c) Active faith
We
touched on this
matter of active faith at the end of our last meditation.
However we want to
note this difference, that this faith is very often strongest
and truest in the
matter of going on in the midst of apparent contradictions,
not in objective
undertakings. We will not stay to illustrate at length.
You
will remember
Abraham, a man who met an apparent contradiction to everything
that the Lord
told him to do, that the Lord had assured him of. The Lord had
said certain
things, and then the Lord met him and seemed to counter the
whole thing as he
went on. God said He was going to give Abraham the land, and
when he came into
the land he found it humanly impossible to stay and he had to
quit. God told
him that his son would be the vehicle of the seed that should
be without
number, yet then seemed to come in and contradict it. Now
Abraham, who is the
outstanding example of faith, shows his faith not so much by
the great
objective undertakings and adventures as by surely going on in
the midst of
repeated contradiction, when all that he had been led to
expect seemed to be
reversed. The way he expected to be quite clear became most
complicated and
entangled, and seemingly impossible. However he believed God,
and went on. That
is active faith.
As
we pointed out,
Paul illustrates this when he was in the Mediterranean, and
everything was
going to pieces; neither sun, moon, nor stars appeared for many
days, and all
hope that they should be saved was cast away. In the midst of
all that he said:
"I believe God!" That was no contradiction, it was active
faith. Until you and
I come into that position in some measure, we shall be useless
in spiritual
leadership. If you and I in the midst of contradictions go
under, become
paralysed, begin to raise questions to the Lord, while those
questions prevail,
our value in bringing others into any measure of Christ is
arrested. True
spiritual leadership requires this active faith. As we have
already said, we
must believe God in the midst of the raging tempest when
everything seems to be
threatened by disaster.
We
are keeping
very close to the book of Judges in all this, and we are
especially keeping
close to Christ. Bring all these things alongside of the Lord
Himself while He
was here on the earth, and you will see that they are all
features of Christ.
It would be profitable to go through the life of Christ with
each one of them.
Did He have spiritual understanding to see through and
discriminate the fine
issues? When Peter said, "I will follow thee even unto death",
did He see
through Peter? Did He, in effect, say: Oh yes, I know you mean
it quite well,
Peter, but that is you, not God in you! You will come to the
place one day when
the Lord will take you through the depths, but it will not be
because you
can go
through! Did the Lord Jesus have the full assurance of
understanding? "He spoke as one having authority, and not as
the scribes", who
were the public authority. When He spoke there was something
there which made
people say, "This Man knows His ground! He is on solid ground,
and He knows
it." You do not find any uncertainty with Him; it is, "Yea and
Nay." Did He
endure? Did He hold through when everything went to pieces
around Him? Yes!
Follow those points through in His life. These are features of
Christ.
d) Spiritual initiative in the
matter of responsibility
We
have spoken of
responsibility to one another, and will not say much more
about it, but the
Lord does need His people to be where they really will take
the initiative in
responsibility. There are so many of the Lord's people who are
all the time
waiting for a lead before they move. They will never do
anything until they are
pulled out and you have to stand by, and if you leave them for
a moment they
will go down. Oh, for more of that spiritual initiative in
responsibility for
the Lord's interests among His people.
Let
us say this
brief word on the matter. There is confusion, chaos, paralysis
and tragedy in
many lives for the very reason of passivity in the Lord's
interests, not taking
spiritual initiative, not taking the responsibility which they
ought to have in
the interests of the Lord. The Lord would say this thing to
us, not for our own
sake, but in order that we may be able to turn to help others
out of their
paralysed position, where the Lord is losing so much. The Lord
would put
spiritual responsibility upon us, and make us know that that
is our way of
deliverance. We may be waiting for someone to come and pull us
out, lift us up,
put us on our feet, but the Lord says, "Get on to your feet!"
That is only
another way of saying, "This is a matter for you!" Do not wait
till someone
comes and lifts you up and puts you on your feet, and becomes
a crutch for you.
Oh, this devastating leaning upon others! What loss there is!
