Lead or follow, or get out of the way

"By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people." - Exodus 13:21, 22

"Lead or follow, or get out of the way," goes the popular saying. Indeed, when God told Moses to lead, he would have been perfectly content to just get out of the way. Forty years before, Moses was ready to lead, but God knew he wasn’t really ready yet. "Take a few more laps around the desert," God suggested, and for forty years, Moses did just that. When the time finally came for Moses to be a leader, he wasn’t interested anymore. But there is one thing that you need to know: When Moses did lead, 2.5 million people followed him.

Leadership is an awesome task, nothing to be taken lightly. From a Christian perspective, leadership is substantially different from what it is in the secular world. One of the anomalies of Christian leadership is that God often picks individuals who have very little to boast about themselves. Yet He selects them to lead. God knows that he who lacks much, trusts much too. A leader needs to know where he is going, right? But from God’s perspective, it doesn’t necessarily work that way.

If you really believe the Lord is leading, you don’t have to see the whole plan. You only need to see the next step, because a leader is also a follower. That’s one of the lessons Moses had to learn. God gave him something visual to follow, a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day. When he saw that either the cloud or the pillar of fire changed directions, all Moses had to do was to say, "Break camp; let’s move," and the people followed him.

But after Moses left Egypt, within only a few days, they encountered big trouble. The pillar of fire and the cloud led them into a box-canyon situation with the Red Sea on one side, and the army of Egypt fast closing the distance in the rear.

God knew then what He was doing, just as He knows now exactly what He is doing when He allows you to get boxed in by circumstances that look like disaster. Remember, God knows the way through the waters, no matter how deep or how turbulent. When you really believe that He is leading you, no matter how grim the circumstances may be, all you have to do is to move when He moves and stop when He stops, staying patient, very patient.

Sometimes the hardest part of leadership is waiting until God says, "Move it!" and then you follow. No person can lead if he has not learned to wait, and to follow. When something inside prompts you to plunge ahead and take the lead, it may well be time to step back and decide whether you are following cleverly disguised plans of men, or you have heard the voice of God and are following Him. That makes all the difference. - Resource reading: John 15