Vision or Revelation?

Each morning I make it a practice to read the Experiencing God Day By Day daily devotional from Blackaby Ministries International. Earlier this past week, I read the entry that focused on Proverbs 29:18, “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint, but happy is he who keeps the law.” I want to quote what the Blackaby’s have said about this proverb:

“The world operates on vision.  God’s people live by revelation.  The world seeks grand and noble purposes and goals to achieve. Institutions establish goals and then organize themselves to achive them.  God’s people function in a radically different way.  Christians arrange their lives baed on the revelation of God, regardless of whether it makes sense to them.  God does not ask for our opinion about what is best for our future, our family, our church, or our community (or our business); He already knows!  What God wants is to get the attention of His people and reveal to us what is on His heart and what His will is, for God’s ways are not our ways.

“Whenever people do not base their lives on God’s revelation, they cast off restraint.  That is, they do what is right in their own eyes.  They set their goals, arrange their agendas and then pray for God’s blessing.  Some Christians are living far outside the will of God, yet they have the audacity to pray and ask God to bless their efforts.

“The only way for you to know God’s will is for Him to reveal it to you.  You will never discover it on your own. What you hear from the Father, you have an immediate agenda for your life: obedience.  As the writer of this proverb observed, happy is he who keeps the law.”

So, is this saying that goals, resolutions, plans and other tools that help us to stay focused and organized are not appropriate or meaningful?  No, I don’t think so.  I think what is being said in the Proverb and by the Blackaby’s is that we must first hear a revelation from God before we go off and set our agendas, plans, goals and deliverables.

What is God’s agenda for you? Have you asked Him or taken the time to allow Him to reveal it to you? If you want to learn more about this, my recently published book devotes the first chapter to this topic and it is entitled Setting a Vision.  Purchase it here.

Appointing Leaders

The first realization we as Christians must have is that God appoints leaders. This is clear in the biblical accounts of how leaders came to be leaders. We must submit the selection of our organization’s leaders to God in prayer and seek His counsel, plan and direction. Proverbs 13:10 (NLT) comes to mind: “Pride leads to conflict; those who take advice are wise.” Another Proverb (16:9 NLT) provides good advice as well, “We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.”

When selecting and appointing leaders, we will make mistakes when we choose to make that decision without any input from other godly people or by not utilizing various information sources to clarify and validate our thinking. It stands to reason that an objective assessment must happen prior to the selection, promotion or appointment. The assessment must include obtaining counsel and advice from other wise, godly people who share in the overall vision of the organization. This is a process that will take time and should not be rushed into for any reason.

We recently conducted a survey of almost 600 business owners and leaders asking them about their leadership development practices.  (Contact me via email wbliss@blissassociates.com for results of that survey) Interestingly, 86 percent of the respondents to this survey indicated they would be interested in an objective process to assess the capabilities of their leadership team. (Contact me directly to learn more about an objective process.) Chief executives or other leaders who believe they are sufficiently wise in their own knowledge and experience to appoint and develop leaders by themselves are sadly mistaken. These decisions are made by people with a great deal of pride who trust their own instincts. In reality, these people have their own agenda; rarely is this agenda aligned with God’s agenda for the organization. Those mistakes inevitably cost hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. These kinds of selection mistakes can be the forerunner of an organization’s failure.

CEOs of family companies who automatically appoint one of their children as their successor, simply to keep the business in the family, often make fatal mistakes as well. Without utilizing careful selection criteria, without submitting the appointment to prayer and seeking God’s plan, these selfish or self-centered decisions lead to disaster and quite often the demise of a once thriving organization. Unfortunately, I can tell you about dozens of clients who have taken this path.  I came along side to help when they began to experience the impact of the mistakes that were made.

Appointing leaders who are just like us is also a strategy fraught with errors. Aside from the obvious possibility of one’s swelled pride and ego leading to “like me” bias, appointing people who are just like us limits what the organization can do and limits where God might want to take the organization. We must appoint leaders based on what God desires the organization to accomplish in the future, not what has been accomplished in the past.

When selecting, appointing and developing leaders in a Christian-run organization, it is critical that those leaders are like-minded in their faith and walk with Jesus. Scripture tells us to not be unevenly yoked (II Corinthians 6:14). Paul was speaking to the Corinthians in a variety of contexts, including in a business or organizational arrangement. Ensuring that a leader’s heart is aligned with God’s eternal objectives is an important and critical criterion for appointment into a leadership role. Leaders who are not evenly yoked will tend to have different and oftentimes conflicting values about what is important.

Leaders who have different principles or moral values will inevitably take the organization to places that God does not intend for them to go. This is painfully clear in the Old Testament when recording all the kings who came after Solomon in both Israel and Judah. For an organization to achieve what God has intended, it must be populated with leaders who believe in and follow God’s principles to the core. Doing it any other way, while it might lead to temporary success or accolades, will surely lead to longer term failure.

We are told in Scripture that God will hold us accountable for our actions. This is certainly applicable to us as leaders.  In every leadership development or selection decision, why not have as one of your filters determining if Jesus will say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

Do you have any stories to share?  Please let me know what you have experienced, or can add to this discussion.