A New Land

You are The Lord God, who chose Abram, and brought him out Ur of the Chaldeans, and gave him the name Abraham; you found his heart faithful before You, and made a covenant with him to give him the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, and the Girgashites-to give it to his descendants. You have performed. Your Words, for You are righteous. Nehemiah 9:7-9

Abraham passed the leadership test in this last passage. Can you perceive what the test was? A faithful heart towards God. Do we see any religion mentioned here? The problem with religion is that people get in the way and hypocrisy starts to weave itself into the process. God was looking for a character quality not a religion. Abraham then becomes the father of the faithful, or father of all those who have a true heart towards God. A seeking heart. A heart though ridden with weaknesses still longs for something better, deeper and more meaningful. A heart, which knows its own frailty and yearns for the Creator to lead it back home. A faithful heart longs for healing and deliverance and senses that it is incapable of helping itself. A faithful heart is willing to throw itself down on the ash heap of despair and be willing to be lifted by the hands of a loving Father who has nothing but compassion strength and power to restore the hurting heart. A true leader is one who recognizes that he is nothing without God’s intervention in his or her life. A true leader understands that God will lead him into a new "land", whether that be a new business venture, a move across the city to a new neighborhood, new relationships based on purity, or whatever, but that the initial placing of unconditional trust towards God will preclude a leading towards a "new land". God never leaves a person in the place he started from. Trust and faith in God will lead the individual into a "new land of promise". Gives pause for thought; am I stuck in the same old patterns of thinking, am I stuck in the same circumstances; am I trying to do everything by my own capacities or do I have the inward "ghanis"( as the South American would say) or inner strength to lay myself aside and put my faith in the hands of The One greater than I. That was Abrahm's defining first step towards leadership; it should be ours if we are called to lead others.