader who cannot hear God first will only echo the noise of the crowd, the voice of strangers and thieves. But the leader who learns to be still and listen finds his surest guidance. It’s humility to pause and say, “Speak, I’m listening.” It’s faith to trust God’s voice more than our own plans.

Leaders Lead

The scriptures show a surprising way power works. Isaiah’s great Servant isn’t a military hero but a figure who “was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities” (Isa. 53.5). The New Testament sees in this prophecy the pattern of Jesus himself: a leader who leads by taking on others’ pain, whose seeming weakness hides his true power, whose wounds bring healing.

Mark’s Gospel makes this explicit: when the disciples jockey for position, Jesus turns ambition upside down. “Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all,” he says, going on to add, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” The Son of Man’s hands that could command the storm are the same hands reaching out to wash feet and be nailed to a cross. Greatness is hiding in the path of service. True authority in God’s kingdom looks like carrying burdens and sacrificial love.

This gospel wisdom speaks directly to the disorder in our hearts. We hate the slow seasons where we feel unworthy, wanting shortcuts through the wilderness. We fear silence and long for applause. We love the idea of power but shrink from its cost. Yet every episode of God’s way of leading undoes that. From Moses to David to the apostles, God forms leaders through wilderness, hiddenness, and suffering before visible exaltation. He calls us first to learn (to be formed, to listen, to serve) before any crown. Each step teaches trust: trust that God will show the next footpath, trust that his gentle voice can guide us through darkness, trust that real honor comes from giving, not grabbing.

The question isn’t whether we’ll have opportunities to lead. The question is whether we’ll let God prepare us first. Will we rush past the wilderness, ignore the still small voice, and chase the crown? Or will we submit to the slow work of formation, learn to recognize the Shepherd’s voice in the dark, and discover that the path to influence runs through the valley of service?

~PW 🌮🛶