It does not
glorify God. Believe me, the Lord will leave you where you are
until you face
this thing. You wait and pray, and agonise in prayer, and
break your heart, and
the Lord will still leave you where you are. He will say to
you, "Take
responsibility! Take initiative!" Your trouble is that you
lack this spiritual
initiative, and it is a kind of infantile paralysis! It is a
mark of your
spiritual immaturity, and you have to exercise yourself
towards God.
When
the Lord is
making spiritual leaders, He very often cuts them off from
others, does not
allow others to come along and help them. They ask the Lord to
send someone to
help them, and the Lord never sends anyone. They are longing
for someone to
come to their rescue. The Lord can be the same for you as for
anyone else; in
Him there is the same life for you as for others. Appropriate
His life for
yourself, stand by faith in the Lord for yourself, discover
the Lord for
yourself. It is very important to know that if you are going
to be of any value
to bring anyone else further on with the Lord. You do not want
to go to poor,
crippled, bound and defeated Christians and say, "Well, now,
the Lord was very
good to me when I was in your condition and He sent someone
along to pull me
out, and that is how I got out!" They will say, "Then we must
wait until the
Lord does something like that for us!" That is not
satisfactory. At any rate
the Lord does not do that sort of thing. The Lord wants people
who can say, "I
was in your condition, and I, like you, was waiting and
praying for someone to
come and help me, and the Lord never sent; and then the Lord
showed me that He
could be just the same to me as He was to that person to whom
I was looking to
come to me. He turned me upon myself, and I had to exercise
myself towards Him,
and I came to discover the Lord." That is your way of
deliverance. That is
spiritual leadership with spiritual equipment. It is of real
value.
There
are other
features of leadership which we perhaps will not mention just
now. We must ever
remember that one characteristic of a true spiritual leader is
always a deep
humility born of a deep sense of dependence. A leader is not
one of those
people who is very sure of himself; he is very often someone
who is not at all
sure of himself, but sure of the Lord.
That
leads us to
the next phase of things.
The Cost of
Spiritual Leadership
We
gather from
this book of Judges that those who are going to be
instrumental in the Lord's
hands in helping others out of their bad condition must
themselves have shared
that bad condition. They do not stand apart from it, but are
equal to the state
of things by reason of knowing in their own experience what
that state of
things means. It is necessary for a spiritual leader to have
suffered in the
same trials as those being led; to have known the same depths
of misery, to
have been in the same complicated circumstances, to have
passed through those
very problems, and to know what it is to emerge from a dark,
dismal and
wretched state. All that makes a leader, but that also
represents the cost to
begin with.
We
will analyse
that more, and deal with it in a different way. The cost of
leadership is
a) All that is involved in the
transition from the natural to the
spiritual
We
have spoken of
spiritual understanding. There must be, then, a spiritual
transition from
natural understanding to spiritual understanding. What is the
transition? By
what course, by what road, is this transition made? Always
through the grave.
Before we ever come to spiritual understanding we shall have
all our own
understanding pulverized, ground to powder, so that we do not
understand
anything, and we know it. If we are asked to explain we can
give no
explanation. It is not in us to explain. All understanding has
gone. God breaks
down the natural to make way for the spiritual. That
transition is through
death, through the grave. Then presently we emerge, and we are
seeing things
now from God's side, we are understanding with a faculty and
capacity that we
never before possessed. Somehow or other a resurrection work
has been done;
that is, something has been quickened which we never had
before. We are made
alive to that of which we had no knowledge before. We have a
new standard of
judgement now, a new standard of values, a new sense of
differences. It is just
something done, not something which we have created or made.
It comes, as it
were, to birth, and we know it, and as we move accordingly, in
obedience to it,
it grows. There is all the difference between natural
understanding and
spiritual understanding, and the difference is between death
and life, and a
grave is between. Oh, those dark days, when we lost all
natural understanding and
there was no light. It is a terrible cost.
We
are not
speaking about just understanding certain events. It may have
to do with trials
of a certain nature through which we pass, but it is the
general faculty to
which we are referring. There is all the difference between a
natural faculty
for understanding things and a spiritual faculty for
understanding the things
of the Lord, which cannot be defined, but can be declared as a
fact. That cost
is the cost bound up with spiritual leadership.
b) The assurance of understanding
There
was a time
when some of us were most sure. Oh yes, we knew, no one could
tell us. We were
the most sure people. We could lay down the law to anybody as
to what they
ought to do. The Lord has taken in hand and has ground to
powder, made pulp of
all that assurance. We have lost all self-assurance. We have
come to the place
where we feel that we could question everything in ourselves,
doubt everything
about ourselves. We have come to the place where, when we tell
the Lord that we
mean to be all for Him there is something inside which says we
meant it, but
come up against the test and we find that we are not that.
