Leadership

This week was the first week of my third year at FSM, and I am very excited about it. The Lord has definitely set me on a different path than I envisioned at the first, but I am so thankful for it! This year, I will be having a more "hands on" experience with my training, and this basically means a lot more work (the good kind).

One of the main aspects that I will be learning this year is leadership, which has been a common theme throughout my life. People have told me ever since I was young, "Becky, you are such a leader," and for some reason I always agreed. Much of what I based my assessment on has been my personality type, since I have a natural ease of speaking and interacting with people, as well as the ability to take charge in necessary situations.

However, since I have been at IHOP, I have had quite the wake up call as to what leadership actually means and looks like. Serving in a house of prayer is like taking a crash-course in leadership, and I've been kind of thrown into areas of leadership that I never expected to have. With most institutions, you only have to see those you're leading and those over you once or twice a week. With a house of prayer, you see them day after night after day, rain or shine, grumpy or chipper. Though I am so grateful to the Lord and those around me for the positions I've been given, I am not grateful because I like to lead but because I need the purifying fire it brings to get the level of sanctification I'm shooting for.

Because I'm in the Worship and Prayer Program at FSM, I'm getting training to lead a house of prayer for myself. That's right... I'm being trained to be the Mike Bickle of an IHOP of my own. The thought of this used to be exciting to me, but now it is quite sobering if not terrifying. The level of humility and perseverance it takes to establish, sustain, and further an IHOP is far, far beyond language, and I have felt the burden of it in just the one year of lower-level leadership. It is very painful to lead, but if the pain is brought to the Lord, it is redemptive.

How is it painful? Leading takes up your time, emotional energy, prayer, resources, and much freedom (whether you do it in a right or wrong way). Without the Lord's grace and sustaining hand, there is no possibility of doing it the right/redemptive way. Is it always painful? Yes. Jesus Himself is the ultimate and final Leader, and He showed us that the only way to lead is through humility, which usually means laying down what you think is best for the sake of others. He, being God incarnate, laid down His status and His very life in order to bring us to glory.

Throughout Scripture, every leader that is committed to following the Lord feels the weight of their own weakness and yet is commissioned to lead anyway. How is it that a perfect God would use very imperfect vessels to fulfill His perfect will? It is not simply that He uses people that are imperfect to begin with and then do better. Actually, as leaders mature (both Biblically and in my experience), they are ever-increasingly aware of their weakness.

How then is leadership redemptive? Paul is one of the ultimate windows into this reality, in that the Lord made it very clear to him saying, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." Who is this God who uses our weakness to not only show how perfect His leadership is but also to actually perfect us?

As I grow and have more responsibilities given to me, I have many times felt like Moses (though probably not to the same extreme) in Numbers 11. The key phrase is at the end of the prayer when Moses reveals the source of his anguish, "...do not let me see my wretchedness." However, the Lord is teaching me not to stop at the place of my own wretchedness but to persevere unto redemption. Humility is more than a mindset, it's a commitment.

All that to say, please pray for me as I delve more into the leadership of a house of prayer this year!