Humility and Leadership

In my previous entry about True Humility I left you with this verse:

1 Peter 5:6 - Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.


How does this connect with Leadership? First of all let me say that I believe that we all have a certain level of leadership ability inherited from our creator.


1 Genesis 1:27 - So God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.


God is the greatest leader of all time and we were created in his image. So I believe we all have leadership ability. Leadership ability that is hindered to a certain degree in each of us by our fear of man. Those with what appears to be natural leadership abilities have a less degree of this fear. If we start to replace the fear of man with the fear of the Lord our leadership abilities grow.


Now back to 1 Peter 5:6 and the first part "humble yourselves, therefore under God's mighty hand"; Peter is telling us to practice true humility as I described in my previous entry. Then to me the exciting part: "that he may lift you up in due time." I feel that he is always working on us, always preparing us...but we need to do our part. Our part is walking humbly with him and when the time is right that God is going to lift us up and use us in a mighty way.


"In due time" - Notice what I said above? I said "when the time is right". I think we sometimes get a glimpse of God's calling in our life, a glimpse that God gives us to begin a time of preparation in our lives. But as leaders we tend to get that glimpse and take off ahead of God and often miss a big part of that preparation. It's important for us to realize the difference between God's calling on our life and God's timing in our life. You may know God's calling on your life right now. If so, are you walking in true humility with Him? Or are you letting your pride in that calling take you off ahead of God's timing?