A Word about the Resourceful Leader

Today I want to share a word about the resourceful leader as I comment on Exodus 4 verses 1 through 5. This passage reads, 

Then Moses answered and said, “But suppose they will not believe me or listen to my voice; suppose they say, ‘The Lord has not appeared to you.’ ”  So the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” He said, “A rod.” And He said, “Cast it on the ground.” So he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from it. Then the Lord said to Moses, “Reach out your hand and take it by the tail” (and he reached out his hand and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand), “that they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.”

A church treasurer once told me that it's easy to be a treasurer when there's plenty of money in the bank. The hard part comes when money is scarce and it's easier to be a leader when you have a lot of resources. But the one thing that almost every leader soon learns is that resources are always limited. Even the federal government does not have unlimited resources. Moses learned a lesson about this as we read above in our text for today, Exodus 4:1-5.  And the first thing that Moses learned is that God can use you where you are. 

God can use you where you are.

So where was Moses? He was on the back side of the desert. It was land that was not good for very much and barely useful for anything. In fact, it is even barely useful for raising sheep. I've learned dealing with my family property in Lee County, Alabama that land connected to the road or with road frontage is worth a lot more than land that has been separated from the road by another parcel of property. But that being said, Moses was in a place that wasn't very resource-rich, and we have to ask the question, what could he do there? He could chase sheep, and he could fight off wolves. I think primarily the thing that Moses did where he was was hide from the Egyptians. But where are we today? 

Moses was in the back side of the desert in a place that was isolated from almost isolated from reality in many ways. But where are we today? Are we individually in the desert? Collectively, are we in the desert, in our churches, in our homes, and in our nation? Or maybe we might be in some better place. But the lesson we can learn here is this: it doesn't matter where you are. God can use you. 

He might ask us to move, or He might not ask us to move. But only our stubbornness, our fear, and refusal to comply will thwart his plans for us. So God can use us wherever we are. Moses also learned that God could use us, whatever we have. 

God can use what we have.

What did Moses have? He had a shepherd's crook. In fact, I'm not even sure it was a crook. It may have just been a stick, but that's beside the point. A shepherd's staff, a shepherd's crook, is very useful for a shepherd. It is not much useful for anything else, especially for liberating a people. You know, there's an old saying, "You don't want to bring a knife to a gunfight." And it seems like that's what God was asking Moses to do. 

God was asking Moses to go back into the lion's mouth, go back and confront his adopted uncle or whatever relative of his stepmother was in charge at that time. He was asking him, to bring a people out from a land of the birth, a people who didn't even know him. Or if they knew him, they only knew him as the failed, murdering son of the Pharaoh that was oppressing them. He was sent by God to represent him in Egypt where no one believed in him. No one even understood him. And he was to do all this with a stick. 

What do we have? Well, our churches have facilities, and beautiful facilities in many cases. We have many talents and abilities. Churches often have a close-knit fellowship. We have Bibles. We have Bible studies. We have videos. We have a whole publishing house in the Southern Baptist Convention called LifeWay Christian Resources. We've got networks of churches and denominational agencies to help churches do well and do better in their ministry. In short, we have a lot more than Moses had. So, what is God asking us to do? 

God is asking us to be witnesses for Him, to preach the gospel, to teach the Bible, to minister to people's needs, to do all these things decently in order so that we can make disciples of all nations for God's glory and for their blessing. And truth be told, it's much easier a task than Moses had. I would hate to go into a place that wanted to murder me or extract judgment upon me, exact judgment upon me, with a stick in my hand. I'd rather do what I'm doing now than what Moses had to do. Moses also learned that God will make the best of any situation. 

God will make the best of any situation.

Now we have the ability to look at the whole counsel of the Word of God so we can see a lot more examples of this than Moses did. We see Moses liberating his people. We see Joshua establishing their homeland. We see David saving Israel from Philistines and many other outsiders bent on destroying them. We see Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. We see Jesus beginning his church. We see Paul and the Apostles evangelizing the known world. Now think about each of these men's situations. Humanly they were not very promising and yet God triumphed anyway. 

So, what should we do? We should trust in God's judgment and will. We should allow Him to use us in whatever way He wants and allow Him to use what we have in whatever way He wants. And then we need to enjoy what He does with us. 

Many years ago, I knew a man by the name of Jack. I won't use his last name because he may still be alive. I don't want to embarrass him or call undue attention upon him, but Jack was a man who was blind. He had been blown out of a tank during World War II and lost his eyesight. He got it back for a time, but then later, over time, it went away. Despite this, Jack continued in ministry. Jack served as a blind headmaster of a Christian school. He retired from that Jack operated an audio ministry for blind people. God can use us where we are with what we have, and He can use us in any situation. 

Conclusion.

There is one truth that all these resourceful leaders had in common. They all realized that God was their greatest resource. And this is true today. The abundance of money, the abundance of volunteers, the abundance of buildings and vehicles and other things will never overcome the greatest resource of all. And that is God. That resource is the Holy Spirit. That resource is the salvation we have in Jesus Christ. 

Resourceful leaders realize many things about God and God's work with them. But the main thing is the resourceful leader realizes that God is the greatest resource of all. 

Thanks so much for visiting me today. I'll be back soon with another word from the Bible we share together. 

Every blessing,

Dr. Otis Corbitt.