Matt's Muzings
The Why and the How of Leadership
April, 2006 Volume 8, Issue 64
I continue to ‘Muze’ on this whole area of the heart. Every since I was young I have heard the statement, “But my heart was in the right place.” Or someone else may say, “I didn’t mean to do that.” It seems the last great argument if you are in trouble. I have believed most of my life that if your heart is ‘right’, that is all that matters. Recently I have realized that is not the full story. Let me explain my thinking.
Moses
One rather dramatic example of this that comes to my mind is an incident that takes place with Moses. Seeing the suffering of one of his own people, he killed the oppressor, an Egyptian and hid him in the sand. I am sure God put the seed of helping his own people in Moses heart. Moses must have known he didn’t fit where he was as an Egyptian leader. His heart was in the right place (obviously I can’t know this for sure), his action was wrong. It was rooted in his own sense of works, his own timing and his own way of doing it. God’s process of how to save Israel was just as important as the goal of saving them. Moses didn’t get this.
God’s leadership school for Moses was 40 years of tending sheep.
Now there is no question that the heart is the key. God works from the inside out. He begins with love and always works from that foundation. There is no other place to begin.
A key question for leadership is: Is having the right motive enough?
The need for wisdom
The Biblical answer is clearly no. If someone does a foolish thing, even if they do it with the right motive, it is still a foolish thing. A right motive does not remove the responsibility for wisdom. It seems clear, particularly with leadership, that motive is not enough. Obviously, in using the example of Moses, I am not talking about killing someone. It is far more subtle for each of us. How do we deal with conflict? How we run a business or work in our job? How do we talk about others around us we don’t understand? Those in leadership? How do we respond to pain? How do we deal with power?
Another way of saying it is ‘faith without works is dead.’ In 1 Cor. Paul writes about the fire that will test all of our works. He writes that wood, hay and stubble will be consumed in the fire but the person will still make it to heaven. So he is talking to Christians who did things with the right heart, but a total lack of wisdom and therefore it is a loss for the Kingdom of God. All benefit to them is also lost, burned in the fire of judgment.
I was reading Matt 5:19 "Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and so teaches others, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
You can still make it into heaven, but that is not God’s end goal for us. God wants us to grow up and reveal His glory and for it to fill the earth. In order to do that in Government, Business, Arts, Education and Family we need wisdom. We need to know the “how”. We must take what we ‘do’ as seriously as God does.
Greatness in the Kingdom of heaven is found in those who have God’s heart and God’s wisdom.
Leaders begin with a heart after God. However, they move the Kingdom of God forward by understanding the wisdom of God or another way of saying it is, they know the ways of God.
Is your heart right before God? If it is then it is time to learn the ways of God and gain wisdom for the job, family or whatever context he has put you in. How you do something as a leader is just as important as why you do it. It is not either/or, but both/and.
Many blessings,
Matt Rawlins
PS. A great site that helps you to think in God’s ways is found at a friend's web site: http://www.ottemplate.org/ Check it out.
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