We are in need of a new kind of leadership. A leadership that listens before speaking; a leadership that seeks to understand before solving; a leadership that puts other before themselves. This type of leadership is countercultural and quite opposite of what we are seeing right now. But it is this leadership that Jesus modeled for us. Paul describes it in Philippians 2:3-8:
3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. 5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
We can use this scripture to model our behavior after the example of Jesus, but sometimes it is a process to allow the Holy Spirit to have access to our hearts and minds to cultivate true humility. This week in My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers encourages believers to be open to the people or circumstances the Holy Spirit is using to refine and create humility.
Yet God can never make us into wine if we object to the fingers He chooses to use to crush us. We say, “If God would only use His own fingers, and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way, then I wouldn’t object!” But when He uses someone we dislike, or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, to crush us, then we object. Yet we must never try to choose the place of our own martyrdom. If we are ever going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed—you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.
I wonder what finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you? Have you been as hard as a marble and escaped? If you are not ripe yet, and if God had squeezed you anyway, the wine produced would have been remarkably bitter. To be a holy person means that the elements of our natural life experience the very presence of God as they are providentially broken in His service. We have to be placed into God and brought into agreement with Him before we can be broken bread in His hands. Stay right with God and let Him do as He likes, and you will find that He is producing the kind of bread and wine that will benefit His other children.
Take some time with God soon. Ask Him who and what He is using to mold you. Breath through it, because you might be shocked, then work with Him. How is He working humility into your heart, mind, and spirit? If you allow His work, you will be ready to serve others through the humble leadership He is growing in you.
KATHY PIERBURG 