Peter was a most
self-confident man; "Lord, I will follow thee even unto
death." I am certain
that if we had met Peter later on, after the cross, we should
have found him a
man who would never for a moment say a word about his own
certainty or
self-assurance. Yet you find the man marked by boldness; there
is nothing more
sure than his statement on the day of Pentecost; but he is a
different man. He
has gone through the grave, and self-assurance has been broken
in him and
replaced with the assurance of God. There is the full
assurance of
understanding of the Lord. It is costly, but it is the way of
spiritual
leadership, the way to spiritual values.
c) Active faith
We
spoke of active
faith. It comes the same way. The time through which we pass
is a time when we
lose all. There are times when we feel that the bottom has
fallen out of
everything. What have we to rest upon? Faith. Where is our
faith? If God is not
merciful to us it is a poor lookout for us. If this whole
thing depends upon
our faith today, the Lord help us!
Yes,
these are
dark, strange experiences, things you may not say to the
unconverted. They are
not bound up with our salvation, our acceptance before God. It
is another side,
the side of our usefulness to the Lord, the measure of our
spiritual value to
the Lord for the sake of others. The cost of spiritual
leadership and a faith
of this true, pure kind is borne out of a grave. It grows like
a new child; it
is quiet, steady faith in God. You have been through the
depths, and you have
found the Lord faithful, and you have had to say, "It was not
because of my
wonderful faith in God, not because of my saying I am able to
hold on, to
persist! God was faithful to me when I had nothing of faith as
far as I was
concerned." That comes back from the grave. It is the cost of
leadership.
d) Initiative
This
is quite true
also in the matter of initiative. Naturally there was a time
when initiative
was not difficult to some of us. The bigger the proposition
the more we gloried
in tackling it, and lacked no initiative in these things. Then
the Lord took us
in hand and broke all that natural force, or began to break
it, and we came steadily
to the place where, so far as we were concerned, the
initiative left us: that
is, the natural initiative, the taking of big responsibility,
and we became
deeply conscious that we were needing a divine energy to move
in relation to
the Lord's interests. And now to some extent we do know that
energising of God
in relation to His interests. When we have no natural energy,
when it does not
spring from ourselves, and if it were left with us, we should
not do it, we
would not move, but just lie there, refuse, decline, and yet
we know that for
the Lord's interests there is an energy which we have not got.
We lay hold of
that divine energy, and the initiative of God is appropriated
by faith, and
there are accomplishments.
There
is all the
difference between that natural go-ahead attitude in the work
of God, and that
energising of the Holy Spirit; that initiative which is of the
flesh, and that
initiative which is of the Holy Spirit. You have to pass from
the one to the
other in a deep experience, when all that is of nature is
broken down, and you
come on to the ground where it is all and only of God. It is a
new creation in
Christ Jesus, where all things are out from God, as manifested
in the Lord
Jesus Himself.
e) Humility and dependence
The
same law holds
good. We may have been very independent or self-dependent, or
dependent upon
others. The Lord has dealt with all that, or will deal with it
in us, and bring
us to a place where every other kind of support is removed,
where all our
independence is dealt with, where our self-dependence is
destroyed, where our
dependence upon others is cut away. And we come out to a
place, through trying
and painful experiences, where our dependence is upon God.
Paul
is an
outstanding illustration of this. There is no character more
self-confident
than Saul of Tarsus. In the long-run there is no one more
dependent upon God,
and confessedly so. He said: "We despaired of life." The
sentence of death was
upon him, so that he should not trust in himself, but in God
who raises the
dead. The way through is a deep, dark, and painful way, but
this is all the way
to spiritual leadership. It is all that is involved in the
transition from the
natural to the spiritual, and it all leads to values for
others.
