So you want to be a Leader
"SO YOU WANT TO BE
A LEADER?"--MO Israel, December 30, 1970 NO.31--GP
1. I WAS WONDERING IF MY TIME SPENT IN EXILE WAS
WASTED--almost completely hidden and unknown--but it immediately came to mind,
the years that some men spent in seclusion and out of the public eye, before
their final day came.
2. WHERE LENIN REALLY WON THE REVOLUTION, WAS THOSE
YEARS HE SPENT IN EXILE--studying, writing, researching, and planning it! And
those works he wrote in exile are still the classics on revolution--when he was
literally in hiding--with only his lovely young wife to help him. He spent a
great deal of time in libraries, reading the history of other revolutions and
researching their tactics!
3. MARX, THE ORIGINAL THEORIST OF THE WHOLE THING,
NEVER DID GET INTO ANY REAL REVOLUTIONARY ACTIVITY. After his exile from
Germany, he spent nearly the rest of his life in England in seclusion writing Das
Capital, the bible of socialism. But look what it's done to the world!
SOMETIMES WHEN YOU'RE RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ACTION, YOU GET YOUR NOSE SO
CLOSE TO THE DETAILS, YOU CAN'T STAND BACK AND SEE THE OVERALL PICTURE. You
don't have time to think! But you have to go through all that to appreciate it.
For example, let's say you've taken your training as an artist, and you've
started painting your major life's work; but you have to back off from it once
in a while, in order to get the over-all picture, so you can really properly
design it! You can get things out of proportion, perspective, and proper
relationship with each other, by being too close to your work. Now and then you
have to get away from it, far enough to be able to study the whole thing, in
order to put things where they belong!
4. IT'S LIKE MONEY!--YOU HAVE TO KEEP IT IN ITS PLACE!
A lot of people misquote that Bible verse about money, and say, "Money is
the root of all evil," but that's not what the Bible says! The Bible says,
"The love of money is the root of all evil!" It's the love of it that
causes the trouble--that makes it worship and idolatry! A little of that
"filthy lucre" is even helpful in the Lord's Work, but if you get
that dollar bill so close to your eyes you can't see anything else, your whole
vision becomes distorted, and everything gets out of proportion, and you can't
see the rest of the world, and what the money is really there for, and why you
need it, and how you should get it, and what you should use it for! You have to
keep it far enough from you, to keep it in its proper place!
5. WHILE I WAS IN TEXAS, ALL I COULD SEE WAS TEXAS. I
couldn't stand to look at Los Angeles, 'cause I had enough problems of my own
in Texas. Now I can see all of you, and be much more fair, treat you more
equally, instead of becoming so involved in urgent daily details, which you can
always handle there yourselves. But if I'm not there, you seek the Lord.
6. THE DESIGNER OF THE REVOLUTION HAS TO BE FAR
ENOUGH AWAY TO SEE THE OVER-ALL PLAN, and not get so involved with one little
battle, that he can't analyse the whole war! The generals have to stay in their
war room a great deal of time and study the maps, in order to synchronise the
whole plan & all their efforts. Of course you have to have good leaders in
the field, but somebody's got to be at the top somewhere to keep everybody
working together. He must be equidistant from all of them, to put them all in
their proper position! So Praise the Lord for such a precious opportunity!
7. THE DRAMATIC, CLIMACTIC, ACTION IN THE LIVES OF
LEADERS SUCH AS LENIN, IS WHAT REALLY DRAWS THE ATTENTION OF THE WORLD and has
the greatest popular appeal--such as his dangerous close calls and his
activities in leading the revolution--his being smuggled into Russia secretly
in a sealed car by the Germans, to help overthrow the Czarist Regime! This is
exciting stuff that people like to hear. Most people are not interested in the
years he spent in exile pouring day and night over books, studying the tactics
of revolution, and planning its battles! In fact, it actually took him more
years to plan the revolution and engineer its battle plans, than it did to
actually wage the war! It took Lenin years to analyse and plan his
procedures--compared to only the few days it took to carry them out! It also
took years of planning and engineering to consolidate the revolution afterward!
