8. My Lord & Leader

Names of God Meditations No.8: My Lord & Leader

2 Chron 13:12  “God is with us; he is our leader.”

Leaders? It is interesting to note that the word ‘leader’ or ‘leaders’ occurs nearly 280 times in the NIV and yet in a search the above verse is the only one I can find that calls God our leader. But this large number of uses of the word shows us that God has delegated leadership of people to other people; there will always be a need for someone to rise up and lead, as the many examples in the book of Judges show us.

God who leads: But the fact is that God IS a leader. He led the people of Israel through the wilderness (Ex 13:21) and he showed them where to go and when to move. The fact is that again and again, the Lord called people and directed them (e.g. Abram, Moses) and they followed His calling and found He was with them the whole way. When we come to observe the Son of God with his disciples, we see his call to them was, “Come, follow me,” (Mt 4:19) and “At once they left their nets and followed him.” (v.20) i.e. he led them. Discipleship is all about following Jesus, about being led by him.

Trustworthy leader: But there is something about the Father and the Son being leaders that is different from any human leadership – they know everything (about us and the world, and not only what could happen but what will happen) and their wisdom is unlimited, so link that to the fact of their love, and we see that they are utterly trustworthy, never making a mistake.

Lord: Now when we add a further factor to all this, that the Bible reveals to us, that God is all-powerful and has no limitations beyond those He imposes on Himself (e.g. that rain falls not rises), putting all these things together, there is only one word to describe God – Lord. The use of ‘Lord’ speaks of His sovereignty, His authority, His power, that makes Him unique, unlike anyone or anything else we know of in all of existence.

Human versus Divine: Also when we might speak of someone as ‘Lord’ we are acknowledging they are the supreme ruler or controller. If it is used of a human it is always very limited; they may rule as long as they remain alive and as long as their people tolerate their rule, but when it comes to God there is no limitation to His Lordship for He is eternal and His power and wisdom are unlimited and never change. It is no wonder that heaven acclaims Him, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.“ (Rev 4:11)

So why do we take time to ponder such things? Well I suggest there are two main reasons, and bear in mind it is in the light of all the revelation from the Bible that we have referred to so far.

He knows best: The first might be summed up as, “He knows best!” Now we describe Sin as self-centred godlessness because our thinking, before we submit to Christ, is both self-centred (not God-centred) and godless (we ignore or reject Him). Now do you see how this conflicts with, “He knows best”? So often children are in conflict with their parents because the parents, with years of experience and knowledge, act on the basis of “we know best” and that is a challenge, especially to teenagers being brought up on an information world who think they know more than their non-tech-savvy parents, but that fails to realise that ‘wisdom’ is far more than gathering data. And so we fallible human beings get deceived into thinking, “I know best” and so we ignore God – to our peril. And the world reveals that in every direction.

Trustworthy, again: But there is also a second reason why we should ponder these things: because He is utterly trustworthy. So teenagers might see the mess of life their parents are making, or very simply challenge whether they do indeed ‘know best’, but when it comes to God, if we will believe what the Bible says of God from cover to cover, then we will trust Him, and when we consider He IS love (1 Jn 4:8,16 & Ex 34:6,5, Num 14:18, Neh 9:17, Psa 86:5,15, 103:8, Joel 2:13, Jonah 4:2), clearly testified to again and again in the Scriptures, we have every reason to trust Him and have utter confidence in Him.

A Tricky Necessity: When we first turned to Christ, we surrendered to him as both Saviour and Lord. In fact he can’t go on saving us (as a daily operation) if we don’t let him be Lord. It’s when we forget him things go wrong. The example of Jesus’ disciples with him is both helpful and not. It is helpful in that it shows us that Jesus led and they followed; very clearly that’s how it worked. But when it comes to us and thinking how we may apply that, mostly we do not get a call to leave our jobs and so aren’t going around following a physical Jesus. Instead we have to allow his Holy Spirit to lead us and that is very much a case of learning to be sensitive to Him and being alert to His leading. This we will do to the best of our current ability (because hopefully we will get better at it as the years pass), but it only becomes easier with time. Nevertheless, He is ‘the God who leads’.