Your
value to
others in the Lord entirely depends upon your own measure of
knowing the Lord
for yourself as your very life, your wisdom, your strength.
There
may be a
little weakness in what we have been saying, that we have
dealt with positives
rather than negatives. Some are not in much danger of strong,
natural,
go-ahead-ness. Perhaps some are lacking altogether in any kind
of strength like
that, and may be saying, "Well, I do not have to be broken
down very much,
therefore I cannot come through to very much for the Lord." Do
not say that, because
your painful experience will probably be from a negative to a
positive, not
from one positive to another positive. We mean this, that some
timid people
will go through an agony when God brings them out to take
initiative. It is an
agony for reticent people to be made to stand on their feet
and take
responsibility. They would sooner shrink into a corner, but
the Lord will not
let them get away with that. In effect He says, "You have got
to be of value,
you have got to count; it is no use your hiding in a corner, I
want values in
you for My people." Then comes the agony of perhaps having to
talk to someone,
having to take initiative for the spiritual help of somebody,
when you would
rather be somewhere else, doing something else. It is the
transition from the
natural, whatever the natural is - whether positive or
negative - to what is
spiritual. It is costly, but it is the price of leadership,
and after all, it
is that the Lord should have His full measure in us, "...each
several part in due
measure" (Eph. 4:16). There is a "due
measure" from each several part.
f) Loneliness
The
cost of
leadership is always loneliness. When you are going through a
thing in the
hands of God, your one sense is that no one has ever been
through this before.
The Lord sees to it that you do not escape by having someone
come along who has
just been through it so that you may throw yourself on them
and they carry you.
The Lord allows isolation. But, however it is, it is always
loneliness. That is
bound up with leadership. It is as though you were pioneering
and no one has
ever gone this way before; you are alone. It is part of the
price, but it must
be. No doubt you have longed for somebody who has been that
way to be alongside
of you while you are going through, but the Lord has not
allowed it. We say in
effect, "If only we had their experience in this thing to
appeal to!" But
somehow or other the Lord cuts it all off from us, and takes
us through with
Himself alone. If we refuse to go through with Him alone, we
are going to miss the
Lord's object.
g) Misunderstanding
So
often
accompanying the loneliness is misunderstanding, and that is
the more bitter
side. It is the more positive or active side. Think of
Nehemiah. He had to take
the lead, the initiative. But it was not long before not only
in his
loneliness, but in misunderstanding and misrepresentation he
discovered the
cost of that leadership. All around things were being said:
"He is building
this thing to make himself a name! He is going to appoint
prophets to preach
about him! He is starting a new movement!" All the things
which were said were
lies, false; it was misrepresentation, misunderstanding. That
is simply because
a man or woman has come to know the will of God as it applies
to them, and they
are going on in that way of God.
It
is strange how
people will very rarely give another credit for walking with
God. Others always
seem to interpret their movements as though they had been
captured and led
astray. They never give them credit for really walking with
God themselves. They
blame someone else, and then blame them for getting into the
hands of someone
else. It is a part of the price.
h) Selflessness
It
is necessary
when counting the cost of leadership to be selfless and
disinterested in the
matter. Leaders may labour for perhaps another generation, for
others to enter
into their labours, and they may never see the fruit of their
own labours.
Look
back over the
history of all who have really been used of God in the lives
of His people.
Very rarely has their life borne fruit until they have gone.
They have
laboured, and other men have entered into their labours. It
means that there is
to be no present glory, nothing for self, no present reward.
It is a Moses
leading through the wilderness, up against the real hard,
tough side of things,
and then passing out without seeing the fruit. That is the
price of leadership
so often; selfless disinterestedness, being willing to labour,
to give one's
life, to suffer, to come to a place of value for others and
never see the full
result of it.
That
is all we
shall say for the time being. It has all come out of that
expression of
Deborah: "For that the leaders took the lead in Israel". That
is the
explanation of such deliverance, of a mighty emancipation, of
glorious victory,
the changing of the whole face of things from servile slavery,
depression and
oppression, to ascendancy, liberty and progress.
Do
remember,
again, that this is spiritual and not official; it has nothing
to do with
persons as such. It is a spiritual condition which the Lord
would find in us
all.