These dramatic action scenes are only little outcroppings of the tremendous
iceberg underneath the surface--just little bubbles of the big pot that has
been brewing underneath for a long time. But that's what people look at--that's
all the public sees!
8. NEARLY EVERY GREAT BUILDING, EVERY GREAT
ACCOMPLISHMENT, EVERY GREAT WAR, EVERY GREAT MOVEMENT, TOOK YEARS OF PLANNING
AND LABORIOUS ENGINEERING. Every Michelangelo's painting was engineered with
meticulous care, with advanced sketches, designs, etc., before he finally got
to the finished stage!
9. IT TAKES A LOT LONGER TO PLAN A BUILDING THAN IT
DOES TO BUILD IT! It took me a whole lot longer to select the property, plan my
church building, scrounge the materials, design it, and do all that figuring to
prepare the ground and lay the almost invisible foundation--it took much longer
to do all that, than to simply lay the blocks, to build the walls, and merely
stick the roof on! That was the fun part! That was the fast part! That was the
physical action where you could really see something! But the people that got
excited as they saw the walls and roof go up, only saw the smallest part of the
job. Every builder loves to get to that physical action part of the job that is
really seen--that the people begin to exclaim about--the visible! It's the
invisible--below the surface, long hard hours and days and weeks and months,
and sometimes years of planning, designing, and preparation, and the slow
laying of the foundation that's the hardest part, takes the most time, and for
which you get the least credit--but without which there would never be a
building and it would never stand.
10. YOU CAN ASK ANY BUSINESSMAN ABOUT THAT: THE
PLEASURE PART IS THE FINISHED PRODUCT--the shiny new car standing there, the
people raving about it--but they don't see the blood, the sweat, and the tears,
that lay in the months and years of planning and designing, trial and error,
and preparation that lay behind it! They can't even see the intricate and
delicate wiring and mechanical systems that lie in the product itself, beneath
the surface, that are far more difficult to install and much more vital to the
efficient operation than any nice shiny polish and paint on the surface! But
what really appeals to the women--the women who buy them?--And they're the ones
who make the decisions! It's the looks of the product--the pretty surface
thing--the colour, the shape, the upholstery! She doesn't know what a
double-barreled, down-draft carburetor or disc brakes are. She's probably doing
well if she knows enough to put gas and oil in it to keep it running. She
couldn't even begin to understand the intricate mechanism of the engine, the
lights, the ignition system, the transmission system, and all other complicated
mechanical and electronical parts unseen beneath the surface, which took a lot
more time to design and install and make it work, than that pretty paint and
polish.
11. EVEN A SIMPLE GOOD, WELL-COOKED MEAL TAKES HOURS
OF THOUGHT AND LABOUR and organisation and preparation, and only appears and
looks good and smells good for a few minutes--and then it's gone, and the
consumer can't possibly appreciate all the time and effort that's gone into it
in the brief moment that he enjoys it, unless he himself has been a cook, and
knows what it is to have to plan the meal, buy the ingredients, and prepare the
materials and cook it and serve it.
12. THAT'S REALLY THE WAY IT IS WITH MOST THINGS IN
LIFE. That banana there. It just appears for the moment--here today and gone
tomorrow and all the hard work of the farmer behind it is invisible! The months
or years of clearing, planning, plowing, planting, growing, fertilising,
pruning, harvesting, transporting, marketing--all of this is unseen behind that
little banana! All we have to do is sit down here and stick it in our
mouth--enjoy it momentarily, without even thinking about the hard work behind
it.
