If I’m not running the show, I’m not involved.
That would normally sound like arrogance, but it’s not. I have no interest in leading much of anything, anyway. There are a lot of things that I leave in other people’s hands. I’m grateful for their leadership. But I have a commission from God, so I don’t invest energy and effort into things He hasn’t called me to do. And what He has called me to do, has always required me strike off in my own direction.
In times past I did a lot of participation, and ended up leading almost every time. That awakened me to consider what really mattered, after all. Then I bailed out of that stuff because I heard a calling that led me places where no one else was going.
I don’t have time for things that are so unimportant to me that I just play along. At no time on this entire planet could there be something so important that I would volunteer to be a mere participant. I may go along as an observer, but never am I just a member of the adoring audience. Nothing humans do in this world captures me like that. Nothing humans do matters that much to me because it doesn’t matter to God.
I don’t want to lead in something that humans do en masse. When I lead, it will always be something almost no one else is doing. That’s why I’m doing it. I represent a God who has already condemned the things humans do for their own reasons. God has commissioned me to do things He can’t get most people to do. I take off down those paths with alacrity.
Sometimes other people join in, and that’s great. I tend to pass off all the burdens at which I’m really not much good. Indeed, I often end up doing things half-assed, as it were, because I won’t mess with the parts that I don’t know how to handle. I look at the heart of the thing and pick the few parts I know best, and ignore everything else. I have to leave it in God’s hands. Most of what God calls me to do works like that. I just do what He tells me, share with anyone who’s interested, and let them do what they feel they are called to do. I have complete faith that it will work out in the end.
Some day, some of the stuff I’m called to do will attract bigger numbers. When that day comes, I’ll have to relearn how to lead. How I led in the past under typical human mass activities required one kind of leadership; what I’m doing now is different. Sure, lessons on how to bless others will transfer, but the whole mindset I was taught in those days turns out to be inapplicable, because those activities seldom involved the power of the Holy Spirit.
It will be the kind of work where it’s more about coordination than it is management. It will require that discipline be self-discipline. It will require a spiritual drive from inside of each participant, because nobody will have time to push you except God. Only after we have established this as the cultural baseline of our expectations can we then talk about shepherding sheep.
So, now you know what it means: If I’m not running the show, I’m not involved.
