In Your Stickiest, Toughest Leadership Challenges
What are some of the most difficult, stickiest, trickiest, toughest, “wouldn’t wish it on your enemy” leadership situations you have faced?
Maybe you are in the middle of one of those hardest situations right now, asking yourself, “How am I/are we going to navigate through this one?” Under the surface of your honest question are feelings of fear, loneliness, anger, hurt, guilt. What do you do with those feelings? You can’t ignore them. Hebrews 6:19-20 anchors us in hope:
“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.”
Jesus, our greatest hope, faces our biggest, stickiest, toughest, most defining death-trap problem—sin. Through His own blood, He, as our great high priest, washes away all sin. Jesus is God’s perfect answer to the world’s biggest, trickiest, toughest, worst challenge.
He sent Jesus to be what no one else could be for you.
You know this, but you need to hear it, regularly, from someone else to you. Take it in. Your biggest challenges—past, present and future—are covered in the grace of Jesus poured out for you in His blood.
Any Christian leader is probably saying to themselves, “I know I am forgiven, but how is that going to help me make good future decisions?” Hebrews 6 is about more than forgiveness; it’s about hope to face what is ahead.
Consider the reason why the author of Hebrews said, “This hope we have as an anchor of the soul…” The captain of an ancient ship faced some of his toughest moments trying to enter a harbor through a narrow passage:
“As his ship moved through the opening, he had to guard against a gust of wind running it onto a reef or a sandbar…. To minimize the risk, the olden-day skipper would lower the ship’s anchor into a smaller boat, which would then be rowed through the narrow entrance of the harbor. The anchor would then be dropped and this ship, with sails down, would be pulled past the obstacles, through the narrow opening and into the safety of the harbor.”1
An anchor not only stands firm in the midst of the storm but is a key part of the vessel used to navigate the trickiest of passageways. You are a leader in the Kingdom who not only holds fast to the hope of Jesus in the midst of what feels like ministry hurricanes, but you are a leader who is being pulled by Jesus and His blood-bought hope through the hardest of situations.
Jesus is guiding you as you lead.
You lead best when you are anchored in Him as He pulls you through the narrowest of situations. You are held fast, made secure because Jesus is your hope in every situation, even the most difficult, stickiest, trickiest, toughest, “wouldn’t wish it on your enemy” leadership situations.
1 Walter A. Henrichsen, After the Sacrifice (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1979), 83.