13. I DON'T EVEN UNDERSTAND THE CLOTHES I HAVE ON,
BELIEVE IT OR NOT! I don't know what it took to have to design this pair of
pants--not even all the problems of making thread, the raising of sheep,
shearing, wool gathering, selling it to the thread maker, and then the spinning
of each little tiny thread, then the intricate weaving of the cloth into
complicated designs of different colours! Think of it!--The elaborate machinery
it must have taken--years of planning, invention, designing, and labour that
have gone into just the making of the cloth! Then the tailor had to design and
plan the pants--how to cut the cloth, how to put it together, how to make it
fit, what shape it would be, how would it hang, what it would have--pockets,
belt straps, zipper, etc., waist size, length, and all these things! We don't
even think about most of these things when we go to buy a pair of pants. All we
see is a pair of pants, and whether we like what we see, and whether or not
they fit!
14. WE DON'T BEGIN TO APPRECIATE THE YEARS OF UNSEEN
LABOUR AND INVENTION BEHIND THEM--not to mention the dyes that were grown in
some exotic clime somewhere under conditions we know not what! I doubt if one
of us could even explain where these dyes came from or what plant had to be
grown to make them, or how they were extracted or how they were made--that in
itself is a whole complicated, long drawn out process which was only learned
through the experience and planning of years, and discoveries and inventions
and trials and errors, successes and failures, and joys and heartbreaks of
generations--all the unseen handiwork, time, thought, and labour behind one
pair of pants! We just see it, buy it; wear it, and don't worry about it! But
it took somebody or a lot of somebodies, years of time and thought and
invention and discovery, and labour, to produce it.
15. EVERY BIT OF FOOD WE EAT, THE CLOTHING WE WEAR,
THE BUILDINGS WE LIVE IN, THE VEHICLES WE TRAVEL IN, AND EVEN ALL THE LITTLE
TINY NECESSITIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE, ARE JUST THE BRIEF AND TEMPORARY VISIBLE END
PRODUCTS OF GENERATIONS of thought, invention, discovery, experimentation,
designing, planning, and producing, by a world of labourers with a world of
labour. "We have entered into other men's labours, and reaped that on
which we bestowed no labour." "One planteth, another watereth; but it
is God that giveth the increase." God's behind-the-scene labours are
almost totally invisible--the work of creation that produced the universe and
keeps it running, His design and plan for man, His constant care for His
creations from the realm of the Spirit, that behind-the-scenes workshop where
God actually does most of His labour. Set not, therefore, your affections on
things on the earth, for the things which are seen are temporal--only
temporary--only the slightly visible manifestation of all the unseen work
behind them--but the things which are not seen are eternal--the spiritual world
which produced them--the power and planning of God! You don't even know how He
did it. All you do is enjoy it! You can't even comprehend it! All you do is
consume it!
16. BUT SOMEBODY HAD TO DO IT! As Dr. Robert Millikan
said, "Behind every watch there had to be a watchmaker, and so behind the
intricate precision of this great universe, there had to be a Divine Designer
and Creator." Even so, behind every great creation, whether of God or man,
there had to be worlds of work, planning, preparation, designing, invention,
discovery, exploration, organisation, and cooperation, in order to produce the
finished product--the thing that's seen--which does not begin to reveal the
vast unseen labour and the multitudes of labourers behind it!
17. EVEN SO, WITH THE CREATION OF A NEW NATION, A
WAR, A REFORMATION, OR A REVOLUTION--or any major change in history! Somebody
had to dream of it before it could happen! Somebody had to have the
inspiration, the vision, the faith, the ingenuity, the genius, the spark that kindled
the fire! You only see the fire--and thrill and marvel at its glory! You don't
see the work and planning behind it--the problems in gathering materials,
figuring out how to start it and keep it going!
18. YOU USED TO LOOK AT A BIG BUSINESS AND WISH YOU
WERE THE BOSS, to enjoy the glory and the riches, and to get to tell other
people what to do! But you'd have been better to work your eight hours and not
worry, lest some day you'd be boss and work at all hours, and have all the
worry! Because you couldn't possibly see all the problems, the difficulties,
the obstacles, the troubles, the complications behind it--how hard it is to
know what to do, to make decisions, and to tell other people how to do it--and
to be willing to take the blame for the failures, as well as credit for the
successes! As Solomon said--and he should know--"The labourer lieth down
at night, and his rest is sweet, but the rich cannot sleep, for the abundance
of his riches."--Because possessions, employees, businesses, and governments
are much more responsibility than enjoyment, much more hard work than pleasure.
