Some people are born with a natural sense of direction. When I was in Boy Scouts as a youth we would practice using a compass, reading a map, and figuring out our location. The practice was called Orienteering. I prided myself of being fairly efficient at it, though not the best in our troop.
There's an old cliché, or stereotype, that dads on a road trip never ask for directions. They would rather pull off the interstate and reassess the map, than ask for directions. In reality they did not want to admit they were lost. Pride has a weird way of causing us to lose grip with logic. Asking for help would be faster, but then we would have lost our honor as navigators.
Weirdly this applies to many aspects of life. I have ended up in leadership positions in almost every job I have ever held. As a leader, you are expected to set the course for the team to follow. This also includes developing a vision for the future, so you have something to pursue or move toward.
What happens when we are lacking direction? Worse, what happens when we don't even have a vision of the future that would give you somewhere to head to? Sadly many people, myself included have been in this very place. The difficulty arises when we have to start moving forward, and we not only don't know the next step, we don't have a clue what the goal of the trip is.
I would be lying if I said this had never happened to me. It has actually happened many times. When I worked for a larger corporation they helped by developing a vision for the future. Then I just had to help rally my team to work toward that goal. When I became a pastor, this became far more challenging.
Developing a vision for a church is no easy task. I tent to want to keep things simple. Our goal is to lead people toward Jesus. This sounds straight forward (which it is), until someone says, "How?". Now I have to develop a plan, or course of action on how we are going to get there. We will start by preaching the Bible. Book by book, verse by verse, we will teach people God's Word.
Perfect, where are we going to start? I suppose we will start with the Gospels. We can narrow it down further, but what happens when we are stuck, and have no sense of where to go? This is the time where I feel like we need to go backward, and remember that before we were leaders we were followers of Christ.
If I am attempting to figure out where I am supposed to be leading people, but I have lost sight of the goal, then I need to return to the beginning. From this position, we can finally ask for directions. God does not care about our ego, rather He cherishes a humble heart. When we humble ourselves before the Lord, He blesses us.
Does this mean that we will instantaneously have it all figured out, no it does not. This is however, the perfect place to be to remember who's really behind the wheel of this car in the first place. Are you struggling with direction for the future? Perhaps in you personal life, work life, or in your faith? Today is the perfect day to ask God for directions.
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