Don't Tread On Me

"Our task is to offer ourselves up to God like a clean, smooth canvas and not bother ourselves about what God may choose to paint on it, but, at every moment, feel only the stroke of his brush." -Jean Pierre de Caussade

The trouble with people is they're always looking out for themselves. The 'self' is the root of many evils. One of which is self-preservation. There is no end to the ink being spilt over leadership. Our futile efforts to reconfigure the beast seem temporal at best. For those who would lead like Jesus must have "soul-discipline." The rent heart, torn asunder who has "forsaken all." Exactly what is that? All of what? All or our stuff or all of ourselves? As painfully attractive as that sounds it is an over-simplification of the truth.

Moses must have dealt with this. He left his flock to lead a nation (which did not always want to be led). Enter the desert, where men are broken and remade. Moses must have been made in the desert before he returned to Egypt for God's people. God prepared the savior. Though the savior proved to be less than perfect during the desert journey. Moses was not without shortcomings. But at least he owned his stuff. At the end of the day he pleads for his people, even when they drove him crazy. He must have seen himself in them, pitied them as he himself needed to be pitied. Of course we don't want any pity. Why do we always shrink from the benefits of compassion? Have we forgotten it is the meek who inherit the earth? Moses was the humblest man on the face of the earth (Numbers 12.3).

Maybe humility must be measured within the tension of one's experience? I say this only because so often I find Moses to be an angry man and yet God loved him. He was Israel's desert shepherd. God was always saving Israel's savior. Perhaps we expect too much. The demands are too great for one man.

So, it is into the desert of "soul-discipline." Where leaders are made, not simply born. The will is steeled and the heart learns to bleed. And bleed it will. For the desert is a place of peril. The irony of leading like Jesus is that it is so subversive. He has the appearance of a lamb which generates its own enemies. Only to discover he is a lamb that roars. Great leaders always have great enemies. I realize you're saying 'obstacles,' not enemies. Is all that really necessary, it sounds so "Bushish." Well you must not have read Psalms. Love your enemies, they might help you become a great leader. Sola Fide, WHB