As the great Scotch poet Bobby Burns wrote under the table--as a whole world
was toasting his fame, "Would that I were back with the wee sma'
daisy," "For the best laid plans of mice and men, aften gang
aglae." He was wishing he were back, a wee small boy again, playing on the
Scotch heather, gazing in wonder at the tiny flowers, without a care or
responsibility in the world, unconcerned about the world around him--a world that
didn't even know he existed! But now that he was famous, he had to worry about
his work and his writing--the opinions of man--and his successes and
failures--and no longer had the time to enjoy the simple, uncomplicated little
things of life, or even the poems about them, which had made him great!--He was
too busy!
19. YOU'D BETTER ENJOY BEING A BUCK PRIVATE WHILE YOU
CAN--with very little worry or responsibility, credit or blame, cursing or
fame. One of these days, you may be the general and have most of the work and
nearly all the worry--and usually, all the blame! You look at your leaders, and
you think, my, I'd like to be like him or her! I wish I had their
position." Watch out! Some day you may have, and wish you hadn't but have
to! You couldn't begin to fathom the depths of despair, the heartbreaks,
trials, tribulations, the bitter experiences, the fires of testing they had to
go through to make them the pure gold they are today, the white hot heat of the
furnace they had to endure before they became the lovely colorful ceramic that
they now are!
20. DON'T ASK FOR LEADERSHIP! DON'T EVEN DESIRE IT!
You don't know what you're asking for! Don't try to be a leader--unless God
shoves you into it--and you have to be! Just be a good follower, and be thankful
that you don't have to do the leading, make the decisions, carry the burden of
the responsibility, and suffer the blame! You don't realise how much goes into
leadership! The years of the school of hard knocks, years of experience, trial
and error, success and failure, suffering and tribulation--the years of
following, obedience, and training, the vast work of the Spirit, the
innumerable lessons, the grades you had to take over again, the demotions as
well as the promotions, the failures as well as the accomplishments, the blame,
as well as the fame, the unseen labour, the unrealised thought, the hours,
days, weeks, months, and years of prayerful planning, the blood, the sweat, the
tears, the agony with the ecstasy--all that goes into the making of a leader!
21. LEADERS ARE MADE--NOT BORN! They're the brief and
final end product of God's infinite care, designing and preparation!--Here
today--and gone tomorrow! "For what is your life? It's but a vapor! It's
here a little while and then it's gone." It takes so long to grow into the
full bloom, the full fruit, of leadership--so that your actual brief span of
leadership is short by comparison to the years of preparation! DON'T ENVY YOUR
LEADERS!--PITY THEM!--PRAY FOR THEM!--HELP THEM! They need you! And don't desire
leadership--unless God forces it on you! I dare say you'll not find a leader in
the Bible who wanted to be a leader! Most of them tried to get out of the job!
It takes too long--it's too hard--and you'll never get enough credit for it!
But without them, God's Work can't go on!
22. JUST APPRECIATE THE END PRODUCT! Enjoy it! Follow
it! Obey it! And help it! And be thankful you don't have to be one, until God
makes you! Nearly every great leader in the Bible had to be pushed into it!
Only in the folly of this world do men fight each other for fickle fame and
fortune! Only in the sickening system of this world, do men struggle for power,
position, riches, and glory--only to find that it doesn't satisfy! Like
Alexander the Great, who, having conquered all the known world, died drunken
and weeping that there were no more worlds to conquer! Or like Napoleon, who
made all Europe to tremble at his feet, but died in exile, whimpering like a
baby, just to have his boots pulled on, that he might die like a soldier! Or
Caesar, whose friends stabbed him in the back at the pinnacle of fame! Or
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was stricken by death at the peak of his
popularity! All these died in vain! The elusive butterfly of fortune found them
weighed in the balances and found wanting! They paid such an awful price for
it, when it wasn't worth it. They sacrificed everything for it, only to
discover it was ashes between their teeth! Husks...Husks...Husks...Like the
Prodigal Son in the swinepit, whose life ended in defeat, his substance wasted
in riotous living, with nothing left but the "husks that the swine did
eat."--His Salvation only the mercy of God--and his reward lost to his
brother! What a pitiful end product are the men of this world--and even the Christians
who fail God! At least God's leaders, who pay the same price and make the same
sacrifices, can look forward to eternal rewards and everlasting glory, and can
die with a feeling of genuine permanent accomplishment, from a lifetime of
investment in His Work, that will reap eternal dividends hereafter!
