Responding to God (Scriptural Leadership)

God is moving all around us. Even in the beginning His Spirit moved above the waters. His very breath moved about the unfinished creation. He continues to move today. He is working in our lives and in the lives of those around us. He is moving in our families, our workplace and within the church. God may be moving in some of your lives as we speak. His Spirit could be convicting you, or leading you, or calling you in a number of ways. It is a humbling thought to realize that there are about 6 billion people on earth and each of us is still on God’s mind when He works. The question that we face today is not whether or not God works, but how we respond to His work. When we see God move, when He reveals His truth to us, when His Spirit convicts us, how do we respond?


Scripture is replete with examples of the responses of man to their God. There are two that are emphatically contrasted for us in the book of Romans: Adam, the first of God’s creation, and Jesus Christ, God’s Son. “For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for man (Romans 5:15).” The Apostle Paul shows us the results of the response of two men to God. Adam was created and placed in the most beautiful place in the entire world. He was created in the very image of God; given every advantage that we could ever imagine. The only command was not to eat from one specific tree in the middle of the garden. Adam and his wife had to respond in some way to that command. Their response was to ignore the command of God and replace it with what was pleasing to them.

Satan convinced man that God was trying to hold him back, to keep him from becoming something greater. “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate (Genesis 3:6).” This is how Satan works. He constantly tries to convince us to respond to God based on our temporal view of the world rather than God’s eternal will. The Devil tries to turn our attention downward and inward, even though God has called us to look outward and upward (Col. 3:1-4).

Satan is trying to give us a false perception of the battlefield. Whether we admit it or not, there is an invisible world around us. This world is largely defined in light of the things that go on in that invisible world because that world is eternal. When we allow Satan to turn our attention to the things of this world, we are no longer defining our lives within an eternal context. We are living for what we see now, and not for what is to come. This makes it nearly impossible to respond to the work of God in the proper way since His work is done in the context of the eternal. He is always working among His people so that they “may not perish but have eternal life.” His rewards are not always going to make us wealthy or affluent in this life. He is more concerned with our souls than our accomplishments and achievements, our possessions and our riches. In the beginning man chose to respond to God by ignoring and replacing His commands. He felt that his way was best, and God’s way left something to be desired.

In contrast to Adam’s response to God we see the response of Jesus during the most trying time of His life on earth. As He agonized about God’s call on His life in the Garden of Gethsemane, our Lord prayed, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but Yours, be done (Luke 22:42).” Jesus was confronted with the choice that Adam had faced in the beginning. He was faced with the choice that each person throughout history has had to make throughout the course of their lives. How would He respond to the directive of God? When God required more than a nominal commitment what would He do? Jesus proved in His prayer that His desire was to respond in a way that would accomplish God’s eternal purposes. In direct contrast to Adam – through whom sin entered the world – Jesus submitted Himself fully to God’s desires and impacted the lives of every person who has followed Him. “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience many will be made righteous (Romans 5:19, 20).”

These truths contained in Scripture remind us that with each passing day we are confronted with God’s work in some way. Somehow He is moving in and around our lives and each of us must choose to respond to Him. Each Sunday morning we are confronted with God’s Word, and though there may be no altar response, every person who has heard the Word must respond in some way. We can either submit to God’s Word and let Him mold and shape us, or we can ignore God’s voice and Spirit in favor of our own ideas and wisdom.

In light of all this, it is imperative that the leaders of God’s church understand how this affects them. What does it mean as we meet and discuss the work of the church? How can we ensure that we are responding to God in the proper way?

First of all, we find the will of God through the witnesses that He has provided for us, His Word and His Spirit. The Word is the measuring rod against which our ideas and thoughts are judged. All of our actions and our efforts must be conformed to what is taught in the Bible. It is our inerrant, infallible rule of faith. Without an ever-growing understanding of Scripture we can never be the leaders that God has called us to be. The Bible is not used by the church simply to justify our opinions, it is used as a revelation of God’s will. The Spirit helps us to respond that that will.

So many times we spend countless hours trying to reason among ourselves when our God has called us to reason with Him. “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord (Isaiah 1:18)...” The role of the leader within the church is far too often looked at as “to make decisions.” A thorough review of Scripture leads us to a contrary conclusion. The role of leaders is to respond to God with submission. It is not our responsibility to “make decisions” but to seek the will of God and actively follow it. That goes against our cultural norms and everything that we have been conditioned to believe, but it does not go against the teachings of the Bible.

God gives His vision through Scripture and leads through His Spirit, and the direct response of man should be prayer. “When God intends to do a mighty work, the first thing He does is to set His people praying.” This is our submission to His will. We know that it is God’s will to save the lost. Our response is to pray for His direction in accomplishing that will. It is His will for His people to live in unity and love. Prayer is the means of seeking direction for this.

Countless times throughout history God has moved, not through the structures of His people, but through their submission. When we humbly pray to our God, He will move in a mighty way among us. “Call to Me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things that you do not know (Jeremiah 33:3).” Leaders do not lead the church because of their intelligence, talents, abilities, finances, or even elected position. They are called by God to lead in submission to His will. They must set this example for each person within the church. If they are not willing to submit to the will of God and allow Him to move, they forfeit the right to expect His work to be done among them.

By continually writing policy and guidelines, we are telling God – much like Adam and Eve – “we have a better way. We don’t really need you because your will can be accomplished through our methods and channels.” We are trying to define for God the ways that we believe He should work. There has never been a time where God has worked through man-made structure. God will not work through us because we sit on the council, or the board, or because we are a part of any other committee. He will work through us because we are people of prayer and men and women of the Word. He will work through us because we are living in humble submission to His Spirit. To place terms on this is to limit the work and the movement of God. If God is to use this specific congregation, His work will begin with the corporate response of the leaders to His will. I say this realizing that it may take more faith than some people within the congregation exhibit. There may be people who are uncomfortable with such an arrangement. The fact remains, however, that our top priority must be to please God. Our focus must be on the things of the spiritual world and not on the temporal world in which we live. His will is always spiritual and eternal, and we must realize that if we are to submit to Him.

By responding to God with our own strategy and our own opinion, we place ourselves in the position of Israel as they stood at the foot of Mount Sinai. Moses had gone up onto the mountain to receive the laws of God for His people. As they waited they decided among themselves that the current arrangement (to wait on God) was just not working. They needed something more tangible. Something they could touch and see. They immediately turned their attention to the worldly and made for themselves a calf of gold to be their God. You are familiar with the story. Their improper response to God led to their judgment by God. However, even evil people like those of Nineveh were restored when they responded to God’s Word in submission. They humbled themselves before Him, and God relented in His anger.

I realize that this goes against the idea that we are elected representatives of the people in the congregation. That is because we are not. We hold positions as “elders” within the church, not because we’re the brightest or the best, but because we are submissive to God. There are times where that submission may cost us dearly. It cost all of the prophets in Scripture. Many paid with their own lives. I once heard Bill Neece point something out that has stuck with me since. “The price has not changed.” Does the church in our day want to be a neatly organized machine that can carry out many social functions among its members? Or do we really want God to move among us? Do we want to see His power and His might? Do we want to see lives changed, families healed and relationships restored? God wants to see those things. He has done them before and the price in our day is still the same.

As leaders, we are confronted this day – and each day – with God’s presence. In what way will we respond? The call of Joshua to the Israelites rings true for us today. “And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve…”