A Leaders' Discontent

[At Rockbridge a couple of weeks ago I gave a talk during one of our “Leadership Summits” where we bring together students from two leadership tracks to talk about Biblical leadership.  This year we worked through the first four chapters of Exodus, looking at how God shaped the early life of Moses to prepare him to lead. 

 

My talk was from Exodus 2.  The quick summary: Moses grows up, goes out, sees an Egyptian beating up a Hebrew slave (one of “his own people”), kills the Egyptian, flees to Midian, protects some women by fighting off some mean shepherds, settles down in Midian and raises a family.]

 

This is our first glimpse of Moses’ personality before he’s famous.  What’s clear from the beginning is something that’s important for us to dial into as many of you are on the front end of exploring your leadership gifts:  The places of Moses’ discontent reveal the places where he is to going to lead. In this case with Moses, he is a deliverer.  He has deliverer’s instincts. 

 

Now his instincts aren’t perfect and what he does is wrong, we’ll talk about that in a minute.  But when Moses faced a situation that is unjust everything in him cries out with an anger and deep discontent that he acts on with a definitive passion to deliver the one who is being treated unfairly.  Moses here is faced with two different situations where things are flat-out wrong, where injustice is occurring.  And in all three situations, Moses feels this compulsion to act because he is deeply disturbed by the situation

 

My friends, this is an important first place for us to pause for a moment: when you look around at the church or your chapter or the world at large, what are the things that really bother you?  Where are your places of discontent?

 

What are the things that when you see them or hear about them you just can’t stand it?  Or conversely, what are the things that just sound so very, very good to you that when you hear about that thing happening it brings such joy and energy and life into your soul that you can’t hardly stand it?

 

How is God beginning to burden you for the things that are wrong in the world?  These places of discontent are often the places where God would have us to step up  and to lead, to serve, to make a difference.  And we need to be attending to that discontent, paying attention to it, looking for opportunities to engage with it rather than just try to play through or ignore it.

 

Because it’s this action and movement that makes us leaders.