23. BUT YOU'LL NEVER KNOW WHAT THEY WENT THROUGH TO
GET THERE--until you've gone through it yourself. And nobody in his right mind
would ever do it for anybody but God and His Children! Most of your work is
unseen and will never be known by anybody but God and you, and perhaps a few of
those closest to you. Most of your sufferings, your sacrifices, and your years
of labour, will never be appreciated in this life, nor realised by others until
the rewards are handed out in Heaven, and the medals are pinned on at the
Marriage Feast of the Lamb, and the cities are distributed in the Millenium.
24. YOU SAY, "LORD, WE ARE ABLE",--BUT YOU
DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE ASKING FOR! Just thank God for your leaders, and hope
you never have to be one! Don't try to be a leader, unless you have to be!
Don't desire leadership, unless God makes you lead--unless the time comes when
you see the job that has to be done and there is nobody else to do it but you,
and you know you have to do it!--It's God's will, God's plan, and you're
ready--even if you don't feel like it!--Ready by the long preparation,
planning, designing, and making of a man by the Hand of God. As Kipling said,
"If you can meet success and failure, and treat these two imposters both
the same ... then you'll be a man, my son."--Simply because you have the
satisfaction of knowing you're doing the will of God--that you were made for
the job--that you can't help it--you have to do it! He expects it of you! In
the words of Alan Seeger, "God knows 'twere better far to be deep pillowed
in silk and scented down, breath nigh to breath, and pulse to pulse, where love
throbs out in blissful sleep: But we have a rendezvous with death!" That's
what it costs to be a leader! "To live in fame, and die in
flame."--Nothing can stop God's army air corps!--Even though sometimes
they have to live in flame and die in shame before the world! We are God's
expendables!--Created to burn out on His altar of sacrifice--made to wear out
as His tools of design--to die, that you might live. For "no greater love
hath any man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." We
"die daily." We can only offer you an invitation to come and die with
us--to die to the flesh that ye may live in the Spirit!
25. AFTER YEARS IN THE MAKING, PREPARATION, AND
PLANNING, YOU MAY ONLY BE A BRIEF FLARE which lights up the landscape for but a
moment in the heat of battle, that the victory may be won!--But that lifetime
of preparation is worth it all--even if for only that "moment of
truth" and recognition by the Lord--that moment of usefulness that you
were designed for--that day when you stood in the gap--that hour when you met
the need--that time when you fulfilled your mission--And you can hear His,
"Well done, thou good and faithful servant! Enter thou into the joy of thy
Lord!" All this--and Heaven, too!
26. YOU'LL NEVER APPRECIATE YOUR LEADERS TILL YOU
HAVE TO JOIN THEM IN LEADERSHIP! You'll probably never fully appreciate God
until we join Him in Glory and see what it really cost Him!--How much time it
took, what infinite care and love and patience.--How much unseen labour went
into the end product--little old insignificant you--and me! Praise His Name
forever!" All glory and praise to the Lamb that was slain, who hath borne
all our sins and hath cleansed every stain!"
27. "Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed
about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and
the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that
is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith; who
for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and
is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him that
endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest yet be wearied and
faint in your minds. My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor
faint when thou art rebuked of Him: For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and
scourgeth every son whom He receiveth." (Hebrews 12:1-3,5,6).
28. DO YOU STILL WANT TO BE A LEADER?
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family
