You Will Never Go Beyond What You See

There was this group of people.

They were talking about church and moaning about leadership.  They moaned about the leadership didn’t do this, and didn’t do that.  They whined about how the leadership appeared stale and stagnant.  They railed against the seeming lack of vision coming from the leadership.

I was very familiar with this, because it wasn’t unusual in time past for me to join in with this critique.  On this occasion, however, I didn’t want to chip in.  In fact I felt that something was missing.

It was intriguing what this group of people were considering as their focus.  I simply asked them who did they consider lead the church.  Some said the Holy Spirit and some said Jesus.  No one referred to the leadership that they had just been dismantling verbally.  I didn’t press anything beyond that.

What I did was go back and look at my own attitude and simply ask if Jesus was who I saw when I looked for leading in my life.  It hasn’t always been the case.  Great parts of my spsiritual development has been given nominal credence to Jesus leading, but actually being affected by what the human leadership in the church set-up did.

By His grace, Jesus has removed a lot of the scales from my eyes where that is concerned.  If Jesus leads and the focus is on Him, then that changes perspective, and also puts what human leadership structures are designed for in their place.  Jesus has ordained human leaders to lead by example and oversee the development of others in seeing Jesus as Lord.

That means there is as much an impetus on me to look to Christ, as there is to expect the leaders to ‘lead’.  If I keep it to just human leaders, and those flawed human beings tend to expose thier flaws whether in lacking leadership skills, or in their pride, then it won’t be a surprise that my own development will be hampered.

That won’t be primarily the leares’ fault though.  I can read scripture for myself, and there is enough in there to see Jesus stake His rightful claim to lead in all of life.  On top of that, there is the Holy Spirit that leads to the truth in itself.

That does not have to manifest itself in a rebellious and disruptive approach to the human leadership structure.  Indeed being lead by the Spirit, looking to Jesus should form a meek and humble approach to such structures – even when they are somewhat wayward.

Yet it is because Jesus leads us and we follow His leading that we engage with brothers and sisters in Christ and we develop and grow.  Not only that, but the life we live affects relations with those outside the church family.  This in itself is ground to see god in action in their lives.

All this inspired from having a Jesus perspective.  As we will never go beyond what we see, then the best person to see is the eternal King of the Ages and live in the light of Him.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

C. L. J. Dryden