Take Me to Your Leader

Isn’t it amazing to see the differences in the way humans view people and the way God views people?  One of the most important things for a youth group is to have leaders other than the youth pastor to build relationships and disciple students.  Being the guy who is in charge of choosing those leaders seems like it would be really tough.  I mean, you have the responsibility of filtering out the unqualified, the dangerous, and the unhealthy ones.  Plus, if something goes wrong, doesn’t it come back to the leader in charge?  It’s a lot of pressure. It’s a tough decision. Lucky for me. It’s not my decision to make.

 That’s right….

 Its Gods.

 We have been looking for more leaders for The Underground youth group.  The search isn’t going well. Or is it? 

 I was praying with a friend the other day about finding leaders.  He mentioned something about identity and I started thinking about the story of Samuel anointing the  king of Israel that would come after Saul.   The story is found in 1 Samuel 16.  It goes something like this.

 God told Samuel to go to Bethlehem to search for the new king amongst the sons of Jesse.  After he arrived and found his way to Jesse, Samuel thought that the son who stood before him must have been who God had chosen.  This son probably had the qualities that humans look for in a leader.  He was probably physically strong, tall, and thin.  He was probably well dressed.  He may have even had a nice voice.  But he was not to be king.

 So Samuel went to the next son.  Not him either. So Samuel went to the next son after that.  Again, not him.  Samuel ended up doing this seven times.  He was then forced to ask if any other son remained and there was one more.  David.

 So then came along a good-looking boy David, who probably smelled like sheep poop.  He probably wasn’t so well dressed either, being that he was tending sheep.

 But God chose David.

 This story really made me think about the way I look at leaders.  It is not my responsibility to choose the leaders.  It’s God’s.  Not to excuse me from searching for them or releasing them into ministry, etc. And of course it is my responsibility to filter out the people who could be dangerous to the youth.  But I realized how important it is, as a leader of leaders, to look for leaders in the way God looks for leaders. Because...

 “The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."